Kelly frowned. He was doing it again. He was evading her. But there was a job to do and a new victim to question in hopes of gleaning some piece of information that would finally point them in the right direction. They definitely needed to discover just who was behind this rash of home invasions.
“We’ll pick this up later,” Kelly promised as they got out of the sedan.
Kane made no reply.
* * *
The latest victim, Ellis Johnson, was a highly successful investment broker who believed in living lavishly and spent his money accordingly. He was livid over what had happened to him and had no problem saying so when questioned about the details of the home invasion.
“If it wasn’t for his damn gun, I would have overpowered him,” he told Kane, contempt seething out of every pore.
“So the thief who broke into your house was on the small side?” Kelly asked.
Johnson, who appeared to be in the neighborhood of six-four, drew himself up to his full height and said, “Hell, yes. I could have picked him up and thrown him against the wall if I could have gotten my hands on him. But he was waving around that gun and he looked crazy enough to use it.”
Kane was instantly alert. “Then you saw his face?” he questioned.
“No,” Johnson grumbled. “But I saw his eyes. They had this really crazy look in them.” Scowling, he cursed viciously. “Do you know what that bastard did?”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Kelly said, doing her best to sound sympathetic. It wasn’t easy. She was beginning to understand why someone would want to do something drastic to teach the broker a lesson in humility.
“That bastard took down my paintings right in front of me. My very expensive art treasures,” he emphasized. “And he destroyed them! Stood right there, two feet away from me, and slashed the canvas with a knife! I could have ripped him apart with my bare hands.” Talking about it now had caused his face to turn a bright shade of red.
“Was there anything that was even vaguely familiar about him?” Kelly pressed. “Anything that stood out?”
“He was a nobody,” Johnson spat out. “Not somebody I would have noticed. He was like all the other nobodies in this world. Transparent even while they’re standing in front of you. How can you expect me to remember a nobody like that?”
“Well, for one thing, this nobody destroyed your Turner seascape,” Kane reminded the victim.
His face turned even redder. “For that alone he should get a lethal injection,” the broker raged.
“Yeah, well, first we have to find him,” Kane said, more to himself than to the victim.
Just then Kane’s phone began to ring. He slid it out of his pocket to check the caller ID. A hint of confusion entered his expression. Glancing up at his partner, he said, “I have to take this.”
Not waiting for Kelly to say anything one way or another, he turned away and took several steps to the side for privacy.
“This isn’t interesting enough for you?” Johnson accused, raising his voice for Kane’s benefit.
Kelly was quick to divert the victim’s attention to herself. “Every case we get interests us, Mr. Johnson. What happened to you seems to be part of a rash of home invasions.”
The man looked astonished and then angry. “This is an ongoing investigation? And you haven’t figured it out yet? What am I paying taxes for?”
“For a great many things, Mr. Johnson,” Kelly told him as patiently as she could. “And just for your own information, solving a case isn’t done in forty-nine minutes—not counting commercials—the way it is on TV. We’re piecing things together and comparing each home invasion to all the others in the state that have taken place.”
Johnson snorted with contempt. “Seems to me that your department could do with some better detectives. Who do I call about that?” he asked, sounding belligerent.
Kelly congratulated herself on keeping her smile—as well as her temper—intact.
“Anyone you want to.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kane closing his cell phone and slipping it back into his pocket. He appeared agitated and disturbed. “Excuse me,” she told the broker just before she walked away from him.
“No, I will not excuse you,” Johnson shouted. “I want to know who the hell is going to pay for my trashed painting!”
“Your insurance company comes to mind,” Kelly said, tossing the words over her shoulder. Catching up to Kane, she asked, “Is everything all right?”
For a second he seemed surprised to see her. Obviously distracted, he said, “Yeah, fine. Look, I have go.”
“Go? Go where?” she asked, catching hold of his arm. She had a feeling that if she hadn’t, he’d just keep walking without saying anything further.
Kane disengaged himself from her. “I have to go take care of something. You finish questioning Mr. Personality over there. Get his full statement. I’ve got to take the car, so catch a ride with one of the uniforms. Thanks,” he added automatically.
“Where can I reach you?” she asked, calling after him. But Kane had already left Johnson’s house and was out of earshot.
She wanted to run after him, to offer her help with whatever it was that had him so upset, but she knew he would refuse her.
Squaring her shoulders and taking a deep, fortifying breath, Kelly turned around and headed back to the less than cooperative broker. He was glaring at her expectantly, as if he thought she should have the apprehended thief in hand.
“Why don’t I have you write down exactly what you just told me?” Kelly suggested once she was next to Johnson.
This was obviously not what Johnson had in mind. He looked at her with absolute disdain. “You want me to include pictures, as well?”
It was a struggle, but she didn’t allow her real feelings to come through. Instead, she offered Johnson her very best, brightest smile. “No, just the words will do.”
