The Cavanaugh Code

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Same M.O. And it gets better,” she added wearily. This newest development tended to blow the other theories out of the water. “This time, the victim is a homeless man.”

  She heard Laredo whistle softly under his breath. “Sounds like we really do have a serial killer on our hands,” he speculated.

  On the outside, yes, but she still harbored doubts. But for now, she’d agree with him. “Looks like it.”

  Laredo watched as the vehicle in front of him turned right at the next corner. He followed suit. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  The way he could crawl into her head made her uneasy. What else could he intuit? “Could have been done to throw us off,” she speculated. “The killer obviously has no problem taking a life. Who better to kill for the purposes of camouflage than some homeless man nobody is going to miss?”

  There was silence on the other end, as if he was thinking. She didn’t have time for this. But just as she was about to close the phone, he spoke up. “You’ve got a point, Detective McIntyre.”

  Detective McIntyre. His usage of her title and last name in almost every other sentence got on her nerves. It was formal and there was nothing formal about him. Besides, he’d kissed her and burst into her bathroom while she was taking a shower. The damn man had seen her naked. Somehow, calling her “Detective” with every other breath felt as if the private investigator was mocking her.

  “You can call me Taylor.”

  “Thank you, Detective McIntyre.” Laredo didn’t bother keeping the grin out of his voice. In response, he heard the click of her phone as she terminated the call.

  No two ways about it, he thought, tucking his phone back into his pocket, she was definitely one fascinating woman.

  Taylor rocked back on her heels as she studied the dead man on the ground, trying not to let the stench of his body overwhelm her.

  It was a homeless man, all right. And he had been murdered in the same fashion as the lawyer and the teacher before him had. The man, roughly in his mid-fifties she judged, had had his hands and feet bound, with duct tape over his mouth and a piece of leather stretched to the limit around his neck.

  Taylor didn’t need a coroner to tell her that the man had died from strangulation. The ventricular hemorrhaging in his eyes told her that.

  A thorough search performed by the younger of the two patrolmen showed that the man had no identification on him.

  Rising, Taylor dusted off her knees. “Tell the M.E. I want this man fingerprinted. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he served in the military or held down a government job—”

  “Or served time,” Laredo interjected.

  “Yes, there’s that, too.” At the very least, she could hope that the man’d held a California license in the last ten years. Thumbprints were required and all it took was one match to tell them who this latest victim was. She didn’t like the fact that he was anonymous. What if he was the key to it all?

  She heard the coroner’s van pulling up into the alley. Taylor stepped back to give the attendants who emerged from the vehicle room to work. As she watched, trying to make sense of this latest development, the attendants bagged the body, placed it on the gurney and then withdrew.

  That was when she saw it. There was a card on the ground. It had been missed because it had fallen beneath the body.

  Was that deliberate? she wondered, taking out a handkerchief. She used it to pick up the card.

  “I need to bag this,” she told the closest crime scene investigator. The man took a plastic bag out of his case and handed it to her. Taylor slipped the card inside very carefully, sealed the opening and then studied it.

  “It’s a mass card,” Laredo observed, looking over her shoulder.

  “I know what it is,” she told him. She flipped the card onto its face. There was a picture of St. Thomas More on the other side. “There’s a saint you don’t see every day,” she murmured more to herself than to him.

  “The card there by accident?” Laredo voiced the question that was on her mind as well. “Or is the killer trying to tell us something?”

  If that was the intent behind leaving the mass card beneath the murder victim’s body, a multitude of questions began to spring up in her head.

  “Why now?” she asked. “Why with the third victim and not the other two?”

  Laredo shrugged. “I guess we’re going to have to catch him before we find that part out.”

  Very carefully, she slipped the mass card into her purse. The fact that Laredo was injecting himself into the investigation on all levels was not lost on her.

  “I thought you were just investigating Eileen’s murder,” she reminded him.

  “They all seem to be connected. I might as well try to help.”

  She didn’t see him as the altruistic type. “I bet you were a Boy Scout when you were a kid.”

  It was meant as a sarcastic remark. She wasn’t prepared for him to seriously answer her. “As a matter of fact, I was. My mother thought it would make me a more rounded person. She thought they had a damn fine motto: Always Be Prepared.”

  A man who spoke fondly of his mother couldn’t be all bad—even if he did burst into bathrooms. “Sounds like a nice lady.”

  A quiet note of sadness fleetingly entered his eyes. “She was.”

  Was. As in past tense. She hadn’t meant to put her foot in her mouth—or to bring up any bad memories for him. She knew what it felt like to lose a parent. The funny thing was, before he was gone, she never thought losing her father would affect her. But it had. No matter what faults he’d had, he’d still been her father.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Laredo had come to terms with losing his mother, but there was a measure of pain, firmly entrenched in the background. “She died a long time ago, but thanks.”

  Taylor found that, despite herself, she was curious about him. “Your father raise you by himself?”

  He shook his head. “My father died a few years before she did. He was a Navy SEAL on a mission that didn’t quite turn out the way everyone expected,” he filled in before she could ask.

