The Baby Mission

by Marie Ferrarella

“No problem. Are you planning on letting me in anytime soon, or would you rather just lick melted mint chip ice cream straight off your doorstep?”

  “Sorry about that.” C.J. stepped to the side, letting him pass. “Mint chip, huh?” Grinning, she looked down at the bag and recognized the emblem on the side. He’d bought the ice cream at a place where she and the other Mom Squad members used to congregate after Lamaze classes. C.J. raised her eyes to his. “You stopped at the Ice Cream Parlor?”

  “You were always raving about their ice cream, I figured why not.” She closed the door behind him. “It was on the way.”

  The hell it was. “To the opposite side of town.”

  He frowned, thrusting the bag at her. “Just take it, will you, and stop talking.” Warrick crossed to the portacrib and looked down at his special delivery. The baby’s eyes had drifted closed. He lowered his voice as he asked, “So how’s she doing?”

  C.J. was in the kitchen, getting a couple of bowls from the cabinet. “Her fever’s down, thank goodness. She’s still fussing, but I think the worst is over.”

  He could hear the relieved smile in her voice. Warrick lingered a moment longer by the portacrib. Funny how something so little could hold on to your heart so tightly, he mused.

  He crossed into the kitchen. “I figured I’d see your mother here.”

  “I sent her home a few hours ago.” C.J. scooped out two servings. It hadn’t been easy, finally getting her mother to leave. “She left under protest, but I’ve got to get a handle on this mothering thing on my own.” She handed Warrick his bowl, then picked up her own and walked over to the kitchen table. Pulling out a chair, she sat down. “I can’t keep depending on her.”

  “One time doesn’t make you hopelessly dependent, C.J.” Sampling his portion, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Hey, this is good.”

  She smiled as she slid in another spoonful. “Told you.”

  Damn but she looked sensual, slipping the spoon between her lips like that. Warrick forced his mind back onto the subject and took another heaping spoonful for good measure.

  “You know, accepting help doesn’t make you a bad mother—it makes you a rested mother,” he pointed out. “Speaking of which, why don’t I stick around for a while after we finish our ice cream, maybe let you catch a catnap.”

  She knew he probably meant well, but it was still an affront to her capabilities. “I don’t need a catnap, or any other animal nap.”

  “Sure you do.” His grin was wicked as it came into his eyes. “You didn’t exactly get much sleep last night.”

  Was he gloating? She couldn’t tell. “Neither did you.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “Which is why I’m only going to spell you for a few hours.” He indicated the bowl before her. “Now eat your ice cream like a good girl and do what I tell you.”

  She laughed shortly. “In your dreams. Since when did you become in charge?”

  “The captain is relieved of duty when showing signs of undue stress and/or insanity,” he recited. “Sleep deprivation has been known to cause both.” He polished off his own bowl and debated getting a second serving. “Now eat, sleep, and I’ll take care of the merry.”

  “That’s eat, drink and be merry,” she corrected. Maybe she should relent a little. Nobody could do everything. “You’re nuts, you know that?” Her laugh was affectionate.

  “I know.” He pulled the carton over to him and scooped out half a serving more. The serious look in his eyes was at odds with his light tone. “My partner made me that way.”

  Why was it that she could almost feel his words dancing along her skin?

  “Okay,” she lowered her eyes to her bowl. Communing with green ice cream was a great deal safer right now than looking into Warrick’s eyes. “I’ll let you stay—but just for a little while.”

  C.J. looked up from her cluttered desk. Every pile on it represented another possible lead that had to be checked out. Hopefully somewhere was the legitimate tip that would lead them to the killer.

  But right now, she was frowning at Warrick. She hadn’t seen him when she’d first walked in this morning. He’d pulled phone duty and she’d thought it was best to stay away before someone asked her to do the same.

  “You shouldn’t have let me sleep that long.”

