Holding up his badge and police ID, Logan flashed what one of his sisters referred to as his “bone melting” smile at the woman in apartment 3D.
“Detective Cavanaugh with the Aurora P.D., ma’am. I need to ask you a few questions, but first I have to tend to something else. I’ll be right back, I promise,” he said, sounding as sincere as a preacher on Sunday. He held up his index finger as if that somehow reinforced the fact that he wanted her to just hold on for a few minutes until he could get back to her.
“What’s this about?” the woman asked, calling after him as he walked into the elevator right behind Destiny.
“I’ll explain everything in five minutes,” he called back, raising his voice as the elevator door slid closed, cutting him off from the blonde. “Sorry about the car,” he told Destiny, turning his attention to her and never missing a beat. “I thought I wasn’t going to be here long.”
“I guess it’s a night for surprises,” Destiny quipped dryly, saying the words more to herself than to him.
But something in her voice managed to catch his attention. As the stainless-steel door opened and she stepped out, Logan caught her by the elbow before she could get too far.
Startled, she turned to look at him quizzically. Now what?
“Do you have anyone?” he asked her.
No, not anymore. The words seemed to echo in her head, draining her soul. Shaking it off, she stared at him.
“What?” she demanded.
“Do you have anyone to talk to?” he elaborated. “Someone to stay with or to have them come over and stay with you?”
Destiny raised her chin, the barricade she kept around herself growing a little higher. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking, but I don’t need a babysitter.”
That meant the answer was no, Logan thought. The woman had already said that her sister was her only living kin. With her gone, that left no one to call family. He had no idea what that was like. All of his life, from his very first memory, he’d always had siblings and cousins, and now that he knew he was a Cavanaugh, he had enough relatives to populate a small city.
Despite the fact that there were times he felt as if he would have traded his soul for some privacy, for an island of time alone with his thoughts and away from well-meaning relatives, he knew that if he had to endure that on a full-time, daily basis, it would have eaten away at him.
“I didn’t say that you did,” he told her, his voice low-key. “But if you want to wait around for a bit while I finish knocking on these doors to see if there’s anyone willing to talk and tell me if they saw or heard something, maybe we could go out afterwards, catch a cup of coffee. Talk,” he emphasized. The elevator stopped. A moment later, as if it first had to pause, the door to the lobby opened.
She walked out of the building’s glass doors ahead of Logan. Her first thought was that he was hitting on her, but that cocky expression she’d noticed earlier on his face was absent. And to give him his due, he did sound sincere. Since he was Sean’s son and she dearly loved the man, she gave Logan the benefit of the doubt. After all, since he was Sean’s son, maybe a little compassion had rubbed off on him.
She realized, in a moment of weakness, that she appreciated the offer. But that still didn’t mean that she wanted him hovering around her, possibly witnessing her break down.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid or drastic,” she assured Logan.
Logan shrugged as if that had never crossed his mind. “I’m just in the mood for some decent coffee. By definition that means not the kind that comes in a paper cup,” he told her.
She’d never been discerning about her coffee. As long as it was black and hot, that was all that she required.
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted, then softened a little as she added, “But thanks.”
“No problem,” he murmured. He caught himself wondering, just for a split second, what she was like without all that barbed wire around her.
She watched him get into his vehicle. A moment later, he turned his ignition key and the car came to life. With his eyes all but glued to the rearview mirror, he eased his car out slowly, going backward one inch at a time. Traffic was light at the moment, but that was subject to instant change, even at this hour of the evening.
Clearing her vehicle, he pulled up the handbrake. Logan allowed his engine to idle as he waited for her to get into her car and pull it out of its current parking spot.
“I’ll take a rain check,” Destiny impulsively called out through the open passenger side window just before she peeled out of the spot and seamlessly merged into the flow of cars.
She didn’t stop until she came to the next light. It was red, but the color barely registered with her brain in time.
She was too busy upbraiding herself.
A rain check? What the hell had possessed her to say that? Was it just to establish some kind of connection with another human being, subconsciously comforting herself with the knowledge that she didn’t have to be alone if she didn’t choose to be? That she could establish some kind of contact with another human being anytime she wanted to? And that if she was alone, it was because she chose to be that way.
Words, she was playing with words.
It didn’t make the empty, gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach go away.
She vacillated between being numb and being shattered.
“Oh, Paula,” she murmured under her breath, blinking back hot tears. “What did you go and leave yourself open to?”
