Cavanaugh Cold Case

by Marie Ferrarella

  She paused for a second and took a deep breath. Malloy made no effort to hurry her. He knew how hard this had to be to talk about.

  “The man who came to notify us said, ‘Alan’s dead,’ the second my mother opened the door. No words of preface, no words to try to soften the blow in at least some way, just bam! ‘He’s dead.’ And then, because he hated being the messenger, he left.” Kristin’s eyes met his, and there was a fierceness in them as she made her point. “I don’t ever want anyone to go through what my mother did.”

  “How about you?” Malloy asked. “Didn’t you have to grapple with the same abruptly delivered news? How old were you?”

  Kristin realized she’d opened up far more than she’d wanted to. “I think I’ve explained enough to earn the right to come along.”

  Malloy nodded. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”

  Because she had no choice, Kristin had to assume that he was a man of his word, so for now, she accepted what he told her.

  “I appreciate that,” she answered.

  Kristin sounded rather stiff, but he knew it was because she was trying her best to retreat from what she had just told him. He could tell that it hadn’t been easy for her to share something like that. He was rather open and easygoing himself, and he knew a couple of people who couldn’t keep a secret even if they got to carry it around in a box.

  But the thing about coming from an extended family as large as his, there was always someone in the family whose personality was a perfect match for someone he had encountered. And there were more than a few in the Cavanaugh family who not only kept their own counsel, but had to be all but dynamited out of their shell to render any sort of extraneous information.

  The thought of getting the gorgeous medical examiner out of her shell presented itself to him. He found the idea rather appealing.

  Dynamite didn’t always have to be used to get the job done, he mused.

  * * *

  The following morning, Malloy was waiting for her in the exam room.

  He had spent the rest of the previous day checking out his various sources. That eventually led to his finding an address for their only identified victim’s family. By then he’d been pretty much wiped out. He didn’t think that the medical examiner would have been thrilled to be woken out of a dead sleep no matter what news he was bearing.

  So he’d decided to bring it to her in person, first thing in the morning.

  Except that she wasn’t here first thing in the morning. Given her dedication and single-mindedness, he found that rather surprising.

  He decided to wait.

  * * *

  Kristin was running late—and she hated that.

  After all but baring her soul to the intrusive, not to mention pushy detective, when she’d closed up shop she’d given in to a sudden urge to spend a little quality time with her mother. Her mother had quizzed her to make sure nothing was wrong. Satisfied that there was nothing dire on the horizon, Josephine Alberghetti had gone into overdrive.

  One thing had led to another, and Kristin had given in, spending the night. That, in turn, had led to her being behind schedule.

  Which was why Kristin came rushing in five minutes late and trying to juggle holding on to a huge container of coffee from the local coffee shop with one hand as she opened the door to the morgue’s exam room with the other.

  “So you don’t sleep here.”

  Stifling a shriek, Kristin swung around toward the source of the voice. When their eyes met, there were daggers coming out of hers.

  This was getting to be a habit. One she really didn’t appreciate in the slightest. She hated being caught off guard, especially by him.

  “Is it your mission in life to sneak up on me until you succeed in giving me a heart attack?” she asked Malloy accusingly.

  “Actually, my mission is more along the lines of granting your request,” he told her, each word slipping out slowly and almost seductively from his lips. Not to mention that his eyes seemed to be saying things to her that should have been censored.

  Or maybe she was just reading things into it, Kristin told herself in self-defense. Maybe he was just talking to hear himself talk. The fact that his voice could create goose bumps was her problem, not his.

  “I don’t have a request,” she informed him coldly. “And you almost made me spill my coffee.”

  “I would have paid for it if you had,” he assured her. “I’m good for it.” A sparkle entered his eyes. “I’m good for a lot of things,” he couldn’t resist adding.

  It was fun to tease her because he knew what she thought of him, and although he had enjoyed a very happy love life over the years, a large part of it—and his appeal—was discretion.

  “I can’t think of a thing that would interest me,” she informed him crisply. Okay, enough was enough. “Is there a point to all this?” she asked. “Or have you decided to become my personal albatross?”

  “You said you wanted to come with me,” he said simply, after taking a leisurely sip from his coffee container.

  “No, I—” Her automatic denial dried up instantly as the puzzle pieces suddenly sprang together. “You found Abby’s family,” she guessed. That had been fast, she couldn’t help thinking. Maybe the man actually was good at his job.

  “What’s left of it, yes,” he told her, getting up and following her to her desk. “I was going to head out first thing this morning to give her father the news and ask some questions, but I did give you my word that I’d let you know. So this is me, letting you know.”

  She didn’t want to just know that he was going to see the woman’s family. The deal was that she would accompany him when he broke the news to Abby Sullivan’s family. She doubted if he’d forgotten that.

  But in case he did, she had no problem reminding him. “The deal was that I’d come with you.”

  “You actually still want to?” he asked uncertainly. “A good night’s sleep didn’t clear your head and make you see that this was a good thing to avoid?”

