The Chill of Night Read online

  In the instant it took for Albright’s mouth to close, for his lips to draw back into a thin, ugly smile, power turned to fear. And then to panic. She darted for her bedroom door, blindly hoping she could get there before him. Hoping she could somehow slip inside. Slam the door. Lock him out.

  She never had a chance. As she reached for the knob, he grabbed an arm, turned her around, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her into him, her back against his body. She could feel his erection through the fabric of his pants, pushing, probing at her butt. She tried pulling away but couldn’t. He lifted her off the floor and carried her, flailing and kicking and screaming, into her room. Across the oval knotted rug Grammy Horton made for her. He threw her down among the stuffed bears and bunnies that still populated the head of her bed. She tried a sudden bolt for the door. He grabbed her and pushed her down again. She screamed. He slapped her hard across the face. The pain was explosive, shocking. ‘Don’t try that again.’ He spat out the words in a quiet voice that was, for all its quietness, full of threat. ‘This is your fault, Lainie. All your fault. You asked for it, and you’re going to get what you deserve.’ He slapped her again. She felt a thin line of blood trickle from her nose.

  She closed her eyes and retreated into the corner, more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. She pulled her muddy knees up, wrapped both arms around them, hugged them tight against her chest. When she dared open her eyes, he was unzipping his pants, pulling them down over his high black socks. Her mind froze. This couldn’t be happening. Not in her own room. Not on her own bed. He pulled down his underpants. He folded the suit pants along the creases and hung them neatly over the back of her desk chair. She supposed he was thinking he’d have to wear them to the office the next day. He left his underpants on the floor. He didn’t bother taking off his shirt or black socks.

  From a distance of fifteen years, the adult Lainie could still see Wallace Stevens Albright’s hard little cock poking out, peekaboo fashion, from between the flaps of his blue-striped Brooks Brothers shirt. She was crying now. Sobbing quietly. She could still feel his soft white hands grabbing her ankles, pulling her out of the corner, pulling her legs apart. Then he pushed her knees up and apart and knelt between them. He lowered his chest so all she could see was shirt. She remembered that shirt so well. The feel of the starched cotton, the smell of it. All his shirts had a little blue monogram on the pocket. A W and an S on either side. A big blue A in the middle. It was all she could see. She felt him open her with his fingers and push himself up and in. It still amazed her such a little prick could inflict such pain.

  Afterward, he smiled and spoke gently. Told her she’d done very well. It was the first time, maybe the only time, he ever praised her. He told her if her eye turned black where he hit her, she had to tell people she’d been hit in the face with a soccer ball. Then he made her go to the bathroom and wash herself out. He stood at the open door and watched as she did. Finally he told her in the same gentle voice that if she ever breathed a word about what happened, either to her mother or to anyone else, he’d kill them both. ‘That’s a promise,’ he said. She never doubted he would keep his word.

  That night and many nights after that, he came back to her room for ‘a visit.’ Each time it was the same. Except sometimes, instead of fucking her, he’d make her get down on her knees and give him a blow job. Each time, before he left, he told her it was her fault. He did what he did because she was a dirty girl who tempted him. Then he would again threaten to kill her and her mother. She sometimes wondered if her mother knew where he was going when he left their bed in the middle of the night. Downstairs for a snack? To read a book? No. Her mother knew – she must have known – but she never had the courage to say or do anything about it. Never wanted to talk about Wallace at all. And Lainie never asked. Finally, two years later, Wallace left her mother. He found a younger woman who was rich and beautiful, and he filed for divorce. He gave her the white house in Rockport as part of the settlement. She sold it, and she and Lainie moved to the little Cape Cod in Rockland. It was over. But the stain stayed with her. It could never be washed away. Her mother was dead now. She committed suicide two years after Lainie graduated high school and went off to Colby. Swallowed a handful of Xanax tablets to still her anxiety and slit her wrists in the tub. But Wallace Stevens Albright was still out there. Still married. With two little girls of his own. Respected attorney. Oft-mentioned candidate for the federal bench. Child fucker. Bastard.

