The Girl In The Glass (29 page)
Read The Girl In The Glass Online
Authors: James Hayman
When Gina agreed, Maggie accompanied her to her desk, where Gina retrieved her bag and jacket. Maggie checked both for possible weapons. There were none, but she took possession of Gina’s cell phone.
They left the building. Maggie put the cuffs on Gina, then deposited her in the backseat of Diane Rizzo’s replacement cruiser. She told Diane to stick Gina in an interview room at 109 and not let her make any phone calls until her father was safely in custody.
I
T TOOK
M
AGGIE
and McCabe fifteen minutes to drive to Mussey Street in South Portland. The Hogan house was a small white colonial with black shutters that looked like it had been built in the early fifties and not changed much since then. Since a two-year-old green Buick LaCrosse was pulled up on one side of the two-car driveway, and since Mrs. Hogan was at the Knowles house taking care of her granddaughter, they figured Little Frannie was likely at home. In case he was looking out the window, they drove past the house and parked at the end of the block. Far enough away so Hogan wouldn’t spot them even if he was looking.
“You have a phone number for the house?” asked McCabe.
“Yup. 207-555-7843. It’s a landline.”
McCabe blocked out caller ID so his number would appear as Private Caller on Hogan’s phone.
The phone rang four times before a croaky male voice answered, “Who’s this?”
“Mr. Hogan?”
“That’s right. Who’re you?”
“My name is John Allen, and I’m with the Greater Portland Campaign to fight Muscular Dystrophy . . .”
There was a click on the other end. “Yup. He’s home.”
“No doubt accompanied by his Glock, his assault rifle and his RPG,” said Maggie. “Plus God knows whatever else he has in his arsenal.” She blew out a long breath. “Okay, McCabe, you’re the boss. How do we play this one without getting a lot of people killed? Possibly including us.”
McCabe thought about it for a minute. Then he called Detective Connie Davenport. He told her to head over to Cumberland Medical Center, where she should hang out and wait for him to call again. He next called South Portland detective Tommy Holmes.
“Hiya, McCabe, what’s up?”
“We’re about to take a man named Francis Hogan into custody for the murders of Byron Knowles and the Whitby girl. The guy’s armed to the teeth. Including an assault rifle and an RPG. He may come peacefully, but maybe not. If he decides to start a war, we’re going to need backup from a SWAT team. Since his house is in South Portland, seems to me the team ought to be yours. Is that possible?”
“Oh, yeah. I think our guys will be eager to take part in this one,” Holmes said. “What’s the address?”
McCabe told him.
“Let me check up the line and get back to you in five minutes,” said Holmes.
He hung up, and Maggie and McCabe both put on their body armor and waited. Ten minutes later, McCabe’s phone rang.
“Okay, McCabe. Everything’s cool,” Holmes said. “My folks are loving the idea of getting a piece of the action on this one.”
McCabe instructed Holmes to have his people approach the house quietly. No lights. No sirens. “I want you to have cruisers blocking off Mussey Street between Broadway and Third. Then I want your SWAT team to deploy quietly on foot on all four sides of Francis Hogan’s house and get as close as they can without being seen. That part’s important. They absolutely should not be seen. Hopefully Mr. Hogan’s watching TV or taking a nap and not looking out the windows. Cool?”
“Cool so far.”
“Okay. I’ll fill you in on the rest of it when your people are in position.”
Maggie and McCabe kept a close eye on 38 Mussey while they waited for the reinforcements to arrive. Another ten minutes passed, then Holmes approached their car and slipped into the backseat. “Okay, everybody’s in place and ready to go. How do we play it?”
“I want to get this guy alive,” said McCabe, “without starting World War III. He’s a professional killer, and adding a couple of cops to his body count won’t bother him in the least. So I’m going to try to get him out of his house without his heavy artillery.”
Maggie looked doubtful. “How do you propose doing that?”
McCabe didn’t answer. Just held up one finger, signaling a brief time out. Then he called Connie Davenport.
“You at the hospital?” he asked.
“I’m here. What do you need me to do?”
“Go up to the nursing station in the obstetrics unit, show them your badge and tell them you need to use one of their phones. Don’t take no for an answer. Let me know when you’re in place. Then you’re going to call a Mr. Francis Hogan at 555-7843.” McCabe waited while Connie wrote down the number. “Tell Mr. Hogan you’re a nurse at Cumberland Med. Give him the real nurse’s name and her extension in case he wants to call back and check. Tell him his daughter, Gina Knowles, who is eight and a half months pregnant, has been in an accident, that she might die and that you’re trying to save the baby. Tell him Gina needs him to come to the hospital right away. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. After you’ve done that, you’re going to call me back and let me know what he said.”
