The Girl on the Bridge Read online

  “Yes. Just up the street at the Regency Hotel. We flew in from New York. Landed about an hour ago. Rachel needs to be present when we meet. The case concerns her husband. My brother-in-law.”

  “All right, come on over,” said McCabe, feeling suddenly grateful for a reason to ignore the forest of papers strewn across his desk.

  “109 Middle Street?”

  “Yup. Corner of Franklin. Fourth floor. Ask the woman downstairs at the reception desk to buzz me directly.”

  A little more than five minutes later the elevator doors slid open and a slim balding guy about forty stepped out accompanied by a tall dark-haired woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. McCabe couldn’t help looking at the woman a little longer than he should have. To say she was gorgeous would have been a serious understatement.

  “Detective McCabe? I’m Mark Christensen. This is my sister.”

  “Rachel,” she said with a thin smile, reaching out her hand. “Rachel Thorne.”

  Christensen was outfitted in the standard big-city lawyer’s uniform. Black cashmere overcoat. Blue pinstripe suit with a white handkerchief neatly folded and tucked into the breast pocket. White shirt. Blue and yellow striped tie.

  For her part, Rachel was dressed simply. Gray slacks, gray cashmere pullover, low-heeled black shoes and a dark blue leather jacket that looked expensive. Her shoulder-length hair was neatly tied back. He estimated her height at about five-nine.

  McCabe signaled Maggie, who was watching from her desk, to join them. “This is my partner, Detective Margaret Savage,” he said. “I’ve asked her to sit in on our conversation.”

  “That’s fine,” said Christensen.

  The two detectives ushered brother and sister into a small interview room. McCabe and Maggie sat on one side of the plain wooden table. Christensen and Rachel Thorne on the other.

  “Before we start,” said Christensen, “I should mention that I’m not here as Rachel’s attorney but rather as a concerned family member.”

  “Okay. That’s fine,” said McCabe. That, at least, suggested there shouldn’t be any irritating issues of attorney client privilege. “And I will mention that we’re videotaping this discussion. That’s standard procedure. The camera’s hidden up there in that light fixture.”

  Christensen glanced up at the light. “Okay. No problem.”

  “All right,” said McCabe, “we’re on your dime, Mr. Christensen. Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

  “I think I’d better let my sister do that.”

  Rachel Thorne took a deep breath. “My husband has disappeared,” she said. “He may have been kidnapped. But I have a horrible feeling it might be something even worse.”

  Rachel spoke in a quiet but breathy voice, sounding to McCabe like she was working hard to keep herself under control.

  “I see,” said McCabe. “I’m very sorry to hear that. What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Josh. Joshua.”

  “Joshua Thorne?”

  “Yes, I took Josh’s name when we got married.”

  “And when you say he disappeared, was that from Portland?”

  “Yes.” Rachel let out a breath she’d been holding in. “As far as we know, the last time anyone saw or heard from him was last night at the Port Grill where he had dinner with his clients. Since then, he hasn’t answered any phone calls or texts or anything either from me or from his office and he didn’t show up for an important business meeting this morning.”

  “I see,” said McCabe. “You mentioned possible kidnapping? Have you received any demands for money?”

  “No. Nothing about money.”

  “Does Joshua have access to enough money to make ransom demands worthwhile?”

  McCabe studied Rachel Thorne as she pondered how to answer his question. Large brown eyes. Sculpted cheekbones. Perfect skin. No two ways about it. Even with the anxious expression drawn across her face, or maybe partly because of it, she really was incredibly attractive.

  “I suppose so,” she finally said. “He works on Wall Street and makes a lot of money.”

  “How much?”

  He half expected her to say, “None of your business,” but she didn’t. “Nearly three million last year. Also his firm, Harris Brumfield, has pretty much unlimited amounts of money.”

  “And your husband’s important enough to them that they would bail him out if necessary?”

  “I think so. Yes, I’m sure of it. He’s their number one deal maker.”

