Putting her mental debate to rest, she braced herself, looked at her partner and “dove” in.
“Step one would be to find out the victim’s name and get some kind of background information on him, like whether or not he’d recently taken out a life insurance policy on himself. Then we’ll know that we’re on to something.”
Noelle paused, her eyes meeting his. Waiting for her partner’s response. It wasn’t that she was seeking Duncan’s approval—exactly. She wanted to find out if he would proceed the same way if the shots were his to call.
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
She realized that she’d been holding her breath and released it now.
“Okay, then let’s go see if the coroner can do something besides pick up a phone and complain,” Noelle said, grabbing her jacket and the container of coffee she’d brought in. She hadn’t even had a chance to take the lid off of it yet and she had a feeling she was going to need at least several shots of caffeine to keep herself going.
“That’s the first step,” he agreed as they left the squad room. “But you also might want to talk to the medical examiner, as well.” When Noelle gave him a confused glance, Duncan explained, “It’s the M.E. who’s going to be able to do an autopsy. The coroner just investigates the circumstances to see if anything suspicious occurred.”
Noelle pressed the down button for the elevator. She wasn’t about to admit this out loud, but this was her first rodeo involving dead bodies. She was at somewhat of a disadvantage.
The elevator arrived and they got in. “Aren’t they interchangeable?” Noelle asked despite the fact that she was aware her question drew attention to her ignorance in this department. But her desire to do this right far outweighed her need to save face. She was in charge of a bona fide case and she meant to do right by it.
Getting out in the subbasement, they made their way to the city’s morgue. “I wouldn’t say that around the M.E. if I were you. He had to get a medical degree to do what he’s doing. The coroner just had to prove that he had a pulse and was capable of making a better judgment call than the deceased he’d transported.”
“Oh. Thanks,” she said belatedly.
Duncan grinned. “Don’t mention it. Always glad to help out.”
* * *
It took them several twists and turns before they finally arrived at the coroner’s office. Duncan knocked once, then opened the door. He stepped back to allow Noelle a chance to enter first.
She glanced at him. “I don’t know if you’re being chivalrous or using me as a decoy.”
He laughed. “A little of both,” he answered.
She believed him.
The encounter was immediate.
“You again?” The coroner, Edwin Addams, demanded the moment she walked in. He appeared far from happy to see her, even if it was on his own turf.
Noelle tried not to shiver as she walked into the cold, antiseptic area where Addams and his two assistants stored the bodies of citizens who had died on the streets and freeways of Aurora. What amounted to metal drawers were the temporary resting places for the deceased until the next of kin or a friend came to identify them and had their bodies picked up by a funeral home.
“Me again,” Noelle replied. It was probably a toss-up as to who didn’t want to see whom more. “We need an ID on the victim you picked up this morning.”
Addams gave no indication that he was about to move or give her what she wanted. “What division did you say you were with again?”
Just who did he think he was kidding? He’d called her lieutenant. “You know perfectly well what division I’m with,” she told him, “or did you just call every division head after you got in this morning, hoping to reach the right person eventually?”
“Okay, you got me,” the coroner admitted, not bothering to hide his irritation. “So how is a senior citizen’s heart attack Vice’s concern? You think he was transporting drugs and decided to take a hit before delivery?” Addams asked her sarcastically.
“We’re investigating possible repercussions coming out of an insurance fraud scheme,” Duncan answered before she could. He was standing directly behind her and his bodyguard stance was difficult to miss.
The coroner looked from Duncan to Noelle and then back again. He shook his head. “Fraud, huh? Still don’t see it.”
“That’s because it’s not your job, it’s ours,” Duncan said flatly. “Your job is to send the victim’s body over to the M.E. so that we can get a better handle on exactly what happened during the guy’s last couple of minutes.”
Addams scowled. “Just a big waste of time if you ask me.”
“But we didn’t ask you,” Noelle pointed out. They’d already spent too much time here and she wanted to get moving. “Where are the deceased’s personal effects?” she asked, looking around for the body. There were several gurneys in the room, but they all appeared to be unoccupied at the moment.
So where was the accident victim?
“His personal effects are with the deceased,” one of the coroner’s assistants, Silas, volunteered.
Duncan turned to the tall, painfully thin man who the coroner was glaring at. “And where is he?” he asked.
The assistant pointed toward the far wall. From where they were standing, it appeared to be a wide, built-in file cabinet.
Duncan and Noelle immediately crossed to the metal doors. Noelle looked back at Addams and his assistant. “Which one is he in?”
The coroner made no attempt to join them where they were standing. Instead, he held his ground and crossed his thick arms across his even thicker chest.
“Why don’t you try your luck and see if you can find him?” he suggested haughtily. It was clear that Addams didn’t appreciate being challenged or having his domain breached and he was definitely not about to help them finding anything.
Glaring down into the lifeless face of a dead man was not something she relished doing. Searching for the accident victim by playing musical doors made the prospect that much more unappetizing.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to look for the accident victim.