McCabe hung up and turned to Holmes. “When Hogan comes out of the house and heads for his car, I’m going to block his driveway with this car. I want your guys to move fast and get between Hogan and the front door so he can’t get back inside. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“With any luck, he won’t rush to the hospital wearing any guns. If he’s unarmed, we’ve got him. If not, we tell him to put his hands up. If he goes for a gun, we kill him.”
“What if he runs for it?”
“He’s got a wounded leg. I don’t think he’s going to be doing any running.”
“He may just hobble for it,” said Maggie. “But I don’t think he’ll get very far.”
T
HE SCENARIO PLAYED
out exactly as McCabe described it. A very distraught Francis Hogan limped out the front door and headed for his car as soon as he got the message from the hospital. Maggie blocked the end of the driveway with the Crown Vic, and the SWAT guys moved in. Hogan instantly recognized the trap and put his hands in the air.
“Francis Hogan,” said McCabe, “you’re under arrest for the murders of Veronica Aimée Whitby and Lucy McCorkle.”
“Who’s Lucy McCorkle?” asked Hogan as Tommy Holmes pushed him spread-eagle against the Buick, frisked and cuffed him. He was unarmed.
“The old lady you blew away on the porch of my house when I was coming home,” said Maggie. “I’d say that was bad timing on your part.”
“Listen guys, have a heart. I’ve got to get to the hospital. My pregnant daughter’s been in an accident. They’re trying to save the baby, but she could die. I’ve got to see her before that happens. Can you take me there first?”
“Sorry to break it to you, Frannie,” said McCabe, “but your daughter and her child are both just fine. She’s being held in custody at Portland police headquarters.”
It took Hogan less than a second to realize he’d been set up.
“You fucks,” said Hogan. “You tricked me.”
“Yeah, we did,” said McCabe, with the biggest grin he’d enjoyed in what seemed like months. “Ain’t life sweet?”
I
T WAS THE
first Saturday in October, and McCabe was jogging down to the running trail that went from East End Beach and then around Back Cove. The same trail Dean Scott and Ruthie had taken the June night they’d discovered Aimée Whitby lying near death on the Loring Trail.
October was always McCabe’s favorite month in Portland. The days beginning to cool but the sun still warm enough to get outside for a run wearing just a T-shirt and shorts. The trees were already well into their annual change from green to brilliant red and gold. The city itself alive with a new season of music and art and theater. Still another new hotel was opening on Fore Street, with a slick modern bar that carried a huge selection of good single malts, including The Macallan 12, which McCabe could just manage to afford, and The Macallan 18, which was truly spectacular but way above his pay grade. A new Asian fusion restaurant and a new upscale steakhouse had just opened their doors to great reviews. He hadn’t tried either yet.
A small indie film company was spending the month in town shooting exteriors for a thriller about the Russian mob’s involvement in human trafficking. The director loved the small cobblestoned streets and the urban feel of the Old Port and the atmospheric grittiness of the wharfs and the waterfront. Turned out the cinematographer was a guy McCabe knew from his student days at NYU Film School, so he’d spent a fair amount of time hanging around the set. A couple of times he’d even dated one of the actresses who was playing a key supporting role as the head of the FBI team investigating the traffickers. She was good company, and he had fun talking movies with somebody who knew as much about films as he did. Still, they both knew the relationship wasn’t going anywhere and that soon she’d be heading back to L.A.
Work had been fairly quiet all summer except for the fallout from the murders. On June 25, Assistant Attorney General Burt Lund recommended that charges against Gina Hogan Knowles be dropped, since there was no hard evidence that she had either conspired with her father to murder Aimée Whitby or her husband, or had any knowledge or warning that he’d planned to do so. McCabe was sure she was guilty as sin, but Lund insisted there was no way short of a confession they could prove it. And neither Hogan nor Gina would admit to a thing. Three days after Lund’s decision not to prosecute, Gina gave birth to a healthy seven-pound, four-ounce baby boy. She named him George Gordon Byron Knowles in honor of her late husband, so maybe she really was innocent. She’d told Maggie, who’d driven over to South Portland to deliver a baby gift, that the boy would be called Byron.
