Cavanaugh on Duty

chapter 8



Kari was trying to decide how best to frame her answer to her new partner’s question when the CSI van pulled up in front of the latest victim’s town house. For a moment, curious as to which of the team had come out to process this crime scene, she forgot about Fernandez.

The three team members quickly got out of the van. They lost no time arming themselves with the equipment needed to document any and all findings at the crime scene. After all, you never knew what could eventually give them that one clue that would help lead to the woman’s killer.

Kari was surprised to see that her father was once again heading up the team. She’d just assumed that he would still be focused on the last murder victim.

“Spreading yourself a little thin, aren’t you, Dad?” Kari asked as she came up behind her father.

Sean closed the trunk and turned around to face her. “I could say the same thing to you and your partner here,” he said, nodding at Esteban.

The latter returned the nod in kind, but refrained from saying anything.

“Not the same thing,” Kari pointed out. “We caught the case because it looks like it might be the work of the same guy who killed our retired mail carrier.”

“Actually, that’s why I’m here, too.” Picking up a case with one hand, a camera with the other, he strode toward the town-house door. A patrolman stood guarding it. “You know I can’t resist serial killer cases,” Sean said. “The sooner we can catch this killer and bring him—or her—in, the safer the public will be.”

It wasn’t anything that she hadn’t heard before. Her father firmly believed that while a common killer might have been motivated by the heat of the moment, a serial killer had a blood lust that was never satisfied.

However, of late, seeing the bodies of the two slaughtered retirees had somehow made it seem more personal. Her father was years away from considering retirement—she had a feeling that he intended to die with his lab coat on, processing a case—but these victims were closer to his age bracket and it made her look at him in a whole new light.

It made her want to protect him, even though she knew she couldn’t.

“Just don’t go poking around in dangerous places,” she cautioned.

Sean’s smile was warm and understanding. She wasn’t anywhere that he hadn’t been himself, time and again, whenever he watched one of his own go out to answer a call.

“I could say the same thing to you,” he reminded her. “And I’ve got the feeling that the warning would make about as much of an impression on you as it would on me.”

“Guess then that it’s a lucky thing you’re both related to half the police department and know they have your back,” Esteban commented.

Sean looked toward his daughter. “Straighten him out, Kari. I’ve got a crime scene to process.” With that, he walked into the town house.

Kari turned her attention to her partner, wondering if he was being sarcastic, reflective, or—? It was still early in the game, but she sincerely wished she was able to read Fernandez better.

But her father was right. In case he was being cynical, he needed to be set straight.

“They’d have our back even if we weren’t related. Just like they have yours.” She saw the skeptical look in his eyes. “I think you’ve been on your own too long, Fernandez. I think your superiors pulled you out just in time.”

“I don’t,” he retorted darkly.

She stared at him. Was he being serious, or just playing the macho card? “You do realize that it was just a matter of time—hours—before you were killed if they hadn’t,” she told him, refusing to believe that he actually meant what he’d just said.

“Maybe,” Esteban qualified in a way that indicated he was far from convinced that would have been his fate.

“The cartel made you,” she stressed. “That means they knew you were a cop,” she said needlessly. “How can you possibly think that their plans for you didn’t involve a cold slab and being plowed six feet under in some unmarked grave?” she demanded.

Did he think he was some kind of superhero who could defy bullets and death?

He was not about to have that argument here, especially not with her. “Let’s change the subject,” he ground out, abruptly ending the conversation.

Kari didn’t want to change the subject. She wanted to hammer away at this numbskull with the beautiful eyes until she got him to see reason. But having been raised with four brothers had taught her how futile it was to argue with a man who had stubbornly made up his mind—even if he was terminally wrong.

“Okay,” she allowed with forced cheerfulness, then couldn’t resist adding, “for now.”

It earned her another formidable look, which she pretended not to see.

Back to the case, she thought. That was the important thing.

“Let’s see if we can find out if the victim’s granddaughter is up to talking yet. Maybe she can give us a list of Mae’s friends.” She sighed, knowing that route usually led nowhere—but she had to try. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone knows something they don’t know they know.”

Esteban shot her a sideways glance that told her what he thought of that idea, but he fell in step with her anyway.

They were just about to get back into the car in order to drive to the hospital where the distraught young woman had been taken when one of the crime scene investigators came hurrying out of the town house, calling to them to get their attention.

