‘What was she like? I saw her picture in the Sentinel. Good-looking woman.’
‘That she was. Twenty-six years old. Blond. She was a competitive triathlete. She’d been training for an upcoming event.’
‘That’s interesting.’ McCabe said. ‘Dubois was young, blond, and an athlete. High school soccer player. Prospect for all-state this year.’
‘Could be a coincidence,’ said Cahill.
‘Maybe,’ said McCabe. ‘Or maybe he likes blonds with firm muscles and healthy hearts.’ McCabe told Cahill about the disappearance of Lucinda Cassidy. A blond and a runner. Training for a 10K. Andersen. Dubois. Cassidy. Three young blonds. Three athletes. Coincidence? McCabe didn’t think so. Neither did Cahill.
‘I’ll e-mail you the case files, but I want you to promise to keep me in the loop. Specially if you find something. I’ll reopen this case in a minute if I think you can give us something to go on.’
‘That’s a deal.’
All of McCabe’s detectives plus a few others on loan from the Crimes Against Property unit were crowded into the small fourth-floor conference room. Some were standing against the wall, others sitting. Most were sipping coffee from paper cups, eating bagels and doughnuts, and basically bullshitting when McCabe arrived. Bill Fortier was hunched silently at the head of the table with a worried look on his face. Tom Tasco was reading the Press Herald coverage of the Dubois murder. A detective from the other side of the building was peering over his shoulder. McCabe’s picture, taken at the press conference, was on the front page next to images of Shockley and Katie Dubois. The photographer had caught him off guard, a questioning scowl on his face. He seemed to be looking into the distance, and McCabe guessed it was snapped just as he had seen his mystery woman take off. Maggie, who was leaning back in her chair, long legs propped against the side of the table, quipped, ‘Nice shot, McCabe. Makes you look like you not only want to catch the bad guy, you want to eat him for lunch.’
‘Yeah, Mike, you’ve gotta learn to smile for the camera,’ added Bill Bacon.
Ignoring the hazing, McCabe poured coffee for himself from the urn just outside the door before sitting down.
Fortier began. ‘Okay, let’s start with Dubois. What leads do we have? What leads was Shockley talking about?’
‘Shockley was mostly blowing smoke for the media, Bill,’ said Tom Tasco. ‘The only thing that remotely qualifies as a lead is a surveillance video of a vehicle that arrived in the right place at what we think may be the right time.’ He filled the others in on what the moving company’s security camera had recorded and what Starbucks had built from it.
‘I’ve got the DMV reports.’ Eddie Fraser was waving a batch of printouts with one hand and eating a chocolate-covered doughnut with the other. There were bits of chocolate around his mouth.
‘That was fast,’ said McCabe.
‘That’s ’cause we’re good,’ said Fraser. ‘Like we agreed, we covered all of Maine, all of New Hampshire, and we threw in Massachusetts north of Boston as a wild card. Owners of late-model Lexus or BMW SUVs who are doctors, surgeons, pathologists. We added biologists at the high school and college level, figuring they ought to be good at cutting up frogs and mice, if not people. We came up with four hundred and sixty-two names.’
‘If we’re talking about people who’re good at cutting up animals,’ asked Will Messing, ‘why not check butchers? They cut up animals all day.’ The others looked at Messing as if he’d descended from another planet.
‘Butchers?’ said Maggie. ‘You mean like grocery store butchers? You think a butcher could have done this?’
‘Why not? They’re good at cutting meat, and who says a butcher can’t be a freak?’
‘It’s a hell of a leap from a surgeon to a butcher,’ said Tom Tasco.
‘Use your imagination,’ Messing persisted. ‘My brother-in-law’s a butcher. You should see him butterfly a leg of lamb. It’s like an art form.’
‘C’mon, Will, for Christ’s sake, we’re talking about a teenage girl here. Not a leg of lamb,’ said Carl Sturgis.
‘You want to make your brother-in-law a suspect?’ Tasco laughed.
‘I think we’re getting a little off track,’ said Maggie.
‘Okay, okay.’ Messing shrugged at them. ‘Just trying to think outside the box.’ Clearly he felt the others didn’t recognize creative thinking when they heard it.
‘Anyway,’ Eddie Fraser continued, ‘I cross-checked the DMV list with AutoTrack. Numbers went up to four ninety. Obviously we’ve got to run down that list. Separate the probables and possibles from the impossibles and the unlikelys. We’ve already started, but with four hundred and ninety names we’re going to need some help.’
‘Well, you should be able to disqualify a lot of them right off the bat,’ said McCabe. ‘Bill, can you assign some additional detectives and patrol officers to help Tom and Eddie run down the list?’