  Lainie glanced again at the Time & Temperature Building. Seven fifty-five and still Hank hadn’t called. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and she was hungry. Despite, or maybe because of her usual regimen of plain grilled fish or chicken and garden salads, she found herself lusting after one of Kyle’s plump garlicky Italian sausages, covered with sautéed onions and Kyle’s own special sauce. She couldn’t actually see the sausages cooking from her seventh-floor perch, but she could sure as hell picture them, crackling away in the frosty air on their bed of hot coals. She could almost taste that first spray of hot fat bursting into her mouth as she popped the skin with her teeth.

  Lainie realized her mouth was watering. For a brief, tempting moment, she thought about running downstairs and getting herself one of the damnable but delicious things. Maybe score a little coke at the same time. A twofer. A dumb idea, she supposed. But it would only take a minute. No longer than going to the ladies’ room. She might miss Hank’s call. But then he’d leave a message. Of course, meeting Hank, literally face-to-face, with onions and garlic on her breath might just turn him off. So what if it did? He couldn’t take away a partnership on grounds of bad breath, could he? And it might just spare her a session on the red leather couch. Of course, in less than twenty-four hours, she’d be sunning in a skimpy bikini on a beautiful beach where she wouldn’t want even the hint of an extra bulge ruining her nearly perfect figure. ‘Oh, screw it,’ she finally said. She grabbed the FedEx envelope from her desk to deposit in the box on the square and headed for the elevator. She’d skip dinner.

  When she came back from her coatless dash across the square, coke in her pocket and hot sausage in hand, Hank still hadn’t called. Lainie lifted her long, slender legs up onto the desk and bit into the succulent snack. She practically moaned with pleasure. This was better than sex. Much better. As she ate, the image of the singers in the square came back, and she felt a sudden longing for a child of her own to celebrate Christmas with. A little boy or girl to love and protect. Like her mother protected her? No. Better than that. Much better. No child of hers would ever go through the kind of hell she’d endured. She’d make sure of that. No child anywhere should ever have to suffer that. Or would if Lainie could help it. Anyway, it all seemed a stretch. Maybe someday, she supposed, but for now she had to be tougher than that. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff, Marc Antony told the Romans.

  Yes, she thought, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Did she have what it took to get where she wanted? Lainie Goff from Rockport via Rockland. The overachiever and star student. The valedictorian of her high school class and winner of a nearly free ride through four years at Colby and another through three years of law school at Cornell. Lainie Goff, who everyone, including Hank, saw as a brilliant, tough, self-confident winner. Lainie Goff, who was capable of anything, even fucking her way to the top. Did she have what it took? She wasn’t sure. So far at least, she’d fooled them all. Only she knew the truth. Superstar Lainie didn’t exist. The real Lainie was a woman unworthy of anyone’s love, even her own. A woman who could only achieve the success she so desperately wanted lying on her back, knees up and knickers down. Wallace Stevens Albright would be so proud of his creation. He wanted her to call him Daddy. Once again, he’d gotten his way. She’d become his daughter through and through.

  The phone rang. Lainie swallowed the last bite of sausage and picked it up.

  Nearly nine o’clock. Lainie Goff’s teeth were clenched in quiet rage as she walked toward her car in Palmer
Milliken’s private underground garage. The clickity-click of her heels against the concrete punctuated her fury in a rhythmic tattoo. He hadn’t turned her down. No. He was much too slick for that. In fact, he hadn’t said much of anything at first. Just teased her with the possibility until he’d gotten his rocks off. Then, while she was standing there, still half naked, he pulled the rug out from under her.

  ‘Lainie, I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient,’ he said.

  She said nothing. Just stood there seething. Staring at him with the same intensity of hatred she once reserved for Albright.

  ‘Just a couple more months,’ he said, zipping his fly, pulling up his suspenders. ‘I’m working on it. It will happen. I promise. It will happen. There are a couple of other good candidates. Janet Pritchard. Bill Tobias.’

  She wondered if he was fucking Pritchard, too. Wondered if Janet was as good as Lainie at her performance reviews.

