“Nobody else knows that yet,” Jason pointed out. “You don’t have to do that part right now.”
“I know that,” Dugan said pointedly. “But I will. It’s only right.”
Jason sighed, shaking his head. “Are all you Cavanaughs such sticklers for honesty when it comes to crossing your T’s and dotting your I’s?” the other detective asked. “Don’t any of you ever kick back?”
“Not where it counts,” Dugan answered, then added with a grin, “Lucky for you.”
Jason laughed. He saw the point. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Okay,” Dugan said, taking a breath and telling himself that they were going to need a fresh start here. “Let’s see what we can find out about this murder. Before homicide starts horning in on our case.”
Jason looked almost hangdog. “So much for going home tonight.”
Dugan paused to look at the other detective. “Hey, you called me, remember?”
Jason looked resigned—for now. “I guess I’ve got nobody else to blame but myself for being here,” he replied. Then his eyes glimmered a little. “But even so, I can still try to put the blame on you for my sleepless night.”
Dugan laughed. “Okay. Whatever floats your boat, Nguyen.”
* * *
Dugan didn’t get to the hospital that morning. Nor did he managed to get there the whole day. The investigation into Gomez’s murder kept him and Nguyen busy.
It wasn’t until the following morning that he finally managed to scrape together a little time for himself. He used it to swing by the hospital.
On his way over to Aurora Memorial Hospital, he decided to give himself a total of fifteen minutes there. Twenty at the most.
Despite the fact that it was only eight in the morning, finding somewhere to park was a bit of a challenge—at least, if he wanted to park somewhere close to the front. The hospital always seemed to be busy.
He wound up parking toward the very back of the lot. Because he was short on time, he decided to sprint. He told himself that a quick sprint would be good for him. It was either that or drive around a few times until someone decided to free up a spot and leave. He didn’t have time for that.
The city had too many people, he thought, getting out of his car. Used to be, according to his uncles—at least, the ones who had been born in this city—that Aurora was so small it hardly warranted a hospital at all, much less two.
It had been a huge deal when the second hospital, Aurora Memorial was finally opened. At the time, the hospital was half the size it was now and there had been empty beds on occasion. But that was because the city hadn’t done all the growing that it had of late. Back then, it was more like a one-horse town than a city.
He smiled to himself. According to his uncles, there’d been three lights down the main drag. One at one freeway, one at the other and one that was halfway in between.
There’d been cows here instead of all these people, and crime had been almost nothing. Now the cows were gone and crime was on its way up, although he and the rest of the Aurora Police Force were definitely trying to do something about that.
Okay, this is supposed to be your downtime, Dugan, remember? No shop talk, just a nice, quick visit. Something to remind you that you’re capable of doing good deeds once in a while and you’re not just a police detective, but a human being as well.
Approaching the main doors, Dugan waited until they sprang open. He preferred opening his own doors, but progress seemed to have other ideas, so he waited. Once the doors had pulled apart, slowly, he walked into the hospital.
The last time he had been here, everything had looked different. But the hospital had gone through a new wave of building again, or modernizing, as it were. For one thing, the lobby didn’t look the way it used to.
It took him a moment to get his bearings. Looking around, he finally spotted the information desk. Relieved, he approached the two people who were sitting there—a man and a woman—looking more than a little bored. They both came alive when they saw him.
“May we help you?” the attendants asked almost in unison.
“I need to get to the maternity floor,” Dugan told them.
“That would be the third floor,” the young woman said, smiling at him.
As he began to walk away, the male attendant called after him. “If you give us the patient’s name, we can tell you which room she is in. It’ll make it go faster for you.”
“Okay.”
Backing up, Dugan returned to the desk and then looked for a way to say this that didn’t make him look like some kind of mindless fool.
“Well, this is a little awkward because I just know her first name.” He saw the two attendants exchange looks and he could almost guess what they were thinking. “No, it’s not like that,” he assured them. “I’m a cop. She went into labor in her car. I happen to be passing by so I helped her give birth.”
“All right,” the male attendant, Dale, said guardedly. “What’s the woman’s first name?”
“Her name’s Scarlet,” Dugan told him.
Dale skimmed down the screen, then looked up, a slightly dubious expression on his gaunt face. “I’m sorry but there’s no one named Scarlet registered at the hospital.”
“Look again,” Dugan instructed, feeling exasperated. “She was admitted with her baby a little after midnight two days ago. The ambulance brought her here.”
Looking really skeptical at this point, Dale skimmed over the names a second time. “Sorry,” he announced. “No Scarlet.”
“Let me look,” the second attendant, Rita, said, taking over the screen. Her superior attitude vanished quickly. Looking up, she shook her head. “I’m sorry but he’s right. There is no one named Scarlet on the maternity floor.”
Dugan frowned at the two attendants at the reception desk. “That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe she had complications and she was admitted to another division,” he suggested. “Look to see if there was anyone admitted to any other section of the hospital by the name of Scarlet.”