  “Oh.” He’d lost two people in his life—and she had lost her father twice. The first time around, the undercover narcotics detective had faked his death but it had hurt just like the real thing.

  “My grandfather raised me,” Laredo told her, adding, “when he didn’t have to.”

  Chester Laredo had been under no obligation to take him and his widowed mother in and definitely under no obligation to opt to raise him on his own after his mother was killed. Chet could have hidden behind the demands of his job, which were enormous, but he didn’t.

  “So anytime he asks me for a favor, I’m more than happy to oblige in any way I can.”

  Every time she tried to write this man off, he’d unexpectedly display an admirable trait. It was getting harder and harder to actively dislike him—and she felt she needed to for her own self-preservation.

  Taylor nodded in response to his last comment. “Yeah, I could see why.” She turned to the two patrolmen who had been first on the scene. “I’d like you to canvass the area, please,” she requested. “See if anyone knew this man or saw anything suspicious.” She gave each man her card. “Call me if you find out anything at all, and I mean anything.” Done, she turned to Laredo. Funny, she thought, in an odd way she was getting used to having him at her elbow. “C’mon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She couldn’t make up her mind if he was having fun at her expense or not as Laredo fell into place beside her. “Mind if I ask where we’re going?”

  “Where we were going before I got this call,” she reminded him. “To show the security guard at The Villas Terrance Crawford’s picture. It’s about time we caught a break.”

  Maybe, just maybe, the guard, Nathan, would recognize the picture and it would make him remember something that would enlighten them.

  “What do you mean he’s gone?”

  Taylor stared at the senior security officer, Ralph
Wilson, who was posted at the front desk. When she’d asked to speak to Nathan, Wilson replied that Nathan was “gone.”

  An uneasy feeling began to tighten in her stomach. “As in gone for the day?” she asked.

  “No,” the older man said in a voice that sounded raw from forty years of smoking over a pack a day. “As in forever. The kid quit with next to no notice. Said he felt horrible about that woman being killed on his watch and that he couldn’t work here anymore.” It was obvious that Wilson saw what Nathan had done as being dereliction of duty, not to mention a lack of discipline and commitment. Wilson shook his head in disgust. “I tried to tell him he was overreacting, but you know these sensitive types.” Wilson fairly spat out the words, leaving them hanging in the air.

  There was no doubt in her mind that the man didn’t think very highly of sensitivity when it came to the male gender. But she wasn’t here to argue about the merits of sensitivity or its drawbacks.

  “Do you have an address for Nathan?”

  A spark of contempt flickered through his brown eyes. “Of course I do. We have all our employees fill out forms when we hire them.”

  Turning the small computer monitor on the side of the desk so that it faced him and no one else, Wilson slowly pressed several key combinations. Eventually, he pulled up the screen.

  “Right here,” he announced.

  Taylor quickly copied down the address, aware that Laredo was looking at the screen over her shoulder.

  Frowning, he addressed the security guard. “You sure this is the address he gave you?”

  The guard blustered. “Of course I’m sure. All the forms are scanned into the program.” Eyebrows that could definitely use a weeding narrowed, joining together over a very sharp, prominent nose. “Why?”

  Laredo saw Taylor eyeing him quizzically as well. “Because, unless the city’s found a new way to make buildings go up instantly, as of two weeks ago that—” he pointed to the line on the application with the street address on it “—was a warehouse. Deserted the last time I looked.”

  Damn it! Taylor scowled. She knew better than to doubt him now, but she still had to ask. “How do you know that?”

  “Another case I was working on,” he replied vaguely, adding, “nasty business.” Client-investigator privilege prevented him from elaborating that he’d tracked down a fourteen-year-old kidnapping victim to the warehouse and rescued her before she could be sold into a foreign prostitution ring.

  Taylor sighed. “Nathan,” or whatever his name really was, had duped them. Had duped her. She hated being taken. “Are you sure?” she pressed. The sinking feeling in her stomach already gave her the answer.

  Laredo glanced at the screen a second time to verify the address, then nodded. “I’m sure.”

  The news was not received well by the head security officer either. He strung several curses together under his breath before saying, “Why the hell would Nathan give us a false address?”

  “To go along with his false name,” Taylor answered, trying to bank down her frustration. Everything the so-called guard had told her was now suspect.

  Why had “Nathan” lied? Unless—damn it, had she been talking to Eileen’s murderer all along?

  Because of the information “Nathan” had given her, she’d wasted precious time calling florists and showing the sketch to see if anyone had noticed the phantom delivery man.

  Taylor’s exasperation grew exponentially. There was only one conclusion she could come to. “There was no delivery man,” she said to Laredo.

  He’d already thought of that, but refrained from saying it out loud since it would be like rubbing salt into her wounds.

  Instead, he just nodded. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

  Taylor swallowed a groan. Taking out her cell phone, she called the precinct, asking the operator to connect her to one of the computer technicians. Two rings later, she spoke with someone who identified himself as Larry Lopez.