With that she put some distance between herself and the home invasion victim. Her self-restraint was within minutes of being flung out the window.
If they went according to a list of people the broker had undoubtedly alienated, Kelly doubted if they would be finished questioning everyone within a year. The man had one of the most abrasive personalities she had ever encountered. She thought of herself as mild mannered and even she was tempted to destroy something of Johnson’s just to put the obnoxious man in his place. That feeling had to be intensified among the people who actually knew and had to deal with him.
After taking down all the information she could and leaving the crime scene investigators to photograph the scene, Kelly hitched a ride with a patrol officer to the precinct.
The first thing she noticed as she crossed the lot was that Kane’s car was missing. Wherever he had gone, he was still there, she concluded.
When she tried to call him on his cell, her call went straight to voice mail. Kane’s phone must have been off.
Frustrated, Kelly forced herself to focus on this latest home invasion case. She meticulously placed key points on the board that was already set up with information from the other six home invasions.
She stayed at it for as long as she could, trying to find just one common thread that ran between all the victims. But again, this latest victim had little to nothing in common with the others. And whatever she did find that two of the victims had in common, it did not carry over to the rest of the group. They used different salons, different gardeners, different dry cleaners, etc. After a while, it felt like an exercise in futility.
The only thing that all the home invasion victims had in common was their ages. She kept coming back to that.
That had to mean something, didn’t it? She just couldn’t really hone in on what.
But in all honesty, her mind was not completely dedicated to the details of the robberies. Part of her was preoccupied with an entirel
y different matter. She kept waiting for Kane to either turn up in the squad room or at the very least return her call.
Neither happened.
She was acting like a schoolgirl, she chided herself. He was her partner, not some high school hunk she had a crush on. Yet she couldn’t deny that she felt this funny tingle washing over her every time someone walked in and for a second or so, she thought it was him.
Grow up, Kelly!
Frustrated, Kelly left yet another voice mail on his smartphone. In addition, she tried texting Kane, as well.
Where the hell are you? I could use your input on our case right now. This is no time to take a break. You can walk on water later.
Even her pseudo rebuke didn’t get any sort of a response from her missing partner.
Where was he?
Something was definitely wrong. Kelly could feel it in her bones.
On her way home she detoured and drove past her Kane’s apartment complex.
His parking space was empty and no lights were on in his apartment. Even so, she went to his door and knocked. She got no answer. At this point, she hadn’t expected one.
After making sure no one was watching her, Kelly deftly picked the lock—something she had learned from Brennan, who’d learned it during his undercover days.
Afterward she turned the doorknob and let herself in.
A quick tour of the premises told her what her gut already knew. Kane wasn’t there.
Kelly closed up the apartment and went back to her vehicle, reviewing the options she had available to her. She could stay here in visitor parking and wait for Kane to come back and then flee again, or—
The or jumped up at her like an unexpected sunrise. Before she thought better of it, she quickly put in a call to Valri.
The second she heard the other end of the line being picked up, Kelly blurted out, “I need another favor.”
Valri laughed drily. “And a hello to you, too, Kelly.”
“Hi,” Kelly replied automatically. “The precinct’s vehicles have a way of tracking down their whereabouts on them, right?”
“Right,” Valri said cautiously. “Why are you asking about that? You didn’t lose the car, did you?” she asked, horrified.
“No, I didn’t lose it. Kane took off in it. I need to find out where Kane is now,” she said bluntly.
“Why don’t you just call him?”
“If I could call him, don’t you think I would?” Kelly asked impatiently. “He got a call in the middle of our investigation and just took off. I need to know where he is.”
“Kelly,” Valri began, a warning note in her voice.
Kelly had no time for lectures on patience and proper behavior. That was for downtime, not now. “Val, please. I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important.”
“Yeah, you would,” Valri contradicted. “Does this have anything to do with police business?”
Valri was asking because she had to, Kelly realized. “Yes. Yes, it does. I have to warn him about something our latest victim just told me.”
Kelly couldn’t help wondering if that excuse she had just made up sounded as lame to Valri as it did to her.
“Okay, hang on. Let me see if I can locate his vehicle.”
It took Valri several minutes of flipping through potential databases before she finally found what she was looking for and was able to isolate the vehicle’s coordinates.
“Got it!” Valri declared triumphantly. “According to what I have here, it says that your partner’s vehicle is parked in a lot at Aurora General Hospital.”
“A hospital?”
Had he been in an accident? But something like that would have made the news stations, she thought. Certainly any police-involved accident would have been broadcasted over the police scanners.
“Thanks, Valri,” Kelly said, “You’re an angel. I’ll take it from here.”
Valri started to say something, then stopped. The dial tone in her ear told her that she was talking to herself.
Kelly had terminated the call.
Chapter 14
It took Kelly several minutes to locate her partner’s sedan.
