Darkness First (9 page)

‘Anything you'd like to add to that?' Maggie asked Pike.

‘Only that what you just heard is pure bullshit. Yes, Tiff came here with this offer and yes I was tempted. But when Donnie said no that was that. And that's all I've got to say to you. Now unless you want to arrest me for the fantasies my wife just dreamed up, I want you out of my house.'

‘Listen, Pike. I don't care about the boat. Or the drugs. All I'm interested in is finding the guy who killed your daughter. And if you want to help me do that, just tell me what this Riordan guy looked like. And maybe where I can find him.'

‘Never laid eyes on him. Never called him on the phone. Never asked Tiff about it.' Pike Stoddard wheeled to the door and opened it, ‘Now get your ass out of my house before I sic the dog on you.'

Maggie pulled out a card. Wrote her cell number on it and left it on a table near the door.

‘You or Donelda have a cell number?'

‘Yeah, like that's all we need. An extra expense.'

‘I want you to search your memory, Pike, and your conscience. Search them very hard and make sure you're telling me the truth because, whoever Conor Riordan is, I'm willing to bet he's the guy who killed your daughter. The number I wrote on that card is my private number. Any information you provide will be just between us. Nobody else need ever know.'

‘Lady, I think I just told you to get out of my house.'

‘One more thing before I leave,' said Maggie. ‘Don't you ever threaten a police officer with that animal again or you'll find yourself behind bars before you know what hit you.'

Maggie glanced up and saw Tabitha sitting motionless on the stairs, staring at her through thick, round lenses. She looked at the child and felt a quiet sorrow for what her life must be like. What it would be like from now on. Then she left.

1:16
P.M.
, Saturday, August 22, 2009

Bangor, Maine

‘W
hat are you doing here?' Emily asked without opening her eyes.

‘Holding your hand.' Maggie squeezed. Em squeezed back. ‘How'd you know it was me?'

‘I always know when you're around.'

‘I came to visit you. See how you're doing.'

‘How long have you been here?'

‘This visit?'

‘Yeah.'

‘About five minutes. Hospital called late this morning. Told me you'd woken up. You were sleeping when I arrived but they said it was just sleep.'

‘You were here before?'

‘Yes. Last night after they brought you in. You look great compared to how you looked then.' Maggie was only lying a little.

‘Well, I feel pretty shitty, I can tell you that.' Emily's voice was little more than a raspy whisper. ‘Collins tells me I'm doing remarkably well. No fractured skull and my intracranial pressure's back to normal. The fact I still understand what intracranial pressure is is a pretty good sign there's no brain damage. As for the rest of it, two cracked ribs and about 900 scrapes and bruises. Still, I don't think I've ever taken such a shellacking in my life. Remember that time when we were twelve and Danny LaBouisse tripped me and I fell down a whole flight of stairs at school?'

‘Of course I remember,' said Maggie. ‘I punched the little bastard out. Probably the most embarrassing moment in his life. Being beaten up by a girl. In front of all his friends no less.'

Em tried to smile but smiling hurt. ‘Well, the pain from that wasn't even close to how much this one hurts.'

‘Can't they give you something?'

‘Anything strong enough to be effective will make my brain fuzzy. I'd rather be clear-headed and put up with the pain. The worst thing right now is, hard as I try, I can't remember the thirty seconds or so before I went down. I remember the girl screaming. Then the screaming stopped and someone was running for the car. Then it all goes blank.'

‘He hit you. Drove the car right at you. He wanted to kill you. Guess he thought he did.'

‘It's weird but I have no recollection of that at all. I'm familiar with the syndrome. It's called retrograde amnesia and its common enough among people who've suffered traumatic concussion. Still it's weird when it happens to you. It's like there's this black hole in your mind.'

‘Will your memory come back?'

‘Sometimes it does. Not always, but sometimes. What happened to the girl? Did he kill her?'

Maggie looked down at her friend a long minute before answering. ‘Yeah. He killed her all right.'

‘How?'

‘With a knife.' Maggie left it at that. Em didn't need the gruesome details. At least not yet.

‘Killed her.' Emily repeated the words and shook her head as if analyzing their meaning. After that she just lay there for a couple of minutes studying the ceiling. ‘I could have saved her, you know. Should have.'

‘Don't be stupid. How could you have saved her?'

‘Dozen different ways. I could've grabbed her and tied her up and kept her from leaving the office.'

‘That's called kidnapping.'

‘Better than having her murdered.'

‘You didn't know that was going to happen.'