Tall and thin to the point of being almost gaunt, and with a mop of unruly dirty-blond hair that made him resemble a giant Q-tip, Silas Baker waved his hand over his head to make his presence known in case they couldn’t hear him.

They could.

“Detectives!”

They both turned from the car and looked in the investigator’s direction. The young man—Kari judged that he had to be younger than she was, which made him pretty young in her book—beckoned them forward.

“The boss found something he thought you might be interested in,” Silas volunteered with barely contained excitement.

His enthusiasm told her that he was new on the job. Kari quickened her pace, getting to the doorway a beat before her partner did.

Assuming that whatever it was her father had discovered and wanted them to see was at the heart of the crime scene, she headed back to the kitchen once she reentered the town house.

“Find something?” she asked her father, crossing to his side.

He’d just finished a very cursory examination of the body, taking care to be gentle and respectful of the dead. “Thought you might be interested in this. I found it clutched in the victim’s hand.” He addressed his words to both of them as he held out a see-through plastic envelope, the kind that was used to bag and tag evidence for cataloging.

Since she was closest to her father, Kari took the evidence bag and looked at it. At first glance, the bag appeared to contain a tiny charm, like the kind that could be found on an old-fashioned charm bracelet.

The sunlight coming in through the window over the sink hit the charm dead-on, making it glimmer like a ray of trapped sunshine.

“Okay,” she said gamely, not quite sure what she was supposed to see when she looked at it—and then she focused on the charm for the first time. Her heart thudded when she realized what it was supposed to be. “Oh, God, it’s a tiny scales of justice,” she breathed.

“So much for the copycat idea,” Esteban muttered, striking the theory off the board. “Looks like our killer is going on with his game.”

“Killing people isn’t a game,” Kari snapped, momentarily losing her temper because she felt so powerless to stop the murderer before he struck again. That he would murder once more was a near certainty at this point.

“It might be to him,” Esteban countered, his voice devoid of any emotion.

She looked at him sharply. Didn’t he feel anything? she wondered angrily.

“He’s right,” Sean told her, his voice low and steady, exhibiting how cool he always was, even under pressure. “This could be just a sick game to the killer, and until we know otherwise, that might be useful to keep in mind.”

She knew what the word “game” implied. “That would make the killer a cold-blooded sociopath.”

His tone didn’t change, but the expression on her father’s face was grim. “Exactly.”

Taking out her phone, Kari took a picture of the encased charm, then handed the evidence bag back to her father. The item had to be cataloged as evidence, but she wanted to show the photo to the victim’s granddaughter. She needed to find out whether the charm belonged to the victim...or if the killer had planted it in her hand rather than draw the symbol on her the way he had on William Reynolds.

“Thanks,” she said to her father, checking to see if the photograph had turned out clear. Satisfied, she put her cell phone away.

“No need for thanks. We’re on the same team, remember?” her father pointed out as he handed off the tagged charm to Silas, the tall, gangly investigator who had called them back. The latter locked away the evidence in his own meticulously organized black case.

“I need a reminder every now and then,” Kari told her father, only half kidding.

Rather than answer with a quip, her father replied, “I know,” just before he got back to work.

Esteban was silent as they walked back to the car and remained that way for the first couple of miles as they drove to the nearest hospital, where the victim’s granddaughter would have been taken.

Finally, ten minutes into the trip, he asked, “What did you mean by ‘still’?” and caught Kari completely off guard.

Because they hadn’t exchanged a single word since they’d left the crime scene, Kari had no idea what he was referring to. Confused, she glanced in his direction before looking back at the road.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

After clearing his throat a couple of times, Esteban tried again. “You said you were surprised to find out that I still had some compassion in me. The word ‘still’ would mean that you thought you already knew me.”

“I did.” She could see that wasn’t the answer he wanted. “Want to go somewhere and pick up a late lunch?” she asked.

Until she’d mentioned it, he hadn’t realized that as of yet, they hadn’t stopped to eat and it was getting closer to dinnertime than to lunch. “What about Anne Daniels?” he asked, referring to the victim’s traumatized granddaughter.

“Have you been to a hospital lately?” she asked him. “I’m sure she’ll still be there in an hour when we get there.”

With a shrug, Esteban said, “Okay, why not?” and assumed that the subject of his so-called recognition was being tabled. Which was just as well, he decided. It would only complicate things.