She finally found it parked not too far from the hospital’s admissions entrance. Since the vehicle was there rather than parked in the smaller lot strictly reserved for emergency patients, Kelly assumed that whoever Kane had come to see had been admitted to Aurora General.
Parking her car as close to his as possible, given that the lot was more than three-quarters full, Kelly mentally crossed her fingers that she was somehow going to be able to find what floor Kane was on and what room he’d gone to.
The only other alternative she had was to remain in her car and wait for Kane to come out and get into his vehicle. The flaw in that plan was if Kane opted to stay the night keeping vigil, either in a waiting room or in someone’s hospital room, she would be out of luck and no closer to knowing what was going on with her partner than she was right at this moment.
Kelly got out of her car.
After walking into the hospital, she looked around and spotted the long admissions desk. It was divided up into three partitions, each with its own clerk.
She picked the one closest to the hospital entrance, thinking that Kane might have done the same thing.
Approaching the first desk, she flashed a smile at the woman in the pink smock and dived in. “Did a rather tall, good-looking man come in here within the last hour or so looking for someone who was admitted to your hospital in, say, the last twelve hours?”
There, Kelly thought, that should cover all the bases.
The clerk, a motherly, jovial-faced woman who looked as if she spent her off-hours whipping up bakery goods, shook her head.
“Honey, even if I could tell you—and the privacy laws say I can’t—I’m afraid you’d have to give me more to work with than just that.”
Kelly took a breath, telling herself to focus. Being scattered like this just wasn’t like her.
“Okay, let’s start over,” she suggested. Taking out her wallet, Kelly showed the woman her badge as well as her ID. “I’m Detective Kelly Cavanaugh. The man I’m looking for is Detective Kane Durant. He would have identified himself.” Suddenly, she remembered Andrew asking after Kane’s uncle Keith. If something had happened to Kane’s uncle, that would have sent him rushing to the hospital, she thought. “He’d be asking about someone who had been recently admitted as an inpatient. An older man named Keith.”
“Keith what?” the woman asked her, typing a few commands to pull up the new patients database.
Kelly didn’t have a clue as to the man’s last name. Valri hadn’t passed on that information.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Could you just go through the most recent admissions in the last twelve hours?” It was possible that the man might have been admitted earlier and the hospital had just now notified Kane, but for the time being, she didn’t want to think about that.
The woman behind the desk looked skeptical. Clearing her throat, she told her, “This is highly irregular.”
“The man you admitted is my partner’s only living relative. I just wanted to be there to lend him some support,” she told the older woman, whose nameplate identified her as Marjorie White. “Could you just take one quick look? Please, Marjorie?”
The woman glanced to either side of the cubicle where she was seated, not that anyone actually could crane their necks far enough to be able to see what she was pulling up on her screen.
“Give me a minute,” she whispered, her fingers flying along the keyboard.
It took less than a minute.
In exactly twenty-eight seconds, Marjorie had pulled up the necessary information. “A Keith Leeds was admitted an hour ago from the ER.” The woman raised her eyes from the monit
or to look at Kelly. “He was in a car accident, and it says here that he’s presently in a coma.”
“Omigod,” Kelly whispered, stunned as well as concerned. Kane had to be devastated. Why hadn’t he said anything before taking off? “Can I have his room number, please?”
“He’s in room 241. It’s right across from ICU. They were out of beds,” Marjorie explained. “We admitted the survivors of a multicar pileup on I-5 yesterday afternoon.”
As sorry as she was to hear about that accident, the one that concerned her was the one that had involved Kane’s uncle and had brought him here.
“Thank you,” Kelly said as she started for the elevators.
“Send me a wedding picture,” the woman called after her.
Marjorie’s parting words had Kelly stopping dead in her tracks. She quickly retraced her steps to the admission’s clerk. What was the woman talking about?
“Detective Durant is my partner at work,” she specified. “We’re not a couple.”
But the smile on the matronly woman’s face told Kelly that she obviously thought otherwise.
“You keep telling yourself that, honey. But that look in your eyes says something else. I’ve had a lot of couples pass through here over the years. Some of them on the worst day of their lives. I know all the signs of involvement.”
“I’m just concerned how this’ll affect his job performance, that’s all,” she assured the woman.
“Uh-huh.”
Kelly started to protest further, but then decided that it just wasn’t worth it. She didn’t have time to try to convince a woman she was, in all likelihood, never going to see again. Her only concern right now was Kane. Macho loner or not, he had to be beside himself about this. And he had no one to turn to.
Or so he thought. She wanted to let him know that she was there for him.
When the elevator did not appear the moment she pressed for it, Kelly decided to take the stairs.
She raced up the metal steps, the heels of her shoes clicking almost rhythmically against them. When she emerged from the stairwell and into the hallway, it took her a second to get her bearings.
How to Seduce a Cavanaugh Page 14