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ he continued, ‘the committee almost never approves partnerships for anyone who hasn’t been here seven years, and you’ve got a way to go yet. The three of you will probably all be invited at once.’

  Didn’t he get it? She didn’t want to wait until the others were invited, too. She wanted her recognition first. She wanted it now. But what the hell was she going to do? Yell? Scream? Hold her breath till she turned blue? She couldn’t quit. She needed the job. She had car payments to make. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready to give up on her dream of a Palmer Milliken partnership. But she finally figured it out. As long as Hank kept dangling the promise without actually delivering the goods, he had her where he wanted her. Literally and figuratively. Down on her knees with her mouth around his cock. The minute she got it, screw him. He could find himself another eager young associate to fuck.

  Her car stood waiting in its assigned spot in the nearly empty garage. Just her Beemer and Hank’s Merc remained. Everyone else had long since left for the holiday. She pressed the little button on her key ring. The car’s lights flashed. Its doors unlocked. Still distracted, she didn’t notice the absence of the accustomed click. She slid into the front seat. She sat there for a minute, still fuming, before she finally turned the key. The engine smoothly hummed to life. She glanced in the rearview mirror.

  She froze.

  ‘Hello, Lainie,’ a familiar voice murmured. ‘There’re a couple of things we still need to discuss.’

  Two

  Portland, Maine

  Friday, January 6

  McCabe poured the Scotch, freehand, nearly to the top of the glass. Twelve-year-old Macallan single malt. No ice. No water. Smooth, expensive whisky, made more for sipping than for serious drinking. But right now he didn’t much care. It was his first of the evening. Though, at eight ounces, the glass held nearly three times as much booze as the drinks they served at Tallulah’s – and Tallulah had a generous hand. Even so, McCabe was thinking a few more might follow. Maybe more than a few. However many it took, he supposed, to figure out why he was feeling so shitty about what just went down with Kyra. Not exactly a fight. But not exactly not. Whatever you wanted to call it. It began with a safe enough routine. A pas de deux they’d gone through a number of times before. He asked. She declined. Familiar words. A familiar tune. But this time, wanting a different result, he pushed beyond the familiar and into uncharted territory. Terra incognita where monsters dwelled and ships fell off the ends of the earth.

  He was wearing a pair of sweats with nothing underneath. The pants were maroon, frayed and torn at both knees. The words ST BARNABAS TRACK ran vertically down one leg, the last physical reminder of McCabe’s days as a middle distance runner at his high school in the Bronx. Taking a good-sized slug of the Scotch, he padded in stockinged feet across the dark hardwood floor of his living room and settled himself in the big window seat that overlooked Portland’s Eastern Prom. With his back propped against one wall, feet against the other, knees bent to accommodate his length, he gazed out the window. At five o’clock on a cold January afternoon, it was already dark. Weather reports were calling for snow, maybe a big one, but so far, at least, the sky was crystal clear. The moon, nearly full, rode low in the sky. A few cars passed below. He could make out the dark silhouetted limbs of the young trees that lined the other side of the street. Beyond the trees, a broad expanse of dirty snow, some plowed into giant mounds. Beyond that, the even broader expanse of Casco Bay. A long shaft of moonlight glittered, jewel-like, across the surface of the water. A few silvery chunks of ice floated free. In the middle of the bay, he could see the distinctive squat shape of Fort Gorges, a six-sided pile of stone and dirt built to defend Portland harbor from the Confederates during the Civil War. Lights from houses on Harts Island shone on the opposite shore.

  McCabe felt the calming, comforting buzz of the alcohol kick in. He thought again about what had happened and wondered if he should give therapy another try. He’d gone through a few sessions last year. The therapist, a psychiatrist named Richard Wolfe, was smart and sympathetic and told McCabe he felt they were making progress. But McCabe had backed off. He was uncomfortable opening up to a stranger. He knew that was his fault and not the therapist’s, so maybe he should try again. He’d never told anybody in the department about the sessions, hadn’t even put in for them on his medical insurance. Dumb, he supposed, but he didn’t want his detectives looking at him like he couldn’t handle the stress. Or his boss, Lieutenant Bill Fortier. Or worse, Portland police chief Tom Shockley. Shockley was such a political animal that McCabe knew he wouldn’t hesitate to somehow use the knowledge as a lever to bend McCabe to his will. McCabe finished the whisky, got up, poured a second, and returned to his perch. He watched a jogger, ignoring the cold, run by in the dark.

