Free The Cutting by James Hayman

on the other side of Somerset? Richard A. Morgan Van Lines?’
    ‘I know the place.’
    ‘Seems they’ve got a night security guy. Student at USM. Name’s Mark Shevack.’
    ‘How long has he worked there?’
    ‘About a year,’ Fraser said. ‘He got the job when he started over at the U. last September. My guess is he mostly snoozes or listens to his iPod, but he occasionally has to wander around and check things out. Says he thinks he saw a car stop and park on Somerset on a line with where the vic was found. It stayed there about ten minutes, then took off.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Thursday around midnight.’
    ‘That works okay with time of death, but it means she was lying there for nearly twenty-four hours before anyone spotted her.’
    ‘Not many people go in there.’
    ‘Did Shevack get a decent look at the car?’
    ‘Not really,’ said Tasco. ‘He says it was a dark-colored SUV. Couldn’t tell what kind. Thought it might be European. Curvier look than a Jeep or Explorer. He couldn’t make a color or plate number either. He says it was pretty dark and he really wasn’t paying much attention. He’s only responsible for checking the warehouse. He only noticed it because cars don’t stop on Somerset very often. Almost never that late.’
    ‘Is that it?’
    ‘No. There was a security camera, too,’ said Fraser.
    ‘That’s good news.’
    ‘Yes and no. Unfortunately, it’s mostly pointed on the warehouse area, but on a corner of the frame, it picked up what might be part of the car in the background.’
    ‘Might be?’
    ‘Yeah. It’s time-coded, but way the hell out of focus. You can see a dark car-blob stop where Shevack said at eleven forty-eight. A human-blob gets out of the car-blob and goes to the rear, where, as best we can tell, it unloads what might possibly be the body and carries it into the yard. Then the human-blob comes back without the possible body-blob, gets in the car, and drives away. It’s eleven fifty-nine.’
    ‘Eleven minutes?’ McCabe considered how long eleven minutes could be. Too much time just to carry the body to where it was dumped, arrange it to his liking, and walk back. So what’s he doing in there for eleven minutes? Admiring his handiwork? Jerking off? That’s some cocky bastard.
    Eddie Fraser was trying to get his attention. ‘Mike, it’s gotta be our guy. It’s gotta be. Starbucks is trying to computer-enhance the image now. C’mon, let’s see how he’s doing.’
    McCabe and the two detectives went downstairs to the small cubicle where the PPD’s resident brainiac sat in front of a computer setup far more sophisticated than McCabe’s. He was a Somali kid named Aden Yusuf Hassan. When he started working for the PPD a few years earlier he was instantly nicknamed Starbucks by the cops, more for his addiction to strong coffee than for any resemblance to the Melville character.
    Starbucks had arrived in Portland at age fifteen back in 2000, in the first wave of Sudanese and Somali refugees who came fleeing genocide in their own lands. Shockley hired him part-time while he was still in high school, part of a brief flirtation with building racial diversity in the department. The kid had never touched a computer in his native country, but he learned fast. He was a natural. One of the best McCabe ever saw. He could teach himself the basics in complex programs in just a couple of hours, mastery in a few days. Without question, he was the number one computer geek in the department, maybe in the whole city. Starbucks sat hunched in front of a flat-panel monitor, his dark brown face scrunched up in concentration.
    He looked up as McCabe and the others approached. His face exploded in a huge smile. ‘Good news, Detectives!’ He said it emphatically, practically shouting out the word ‘Detectives’ with only a trace of a Somali accent, his only language until age fourteen. ‘I make the car as definitely an SUV. Maybe a Lexus. Maybe a BMW. A 2002 model, maybe