Maggie drove fast. McCabe sat next to her, pondering their next move. Neither spoke. This thing was metastasizing, McCabe thought grimly. First Dubois. Then Sophie. Now this kid. Next maybe Lucinda Cassidy. They had to move fast before any more victims were claimed. In the dark, Maggie gave McCabe’s forearm a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him,’ she said.
The flashing light bars of half a dozen police cars, state and local as well as the PPD, lent an eerie glow to the night sky above Taylorville Road. A young trooper flagged Maggie to the shoulder a hundred yards short of the crime scene. He checked their IDs and told them they’d have to walk from there. Terri Mirabito’s van pulled in right behind. Terri grabbed her bag, and the three of them approached the yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the area where the boy had been killed. Inside, teams of crime scene techs, Jacobi’s and one from the state crime lab, were making measurements and taking pictures.
McCabe and Maggie saw Bill Fortier standing with a senior MSP officer, and they went over to join them. Fortier made the introductions. ‘Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe, Detective Margaret Savage, this is Colonel Matthews. Colonel, you probably know the assistant ME.’
Matthews extended his hand first to McCabe, then Maggie. ‘Ed Matthews,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you two.’ He smiled over at Terri. ‘I do know Dr. Mirabito.’
McCabe’s mind played with the name. ‘Ed Mathews. Third baseman. Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta Braves. Only man to play with the Braves in all three cities. Five hundred and twelve career home runs. Tied with Ernie Banks for seventeenth on the all-time list. Voted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. Spelled with one T.’ What a lot of shit. Sometimes he wished he had a delete button for all the unwanted detritus that lingered in his brain.
‘Colonel Matthews and I have been discussing jurisdictional issues,’ said Fortier. ‘This could be considered an MSP case because the kid was killed out here in East Hoo-Haa and not in the City of Portland. On the other hand, with the obvious connection to the Dubois case, if that holds up, and we think it will, PPD has a material interest. What we’ve decided is that Portland will continue as the lead agency, you and Maggie as lead team, but MSP will commit any resources we need – detectives, uniformed assets, whatever. Anybody involved reports to you, Mike, and through you to me and then to Shockley.’
‘Feel free to call on me for whatever you need,’ added Matthews. ‘If we’ve got it, you’ve got it.’
McCabe nodded, his hands stuffed in his pockets against the early morning chill. ‘Works for me.’ Truth was he couldn’t have asked for more. He was still running the show, but the new arrangement gave him extra resources whenever and wherever he might need them.
*
Maggie, Terri, and McCabe all donned latex gloves and paper booties and walked over to where the body lay in a small drainage culvert that ran between the side of the road and an open meadow beyond. In the predawn light, with his pants pulled down and his arms and head turned at improbable angles, the boy looked like an oversized puppet that had been carelessly tossed away. A cop shone his Maglite on the corpse. Dirt from dried tears marked the boy’s cheeks just below the eyes. An ugly star-shaped wound, black, red, and orange, shone like a gaping eye an inch above the left ear. The boy hadn’t bled much from the wound, but there was a lot of dried blood below his nose on his lips and chin and some spattered on his sweatshirt.
Terri knelt in the culvert and examined the wound. ‘Not much question about cause,’ she said. ‘Contact wound from a rifle. The killer must have held the muzzle up close against the kid’s head. This stippling effect’ – she pointed with a finger – ‘was caused by muzzle gases burning and staining the skin.’ She pointed to a clearly round indentation in the center of the wound. ‘Muzzle impact.’ Then, looking up, she said, ‘It’ll match the bore of the weapon.’ She wiggled the boy’s nose with a gloved hand. ‘Nose is broken. The guy must have roughed him up first.’
‘Time of death?’ asked Maggie.
‘Only a few hours ago. Between midnight and 2:00 A.M.’ She gently moved one of the boy’s wrists back and forth. ‘Rigor hasn’t set in yet. Looking at the scrapes on the back and buttocks, I figure he was shot up there on the road somewhere and dragged here postmortem.’
‘We’ve found the slug.’ Jacobi walked over from the road, carrying a small evidence bag. ‘Imbedded about six inches into the road. Should match the one we took from the seat of the T-Bird.’
‘It’ll match,’ said McCabe.