  “Larry, this is Detective Taylor McIntyre. I need you to get me everything and anything you can on a Nathan Miller.” She paused for a second, then added, “I’m not sure if he exists.”

  Rather than complain or issue a disclaimer, the man on the other end sounded as if he had just become enthusiastic. “Love a challenge. Hang on, Detective, I can just put you on hold. Shouldn’t take too long to find out if he exists one way or another.”

  Before she could tell him that she preferred being called back, Taylor found herself listening to rousing music that sounded vaguely familiar. She didn’t bother trying to place it.

  “Anything?” Laredo asked her when it became apparent that she was on hold.

  Instead of answering, she held up her phone to his ear. And watched him smile. She struggled to ignore how the sight stirred her on so many levels. Now was neither the time nor the place to get sidetracked. And certainly not with him. She had no doubt that the man probably thought of himself as charm personified and had a woman for every week of the calendar year.

  “The Magnificent Seven,” he said, nodding his head in approval. When she looked at him quizzically, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that she wasn’t familiar with it. “Great movie, remake of a Japanese classic, Seven Samurai.” He watched Taylor to see if any of this rang a bell for her.

  It didn’t.

  Taylor shrugged dismissively. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Laredo looked at her in disbelief. “You’ve never seen it?”

  “That would be the implication behind I wouldn’t know,” she agreed. The other members of her family, particularly Riley, were movie buffs. She usually watched and forgot what she viewed once the credits faded to black.

  This was not something he could leave alone. “I’ve got it in my collection. I could screen it for you,” he offered.

  Oh, no, no personal time with this man. That path, she was now convinced, only led to trouble. “Maybe some other time.”

  “I didn’t mean this minute,” he told her, amusement in his eyes.

  She took offense. And being on hold always made her impatient. “I don’t appreciate you laughing at me, Laredo.”

  “I’m not laughing,” he contradicted. “I’m just enjoying you.”

  She was spared from responding to that because at that moment, Larry came back on the line.

  “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” the computer tech told her. “Which would you like to hear first?”

  Right about now, she could definitely stand to hear some good news. The choice was not difficult. “The good news.”

  She tilted the cell phone so that Laredo could hear as well.

  The second his head bent close to hers, Taylor felt something warm and receptive moving through her. Sharing the phone was a tactical mistake, but pulling it away would be an even bigger one.

  She hoped Larry talked fast.

  “Okay. The good news, Detective McIntyre, is that Nathan Miller did exist.”

  Taylor picked up on the only word that mattered. “Did?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Nathan Miller died in 2000. He drowned while on vacation. It was a freak accident.”

  I just bet it was. “Terrific,” she said out loud just before she flipped her phone closed.

  “Think our Nathan killed the real Nathan?” Laredo asked.

  It was as if the private investigator could read her mind. She definitely wasn’t comfortable with that parlor trick.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. With a weary sigh that came straight from her toes, she said in disgust, “Back to square one.”

  She expected Laredo to agree and was surprised when he said, “Not necessarily.”

  Chapter 10

  “W hat do you mean, not necessarily?” Taylor asked.

  Now that she’d agreed to let him hang around, she couldn’t help wondering if he was going to make her resort to dragging information out of him. She wasn’t in the mood for games.

  Laredo didn’t answer her.

  Instead, he
strode back to the security guard at the front desk. A second before he reached the man, she realized what Laredo had to be thinking.

  Of course.

  “The logbook,” she said out loud.

  Laredo glanced at her over his shoulder and grinned. “Exactly.”

  “Nathan” had handled the logbook, at least once in her presence when he’d picked it up to supposedly look at the previous day’s sign-in sheet. That meant the man’s fingerprints had to be on the book.

  Along with who knew how many others, but at least it was a start.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to impound your logbook for a while,” she told the retired policeman just as Laredo reached him.

  Clearly on the same wavelength, Wilson nodded. “And you’re going to want the fingerprints of all the other security guards so you can rule out their prints on the book.”

  Taylor smiled, relieved that she wouldn’t have any arguments. It was nice dealing with someone who didn’t immediately balk at routine police procedures. Far too many people reacted as if their personal space was being violated when asked to cooperate with an investigation.

  “Yes, I am,” she agreed.

  Wilson took out his cell phone and pressed a button on the keypad, getting started. “I’ll round them up for you.”

  She nodded her gratitude. “In the meantime, I’ll get someone from CSI out here to collect their fingerprints.” But as she took out her phone again, Laredo caught her arm, stopping her. Now what? “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “No need to call anyone,” he told her, releasing her arm. “I’ve got everything we need in the trunk of my car.”

  We. She was getting used to that, God help her. She was also getting used to going along with him. Was that a mistake?

  “The Boy Scout thing again?” she asked, flipping her phone closed. She followed him out of the building as he went to his car.

  “Absolutely.”

  She could hear the grin in his voice. He was probably pretty pleased with himself, but since he was being useful, she let it go.