Both McCabe and Maggie testified at the trial of Gina’s father, Francis J. “Little Frannie” Hogan. He was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder for the murders of Veronica Aimée Whitby and Lucy McCorkle. The conviction was based on both the DNA evidence and Maggie Savage’s eyewitness account of the McCorkle killing. Lund didn’t bother filing murder charges against Hogan for killing his son-in-law. He only had circumstantial evidence for the murder of Byron, and Little Frannie was going away for the rest of his life for the other two murders anyway.
As expected, Edward Whitby’s team of high-priced attorneys pleaded not guilty on account of irresistible impulse, and the trial was now going into its third month. Betting at 109 was that, in the end, Whitby would serve no time for killing his wife. Whitby’s surviving daughter, Julia, was now a freshman at Princeton, where, to avoid attracting attention, she listed her last name as McClure. When not at school, Julia was living with her uncle and aunt in Washington.
McCabe’s biggest problem was loneliness coupled with boredom. The Crimes Against People slate had calmed down to the usual assortment of DV and assault cases. Casey had spent most of the summer in France on a student exchange program and was now thoroughly ensconced at Brown and loving every minute of it. Kyra was still in San Francisco, and he hadn’t heard from her in a while. Of course she hadn’t heard from him either. Some photos on her Facebook page showed her hiking and at the beach with a guy who definitely looked like a new boyfriend and definitely didn’t look like a cop. McCabe was pretty sure the Kyra chapter of his life was over.
What he really needed was either a new murder or a new girlfriend or maybe both. So far, at least, the murder wasn’t happening. As for the girlfriend, he’d spent a fair amount of time checking out the Match.com and OkCupid websites. He’d gone out for drinks with three different women whose profiles he’d liked. They were all nice. All attractive. But none of them excited him enough to follow through. Apparently he hadn’t excited them either.
Finally there was Maggie. They had both avoided the subject of a possible relationship since that day in June when he’d gotten so staggeringly drunk at Tallulah’s. While he was now certain Kyra was gone for good, there was still the undeniable fact that Maggie worked for him and the equally undeniable fact that the department frowned on relationships between cops who worked together. McCabe ran under the highway overpass and started counterclockwise around Back Cove. For the next mile or so he argued with himself.
As he passed the Chevrus High School football field, he decided the hell with the arguments and leaned against a tree. Feeling as nervous as an adolescent, he took out his phone and punched in her number.
“Hi, McCabe. What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer for a minute.
“McCabe, are you there?”
“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“You mean like a date?”
“Yup. Exactly like a date.”
“I’m afraid the answer is no.”
“Oh.”
“For one thing, I’ve already got a date tonight.”
“Who with?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but it just happens to be with a guy named Kraft.”
“As in Charles Kraft?”
“As in.”
“You like him?”
“That really is none of your business.”
“What about tomorrow?”
There was a pause. “Let me think about it.” After a minute Maggie finally said, “We can have dinner tomorrow. But let’s not call it a date. How about a working supper?”
McCabe sighed. “Okay. A working supper. Seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock is fine.”
The whole way back to his house McCabe couldn’t get the image of Maggie and Whitby E&D’s head of corporate security out of his mind. He figured he’d find out whether or not there was anything to be jealous about when they got together on Sunday. And if there was, if Maggie was “taken,” he supposed he’d just have to figure out how to deal with it.
I’d like to thank all those people who were helpful to me in the writing of this book. Former Detective Sergeant Tom Joyce, who once held McCabe’s job on the Portland PD and who has always done his best to make sure my cops investigate crime the way cops should investigate crime. Where I stray from reality, it is my own doing and not Tom’s. Former Portland detective and unofficial historian of the Portland PD, Steve Roberts, for his help in presenting an accurate picture of the way things were in 1904. Forensic pathologist Dr. Erin Presnell of the Medical College of South Carolina for graciously answering all my pestering questions about death and DNA. Dr. Bud Higgins and Dr. Robert Zeff, who both, once again, helped with medical details. Naturally, I want to thank my super agents Meg Ruley and Rebecca Scherer of the Jane Rotrosen Agency for their insights and help in getting this book right. And, of course, to my editor, Emily Krump, and my publisher, Dan Mallory, from HarperCollins Witness Impulse for their constant patience and support for this project. Finally, to my wife, Jeanne O’Toole Hayman, for putting up with my grumpiness when things weren’t going right and with my lengthy solitary journeys into the imaginary world that all writers of fiction must inhabit.
I should also reiterate that
The Girl in the Glass
is most definitely a work of fiction. While my descriptions of the city of Portland are generally accurate, the Whitby family, Whitby Island, and the activities of Whitby Engineering & Development are totally figments of my imagination.