Kari asked softly, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

For now, Esteban intended to play it very close to the vest. “Should I?”

She answered his question with a question of her own. “What high school did you go to?”

Accustomed to covering up every detail of his life and keeping it hidden at all costs, his immediate reaction was to go on the defensive. “What difference does that make?” he contested.

“Plenty,” she told him with feeling. “I went to Aurora High. The quarterback there my first two years was this Adonis with an incredible throwing arm. To watch him play football was like watching poetry in motion.”

She watched him carefully, waiting to see if there was any kind of reaction to her words. He remained as stoic as a statue. “He had midnight-black hair that was a little on the long side, and I knew of several girls who would have killed just to run their fingers through it...or simply have him smile in their direction.”

“Does that include you?” The question came out of the blue and succeeded in catching her off guard for a second time.

She felt a wave of heat pass over her. Since it was a mild spring day, the weather was not a factor in the abrupt change in temperature. “I had a crush on him,” she admitted, knowing she had to answer him honestly. “But I could never get myself to be part of a crowd. Because I was already one of seven at home, I was always trying too hard to be noticed as an individual.” She kept on studying his facial features, waiting for a glimmer, for some sort of an indication that she was right. “His name was Steve Fernandez.”

He shrugged indifferently. “Fernandez is a common last name.”

“So you’re saying that wasn’t you,” she challenged.

He stared straight ahead. The teenager he had been seemed like someone from another lifetime. His world had undergone drastic changes since then. And he had had to struggle every day to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

And maybe the answer to healing was shedding his identity altogether. “I’m saying that wasn’t me.”

She saw the minuscule way his jaw tightened, saw the lone nerve along his cheek move spasmodically. That was her answer, not the words he said.

“It was you,” she said quietly.

He shot her a look. “If that’s an indication of your detective instincts, I’d say as a team, we’re in big trouble and I’m within my rights to ask for another partner.”

“Think another partner would put up with you any better than I would?” she wanted to know, her tone deceptively mild.

Esteban blew out a breath.

Rather than answer her question or even acknowledge it, he quoted an old adage he knew: “I guess better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Kari laughed shortly, amused despite herself. “First time I’ve been referred to as the devil. You’d be a big hit with my brothers, you know.” Pausing for a moment, she looked at him just before she started up the car. “So we’re good?”

“We’re good, Hyphen,” he said, slanting a glance in her direction.

She still wasn’t warming up to the nickname, but she supposed that things could be a lot worse. “Okay, slight change in plans,” she announced. “Let’s go see how the victim’s granddaughter is doing first, then pick up some takeout and bring it to the station. This way we can eat and go over what we’ve learned so far.” She paused for a second, then added, “Steve.”

He looked at her sharply then. She could see that he wanted to say something in response, maybe even chastise her for addressing him by a name he’d clearly disavowed. But she also knew that her new partner couldn’t have survived undercover for the length of time that he had by allowing his temper to get the better of him.

What he did say to her when he finally spoke was “I’m not your quarterback.”

She smiled at that, thinking how, back in the day, the very idea that he was hers would have had her walking at least three inches off the ground.

“I never said the quarterback was mine,” Kari pointed out.

Esteban said nothing. She had a feeling that was because he really didn’t know what to say.

Score one for the home team, Kari thought.

His beautiful, feisty partner had managed to hit far too close to home and that made him uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned, the life he’d had before he’d gone undercover was dead and gone and bringing it up now after all this time just succeeded in exhuming all the hurt, all the pain that he’d buried almost four years ago.

All the hurt and pain that had to remain buried in order for him to function at least moderately well as a cop.

He gave serious consideration to asking for a new partner, but he needed a reason and citing something as inane as irreconcilable differences was beyond ridiculous. And he couldn’t very well tell the Chief of D’s that his niece recognized him from their school days, blowing the last of his carefully constructed cover, because that sounded worse than lame.

So, for now, he knew he had no other choice but to ride it out, and stay confident that keeping to himself would eventually push her to ask for a new partner. He just hoped that the confounding feeling bedeviling him—the one he was doing his best to ignore—wouldn’t trip him up and wreak havoc on the life he’d worked so hard to strip bare.

Yet even as he tried not to think about it—about her—he found that it was far easier said than done.