The detectives huddled in the street discussing strategy. Because Lucinda Cassidy might be a hostage, McCabe told the others he wanted to enter quietly and not force a confrontation. They deployed the uniformed officers to the sides and rear of the property to cut off avenues of escape. Tasco and Fraser covered the driveway. Maggie and McCabe headed for the house.
Twenty-four Trinity Street had an empty, forlorn look about it. Windows shut. Shades drawn. On the front step, Maggie stood to one side of the door, her back against the house, McCabe to the other. He rang the bell. They waited. Rang it again. Quietly, McCabe tried the handle. Locked. They could either break in or pick the lock. Again McCabe preferred the quiet option. Less likely to panic anyone hiding inside. The front lock was an Ilco tubular model. Pickable but not easy. Plus you needed special tools they didn’t have.
They slipped around to the kitchen door and looked in through the glass. Empty. A coffee mug on the round oak table, nothing else out of place. He tried the knob. Locked, an older-style Schlage pin-and-tumbler dead bolt. He took out the small leather wallet he’d brought from Maggie’s car and withdrew a slender tension wrench and one of three stainless steel picks, each shaped like a delicate dental tool, a small hook on the end. He knelt, putting the lock at eye level. Maggie drew her weapon and waited.
McCabe inserted the wrench in the keyhole and turned it a quarter turn to the right. Then he slid the pick in, probed, found a pin, and eased it onto the narrow ledge of the cylinder. One by one, he lifted the remaining pins. When all five were clear of the shear line, he turned the wrench. The lock slid open.
Inside, weapons drawn, the two detectives looked and listened to the silence. A slow drip from the kitchen faucet. The ticking of a clock. A motor turning on in the fridge. The coffee mug on the table was filled about halfway with clear liquid, traces of lipstick marking the rim. McCabe sniffed. The scent of gin. A familiar ploy of drunks the world over. Every morning, for years, Tom McCabe senior sipped his Bushmill’s from a bone china teacup. ‘Pa’s tea,’ he called it. Mom never spoke of it. Never let the kids say anything either. Not to the old man. Not to anyone. She grew angry when Tom junior, Tommy the Narc, brought it up the day they put the old man in the ground. Sixty-one years old. A liver ailment. Mom only forgave Tommy his indiscretion after he himself was dead.
Four interior doors led from the kitchen. The first opened on an empty butler’s pantry. The second, a set of back stairs leading up to the second floor. Behind the third, more stairs, this time down to what looked like an unfinished cellar. The last door led into a broad central hall. They decided Maggie would stay in the kitchen to block anyone exiting from either the back stairs or the cellar. McCabe would check the other rooms.
To the right of the hall he found a formal dining room, a gleaming mahogany table and eight Duncan Phyfe chairs in the middle. He had a vivid memory of Sandy coveting a similar set in an antique store in Connecticut. Frustrated and angry they couldn’t afford even one of the chairs on a cop’s salary, she sulked all the way back to New York. Probably had the whole set now.
Beyond the dining room McCabe found the small den he’d seen from outside on his first visit. It, too, lay silent and empty, the New York Times crossword still in the same place, still half finished. He crossed the hall. A pair of massive pocket doors, each weighing several hundred pounds, blocked entry to what he assumed was the living room. He gave one a gentle push. The beautifully balanced door rolled silently and smoothly into its pocket on the far side, revealing another empty room.
An open bottle of Tanqueray stood on a silver tray on a walnut chest. The source, he supposed, of Hattie Spencer’s morning nip. On the opposite wall, a pair of tall windows looked out on the front garden. He remembered Hattie’s slender form outlined in the far window, seeing him off the property, just days before.
Something soft rubbed against his leg. A small black-and-white cat looked up and purred, then continued past, squeezing itself under the protective legs of an upholstered chair. It peered out at McCabe. McCabe peered back. The animal decided to ignore the man and began licking its once white feet, now stained a dark red.