  He downed the last of his less than mediocre coffee, then put his mug down on the corner of his desk. “You needed it. Besides, the baby slept right along with you.” He was honest about his limitations. “If I’d had to face a dirty diaper, maybe I would have woken you up sooner.” He’d left her house at two in the morning to get a few hours of sleep himself before going in to the office. “Feel any better today?”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  He grinned, digging in again. “Don’t mention it.”

  “I’m also probably five pounds heavier, thanks to the ice cream.”

  He laughed. “Hey, nobody told you to finish it.” His eyes swept over her. “Besides, the five pounds look as if they found a good home. You always were a little too thin.”

  She arched a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

  The assistant director, Edward Alberdeen, picked that moment to walk in, curtailing any further exchange.

  “Heads up, people.” His booming voice brought everything within the noisy room to a standstill. “Our boy’s struck again.”

  Warrick was the first to reach the A.D. It was a grim fact of life that every new strike meant that much more of a chance that there might be a slip-up, a clue that would finally lead them to their quarry. But the grim reality was that it also meant someone else had died.

  “Are we sure it’s him this time?” They all knew he was referring to the wild-goose chase he and C.J. had gone on on Saturday. “Lots of people are getting edgy, seeing things that aren’t there.”

  In reply, Alberdeen placed the photograph he’d just received via a colored fax and turned it around so that Warrick, C.J. and the others could all see. The woman in the photograph looked like all the others: blond, a rose clutched in her hands, a cheap pearl choker on her neck to hide the bruising.

  “We’re sure,” he replied grimly. “The M.E. thinks death was within the last twelve hours.” He looked down at the photograph, shaking his head. “She’s dressed as if she was going to a party.”

  “Maybe she was. Maybe our killer picked her up and decided to add her to his collection,” C.J. suggested. She looked at Alberdeen. “We have a name?”

  “Jackie Meyers. Purse wasn’t touched, same as the others. Mother made a positive ID. Here’s the address.” The A.D. handed it to Warrick. “Go canvass the area, see if we can get lucky this time.” He said what they’d been saying since the very beginning. “He’s got to slip up sometime.”

  “You’d think,” C.J. muttered under her breath. She looked at the photograph again. It was the face of pure innocence. Just like the other victims had appeared. “Damn, it’s a shame.”

  “It’s always a shame when someone’s murdered,” Alberdeen interjected. “You getting anywhere with that theory of yours, Jones?”

  She looked back at the piles on her desk. She was going to have to apply good old-fashioned legwork to them soon. With no other strong leads to follow, she’d gone back to her theory that perhaps their killer had been away either in prison or a mental facility somewhere in the county for the past three years and had taken up where he’d left off as soon as he was released. Another possibility was that he might have enlisted. But no other murders matching the killer’s MO had turned up anywhere else, so she was less inclined to go that route.

  “Not yet. Checking out former inmates is slow work, A.D. Orange County has its fair share of loonies and felons.”

  The expression on the A.D.’s long, thin face said that no one had to tell him that. “Well, keep at it. We don’t have much else to go on—yet.”

  She nodded, then glanced at the address in Warrick’s hand. It wasn’t far from where she lived. Had she known the girl, passed her in the ma
ll, perhaps in the supermarket?

  The thought of the Sleeping Beauty Killer lurking somewhere close by made C.J.’s blood run cold. Suddenly, she felt too restless to just sit behind a desk. “Okay let’s go, boys, and see if we can’t catch ourselves a killer.”

  Warrick gestured toward the door. “You heard the lady, let’s roll.”

  Warrick looked at her as they drove back to the field office. They’d put in a long day, interviewing all the people Jackie Meyers might have interacted with on her last day. A few names had been provided by the girl’s mother, and they had gone from there.

  The silence got to him. “You’re being awfully quiet—again.”

  She shook her head, as if unaware of her lapse. “I was just thinking how much I hate having to talk to the parents of a victim.”

  The girl had lived with her widowed mother. The woman broke down twice while talking to them. C.J.’s heart went out to her, but there was nothing she could do. Except catch the killer.

