The Girl In The Glass (17 page)

Chapter 35

M
AGGIE A
N
D
M
C
C
A
B
E
were sitting in Bill Fortier’s office debriefing him on their next-­of-­kin notifications and their interview with Gina Knowles when Detective Brian Cleary stuck his head in. “Phone records just came in.”

“And?” asked McCabe.

“No question something hot and heavy was going on between them. Something illegal as well. Tom’s got the records for both phones laid out in the conference room.”

They went down the hall and joined Cleary’s partner, Tom Tasco. Once there, they all leaned over the long table and pored over the documents.

“Finding her phone was a gift,” said Tasco. “Seems she deleted practically nothing. The phone tells us as much about what was going on between them as we need to know.”

“There were hundreds of calls, texts and voice mails between the two. Sometimes as many as twenty round-­trip texts in one day,” Cleary added.

“Starting when?” asked Maggie.

“The first ones date from November just before the Thanksgiving holidays. Initially nothing more than flirty. Stuff like her asking, ‘Did you like the poem I sent you? Wrote it specially for you.’ And him responding, ‘Stop by my office and we can talk about it.’ Course we don’t know what went on in the office. Bill Bacon checked with the Penfield headmaster. As department head, Knowles rated a private office with a door.”

“Lockable?” asked McCabe.

“Yes,” said Tasco. “But teachers aren’t supposed to even close their doors, let alone lock them, when they have a student in the office. Closed doors leave the teacher vulnerable to charges of sexual harassment.”

“Man,” said McCabe, “times sure have changed since my days at St. Barnabas.”

“The texting back and forth picked up steam in December. She apparently bought him a Christmas present. First edition of something called
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
by a poet named Lord Byron. Must have been expensive, cause he wrote her a big thank-­you note. Asked . . .” Tasco checked his notes. “ . . . ‘Where on earth did you find this? It must have cost you a fortune.’ By the middle of January they were texting back and forth pretty much every day, and it was obvious they were doing more than just texting. Voice mail content, specially the ones from her to him, was getting pretty steamy. Not quite
Fifty Shades of Grey
but some pretty damned close. She also sent him a ­couple of nude selfies. I don’t know about Knowles, but if a hot-­looking kid like Aimée Whitby sent me some of the stuff she sent him, I think I’d turn fifty shades of scarlet.”

Maggie smiled. Tom was no prude, so Aimée’s messages must have been pretty hot. Not to mention the photos. “How about his replies? Equally explicit?”

“No. His were more discreet. Even so, he was saying stuff like ‘I’ve never loved another human being as much as I love you.’ Love notwithstanding, he made it pretty clear he was as eager for sex as she was.”

“Where’d they do their dirty dancing?” asked Maggie.

“In the beginning at Tracy Carlin’s house. I’m assuming Tracy wasn’t home while they went at it. Then in February he rented a studio apartment in a building on Hampshire Street a ­couple of doors up from Angelo’s.”

Angelo’s was a down-­at-­the-­heels tavern popular with a lot of the local drinkers and brawlers. Cops were constantly being called to the place to break up fights. Just two months ago a melee in the parking lot ended with somebody getting stabbed to death and the stabber being sentenced to a long stay at the state prison in Warren. The city council was thinking about lifting the tavern’s liquor license.

“Reading between the lines,” Tasco said, “it seems Knowles told the landlord he planned to use the apartment as an office for writing his book. Don’t know if he ever told his wife anything about it.”

“I doubt it,” said Maggie. “Knowles’s wife implied they were pretty much broke. Said he worked at the USM library.”

“Anyway, the apartment wasn’t his idea, it was Aimée’s. When she suggested it, he told her he couldn’t afford it. She texted back, ‘My treat.’ He signed the lease, since she was only seventeen, and I guess probably because the name Whitby would have made more than a few waves. But she paid the rent. Six fifty a month.”

“A kept man,” said McCabe. “Usually it’s the other way around. Especially when the woman’s young and beautiful. Mag, when you get a chance, take a look at the place, talk to the landlord. Find out what you can about who went in and out.”

“Aside from the two of them?” asked Maggie.

“Yeah, I’m just wondering if anybody else ever dropped by.”

“Like who?”

