The news story sprang back to life in McCabe’s mind as he read.
A construction crew working for the D. J. Puozzoli Construction Company of Orlando yesterday unearthed the decomposed remains of a nude woman, later identified as 26-year-old Elyse Andersen of Winter Park. Ms. Andersen, a sales representative with Mulvaney Real Estate in Orlando, was reported missing three weeks ago by her husband, Martin Andersen, also of Winter Park. An unnamed source at the Orange County Medical Examiner’s office told the Sentinel that the cause of death had been the ‘surgical’ removal of Ms. Andersen’s heart.
McCabe closed out the page. He remembered the rest of the article pretty much verbatim. Orlando police were following several leads. There was no mention of additional wounds, but the article did include the name of the lead detective on the case, Sergeant Aaron Cahill. McCabe looked through the rest of the hits on the Google search and found one follow-up article. Apparently Sergeant Cahill’s leads led nowhere and the case went cold. McCabe decided to wait until after the autopsy, when he would know more about the manner and cause of Katie Dubois’s death, before contacting Sergeant Cahill of the Orlando PD.
He printed out the article and slipped it into a brand-new murder book. Then he picked up the coffee cups and walked them to the small kitchen at the back of the bullpen. He poured the dregs down the sink. One of McCabe’s detectives, Jack Batchelder, stood nearby making a fresh pot.
‘Hiya, Mike. Bad night, huh? At least that’s what I heard.’ Batchelder was a balding, overweight man of fifty. In McCabe’s view, Jack was pretty much a burned-out case, putting in time, padding his pension with a few more years, before calling it quits.
‘I guess you heard right, Jack. Anything else going on?’ McCabe asked.
‘The usual Friday night mayhem. A couple of domestics. A kid got beaten up in a brawl down by the ferry terminal. Oh yeah, there’s another missing persons report. Woman named Cassidy. Works for an ad agency here in town, Beckman and Hawes. Her ex-husband called it in about eight o’clock.’
McCabe looked up. That was about the same time he and Kyra were arriving at Arno and Lacey was sneaking into the scrap yard. ‘Who took the call?’
‘Bill and Will. They should be talking with the ex now.’ Detectives Bill Bacon and Will Messing had been universally known by their rhyming first names since McCabe teamed them up a year earlier.
Carl Sturgis joined them by the sink. ‘Hey, McCabe,’ he said in that shrill terrierlike bark of his, ‘that homeless guy they brought in? He didn’t have shit to say. He was just sneaking into the scrap yard for a couple of snorts. Found the body. Started running around screaming till he found Comisky. End of story. Except he was pissed I didn’t offer him a drink. Big joker. Says you promised him some booze. I told him it was up to you to keep your own promises. I mean, you didn’t really do that, did you?’
‘Don’t believe everything you hear,’ McCabe said, pouring himself a fresh coffee, ‘but thanks for asking.’ He tossed a dollar into the can next to the coffeepot. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I got a uniform to drop him off down by the shelter. I told him to let us know where we could find him. Fat chance.’
McCabe took the coffee back to his desk and called Bill Bacon’s cell. It looked like it was going to be an even longer night than he’d thought. Bacon picked up. ‘Hiya, Mike.’
‘Where are you guys?’
‘In the car. You heard about our missing person? We just finished with her ex-husband. Says he’s very upset. I personally think he’s full of shit. Anyway, we’re on our way to her apartment.’
‘Back it up, Bill, and give me the two-minute drill on this.’
‘Missing woman is named Lucinda Cassidy. She’s twenty-eight years old. Works for an advertising outfit on Free Street, Beckman and Hawes.’ Bacon sounded like he was reading from his notes. ‘Young management type. She was supposed to meet her ex-husband for dinner at Tony’s at six thirty. Guy named Dave Farrington. They’ve been divorced less than a year. She’s not there when he arrives. He orders a drink and waits. By seven she still hasn’t turned up, which he says is very unlike her. He orders another drink and starts making calls. First he tries calling her numbers. There’s no answer either on her landline or her cell or at the office. So next he looks up her boss’s home number and reaches him. The boss, a John Beckman of Beckman and Hawes, says she never showed up for work this morning. He’s pissed ’cause she missed some big meeting or something. Tells Farrington he thought maybe she was sick or maybe there was a family crisis, but when she didn’t answer her phone, he didn’t know what to think. Naturally, the schmuck doesn’t think to call us.’