  “All right, Rachel,” said Maggie. “Is it okay if I call you Rachel?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, then, why don’t you give us a little background on Josh and yourself so we’ll have some idea about what might have happened and how to go about looking for him.”

  “I’m not sure where to start.” Rachel Thorne’s eyes were starting to well with tears. Christensen pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Just start at the beginning and tell us what you know,” said Maggie.

  Rachel nodded. Wiped her eyes and nose with the handkerchief. She took a deep breath. Let it out. “Okay. Josh works for a small investment bank in New York called Harris Brumfield. They have their offices in downtown Manhattan on Broad Street. It’s a boutique firm specializing in real estate investment. At least, boutique is how they like to refer to themselves. Josh flew to Portland yesterday at noon on a quick business trip. Two days and one or possibly two nights tying up details on financing a large residential development. According to his assistant at the office . . .”

  “Can you give me the assistant’s name?” asked Maggie. “And phone number?”

  “Roseanne. Roseanne Mezzina. Josh’s direct line is 212-555-6741. Roseanne answers it.”

  Maggie jotted the information down. Blessed with an eidetic memory, McCabe would remember it without having to make a note.

  “According to Roseanne, Josh got to Portland a little after one yesterday afternoon. He took a car from the airport and went directly into a nearly three-hour meeting.”

  “Did he rent a car?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. He usually just takes Uber.”

  “Do you know the name of the client?”

  “Yes. A company called Trident Development.”

  Maggie and McCabe exchanged glances. The Trident name was familiar and not in a good way to just about everyone who lived or worked in Portland. Both the company and its CEO, Joe Bonner, had been in the news a lot lately. Trident was planning to build what many Portlanders considered a wildly oversized condominium complex right on the waterfront on the city side of Ocean Gateway. The proposed cluster of three ten-story buildings, which the Press Herald editorial page had called “a cancer on the community,” would block a lot of people’s views of the water and was way out of keeping with what many considered Portland’s, and particularly the waterfront’s, historic architectural heritage and charm. To say there was a lot of anger about it in the city would be a major understatement. Especially when the planning board, after rejecting Trident’s plans twice in two years, suddenly flip-flopped even though the only changes the company had made to their proposal was reducing the height of the buildings from twelve stories to ten.

  No one could prove anything, but whispers around town suggested that several big buckets of money had suddenly found their way under the mattresses of a few city bigwigs. The level of public anger alone made the sudden disappearance of the guy financing the deal look suspicious. It also raised another interesting question. Were any of the Trident executives also in danger of not turning up for work? Personally, McCabe wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if the whole lot of them were suddenly run over by a large truck. But, as the Portland PD mission statement declared, his job as head of the department’s Crimes Against People unit was to protect and serve, even if it meant protecting and serving a bunch of money-grubbing bloodsuckers.

  “Do you know where Josh went after the meeting?” asked Maggie.


  “Yes. Roseanne told me everything she knew. At about five o’clock he left the Trident offices . . .”

  “The ones at 3 Portland Square?”

  “If that’s where they are. After leaving the meeting he went to his hotel.”

  “The Regency?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if he walked there?”

  “No. But if the offices are close by he probably would have.”

  “They are. It’s an easy walk.”

  “Mark and I talked to the people at the hotel before calling you. They told us Josh checked in at five-fifteen, went to his room and then ordered a drink from room service. He called Roseanne a little before six to catch up on the day’s goings-on at the office. He probably left the hotel at seven-fifteen or so. He had a seven-thirty reservation to meet Joe Bonner and two of the other Trident people for dinner at the Port Grill restaurant. Roseanne told me that Joe Bonner confirmed that they all arrived on time and that they finished eating at around nine-thirty. Bonner and the others went home. Apparently Josh went into the bar for a nightcap. Nobody’s heard from him since.”

  “I see,” said Maggie. “So you haven’t communicated with Josh in any way since then?”