Behind her, she heard Duncan telling the coroner, “By the way, I don’t think I identified myself to you when we came in. I’m Detective Duncan Cavanaugh.” He saw the sharp, wary look entering Addams’s eyes. “Yes, I’m related to that Cavanaugh,” Duncan confirmed, then for emphasis, he spelled it out for the man. “Brian Cavanaugh. The chief of detectives.”
Clearly intimidated, Addams responded like a cornered animal trying to make his enemy back off. “I don’t take my orders from him,” the man announced.
One way or another, the chief of detectives had a great deal of influence throughout all the departments. And they all knew it.
“You won’t be taking orders from anyone pretty soon if you keep this up,” Duncan told him, keeping his statement just vague enough to allow Addams to put his own interpretation to what he’d just said.
Obviously that interpretation worked in their favor because, muttering disgruntled words under his breath, the coroner stormed over to the wall of metal doors and pulled open one of them that was located at approximately eye level.
“Here,” he almost shouted, unzipping the black body bag and exposing the victim for viewing. “Satisfied?” he challenged.
“Getting there,” Duncan replied mildly. “I believe Detective O’Banyon requested that you send the body over to the medical examiner’s office.”
“Sure, first chance I get,” Addams retorted, turning away from the body. “Don’t forget to close that when you’re done,” he groused as he stormed away.
The contents of the deceased’s pockets, his wallet, a partial roll of breath mints and a key ring with several keys, were all tucked within a plastic zip bag and left laying on the man’s blood-soaked chest.
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Noelle quickly pulled on a set of rubber gloves she had in her pocket and opened the plastic bag. Gingerly, she took out the dead man’s wallet and flipped it open to look at the license.
“Walter Teasdale,” she read out loud, then murmured, “It’s expired.” Raising her eyes to her partner, she clarified her statement. “His license,” she told Duncan, “it’s expired.”
The coroner’s assistant continued to hover about in the background, apparently doing his best to ignore his boss’s exceedingly dark scowls.
“What was he doing out on the road, driving, then?” Silas innocently asked.
“Trying to beat the odds,” Noelle concluded with more than a touch of sympathy. Checking the address, she placed the wallet back into the plastic bag. “He lived in the apartments not too far from where he crashed,” she told Duncan. “Let’s find out if he had any next of kin to notify.” Turning toward the coroner, she asked, “Has that chance come up yet?”
Addams looked at her, irritated as well as confused. “Chance?”
“The first one you were supposed to use to get Mr. Teasdale here transported to the medical examiner’s office.”
The furrows in the coroner’s brow deepened as he snapped, “No.”
“I can do it,” Silas offered, stepping forward and all but raising his hand as he volunteered. Taking note of the withering look his boss shot in his direction, the assistant seemed to almost fold into himself as he mumbled, “Or not.”
Duncan flashed a reassuring smile at the man as he placed a hand on Silas’s bony shoulder. “I’m sure my uncle will appreciate that,” Duncan told him.
Still glaring, knowing when he’d lost, the coroner waved Silas on his way. “Go, cart the stiff off. One less body to account for,” Addams muttered.
“You know, maybe you’d be happier in some other line of work,” Noelle suggested to Addams crisply.
The expression in the man’s dark brown eyes was nothing if not defiant. “No, I like dealing with dead people just fine. They don’t talk back,” he emphasized, eyeing her pointedly. “It’s the ones who aren’t dead that I have trouble with.”
Duncan tactfully moved his body in between Addams and his partner—just in case. He had no doubt that O’Banyon could only be pushed so far and no more. He was in essence saving Noelle from herself.
“This is just a guess,” he told Addams, “but I think you just lost her vote for the Mr. Congeniality award.” With that, he looked at Noelle. “You ready to go?” he asked.
“Oh, more than ready,” she responded with feeling. Facing Addams, she said, “I’d like to thank you for all your help.”
“Don’t mention it,” he retorted coldly.
Noelle pushed the swinging doors that led out of the coroner’s quarters with both hands as she stormed out. She muttered something indiscernible under her breath.
Fury looked good on her, Duncan couldn’t help thinking. But that didn’t mean it was good for her or for the job.
“You know, part of being the lead on a case is learning not to let jerks like that get to you,” he said as he hurried to keep up with Noelle. He had more leg than she had, but keeping abreast of her took effort right now.
“So you wouldn’t have wanted to strangle him?” she challenged as she arrived at the elevator. She punched the button a little harder than was warranted.
“I didn’t say that,” he answered with a grin. “But from his point of view, you invaded his little fiefdom and challenged his authority. The guy was just lashing out, trying to protect his territory.”
In his own way, Cavanaugh had a point and she knew it. Noelle shrugged, silently conceding the argument to her partner.
And then she thought of something that had caught her attention earlier. “I thought you Cavanaughs never played the I’ve-got-relatives-in-high-places card.”