  She only hoped that she could.

  Warrick slowed down as a late-model Thunder-bird merged into his lane in front of them. “Not exactly on my top five list of favorite things, either, C.J.” He blew out a breath. The case was getting to all of them. “I wish we’d catch a break.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” She stared out the window, trying desperately to keep her mind focused only on the case and nothing more. Or, if it drifted in any direction, that it only settle on thoughts about her daughter. Anything but on the man sitting beside her.

  She’d made up her mind this morning on the way to work after she’d dropped off the baby with her mother that what had happened between her and Warrick that night outside of Santa Barbara was a mixture of opportunity, curiosity and, just possibly, stress. Why else would she have been so vulnerable? So willing to do something she knew damn well was a mistake?

  Okay, so somewhere in her mind she’d always wondered what it would be like to be kissed by Warrick, to make love with him.

  Now she knew.

  Now she could move on.

  The hell she could, she thought.

  Didn’t matter what she felt, what she wanted—again. She just wasn’t going to go there. He was a box of chocolates and she was on a diet and that’s all there was to that.

  Maybe.

  Stopping at a light, Warrick glanced at her. “I never thought I’d say this, but I do miss the sound of your voice. Talk to me, C.J. Bounce theories off me. Something. Anything.”

  She mentally grabbed on to the lifeline he threw her. That’s what this was all about, what it should be about: catching the killer, not about an itch she couldn’t allow herself to scratch again. The last time she scratched, she was left pregnant and her pride was devastated. She wasn’t going to go through that again.

  Warrick might not be another Thorndyke, but he wasn’t her Prince Charming, either.

  She forced her mind back on the case.

  C.J. watched the early evening traffic as it went by in both directions. Was the killer in one of these cars? Or was he safely hiding inside his house, waiting for the cover of night before he ventured out to make a move? When would he make a move?

  “We’re going to be hearing from the crazies again,” she finally said. The crazies, well-meaning callers and nut jobs who came out of the woodwork to point fingers in a quest for the limelight, give tips that led nowhere and periodically made confessions that ninety-nine times out of a hundred weren’t true. Every crime brought them out in droves.

  She and the others had all put in their time on the phones, hoping against hope that the next call would be the one that would lead them somewhere.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Warrick said, “and Alberdeen’ll bring in more people to handle the phones.”

  She laughed, turning toward him. “You’re kidding, right? Alberdeen’s a company man. Cost conscious to the ultimate degree. He’ll just make everyone work harder until this guy’s caught.”

  “If this guy is caught,” he amended.

  C.J. frowned. “Damn your pessimism, Warrick. When,” she repeated, daring him to contradict her.

  Warrick shrugged carelessly. “When,” he echoed just to appease her.

  He certainly hoped she was right, but odds were not in their favor. They never were. For every crime that was solved, a great many more weren’t.

  He wished he could stop thinking about C.J. Whenever he wasn’t around her, she dominated his thoughts and had ever since they’d slept together last Saturday. The harder he tried to eradicate her from his mind, the less he succeeded.

  Sleeping with her hadn’t satisfied anything, just as kissing hadn’t. It only made him want more. Working alongside of her didn’t help matters any, either, but he couldn’t very well ask for another partner. If nothing else, it would have been cowardly.

  Besides, she was a damn good partner and what she lacked in self-discipline, she more than made up for in tenacity and enthusiasm. He didn’t want to work with anyone else. He just didn’t want to keep thinking about her that way. It was frustrating the hell out of him.

  Warrick stopped by her desk. She’d been at it all morning, calling the various people on her lists, narrowing them down as best she could. No one on the outside realized how tedious the work that went into apprehending a killer could be.

  He was behind her. She could feel it. It wasn’t exactly the way it used to be, when she had almost a sixth sense about her partner. Now it was more.

  Now it was driving her crazy.

  He flipped a page. “Come up with any good suspects yet?”