  “I’ve tried.” Rachel described how she’d called, texted and e-mailed her husband both last night and again this morning and gotten zero response.

  “Is that unusual?” asked McCabe. “Him not responding when you try to reach him?”

  “Unusual, yes. Unheard of, no,” said Rachel. “Sometimes his mind is somewhere else. Sometimes his phone is. So I wasn’t particularly worried until I got the call from his office about ten o’clock this morning.”

  “Okay. Keep going.”

  She then took them, chapter and verse, through her phone conversation with Roseanne Mezzina.

  “After talking to Roseanne, I was obviously very concerned. I told my boss some personal issues had come up and I needed a couple of days off. Then I called Mark and told him what I knew.” Rachel reached over and took Mark Christensen’s hand. “I know I can always rely on my big brother when I need help,” she said with a faint smile. “After I told Mark what was going on he called your brother Bob. Bob suggested we come up here and talk to you face-to-face. So we did. Same flight Josh took. Only twenty-four hours later.”

  “We would have called you from New York,” said Christensen, “but we had to scramble to make the flight.”

  “When we arrived in Portland,” Rachel continued, “we took a car over to the Regency just in case he’d shown up there in the meantime. I spoke to one of the assistant managers.”

  “Name?”

  “John Travers. We were hoping if Josh wasn’t at the hotel that at least we might find some clue as to his whereabouts. He wasn’t and we didn’t.”

  “Did you ask to see the room?”

  “Yes. Travers was reluctant, worried about privacy concerns and whatnot, but Mark threatened him with some legal mumbo-jumbo and he finally took us up.”

  “Describe the scene.”

  Rachel Thorne shrugged. “It was just a hotel room. Kind of upscale but nothing special. There was a Do Not Disturb sign hanging outside the door. Inside, the empty martini glass was still on the tray with a small bowl of nuts. Josh’s Dopp kit was open on the bathroom sink and some towels had been used so it looked like he showered and shaved before going to dinner. His overnight bag and briefcase were in the room. The bed hadn’t been slept in.”

  “Did either of you touch anything?”

  Brother and sister looked at each other. “Yes. We both did,” said Mark Christensen.

  “All right, before you leave, we’ll want to get a set of both of your fingerprints. Also cheek swabs for DNA.”

  Rachel looked at him questioningly.

  “If we decide to check the room for prints or DNA we’ll need to be able to distinguish yours from anyone else’s.”

  “That’s fine,” said Christensen.

  “Did you look inside the briefcase?” asked McCabe.

  Rachel Thorne shook her head. “No.”

  McCabe wondered if Josh Thorne’s laptop might still be there. Or any pertinent papers. Without probable cause to believe a crime had been committed it might be tough to get a judge to sign off on a warrant to open the briefcase. Thorne had only been unaccounted for for eighteen hours or so. Not nearly enough to classify him as a missing person. Even so it seemed like it might be worth trying.

  “Was there any indication anyone else had been in the room at any time?”

  “Not that I could see. I suppose the room service person who brought him the drink might have gone in.”

  “Did you check to see if he’d been involved in an accident? Or maybe suffered a health emergency of some kind?” asked Maggie.

  “Yes. Mark called both the hospitals in Portland from New York. Josh wasn’t at either one and Roseanne said your people didn’t know of any accidents.”

  McCabe raised a finger to signal a time-out. It wouldn’t hurt to double-check. He called Kelly Haddon, who confirmed what Rachel Thorne had said.

  “Okay. So nobody knows where Josh is,” said Maggie. “Does your husband have any long term health issues, either mental or physical?”

  Rachel Thorne looked puzzled. She shook her head. “No. Josh is fit and healthy. Why do you ask?”

  “Only because in the absence of any other supporting evidence such as a ransom note or a body turning up, one or even two days is not considered a particularly long time for a healthy functioning adult to be out of touch. Are you sure your husband isn’t just . . . how shall I put this delicately? Maybe taking a sabbatical from your marriage? Or from his job? Or maybe from both?”