She knew that it was almost a point of honor with them, each Cavanaugh insisting on making his or her own way within the department without the help of the rest of the family.
The elevator car finally arrived. Stepping in after her, Duncan pressed the button for the first floor. “They don’t.”
“But you do?” she questioned. The doors barely closed and they were opening again, this time two levels away on the first floor. Getting out, she headed toward the rear of the building and the exit there.
“First time,” Duncan admitted. “But Addams was obviously a bully so I thought just this once, I could be forgiven. Besides,” he went on as he held the exit door open for her, “I didn’t like the hard time he was giving you.”
Walking out, she went down the cement steps and made her way toward their vehicle. “So that was why you decided to be my hero?”
“Your word, not mine,” he said. “In my world, it takes a lot more to be a hero.”
No, he’d tried to be her hero and normally, she would have balked at that. But not today. Not when it secretly felt so right—not that she would ever admit that to him as long as there was breath left in her body.
“Sometimes, the simplest acts leave the biggest impression,” she told him. “But just so you know, I can take care of myself.”
He had no doubt that she could, both verbally and physically if she had to. He’d seen her on the gun range. The woman was proficient. Watching her shoot was to watch a thing of beauty.
“Never said you couldn’t,” he replied. “And just so you know, this was more about Addams than about you. I’ve heard that you’re not the first person he tried to browbeat and intimidate.” Duncan looked at her over the dusty hood of the car. “Just the first one that I witnessed.”
“So are you going to put him on report?” she asked.
“Not my usual style,” Duncan admitted—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t turn over a new leaf. “But I haven’t decided yet. People like that give the rest of the department a bad name. There’re a lot of good people in the Crime Scene Investigative Unit—like Brenda.”
Since he’d brought the woman’s name up, she felt she could ask, “Speaking of whom, have you heard anything from her yet?”
“Not yet,” he answered. “But she always makes a point of answering every question. Some answers just take longer,” he added. He glanced down at the car and then at her. She was already on the driver’s side, but she hadn’t gotten in yet. “Do you want me to drive?” he offered.
“Thanks, but I’m fine, Cavanaugh. He didn’t shake me up,” she told him, guessing that Duncan probably thought that all this had gotten to her and sent her spiraling off into oblivion.
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking that,” he confessed to her.
Okay, he had her stumped now. “Then what were you thinking?”
“I thought that maybe, since you’re the lead on this, you might like to be chauffeured around.” He made the suggestion with a completely straight face.
She tried to ascertain whether or not Duncan was serious or just pulling her leg. Their relationship had evolved to this state, that he felt comfortable enough to tease her. She hadn’t gotten to that place yet.
“What, no cushioned litter with four body servants carrying me to the apartment complex, à la Cleopatra?”
“I could call my brothers and see what we could arrange,” he deadpanned.
Okay, he was kidding, she thought, relieved. “Thanks, but I’ll just drive us there,” she said, getting in behind the steering wheel. She put the key into the ignition.
“That works, too,” he agreed.
Duncan had barely managed to get the seat belt’s metal tongue into the slot when he felt her accelerating, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road.
“Just a thought,” he began as he watched Noelle merging the sedan into the right lane, then weaving into the next one because the cars were moving faster in that lane, “you might want to
think about changing those shoes of yours.”
She bit back the part about his not having any authority to tell her what and what not to wear on any part of her body.
Instead, she merely turned her head toward him for half a second and asked, “What?”
“Shoes,” he repeated. “Get a pair with less lead in them,” he suggested.
“Is that your clever way of saying I have a lead foot?” she asked him, barely having time to spare him a glance. The traffic was whizzing by almost as fast as she was.
“I don’t know about ‘clever,’” Duncan said cautiously, “but yeah, that’s my way of saying you have a really lead foot. You do realize that getting there—wherever ‘there’ is—five minutes faster isn’t going to matter if we’re dead when we get there.”
She didn’t take kindly to lectures about her driving, no matter how discreetly the words were couched. At bottom a criticism was still a criticism.
“I’ve been driving like this since I got my license,” Noelle informed her partner, hoping to get him to back away.
She should have known better.
“And I find that pretty scary.” He paused, debating saying anything, then decided he had nothing to lose. “Did you ever consider the possibility that you might have used up all your luck by now?”
She glanced at him, and then, to his surprise, she eased back on the gas pedal. The car’s speed lowered.
“You’ve decided you do have something to live for?” he asked her.
“Just didn’t want to deprive your next date from enjoying the thrill of your company,” she answered.
“I’ll be sure to let her know about your thoughtfulness...once I figure out who she is,” he added.
Chapter 10
There was no answer when they knocked on the door of Walter Teasdale’s ground-floor apartment.
“He probably lived alone,” Duncan guessed after he had knocked on the door for a second time with no results. “We might as well stop wasting time and just get the rental manager to let us into Teasdale’s apartment,” he told Noelle.
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