The Cutting
PENGUIN BOOKS
The Cutting
James Hayman spent more than twenty years as a senior creative director at one of New York’s largest advertising agencies. He and his wife now live in Portland, Maine.
The Cutting
is his debut novel.
The Cutting
JAMES HAYMAN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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First published in the United States of America by Minotaur Books 2009
First published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2010
Copyright © James Hayman, 2009
Excerpt from
The Chill of Night
copyright © James Hayman, 2011
All rights reserved
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-95487-5
For Jeanne
Acknowledgments
There are many people I wish to thank for their help and encouragement in writing this book. Among them, in no particular order, are:
Detective Sergeant Tom Joyce, who once held McCabe’s job in the Portland Police Department’s Crimes Against People unit and who now teaches Criminal Justice at Southern Maine Community College. What I got right is due to Tom. What I got wrong is entirely my own fault.
Dr. George ‘Bud’ Higgins and Dr. Bob Kramer of Maine Medical Center and Dr. Bob Zeff of the Iowa Heart Center for their knowledge and insights about medical practice in general and transplant surgery in particular.
Portland attorneys Brenda Buchanan, Ron Schneider, and Elizabeth Burns for their insights on criminal and family law.
Bruce White, Transplant Co-Ordinator at Maine Med.
Jim Ferland of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of Maine for showing me where and how autopsies are done.
Jane Hayman Abbott, Cynthia Thayer, Lewis Robinson, Kate Sullivan, Mike Kimball, Shonna Humphrey, Brenda Buchanan (again), Jane Slovan, Richard Bilodeau, and Eleanor Lincoln Morse, fine writers all, who were kind enough to read the manuscript and offer ideas and suggestions that improved it enormously.
Laima Vince, whose writing workshops helped get me started down this road, and Cevia Rosol for proofing and copyediting the early drafts.
Charlie Spicer, Yaniv Soha, and Andy Martin of Minotaur Books for their unstinting support and encouragement.
Meg Ruley, a good friend and, without question, the best agent a first- time novelist could ever hope to find, and Suzy Kane, a fellow islander, who introduced me to Meg.
Finally, my children, Kate and Ben, and my wife, Jeanne, for their love and encouragement every step of the way.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Prologue
July 1971
He pressed the terrified creature firmly against his body. He was a sturdy boy, tall for his eight years, with dark hair and a long, thin face. After more than a month of summer sunshine, his normally fair skin had turned quite brown. He could feel the rabbit, just weeks old, shivering, and he felt a sense of rising excitement, anticipating the adventure that lay ahead. The boy resisted an urge to run toward the secret place. He feared tripping over a bit of protruding ledge or a branch buried in last fall’s rotting leaves. His prize might fall loose and scamper away. Even as the boy walked, his breathing quickened. He lightly stroked the bunny’s soft fur, trying to calm its beating heart and, perhaps, his own as well.
It took him nearly twenty minutes to reach his destination, a kind of natural cave formed by arching tendrils of bittersweet vines as they reached upward to grasp and wind around the young white pine and birch trees that surrounded the place. The boy had filled in the lower walls, layering spruce branches atop the bittersweet. He had also cut away the growth from the interior and brought in armfuls of dead leaves and pine needles to form a kind of floor. The entire space measured about four feet in diameter and at its center was no more than three feet high. Shafts of sunlight entered from above, projecting a pattern of brightness and shadow on the ground.
The boy crawled into the cave, securing the rabbit with one hand against his chest. Moisture from the ground soaked through the knees of his jeans and felt cold against his skin. Once inside, he laid the animal on the ground, holding it by its ears. Its black button eyes were fixed on the boy, who saw what he sensed was both terror and resignation. It was a feeling that the creature knew – and in its way accepted – what the boy had so carefully planned and prepared for. This seemed to the boy to be as it should be.
With his free hand he withdrew the folding knife from his back pocket. He had sharpened the three-inch blade to razor fineness on his father’s stone, and he took care not to cut his finger as he worked it open.
He forced himself to wait a few seconds, enjoying the anticipation. He could feel his heart pounding as he placed the point of the blade just below the creature’s neck. He pushed hard and then sliced down toward its stomach, opening the animal up. The creature’s screams pierced the air. So like the high-pitched shrieks of pain that came from his infant brother when the boy played with him. He didn’t let the sound distract him from his task. He was quite sure no one could hear.
He had no words for the feeling that shook his body as he gazed upon the rabbit’s beating heart and held it for an instant in his hand before the beating stopped and the creature died. He only knew it was something he wanted to experience again and again.
1
Portland, Maine
September 16, 2005
Friday. 5:30
A.M.
Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast. On even the clearest mornings, swirling gray mists sometimes appear in an instant, covering the earth with an opacity that makes it hard to see even one’s own feet on the ground. On this particular September morning it descended at 5:30, about the time Lucinda Cassidy and her companion Fritz, a small dog of indeterminate pedigree, arrived at the cemetery on Vaughan Street to begin their four-mile run along the streets of Portland’s West End and the path that borders the city’s Western Promenade.
The cemetery was one of Portland’s oldest and was surrounded by a chain-link fence, now falling into disrepair. The gates on the Vaughan Street side were locked to keep out neighborhood dog walkers. The earliest gravestones dated back to the late 1700s. On most of these stones, dates and other specifics had faded to near illegibility. Those that could be read bore the names of early Portland’s most prominent families, Deering, Dana, Brackett, Reed, Preble. These were old Yankee names, many of which had achieved a measure of immortality, having been bestowed upon the streets and parks of a young and growing city. More recent stones marked the graves of Irish, Italian, and French-Canadian immigrants who came to Portland to work in the city’s thriving shipbuilding trades or on the railroads in the last half of the nineteenth century. Today, however, no more of the dead would be buried here, regardless of ancestry or influence. The place was full, the last remains having been interred and the last markers erected in the years immediately following World War II.
When the fog moved in, Lucy considered canceling her run, but only briefly. At age twenty-eight, she was preparing for her first 10K race. She had more than enough self-discipline not to let anything as transitory as a little morning fog interfere with her training schedule. It was tough enough getting the runs in, given the long hours she worked as the newest account executive at Beckman and Hawes, the city’s biggest ad agency. In any case, Lucy knew her route well. The fog wouldn’t be a problem as long as she took care not to trip on one of the sidewalk’s uneven pavers.
The air was cool on her bare legs as Lucy performed her stretches – calves and quads and hamstrings. She pulled off her oversized Bates College sweatshirt, revealing a white sports bra and blue nylon shorts, and tossed it into her car, an aging Toyota Corolla.
She saw no other joggers or dog walkers and thought she and Fritz might well have the streets to themselves. She slipped off his collar to let him run free. He was well trained and wouldn’t go far. She pulled a Portland Sea Dogs cap down over her blond hair, stretching the Velcro band down and under her ponytail. She draped the dog’s lead around her shoulders and set off along Vaughan Street at a leisurely pace, with Fritzy first racing ahead and then stopping to leave his mark on a tree or lamppost.