The Chill of Night by James Hayman

obvious. Also he had that habit of calling McCabe ‘Mac.’ It was a nickname McCabe loathed. Even when Fry was right, as far as McCabe was concerned, Fry was wrong.
    Maggie nodded. ‘Yeah. I called her cell. She was on her way out for a big evening with some new guy I think she has the hots for.’ McCabe smiled. He enjoyed the image of the short, bubbly pathologist nursing a case of ‘the hots.’
    ‘Where was she headed?’
    ‘A night at the opera.’
    McCabe smiled again.
    ‘No,’ Maggie said with a sigh, ‘not the Marx Brothers. The Kirov. They’re singing at Merrill. I caught her just as she was parking her car. Tough ticket to get. She wasn’t real happy hearing from me. Anyway, she said she’d let her friend know and then run home and get her kit.’ Maggie glanced at her watch. ‘Should be here any minute.’
    ‘Okay. Let’s take a look,’ he said. In spite of Maggie’s concern for his boozy breath, McCabe felt sober, his head clear at last. He slipped under the crime scene tape. ‘You coming?’
    ‘I’m coming.’
    He headed toward the car, watching where he walked, shining Officer Ly’s light on the concrete platform of the pier, flashing left and then right, trying to spot anything that shouldn’t be there. There was nothing visible. Not even any tire tracks on the dirty patches of ice and snow. Too cold. Too hard. He reached the car. He peered in through the open driver’s side door. Moved the light around the interior. Looked clean and new. He noted the key, still in the ignition. No other keys on the ring. No house keys. No office key. Just a plastic membership tag for Planet Fitness, a gym over on Marginal Way. He knew the place. Kyra went there. He wondered if they’d ever run into each other. McCabe squatted down and moved the light slowly across the floor and under the seats. He could just see the edge of a small plastic bag pushed under the driver’s seat. He pulled it out. Pure white powder. Possibly coke. Jacobi could run a field test to be sure, but it looked like either Jane Doe or her killer was a user. Or maybe a dealer? He pointed it out to Maggie. She shook her head, indicating she hadn’t seen it before. Either way, probable cause was established. They just had to let Vodnick know what he’d seen.
    A couple of scenarios ran through McCabe’s mind. One, Goff drives here to meet someone. Maybe her dealer. He gives her the coke. She hides the bag under the seat. They have a disagreement. He gets pissed, kills her, and takes off. Possible. But if that was the case, why would the body be naked? Maybe the dealer demands sex for payment. She says no. He rapes her. Panics and kills her and takes off either in a second car or maybe a boat. Again possible, but it didn’t feel right. Not the way the car was positioned in the most public place on the pier. Unless he backed it up to the edge after he killed her to dump the body overboard. So why didn’t he? It wouldn’t have been frozen yet. He could have tossed her into the harbor easily and driven off. Instead, he packs her into the trunk and leaves her. No. None of that felt right. More likely somebody brought the body here already stuffed in the trunk. Somebody who wanted the car to be noticed. Who wanted the body to be found.
    Finally McCabe flicked off the light and stood up. He took a deep breath and walked toward the trunk, preparing himself for the first few seconds he’d spend alone with the victim. The cop and the corpse. A unique and strangely intimate relationship. Just the two of them. It didn’t matter to McCabe who the victim was. A gangbanger or an innocent child. Either way, for him, it was this moment of shared intimacy that turned what for some cops was merely a job into an obligation. A sacred trust. To find and punish the killer, to right the wrong, to balance the scales. The Lord may someday get His turn – but for now, McCabe believed, vengeance is mine. I go first.
    In the dim light of the open trunk,