‘Even after she left, if I hadn't wasted time looking for the pills and had just run a little faster. Or if I hadn't alerted the guy by yelling and screaming for him to stop. Just run up silently and whacked him one instead.'

‘Then he might have killed you as well. He had a knife.'

‘Maybe. He tried to kill me anyway.'

‘Yes, he did. But you can't blame yourself for what he did to Stoddard. It wasn't your fault.'

‘I could have saved her.'

Maggie shook her head. It was just like Emily to think she could fix anything. That it was her job to save the world and everyone in it.

‘You know,' said Emily. ‘The girl, Tiffany Stoddard, told me he was going to kill her. At first I didn't believe her. But then, when I saw how scared she was, I did. I just didn't think it would happen so soon.'

‘Did she tell you who the guy was? The one who was going to kill her?'

‘No, nothing. Not her name. Not his. Not where she lived. The only reason I know those things is I broke every rule in the book and looked in her backpack. Checked the ID in her wallet and saw the pills. Did they find the pills?'

‘Yeah. In your pocket.'

‘Great. If any of this stuff gets out I could be looking for a job. And not as a doctor.'

‘Let's just say there were extenuating circumstances.'

‘Where are the pills now?' asked Emily.

‘In an evidence locker in Machias. Maybe you better tell me how they ended up in your pocket. In fact, maybe you better tell me the whole story.'

‘Are you asking as a friend or as a cop?'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Not really. I just wondered.'

‘The answer is both. The state police have jurisdiction. I'm helping out on a semi-official basis.'

‘Okay. What are your questions?'

‘How often do you prescribe Oxycontin?'

Emily shook her head. ‘Hardly ever. I can check my records, but I'll bet it hasn't been over half a dozen times over the last four years. And I don't give refills. Not in Washington County. Too easy for people to abuse.'

‘Okay, good.'

‘What else?'

Remembering Carroll's words,
you know there are doctors who break the law
, Maggie said, ‘I need you to remember where you were on the night of January sixth. Other cops might be asking you that.'

‘January sixth? What happened January sixth?'

Maggie ignored the question. ‘It was the Wednesday after the New Year's weekend.'

Emily gave it a few seconds thought but no more. ‘That's easy then. First Wednesday every month I go to a book group at the Porter Library. The book was
Cutting for Stone
by a writer named Abraham Verghese. Since I suggested it, I led the discussion.'

‘How many people saw you there?'

‘Probably seven or eight.'

Maggie asked for the names and wrote them down. ‘Okay, now why don't you tell me what happened last night? Everything you remember.'

‘Where do you want me to start?'

‘The beginning.'

Emily pointed to a pitcher on her side table. ‘There's some ice chips over there. Can you get me a cupful of them?'

Maggie handed Em the plastic cup. She put a few of the bigger chips in her mouth and began to suck. After she'd swallowed a few, she began. ‘Okay. It started when I first saw Tiffany Stoddard.'

‘When was that?'

‘Around eight o'clock last night.' For the next twenty minutes Emily took Maggie through the whole story. How the young woman had come in to the office, her face beaten and battered. What she looked like. What she was wearing. How Em checked her bruises and reset her broken nose. How she wouldn't tell Em her name or where she had come from or who had beaten her up.

‘Did you ask her why she wouldn't give you any of that information?'

‘She said if she told me any of it, the guy who beat her up would probably kill her. Then she corrected herself. Said there was no probably about it. He would definitely kill her. And he would kill me too.'

‘She used those words? Kill her? Kill you?'

‘Yeah. At first I thought she was exaggerating. But she said it with such intensity I figured maybe it was true and somebody really had threatened to kill her.'

‘What happened then?'

‘She told me she was pregnant.'

‘Wait a minute,' Maggie interrupted. ‘Tiffany Stoddard was pregnant?'

‘Said she was. I never had a chance to check but she said she missed her period and a home pregnancy test turned up positive. Told me the real reason she came to see me wasn't because of the beating but because she wanted me to terminate the pregnancy.'

‘As far as I know you don't do abortions.'

‘No, but very occasionally, I have prescribed drugs that terminate early-stage pregnancies. Somehow Stoddard knew about it.'

‘How?'

‘She said a friend told her. Told her to come see me.'

‘What friend?'

‘I asked. She wouldn't tell me that either.'

Maggie held up one hand. ‘Hold on a second would you?' she said. She found her phone and speed dialed Terri Mirabito's cell. Mirabito was one of the Assistant Medical Examiners for the state of Maine. She was also a good friend.

