‘Just like that?’
‘No. After I came, I’m thinking to myself, holy shit, what have I done? I got up and got her a towel to wipe her face. Then I told her to get in the car. I’m going to drive her home. She says she wants to spend the night. I tell her she can’t. She gets angry, and we argue about it for a while. Then she slams out the door and she just stands there on the front steps, screaming at me through the screen that I’m an asshole. She just gave me a great fucking blow job, she says, and I won’t even let her spend the fucking night. She calls me a bunch of names. Tells me to go fuck myself.
‘Then she was gone.’ Kenney looked up. ‘Just like that she was gone. Ran off into the night, and that’s the truth of the matter. I didn’t kill her and I didn’t fuck her. Maybe that sounds like Bill Clinton. “I didn’t have sex with that woman” – but it’s the truth.’
‘Why didn’t you come in and tell us this when she was reported missing?’ asked Maggie.
‘I picked up the phone about a hundred times, but I couldn’t do it. I knew it would cost me my job, and I guess I convinced myself that she’d just run off and would come home after a while. Pretty stupid, but who knew she was going to go out and get herself killed? If I’d just pushed her in the car and driven her home, none of this would ever have happened.’
Maggie believed him. In spite of his anger, so did McCabe.
‘Is this going to get me arrested? Statutory rape?’
‘You screwed up, big-time, Tobin,’ said McCabe. ‘In Maine, any sexual act between a teacher and a student under eighteen is a crime. Doesn’t matter who started it. Maybe, if you’re real cooperative, real contrite, they’ll let you off with a suspended sentence. Maybe not. Either way, you better go find yourself another career. Another life. There’s no way you’re working with kids anymore. Not now. Not ever.’
Later, in the car, before driving away, McCabe sat there thinking about what Kenney’d told them. ‘Why do you think he talked?’ he asked Maggie. ‘It would have been so easy for him just to stonewall the whole thing.’
‘Guilt.’
‘You think?’
‘Sure. He’s just a kid himself. Probably not a bad kid. He was already feeling guilty about the blow job. Then when Katie turned up dead, it got a whole lot worse. You heard him. He was blaming himself. He had to tell somebody. So he told us. Which leaves us with the question, what do we do now?’
‘I don’t know. Try to find some dude from Florida with cowboy boots and a fancy SUV. If he really is from Florida. I’ll see if Cahill will do a doctor/Lexus cross-check down there. We should also get some people talking to the girls on the soccer team again. See if any of them remembers him. Maybe he talked to more than one kid. Or maybe they saw him talking to Katie.’
15
Sunday. 6:00 P.M.
Purely on impulse, McCabe picked up the Bird and drove to the West Side. There was still plenty of light, and on a Sunday evening crossing from one end of the city to the other took less than ten minutes. He drove west on Spring Street, passing Mercy, Portland’s smaller hospital, on his right. Covering the same distance in New York could take an hour.
He slowed as he passed 24 Trinity Street and then rounded the corner. McCabe parked where the Bird wouldn’t be seen and walked back. Philip and Harriet Spencer’s home was a private place, a sizable property surrounded by an ancient wrought-iron fence, free from rust and in perfect repair. A glance at the house and grounds told him that if Spencer was somehow involved in Katie’s Dubois’s murder, money wasn’t a motive. The house itself was a century-old redbrick Georgian with a slate roof and black shutters. Graceful and classically proportioned, the work of a well-schooled, if unadventurous, architect. The solid oak front door was polished a lustrous brown. It looked easily capable of deterring the efforts of any unwelcome visitors, at least any not equipped with a battering ram.
McCabe pushed the bell. Chimes pealed inside. He hadn’t planned the visit and found himself hoping Spencer wasn’t home. He wanted to talk to the doctor’s wife. Failing that, he hoped, at least, to get a sense of how the man lived. As McCabe waited, his eyes took in the lush grounds.