  McCabe watched a frown line form between Rachel’s eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Josh and I love each other. We love being together. And while he wouldn’t necessarily respond to calls or e-mails from me when he’s away on business, there’s no way he wouldn’t show up for a critical meeting or not take calls from Joe Bonner or Floyd Brumfield or leave his briefcase in an empty hotel room. It just wouldn’t happen.”

  “Besides,” said Mark Christensen, “I’m afraid there is supporting evidence.”

  “What kind of supporting evidence?”

  “Show them the e-mail, Rachel.”

  Rachel Thorne closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then opened them again. “I’m afraid this is more than a little embarrassing but I received an e-mail that came in this morning while Mark and I were in the process of boarding the flight. It was written by somebody named Norah Wilcox and sent from an e-mail address I didn’t recognize. [email protected]. And the subject line, Support the Fight Against Rape, wasn’t something Josh ever would have sent out. Or even forwarded. I assumed it was spam. A plea for a donation. But instead of deleting it I opened it after we’d taken our seats on the plane. When I did, what I saw made it obvious Josh is in terrible trouble.”

  Chapter 7

  RACHEL THORNE REACHED into her leather shoulder bag and extracted a mini iPad tablet.

  She hesitated before sliding the tablet across the table.

  Maggie and McCabe placed the tablet between them and studied the screen. It showed a photograph of a nude man lying on a bed, hands and feet tethered to an old-fashioned iron bed frame with what looked like clothesline. His legs were spread, genitals prominently displayed. His eyes and the upper part of his nose were covered with what looked like a necktie serving as a blindfold. Propped on his chest was a white cardboard sign with black hand lettering that read Rapists Get What Rapists Deserve.

  The most curious part to McCabe was the blindfold. If the purpose of the picture was to destroy Thorne’s reputation by accusing him of rape and posting it on the Internet, or even just sending it to his wife, why cover half his face with a makeshift blindfold? That made it a picture of an anonymous male nude bound to a bed. Again it didn’t make much sense.

  “This is your husband?” asked Maggie.

  “Yes.”

&nbs
p; “You’re sure?” asked McCabe, picking up the tablet and tapping it to enlarge the image. “With his eyes covered like this is there any possibility it might be someone else?”

  “To anyone else, it might be. To me it’s Josh. I know the shape of his head. His nose and mouth. I know his hair. And we’ve been married seven years. I know his body as well as I know my own. I don’t need to see his eyes to be sure.”

  “Does he normally wear a wedding ring?”

  “Yes. It’s not there. I noticed that as well.”

  “Any other jewelry?”

  “A gold Rolex. Which isn’t there either. But that tie covering his eyes looks an awful lot like one I bought for him last year.”

  McCabe gave Rachel both his own and Maggie’s e-mail addresses, handed her the tablet and asked her to forward the picture to them.

  After she did, he held up one finger to signal a time-out and went back out to the squad room and found one of his senior detectives, Bill Bacon.

  “Bill, I want you to try to track down somebody named Norah Wilcox. Norah with an H at the end. E-mail address [email protected] but that’s probably a phony.”

  “You got anything else on her.”

  “Only that she’s probably good-looking enough to interest a successful, young Wall Street banker named Joshua Thorne. So it’s likely she’d be in her twenties or early thirties. Possibly lives in or around Portland. It’s a good bet he picked her up in the bar at the Port Grill last night. There’s no hard evidence but consider it a possibility that she killed this Thorne guy after snapping this picture.”

  McCabe held up the tablet. Bacon leaned in and looked. “Charming.”

  “At this point it’s all we’ve got. I’ll let you know when there’s more but, in the meantime, start looking.”

  “Will do. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Check ViCAP and see if you can find any accusations of rape or complaints of sexual assault against this Thorne guy. Thorne with an E on the end.”

  McCabe returned to the interview room in time to hear Maggie ask Rachel Thorne, “I’m sorry to have to ask, Rachel, but is your husband a rapist?”