‘Hi, Mag, what's up?'

‘You doing the autopsy on the kid they brought in this morning? Tiffany Stoddard?'

‘Yup. That'd be me. Heard you were working with the staties on that one.'

‘Yeah? Heard it from who?'

‘Emmett Ganzer. He didn't sound real pleased.'

‘Well, that's his problem,' she said. ‘When are you cutting?'

‘Early tomorrow morning. First thing. How can I help you?'

‘I just found out Stoddard may have been pregnant.'

‘Couldn't be very pregnant.'

‘It's early stage. Maybe six weeks.'

‘Interesting. You think it's the daddy-to-be who offed her?'

‘Yeah, maybe. Listen, if there's a fetus in there, can you get the DNA reads as fast as possible?'

‘All I can do is alert Joe Pines. Try to light a fire under him.' Pines was the DNA guy at the state lab in Augusta. ‘You have any suspect matches for Joe to check them against? Any idea who she was having sex with?'

‘Not yet, but I'm working on it. Plus we may get a hit out of CODIS. I think the guy may be a sex offender.'

CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System, was an FBI-controlled database that kept DNA profiles of all sexual offenders in the United States as well as most other criminals convicted of a felony.

‘Sex offender? Jesus, Maggie, based on what he did to this kid I'd love to personally cut his balls off. And I don't mean after he's dead.' Maggie had never heard Terri sound so angry about wounds inflicted on a victim. ‘This creep used his knife like a substitute penis. Must have gone in and out of her twenty times. I'm just wondering if he actually came.'

‘Any signs of ejaculate?'

‘Not on her body or clothes. And trust me I looked. But maybe Heinrich ought to double-check the killing zone. Fucker might still have been dripping as he ran to his car.'

Terri took a deep breath to calm down before continuing. ‘I'll also have Joe check if the fetal reads match any foreign DNA I find on Stoddard's body. If we get a match with fetal, that'll at least tell us if the killer and the father are the same guy. How's Kaplan doing?'

‘Other than looking like she just went fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, pretty damn well. Awake and alert. She's the one who told me about the pregnancy.'

‘Okay. Good. I'll give you a call soon as I know.'

‘Thanks, Terri.'

Maggie broke the connection. ‘Okay, first order of business. Who knew you prescribed these drugs? Maybe told Stoddard about them?'

‘Lord, I don't know. Like I said, I've only prescribed them, let me think, three times. The first time I was still down in Portland. Patient was a thirty-eight-year-old woman who already had three kids, no job and a boyfriend who'd just walked out on her. She was desperate not to have another. I suppose she might have known Tiffany Stoddard and mentioned it but that seems really unlikely. The second time was right after I opened my practice in Machiasport. About four years ago. Patient was a twelve-year-old girl who'd been raped by her father. Mother and daughter have since moved out of the area and the father's doing time. Again unlikely.'

‘And the third?'

Emily sighed. ‘I guess that's the one. I never told anybody about it before because, frankly, I really didn't want anybody to know. Not even you. It was right before my divorce from Sam, when the marriage was really turning ugly. This young woman, a student over at UMM, tells me she's pregnant and wants to terminate the pregnancy. Unlike Stoddard, she's perfectly willing to give me her name and insurance card and all the other necessary information. I ask her if she knows who the father is and, if she does, do either of them have any interest in getting married and maybe having the baby. Well, she laughs at this. Thinks it's kind of funny. Says yes indeed, she knows who the father is and, no, she doesn't think he's going to want to get married. I ask why. She says, among other reasons, because he's already married.' Emily paused and shook her head. ‘I almost hate to ask you but by any chance was Tiffany Stoddard a student at UMM?'

‘Yes, and somehow I think I know where you're going with this,' said Maggie.

‘Yes, I'm sure you do,' Emily sighed. ‘Did Stoddard ever take any English courses? Creative writing perhaps?'

‘I guess we'll just have to find out.'

‘Maggie?'

‘What?'

‘Before you talk to Sam, make sure you call Detective Louisa DelCastro on the Philadelphia Police Department. Ask her about what happened about three and a half years ago at the Palomar Hotel in Philadelphia. Sam is more than just the preppy, wiseguy drunk he pretends to be. Be careful.'

B
efore leaving the hospital, Maggie called Detective DelCastro. She wasn't available. Maggie left a message asking the detective to please call her back as soon as possible. It concerned a murder and was urgent. Her second call was to her father.