  Several. None. It all depended on how you looked at it. “I’m winnowing it down to a manageable crowd.” She pointed to a clipboard on her desk. “Those I plan to interview face-to-face.” She glanced up at him and smiled. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Glutton for punishment, that’s me.”

  Especially, she added silently, where he was concerned. They were alone in the office, something that didn’t happen very often. She decided to screw up her courage and confront him with what had been nagging at her ever since Sunday. “Why haven’t you called me?”

  He stared at her. Was she turning all female on him, wanting to know “where this is going” and throw a noose around his neck? “What?”

  “You don’t drop by to hang out anymore.” She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. She just wanted her partner back. If she wanted anything else, that was her problem, not theirs. “My brothers want to know what I did to you.”

  The word nothing was right there, waiting to be set free. But it was a lie. She’d done something to him, all right, he just didn’t know exactly what to call it. “Do people still use the word bedeviled?”

  C.J. cocked her head, determined to keep this light, determined to get back on even keel. “Only if they have long lacy cuffs and wear powdered wigs.” She looked at him. “So what do I tell them? My brothers,” she prompted when he didn’t say anything.

  “Tell them the truth. That I’ve been burning the midnight oil on this case.” The case had just taken on major proportions. “It seems the last victim was also the niece of a congressman from Nevada. There’s pressure to bring this guy in as soon as possible.”

  C.J. leaned back in her chair, looking at the screen on her monitor but not really seeing it. She had been toying with a thought for the past two days. Maybe it was time to say it out loud and see how it fared in the light of day.

  “Maybe it’s not a guy.” She could see the skepticism on Warrick’s face. “Maybe it’s a jealous woman. There are female serial killers.”

  “Not many,” he pointed out. He couldn’t think of more than a handful. “And she’d have to be strong. All the bodies were moved.”

  “Not so strong,” C.J. countered. She looked at the bulletin board with its photographs of the victims. “Most of the women were small.” That fed her theory. “Maybe that’s one of the things she has against them. In this image-conscious world, maybe they typify everything she isn’t.” C.
J. shrugged. It was thin, but there was a possibility she could be right. “It might explain the nail polish.”

  “What, that she’s playing house with them? Or beauty parlor?” Warrick shook his head. “I think you’re reaching.”

  She blew out a breath and pushed herself away from the desk. C.J. rose to her feet. Maybe it was time for a break. There was a candy bar in the vending machine with her name on it. “Damn straight I’m reaching. Reaching for anything I can latch on to, hoping to catch a break.”

  As she was about to go out the door, Rodriguez stuck his head in. “Guess what?”

  “Your fiancée came to her senses and called off the engagement?” Warrick deadpanned behind her.

  “Very funny. We think we might have caught a break. Someone just called in saying they remember seeing a car parked in the vicinity where the last body was found. He puts it there around the time the M.E. guessed the victim was killed.”

  C.J. wasn’t biting just yet. “And why would this ‘witness’ remember that?”

  “Because he said he came damn near close to hitting the car. It was half-hidden in the shadows. As a matter of fact, he thinks that maybe he might have scraped a fender.”

  This was too much to hope for. C.J. tried not to let her enthusiasm go just yet. “This so-called witness wouldn’t have by any chance taken down the license plate number, would he?”

  Rodriguez grinned. “He did better than that, he took a picture.”

  C.J. and Warrick exchanged looks. Maybe this was too good to be true.

  “What?” C.J. cried.

  “Why?” Warrick wanted to know.

  Rodriguez couldn’t wait to tell them. “Listen to this. He said he was burned badly in a minor fender bender once. Hardly tapped the car and the other guy sued him for a hundred grand one day short of a year to the date of the accident. The other guy’s car was a wreck and his insurance company wound up dropping him.”

  “The point, Rodriguez, the point,” Warrick prodded impatiently.

  “I’m getting to it,” the other man told him. “Since then, our witness has been driving around with one of these disposable cameras in his car.”