  “You can’t live your life avoiding things—because then you’re not living,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

  “Did you get that out of a fortune cookie, or the inside of a greeting card, or...?”

  Was he trying to get her angry enough not to go with him? Or did he have something else up that sleeve of his? She found that she was having trouble reading him.

  Kristin sighed. “You are not an easy man to like,” she informed him.

  Rather than daunt him, her retort amused him. There was also no lack of confidence in Malloy’s voice as he said, “Sure I am. Just give yourself half a chance, Doc. I’ll grow on you.”

  “Like fungus,” she responded. “Not an experience I’d even remotely look forward to or want. How far away is this?” she asked, referring to the house. Malloy wasn’t much on doling out details. For all she knew, the dead girl’s next of kin lived in another state.

  “Not far in miles,” he assured her. “Emotionally, however, is another story.” He’d done his homework on Abby Sullivan’s family. It didn’t make for warm storytelling. Something protective stirred within Malloy. He didn’t really think that Kristin should be subjected to the ordeal she seemed so willing to take on. “Seriously, are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I have to do this,” she told him, avoiding directly answering the actual question.

  He noted the evasion and decided to leave it alone. “Okay, you asked for this,” he said. “Let’s go. The sooner we get out there, the sooner we’ll get you back to those bones.”

  “You’ll be happy to know that our count stands at twelve bodies. O’Shea and Reynolds used that GPR—the ground penetrating radar—on the surrounding area and didn’t come up with anything,” she told him as they made their way to the elevator.

 
“I know what a GPR is, Doc,” he replied. “You don’t have to spell things out for me.”

  “Funny, I had the impression that I did,” she quipped as they got in the elevator car.

  Malloy merely laughed to himself.

  * * *

  Abby Sullivan’s father still lived in the general vicinity where she had spent her childhood and adolescence. Her mother had died ten years earlier, succumbing to the grief of having a child who had suddenly vanished without a trace, leaving behind no clues.

  It was the not knowing that had killed her, Abby’s father had maintained. Alone now, he had remained living in the area, afraid that if his daughter did someday return, she wouldn’t know where to find what was left of her family.

  Age and anxiety had not only stooped the retired college professor’s shoulders, but his entire countenance as well, making him look much older than his years.

  When Henry Sullivan opened his front door in response to the doorbell, he looked at the two people on the other side of the threshold. It was obvious by the way he stared at them that he was trying to place them.

  Peering over rimless glasses that kept insisting on sliding down his nose, he asked, “Yes?”

  “Professor Sullivan?” Malloy asked.

  “Yes?” This time the word was uttered a bit more emphatically.

  Malloy took out his badge and his ID. “I’m Detective Cavanaugh, this is Doctor Alberghetti.”

  For a moment, the introduction seemed lost on the older man, and then a sudden understanding washed over the lined, drawn face.

  “This is about Abby, isn’t it?” Each word he uttered was more anxious-sounding than the last. “You’ve come about Abby.”

  “Yes, sir, we did,” Malloy replied in as calm a voice as Kristin had ever heard him use. She glanced in his direction as he asked Abby’s father, “May we come in?”

  The older man all but stumbled as he backed up. Kristin couldn’t tell if it was because the professor was trying to give them some room to enter, or if he’d stumbled like that from the impact of the words he’d just heard.

  Belatedly, Sullivan answered, “Sure. Come in. Come in. I’m right, aren’t I?” he asked nervously, looking over his shoulder at the two people even as he led them to his living room.

  Every flat surface within the partially darkened room had a framed photograph of a bright-eyed, smiling young girl with long blond hair. It was a panorama that began with a photograph taken straight out of the hospital the day she was born and abruptly stopped with a photograph of her standing before a building that was clearly on a campus. Abby appeared to be about nineteen.

  “It’s about Abby, isn’t it?” Sullivan asked again, his voice sounding raspy as the question clawed up his throat.

  “We’re very sorry, sir,” Kristin said, taking the man’s hand between hers as she made eye contact with the professor.

  His eyes filled with tears—as did hers. “Then she is dead,” he said sadly, murmuring the words almost to himself. And then he looked at Malloy for his answers. “How did it happen? How did my little girl die?”

  “We’re not sure yet, Mr. Sullivan,” Malloy told him. “Her body was found buried at the perimeter of a cacti and succulent nursery in Aurora. It was called Prickly Gardens. Would you have any idea why she might have been there? Did your daughter work there or know anyone who worked there?”

  “A cacti nursery?” Sullivan asked, clearly mystified. He shook his head. “She hated those things. What was she doing there?” he asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Malloy told him gently, not bothering to point out that he had asked the man the same question. He tried something easier. “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” The man made no response. He clearly looked shell-shocked. “Mr. Sullivan?”

  Kristin took the man’s hand again, closing hers over it and doing her best to get him to come around. “Mr. Sullivan, this could be very important and help us get whoever did this to your daughter. Please think. When was the last time you saw her?”