“That is highly irregular,” Dale informed him, taking umbrage. However, the look that Dugan shot at him had the attendant quickly skimming through the records. Finishing, he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. There was no Scarlet admitted to the hospital in the last two days on any of the floors.”
“All right, maybe they made a mistake with her name,” Dugan said. “Was there anyone admitted a little after midnight two days ago to the maternity floor? She had a newborn daughter.” He knew that at least that much was right.
Glancing at the screen, Rita did a quick search and then announced, “Yes.”
“Finally,” Dugan cried. He needed to get away from these two people before he lost his temper. “What room is she in?” he asked as he began to walk to the elevator.
“She’s not,” Dale called out after him. “She checked herself out yesterday.”
Chapter 3
“You’re serious?” Dugan asked the attendants. This just wasn’t adding up. “She just had a baby,” he said. “Aren’t you people supposed to keep them here for at least three days?”
“This isn’t a prison, officer,” Dale told him, obviously taking offense at the implication that they or the hospital had failed in some way. “Patients are free to go home at any time.”
“What about the doctor?” Dugan asked. “Wouldn’t he or she have ordered against something like that? And by the way, it’s detective, not officer,” he said, pointedly correcting the man.
“Well, detective,” Dale said with an exaggerated bow of his head, “the doctor can make a recommendation, but if the patient chooses to disregard that recommendation, the patient is free to just sign herself out and leave whenever she wants to. Unless, of course, if she’s being restrained,” he added, glancing toward the woman beside him to make sure he was right. Rita nodded. “But that
’s a whole different story.”
“Bottom line, detective,” Rita told him in a far more polite voice than Dale was using, “the woman you’re looking for isn’t here any longer.”
Dugan blew out a breath, then shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he said, addressing his words to the woman. He’d already used up the twenty minutes he’d allotted himself. He needed to be getting to the precinct. “That’s all a man can do.” Dugan offered her a smile. “Thanks for your help.”
And with that, he turned away and walked out of the hospital lobby.
He had no doubt that the woman wasn’t there anymore. There was no reason for either of the people, even the irritating idiot, to have lied to him. What bothered Dugan was why the woman from the other night wasn’t there any longer.
And why she had given him—or the hospital—a phony name.
Not your problem, Dugan, he told himself as he made his way back toward his car. You gave it your best shot, which is more than a lot of other guys would have done. And apparently, for whatever reason, the woman had no desire to stick around longer than she has to.
Still, he had to admit as he crossed the lot, the detective in him was really curious about why someone like Scarlet—or whatever her real name was—would just leave the hospital so quickly after having given birth. The experience had to have exhausted her. Wasn’t a stay at the hospital supposed to help her get back on her feet?
Maybe, Dugan thought as he finally reached his vehicle and got into it, it was just a simple matter of not having any insurance coverage. She couldn’t pay her bill, so she gave them a phony name and decided to pull a disappearing act before anyone in the administration office had a chance to check her out.
But if that was the case, then why hadn’t she tried to talk the hospital into letting her pay her bill off over time? People did that sort of thing. Sometimes the hospital would just write off a patient’s charges.
“You’ve got a legitimate case to work on,” he told himself out loud. “You don’t have any time to try to figure this out.”
Pushing the thought out of his mind, he started up his car. Puzzles were for people who had time on their hands to try to solve them. He, on the other hand, had a dead CI whose murder he was trying to solve. Someone obviously felt that Mitch Gomez had known too much and that was the mystery that took precedence over everything else, not some missing mama who had checked out of the hospital too early.
A missing mama with a gun, he reminded himself as he drove to the precinct.
When he’d first attempted to come to her aid, he recalled that the woman had tried to reach for a gun. Had she not been tied up in knots because of those contractions, he had no doubt that she probably would have shot him.
What—or who—was the woman afraid of? Dugan wondered.
“Later, damn it,” he ordered himself sternly. “Think about this later. Not now.”
The rest of the way to the precinct, he did the best he could to push all the other thoughts aside. He was a detective first, a man with a mystery woman to pursue second.
A far second he reminded himself.
The answer didn’t satisfy him, but for now, it was going to have to do.
* * *
They were getting nowhere.
Eight weeks later they were no closer to finding out who had put that bullet into Mitch Gomez’s head than they had been when the body was first found.
He and Jason had canvassed the area, talking to more people in the last two months than he probably had in the last six months, and still nothing. People talked, but in the long run, they said nothing.
Oh, he had a few suspicions about who might have been responsible—Michael Oren, a higher-up who represented the Juarez cartel in California—but suspicions had never won a case.
Not only that, but now he was currently down a partner, as well. Jason had broken his tibia and it looked as if he was going to be sidelined for the next few weeks if not longer.
“Tripping over your eighteen-month-old daughter, who does that?” Dugan demanded when he went to see Jason at his home to see how his partner was coming along.