“Like maybe the murderer. We’re all assuming Knowles killed her and then himself. I’d rather not be that hasty in our assumptions. Anyway, take a look yourself and then have the techs go over it and see what they can find. Also ask the landlord to give you a copy of the lease. I’ll write up a subpoena for her bank records and get copies of her canceled checks. I’m curious how much money of her own this kid had.”

Maggie turned to Cleary. “After February, did they always use the apartment for their get-­togethers?”

“Yeah. They e-­mailed a few times about going out to Whitby Island. Some place called the studio. But Aimée said they couldn’t because somebody named Mr. Jolley might be nosing around.”

“Jolley and his wife are the caretakers,” said Maggie.

“Any communications between them in the last twenty-­four hours?” asked McCabe.

“Quite a lot there too,” said Brian Cleary. “The most interesting are the last ones. At 10:52, when we know they were probably both on the island, she texts him, ‘Meet you in 15 u know where.’ He texts back, ‘Gotcha.’ Then nothing until 1:41, when he texted, ‘How could I have been such a jerk? I’m so sorry. We need to talk. Please meet me by my boat. I love you.’ She texted back, ‘OMW.’ ”

“OMW?” Fortier looked puzzled.

“Kids texting abbreviation,” Maggie explained. “Means ‘On my way.’ ”

“I wonder what he was apologizing for? Kind of sounds like they had a fight and he wants to make up. Anything else?”

“After that, just the final text he sent to his wife,” said Cleary. “The so-­called suicide note. At least one scenario of what happened here seems pretty obvious to me.”

“Really?” said McCabe. “Well, maybe you can enlighten the rest of us.”

“Since they were on the island, I’d say they went to the studio to do their thing. In her texts, she was always saying how it was her favorite place and she wished that they could be together there. So they go, but when they get there, they have a fight. About what? Who knows. What do lovers fight about? Something he said. Something he didn’t say. His sex technique? Hers? Maybe she’s pissed because she didn’t have an orgasm. Maybe she wants to do it again and he doesn’t. Maybe she wants him to leave his wife and he says no. Since they’re both dead, we’ll never know. Point is, they have a fight. During which he says something that hurts her and storms out.”

“Lot of suppositions there,” said McCabe.

“Just hear me out. Knowles storms out, but as he heads to his boat, he’s horrified by the nasty things he’s said. He needs to apologize. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sends in a text from his boat. ‘How could I have been such a jerk?’ Followed by a plea to make up. ‘I love you.’ To which Aimée responded, not by telling him she’s sorry too but rather, ‘On my way.’ Maybe she’s still pissed and hasn’t finished telling him off. So when she gets there, she starts the fight up all over again. Maybe she threatens to tell her father about the affair. Or the police. He knows if she does that it’ll cost him. Not just his marriage but also his job and possibly even jail time. He panics and knocks her down. She hits her head against a rock or maybe the back of the boat and starts bleeding. She tries to hit back. He panics. Sees his future going down the drain. Grabs a knife.”

“Aha,” said McCabe, “the handy knife.”

“C’mon, McCabe, this is a fishing boat. It’s next to certain there’s at least a gutting knife on board. He grabs it as she comes for him. In the melee he stabs her. Or maybe she just runs into the knife and it really is an accident. He pulls out the knife. She falls down, not dead but dying from the wound. Knowles realizes that if anyone finds out what he’s done, he won’t just do a year in the county jail for screwing a student, he’ll most likely spend the rest of his life in prison for killing one. Or at least a lot of years for stabbing and wounding one.

“That means he can’t leave her where she is. He’s got to get the hell out of there before anyone sees them. He starts up the boat and heads back to Portland. He thinks about throwing her body overboard but she isn’t dead yet, so he can’t bring himself to do it.

“He convinces himself that if he hides the body up by the Loring, he can tell the police she asked for a ride to her mother’s place and he dropped her off as near as he could. He’ll tell them the last he saw of her, she was climbing up the Loring Trail to head for home.

“He thinks maybe it’ll all be blamed on some random rapist who just happened to be on the prowl. If they find his DNA on her body, he can admit to consensual sex. He leaves her there, gets back in the boat and starts for home. On the way, he has a real
Oh my God
moment. Twenty-­four hours ago he was an upstanding father and a respected teacher. Now he’s nothing but a murderer. He’s overcome by guilt and self-­loathing. Decides he can’t live with himself. He texts the suicide note and dives overboard. He drowns and his body washes up at Two Lights. There you have it. Means. Motive. Opportunity. Q.E.D.”