  Today began as a nothing kind of day at the end of a nothing kind of week, and McCabe was bored. No rapes. No assaults. No murders. Not even a garden-variety case of domestic abuse he could sink his teeth into. It was as if everybody in Portland suddenly started taking nice pills. It was making him cranky.

  Around ten thirty he went downstairs to the firing range on the ground floor of police headquarters and spent an hour putting tight clusters of holes in man-shaped targets. He thought about going to the gym, putting on the gloves, and continuing to work out the angst he was feeling by banging away at the heavy bag. Instead he went back to his desk and made a show of doing paperwork. Around one in the afternoon, Kyra called.

  ‘Congratulate me,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, congratulations,’ he replied. ‘Now tell me what for.’

  ‘Well, we finished hanging the show this morning and guess what? Gloria’s put three of my pieces right in the middle of the front wall.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Wait. It gets even better. There’s me right out front, and meanwhile, she’s relegated Marta Einhorn and a couple of the other so-called major Maine artists’ – Kyra’s voice underlined the words with a dose of sarcasm – ‘to the back room.’

  ‘So they’re pissed?’

  ‘Not yet, but they sure as hell will be when they see it.’

  ‘You said three pieces. What about the fourth?’

  ‘In the window.’

  ‘Well, alright! Congratulations again. How about I buy a major Maine artist a fancy lunch?’

  ‘That your idea of a good time?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  ‘I’ve got a better one,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. Like what?’

  ‘Like why don’t you meet me at the apartment and find out.’

  ‘What and skip a wholesome lunch?’

  ‘Oh, you never know,’ she said, her voice getting low and growly, ‘I just might decide to nibble at a little something.’ If this was Kyra’s idea of phone sex, it was sure as hell working.

  He glanced around the room to see if anyone was looking. Or listening. Nobody was. Less than a minute later, McCabe had his desk cleared, his coat on, and was heading for the door. He wondered what he’d say if Bill Fortier asked wher
e he was going. Following a lead on an ongoing investigation? No way. Bill’d want to know what investigation. Going down to the gym for a workout? Possible. That wouldn’t elicit anything more than a grunt and a nod. Of course, it might be fun just telling the truth. Well, actually, Bill, I’m going home to get laid. That’d turn the old puritan fart a couple of shades redder. McCabe grinned at the idea. He glanced over at Maggie Savage, his number two in the Portland PD’s Crimes Against People unit. She was on the phone, probably for a while. He hand-signaled that he was taking off. She nodded and mouthed ‘Okay.’ Today even Casey wouldn’t be a problem. McCabe’s fourteen-year-old daughter was leaving right from school with her friend Sarah Palfrey. Sarah’s parents owned a condo at Sunday River and had invited Casey up for a weekend of snowboarding. He’d call from the car to make sure that she had everything she needed and that there’d be no unexpected drop-ins.

  An hour later, McCabe and Kyra were lying side by side in the afterglow of lovemaking, Kyra on her back, eyes closed, McCabe on his side, idly tracing figure eights with two of his fingers around her damp and naked body. He thought about how different Kyra was from Sandy, his first wife. He leaned over and found her lips with his. ‘Ummm,’ she said, her eyes still closed, her arms reaching up to circle his neck. ‘Wanna go again?’

  ‘Only if you ask very nicely.’

  She opened those liquid blue eyes he loved, looked right at him, and smiled. ‘Please, sir, I want some more,’ she said, her voice a passable imitation of young John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist in David Lean’s 1948 film version. They’d watched it on TMC, together with Casey, just last night.

  And so, in the fading half-light of a cold January afternoon, they made love again. And when they finished, he looked at her gravely and asked her again if she was ready to marry.