  He didn’t have to pause to think. It was obviously a date that had been stamped on his heart. “August eighteenth of ’95. She was driving this old Corolla back to college.” He pressed his lips together to keep them from quivering. It took him a moment to pull himself together. “She was a headstrong girl, and we’d had an argument just before she left.” He let out a shaky breath. “Margaret thought she just ran off because I’d yelled at her.”

  “Margaret?” Kristin questioned as unobtrusively as possible.

  “My wife,” he explained. “She blamed me when we didn’t hear from Abby.” For a second, he sounded like a man reliving his worst nightmare. “When she didn’t come home anymore,” he all but whispered. And then there was confusion mixed with high anxiety as he looked at them. “You said someone buried her? Do you know how long ago they did that?”

  “We don’t have anything even close to exact yet,” Malloy told him, “but since you told me when you last saw her, going by what we do know, I’d say it was approximately shortly after she left home that August.”

  Sullivan scrubbed his hands over his stubbled face. “Oh, God, all this time I’ve been hoping, praying that she was all right and that she’d come around eventually. And all this time, she was in the ground—lost to us.” His voice hitched.

  “If you’re up to it, Mr. Sullivan, we’d like to ask you a few more questions,” Malloy prompted as gently as he could.

  “Anything,” Henry Sullivan said. “Ask me anything. I don’t have anything to live for except catching the bastard who did this to my little girl.” He grabbed hold of Malloy’s arm. “You will catch him, right?”

  “We’ll catch him,” Malloy promised.

  Chapter 8

  “Why did you tell that man you were going to catch whoever killed his daughter?” Kristin demanded in a hushed whisper when they walked out of Henry Sullivan’s house nearly an hour later. “You can’t make a promise like that in good conscience.”

  “I damn well am going to try to catch whoever killed his daughter,” Malloy told her, and then his mood lightened just a little as, approaching his vehicle, he asked her, “Why are you whispering? Sullivan’s inside the house. He can’t hear you from there.”

  Kristin realized that she’d overreacted. She shrugged, feeling somewhat foolish. “For a minute, I thought he might come out and follow us.”

  She hadn’t really thought that, but it was a good enough excuse to give the detective.

  Opening the door on the passenger side, Kristin got in. “That poor man’s been through so much. He clearly holds himself responsible in some way for his daughter’s death.”

  “Lots of girls have arguments with their fathers and they don’t go running away—or wind up dead.” Malloy got in on his side. “Besides, he said she was going back to college after summer break. It’s very possible that whatever happened to her might have happened either on the way back, or after she got to school.”

  “Her father said he never spoke to her again,” she reminded Malloy.

  He put his key into the ignition and started up the car. “Typical teenage stuff. She held a grudge, didn’t want to talk to him until she cooled off—or Sullivan apologized. Either way, that doesn’t point to her running away.”

  “What makes you such an expert on teenage girls?” she challenged.

  “Three sisters—and I have the scars to prove it,” he added with a grin.

  Kristin deliberately looked out through the windshield, avoiding eye contact for the moment. He had a way about him that was getting to her, and she really didn’t want that happening.

  “Maybe you should look up some of the teachers she had at the time. One of them might be able to give you some insight into what her on-campus life was like.”

  He glanc
ed at her with amused admiration. “You know, if you set your mind to it, you might make a pretty good detective, Doc.”

  “What makes you think I’m not one already?” she said, forgetting her promise to herself, and glared at Malloy. “You put together crime-scene clues. I put together the clues that a dead body gives me.”

  Instead of offering an argument, Malloy nodded. “You have a point.”

  Kristin frowned. That wasn’t the response she’d expected from him.

  “Stop being so agreeable,” she told him. “It makes it hard for me not to like you.”

  “Good, because that’s one of my goals,” he told her amicably. “To get you to like me.”

  She wasn’t about to ask him about his other goals, and she definitely wasn’t going to let him get to her, Kristin thought. She wasn’t about to become just another name in a long list of women in his past. “Don’t get any ideas, Detective.”

  “It’s Malloy, remember? And it’s too late,” he told her. “Those ideas have already gotten ‘got.’ By the way,” Malloy said, switching subjects before she had time to get worked up, “you were right.”

  “About?”

  He took a turn down a side street. “I think you being there for Professor Sullivan when I broke the news about his daughter actually helped him process it.”

  He spared Kristin a glance as he was forced to stop at a red light. “I have to admit I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a hand-holder. Especially since you’re a medical examiner.”

  “It’s not always a patient’s bedside where bedside manner comes into play. I’ve had to be there for my share of identifications,” she told him.

  He’d seen her with Sullivan, and it certainly seemed as if she felt the man’s pain. But if that was the case, something didn’t make any sense to him.

  “If you have all this bottled-up compassion, why is it that you choose to cut up dead bodies instead of ministering to live ones?”