“Q.E.D.? What the hell’s that?” asked Fortier. “More of that texting stuff?”

“No,” said McCabe, “it’s Latin for
Quod Erat Demonstrandum,
which means ‘thus it is demonstrated.’ ”

“Jesus, Brian, where the hell did you learn Latin? Your old man make you go to church?”

“Nah. I picked it up on an episode of one of those new Sherlock Holmes shows. Holmes says ‘Q.E.D.’ to Watson after proving a point. Only the Watson on this show is a cute girl. I thought it was kind of cool.” Cleary looked pleased with himself. “Now if you all will just admit I’m right about all this, we can wrap it up and I won’t have to miss tonight’s Sox-­Yankees game. I planned to meet up with a ­couple of buddies at Rivalries to watch it.” Rivalries was a popular sports bar on Cotton Street in Portland.

McCabe sighed. “Sorry, Brian, you better let your pals know you won’t be making it.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I mean I think there may be a few holes in your theory.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, you’ve got too many what-­ifs and not enough facts.
What if
they had a fight.
What if
she texted OMW because she wanted to yell at him some more. What if she falls and bashes her head. C’mon, I know it’s a big game, but you know as well as I do that any defense attorney would tell any judge this is all just random speculation on your part. Any or all of it might be exactly how it happened, but it’s just as likely that it’s not. There’s no way you can prove it. Which means if Knowles were alive, there’d be no way you could convict him of anything other than having sex with a student, which at least we have some hard evidence for but frankly isn’t the main issue here.”

Cleary looked crestfallen. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. What some might consider gaping holes in your solution.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why in hell would a panicked or maybe guilt-­ridden Byron Knowles take x minutes to carve an
A
in her chest? You’ve suggested no reason, and I can’t imagine any unless it’s some weird reference to a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. Then there’s the question of her cell phone. Why on earth would Knowles leave her cell phone with all its sexy text messages lying ten feet from her body? If he wants to hide the sexual relationship, especially if he wants to hide what you called the
Fifty Shades of Grey
stuff, no way he’d leave it there. All it does is implicate him. Especially when his last message to his wife was ‘Please know that I have always loved you.’ I mean if you were him, wouldn’t you want to hide the dirty things you were doing and not have them become part of the official record?”

“There’s one possible reason he might have left it,” said Maggie.

“Okay, what’s that?”

“If he had to leave in a hurry. If he heard Scott’s dog charging up the trail with Scott not so far behind, he might have just dropped it and run like hell.”

“Okay, that’s a definite maybe,” said McCabe. “But what about this? We know Aimée was still alive when Scott found her. She was breathing. She had a pulse. If Knowles didn’t want her to die, why would he drag her body a hundred feet up a rough incline and then hide her in some brambles where she was so hard to find it took a dog to actually sniff her out? Not to mention the fact that he didn’t bother calling 911 for an ambulance to come and help her?”

Cleary shrugged. “Because he’s no doctor. He thought she was dead and, like I said, he thinks a rapist/murderer would try to hide the body, so that’s what he does. As for the phone, maybe Maggie’s right. He panicked when he heard Ruthie and Scott approaching and just forgot to take it.”

“Yeah, maybe. But it’s equally possible that Knowles didn’t kill anyone. Not Aimée. Not himself. They may have both been the victims of a third man. An unsub who wants all us cops to believe the scenario you just laid out. I don’t think we can do that till we know a whole lot more.”

“Me either,” said Maggie. “Especially not after spending an hour with his wife. Gina Knowles is an angry and bitter woman, which she has every right to be. But she still couldn’t imagine Knowles being capable of murder.”

“If there is a third man,” said McCabe, “he probably used Knowles’s cell phone to send the text that lured Aimée to Knowles’s boat. Which means A, the bad guy was on the island at the time, and B, based on the content of the text, he somehow knew that Knowles and Aimée had just had a fight or a disagreement or something else that Knowles felt he had to apologize about. It’s like the bad guy had the damned studio bugged.”