“Apparently I do,” the detective answered almost morosely. Fighting with his crutches, he managed to make it over to an easy chair. The whole adventure had left him exhausted. Three days and he still hadn’t gotten the hang of maneuvering the crutches.
“I mean, she’s not that tiny a baby. How could you have missed seeing her?” Dugan asked, shaking his head.
“Believe me, when you’re not looking for an eighteen-month-old baby, they’re easy enough to miss—and trip over,” Jason grumbled.
His mother-in-law, who was babysitting the little girl, looked as if she was less than thrilled to also act as a part-time nurse for Jason. The look on his face showed that he felt the same way.
Jason lowered his voice so that only Dugan heard him. “Look, I’m sorry that this leaves you high and dry right now. I should be able to get around with crutches pretty soon.”
Dugan had seen Jason attempting to maneuver into the room. He didn’t hold out much hope.
“Right,” Dugan replied sarcastically. “Just do me a favor. Stay home and get well. Fast,” he underscored.
Jason glanced over toward his mother-in-law. “As fast as I can, trust me,” he responded.
“I’ll check back with you in a few days,” Dugan promised.
And with that, he left.
Dugan had some thinking to do, and right now, he was better doing it alone. Granted, he and Jason had been a team for the last year and a half, but now that Jason was home for what looked to be some time, for now he was on his own in this investigation. He was not about to tackle the investigation and break in a new partner.
Granted, he could walk and chew gum at the same time, but at the moment, all his energy was concentrated on unraveling the massive drug connections that were involved here.
Factions of the Juarez Cartel had brought their territory fight against the Sinaloa Cartel up here. He didn’t have time for anything else. Besides, he’d worked alone before and he was more than willing to do it again. It was definitely preferable to putting up with a new partner. Besides, if he needed backup, there were always Patterson and Ryan to call in.
His mind was made up. Until things changed, he was going to be working alone.
* * *
“Cavanaugh, get in here,” Lieutenant Jerry Daniels called out the moment Dugan walked back into the Vice squad room.
He didn’t like the sound of that, Dugan thought. But he couldn’t very well pretend not to have heard the lieutenant and walk out again, not when he was certain that the man had seen him come in.
With a sigh, he braced himself and then walked into the lieutenant’s office.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” he asked.
The words dribbled out of his mouth. He was aware of her the moment he walked in and was doing his best not to stare.
Even though she had her back to him, the tall, stately blonde sitting in the other chair would have been hard to miss. He could only hope that the woman didn’t have anything to do with his assignment. Maybe she was involved in some kind of a goodwill gesture on the lieutenant’s part, or—
She turned around to look at him. Recognition was immediate.
“It’s you.”
Dugan hadn’t even realized that he’d said the words out loud until the lieutenant looked at him, obviously curious.
“You two know each other?” the lieutenant asked uncertainly.
There was no sign of recognition on the woman’s face whatsoever. Either she was one hell of a poker player or she was the victim of a sudden case of amnesia, because it was her, the woman in the alley. He would have known her anywhere. She was the woman he’d helped to give birth...
If he stood here and insisted that he had been there eight weeks ago, hover
ing over her in that back alley, coaching her as she pushed out her baby daughter, and she didn’t say anything to back him up, he was going to come across like a complete idiot who was on his way to a nervous breakdown.
So, for now, he was going to deny that he knew her—or how.
“No, my mistake, sir,” Dugan said formally. “I thought I recognized your guest here, but I obviously don’t.”
Daniels nodded, accepting the explanation. “All right, then. If you’re through interrupting me, we can get on with this. Since your partner is temporarily out on medical leave and the two of you weren’t getting anywhere in your investigation anyway,” he said crisply, his words cutting like a knife, “I thought that maybe another angle in this investigation might prove useful.”
He was getting that feeling again, Dugan thought. That feeling where the back of his neck began to prickle, getting itchy. It happened every time that he felt something was going wrong.
He told himself he was overreacting.
“And what angle might that be, sir?” he asked in the calmest, most virtuous voice he could summon, even though he could feel his stomach beginning to tie itself up in knots.
The look that Daniels shot him told Dugan that his superior thought his tone was a little too innocent. But because there was someone else in the room and he wanted to come off at his best, Daniels was forced to keep his temper.
So, instead, Daniels just continued with his introduction. “That would be where Ms. O’Keefe would come in.”
“Ms. O’Keefe,” Dugan repeated. Was that finally her real name or was this just another alias? At this point, he couldn’t be sure. “That would be you?” he asked the woman sitting in the other chair.
The woman smiled at him. The smile was polite, distant and showed absolutely no sign of any sort of recognition in any manner, shape or form.
Leaning forward, she extended her hand to him and introduced herself.
“Toni O’Keefe, investigative journalist,” she told him in case he thought she was part of the police department.
Dugan never took his eyes off hers. “Detective Dugan Cavanaugh.”
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