Neither Maggie nor McCabe spoke until they were outside the hospital building, heading toward the garage where they’d left the car. Maggie spoke first. “The NYPD is supposed to be very competent, you know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“They know what they’re doing.”
“Most of the time.”
“They’re about as good as any police force in the world.”
“Probably so.”
“But you still think they need your help? Or that they even want it?”
McCabe stopped and looked at Maggie. “It’s not that they need my help. Or want it. You of all people should understand it’s not about them. It’s about me. I need to know I’m doing everything I can to find my niece, my brother’s only child. I couldn’t live with myself if some bastard raped or killed her or most likely both and I hadn’t personally done absolutely everything I possibly could. Both to save her life and to punish the bad guy. I also have a feeling my brother would never forgive me.”
“Have you thought what you’re going to say to Shockley if he won’t give you the time off?” Tom Shockley was Portland’s chief of police. Both Maggie and McCabe’s boss.
“I believe compassionate leave is the generally accepted term in cases like this. For a couple of days at least. Plus I’ve got a lot of accrued vacation. If Shockley has a problem with me taking some of the vacation days they owe me, he can go screw off.”
Maggie let out a deep sigh. “Okay, McCabe, if you’re working on this, I’m working on it with you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is to me. A, I’m your partner. Have been for the last eight years. And B, you do remember that ring you just put in your pocket, don’t you?”
McCabe didn’t answer.
“That ring means we’ve just elevated our partnership to a whole other level. Which means to me, if you’re determined to go after some wacko serial killer, with or without the help of some New York cops who I’m not entirely sure will have your best interests at heart, well, I’m not letting you out of my sight. Whither thou goest and all that jazz.”
“Book of Ruth.”
“What?”
McCabe looked at the woman he loved and stroked her cheek. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Ruth 1:16. I understand perfectly. And I feel exactly the same way about you.”
Maggie put her arms around him and they stood like that until a car that wanted to get past them flashed its lights. The driver smiled as he passed and gave them a thumbs-up.
Maggie clicked a button. The TrailBlazer’s lights flashed.
“You drive,” said McCabe. “I need to make some calls. Set your GPS to 2 Sutton Place South in Manhattan.”
“Bobby’s apartment?”
“Yeah. When we get closer we may divert and head down to the Lower East Side. I’ll let you know.”
As Maggie headed toward the garage exit, McCabe took out his phone. “Siri, call Bobby’s mobile.”
“I heard about Mam. Fran told me,” his brother said, picking up so fast McCabe was sure he’d been holding the phone in his hand waiting for a call.
Bobby spoke in a flat, quiet tone, as if all positive emotion had been drained out of him and there was nothing left but a brewing stew of raw anger.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be with Mam when she passed,” he said. “I know you and Frannie were and I’m glad about that. At the moment finding Zoe just seems like a higher priority.”
McCabe could hear the sound of street traffic in the background. “Bobby, where are you?”
“Right now? Leaning against a rusty wrought-iron fence outside a crappy tenement on Clinton Street. It’s right across the street from Zoe’s.”
“And what exactly are you doing?”
“Waiting for Zoe.”
“Waiting for Zoe?”
“Yeah. I keep hoping she’ll just come bopping up the street and have no idea what all the cops are doing here. Have no idea her neighbor’s been murdered. Hoping maybe she just grabbed that duffel bag herself and stuffed some clothes in it and took off. Maybe she’s been staying with a boyfriend or maybe gone away for a couple of days’ seclusion now that the show’s closed. Or maybe something.”
McCabe sighed to himself. He knew all about denial and self-deception. About holding on to every possible thread of hope no matter how slender. “The police are still there, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. A couple of squad cars and an evidence van. A van from the ME’s department came and took the Japanese woman away about half an hour ago. Your friend Astarita keeps telling me to go home and they’ll be in touch the minute they know anything.”
“That’s good advice, Bobby. Are you there by yourself?”
“Aside from about a dozen cops and fifty onlookers, yeah.”
“Cathy’s not with you?”
“No. She’s waiting at home.” There was a pause before he added, “She’s not Zoe’s mother.”
Bobby’s first wife, Zoe’s mother, had been killed in an automobile accident nearly twelve years earlier. He married for the second time a couple of years after that.
“I’m sure she still loves her.”
He sensed Bobby wanting to say, Not like I do. But his brother held back. “Yes, yes, of course she does.”
McCabe put a finger over his free ear to block out Siri’s computerized voice telling Maggie to merge onto the Bronx River Parkway South.
Bobby kept talking. “With all the cops coming and going and people hanging out and watching like this was some kind of spectator sport . . . well, they were upsetting her too much. So I told her to go home, slug back a couple of martinis and I’d see her there. I also told her you were going to help find our daughter for us.” There was a short pause. “I wasn’t lying when I told her that, was I?”
McCabe took a couple of seconds before answering. “No. No. You weren’t lying. I’m gonna drop Maggie at your place and then head downtown to talk to Astarita. Meantime I want you going home as well. There’s nothing you can do there except get in the way.”
Bobby kept him on the line for another couple of minutes, venting more anxiety and then more denial. Finally he agreed to go home.
When he ended the call, Maggie looked over at him. “Have the locals agreed to let you work on this?”
“Not yet. I’m going downtown to find out if my old partner Art Astarita and his boss, a guy named Danny Lynch, will let me.”
“And if they won’t?”
“Then you and I work it unofficially. Just like we would have done when Conor Riordon tried to kill Emily up in Machias.” Emily Kaplan was Maggie’s oldest and best friend. Maggie had convinced the Maine Staties to let her help in the investigation. She damned near got herself killed in the process. It was only her brother Harlan’s skilled marksmanship that saved her life.
Maggie followed GPS directions over the Triboro Bridge, now renamed the RFK Bridge in honor of Bobby Kennedy, into Manhattan. They swung around the long curve that fed them onto the FDR south. “Get out at the 63rd Street exit,” said McCabe.
“That’s not what Siri’s saying.”
“She doesn’t know everything.”
“But you do?”
“About the best ways to get to get around in New York? Yeah.”
Maggie continued past the 63rd Street exit.
“What are you doing.”
“Me? I’m heading downtown with you to talk to Astarita. You better tell me how to get there.”
“No. It’s better if I talk to him alone. He’ll clam up if you’re there. I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”
Maggie waited a beat before reluctantly responding. “Okay, boss. Your call.”
Following McCabe’s directions, Maggie pulled off at the East 54th Street exit and doubled back around to 2 Sutton Place South on the corner of 57th.
“All right. I’ll tell you what Art says as soon as I can. For now, I’d like you to go upstairs. Apartment 14B. Your about-to-be sister in law may need a little comforting. And my brother, when and if he gets here, will need to be kept under house arrest. He’s more than a little crazed at the moment. FYI, he keeps a couple of handguns in the apartment and he knows how to use them. One was Tommy’s. The other my old man’s. The last thing we need is for him to grab one of them and start wandering around the Lower East Side looking for the kidnapper.”