The Chill of Night by James Hayman Read Free Book Online

extra bucks by selling the lobsters they snared in their nets. They had to throw them back. Or sneak them home to share with friends.
    Without enough fish coming in, the Fish Exchange auctions, once held daily at noon, had become intermittent. Half the time they didn’t happen at all. Some longtime Portland fishing families were being squeezed out of the business. Others moved down the coast to Gloucester, where selling stray lobsters was allowed. The captains who remained weren’t happy.
    Near the end of the pier, McCabe could see a pack of PPD units, light bars flashing. They were clustered next to the Vessel Services facility. Behind them yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the far end of the pier. Ly joined them. Half a dozen cold cops, clouds of breath streaming from their mouths, were stamping their feet, clapping their hands, or just moving around to keep warm. Two had positioned themselves by the tape to keep unauthorized visitors out of the active crime scene area. The others were keeping them company. A MedCU unit was just leaving. A dead body meant there was nothing for the paramedics to do.
    ‘Hey.’ Maggie Savage greeted McCabe as he emerged from the car. She was bundled in a dark blue Gore-Tex parka, hands in her pockets, a wool watch cap pulled down around her ears, her shield pinned to the outside.
    ‘Hey, yourself. What’s going on?’ McCabe borrowed Ly’s Maglite, and they headed toward a bronze BMW convertible parked facing in toward the city from the far end of the pier. Its driver’s side door and trunk lid gaped open. Senior evidence tech Bill Jacobi and one of his guys were busy taking their pictures and measurements, drawing their diagrams, and writing their notes. The car was elegantly framed at a three-quarter angle between two concrete arms that poked out from the end of the pier into the Fore River, the tidal estuary that formed the far end of Portland harbor. Its rear wheels were two or three feet from the edge, leaving just enough room for the techs to walk behind the car without falling in. McCabe could see reflections of ambient light from nearby buildings as well as the more distant Casco Bay Bridge bouncing off the showroom-shiny fenders. Like an ad in a glossy magazine, the damned thing practically shouted, Hey, look at me! Ain’t I sexy? To McCabe, it seemed too artfully placed for it to have been accidental. Someone wanted the car to be noticed.
    As they stood there, Maggie handed him a plastic box of Tic-Tacs. ‘Here. Before you breathe on anyone else, you might want to suck on a couple of these.’
    ‘That bad, huh?’
    ‘Not for anyone who appreciates the finer qualities of single malt. I just don’t think it’s something you want Jacobi noticing. Or the uniforms either, for that matter. Big night on the town?’
    ‘I guess I had a few.’ He left it at that and tossed two white pellets into his mouth. If truth be told, he felt a bit sick. He might have trouble walking the proverbial straight line. He handed the box back. ‘Anything new?’ he asked. He wondered if he was slurring his words.
    ‘Just what I told you on the phone. Woman’s body is stuffed in the trunk,’ Maggie said. ‘Frozen solid.’
    McCabe shivered. ‘I know how she feels.’
    ‘She’s packed in there so tight, I’m not sure how we’re gonna get her out. At least not till she thaws.’
    ‘Who called it in?’
    ‘Guy named Doug Hester a little after six.’
    About the time he was deciding to go to Kyra’s show.
    ‘Hester’s office is over there,’ Maggie continued. ‘The one with lights on on the second floor. He runs a one-man marine insurance agency. Says he could see the car from his desk. It’s been sitting there, illegally parked, since at least seven thirty yesterday morning when he came to work.’
    Thirty-six hours. ‘What took him so long to call it in?’
    ‘It wasn’t just him. There must have been fifty people who saw that car parked where it shouldn’t be, and for two