No matter what the answer to that was, if her sister had openly invited her killer into the apartment or the person had let himself in with a copy of her key, Paula was still dead.
She was still not coming back.
Paula had always been a delicate, small-boned little thing, and even if she hadn’t been drugged, she wouldn’t have been able to fight her attacker off if he had been any larger than a small field mouse.
“I tried to get you to take self-defense classes,” Destiny angrily shouted into the emptiness, the feeling of helplessness snowballing into outrage and fury. “Why didn’t you listen to me? Why the hell didn’t you ever listen to anything I said to you?”
It seemed to her as if, up until these past two years, anytime she’d made a constructive suggestion, Paula would turn around and do the exact opposite.
And yet, she knew her sister had always loved her. Loved her as fiercely as she loved Paula.
A lot of good that did either of them now, Destiny thought sadly.
With a sigh, she stepped on the gas.
* * *
One Police Plaza looked mournful silhouetted against the dark, moonless sky. The building had a minimum of lights on, beneath which a handful of detectives were burning the midnight oil, trying to solve a case or just tying up the loose ends on one.
A slightly lesser complement of officers patrolled the streets now than during the daylight hours. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Parking her vehicle near the building, Destiny got out and began to hurry up the ten stone steps.
What she was really doing, she knew, was trying to outrun the loneliness inside her. She was having little success at that.
The only way she would be able to get through this, Destiny told herself, was to find Paula’s killer and make him pay.
“Damn it, Paula, you should have told me who you were dating.”
Maybe the guy wasn’t responsible for what had ultimately happened, but at least it would have been a start, someone to question so she could begin putting the disjointed pieces together.
The last phrase echoed in her head. Begin putting the disjointed pieces together.
Well, if she didn’t have Paula’s mystery man’s name, she would have to start somewhere else to make this puzzle come together.
Destiny suddenly thought of the prescription bottle that Logan had found in the medicine cabinet. Now that she thought about it, the whole thing just didn’t seem to ring true to her.
It didn’t seem like Paula.
Granted her sister did have a lot of trouble sleeping and she had taken the drug when it had first come out. But Paula was stubborn. She would have never allowed herself to be dependent on a drug. Most likely, she would have tried her best to use the prescription as little as possible.
Now that she thought about it, she remembered that Paula was adamantly against taking drugs of any kind. This even went so far as to include simple painkillers. She wouldn’t take them even when she had one of her excruciating headaches.
She and Paula had argued over that more than once. But Paula wouldn’t be budged. Her deep aversion came from the fact that her best friend in high school had had a drug problem. A week before her graduation, the girl, Rachel Wyman, had accidentally overdosed. She was dead before she ever reached the hospital.
Paula had been the one to find her.
Just like I was the one who found you, Destiny thought ruefully.
That was when Paula started getting involved in anti-drug campaigns, volunteering her time and considerable artistic talents to do whatever she could to try to save someone else from ending up the way that Rachel had.
So, feeling that way, what was Paula doing with a brand-new prescription for sleeping pills?
Making a decision, Destiny turned on her heel and hurried back to her car. Blessed with what amounted to total recall, she had the ability to remember anything that had crossed her line of vision.
Right now, as she concentrated, she remembered the name of the pharmacy that was written across the top of the bottle.
She also remembered the prescription number on the bottle, a long fourteen-digit number. What she hadn’t noted at the time, because she’d been so focused on keeping herself together, was the prescribing doctor’s name. She wanted to speak to him because, as a rule, her sister didn’t go to doctors.
* * *
The pharmacist on duty expressed an initial reluctance to answer her questions about her sister’s medication until Destiny flashed her badge and ID for him. Mentally, she crossed her fingers that the young pharmacist wasn’t the belt-and-suspenders type. Because if he was, she had the sinking feeling that he would have felt compelled not just to take note of her ID but to call in and verify with her superior whether or not she was really supposed to be there, asking questions.
Destiny held her breath until the pharmacist finally lifted his rather thin, sloping shoulders, then dropped them again in what amounted to a disinterested shrug. With that, he went to the computer to access the prescription in question.
After several minutes had passed and the pharmacist still hadn’t stopped searching, Destiny felt compelled to ask, “Is there anything wrong?”
“That depends on your point of view,” he told her. His brow furrowed in frustration. “I can’t seem to find that prescription number. Are you sure that you got the numbers down right?”
There were a great many things that she was uncertain about, but that didn’t include her ability to recall things in crystal clarity. “Positive,” she told the pharmacist.
The young man frowned, his thin lips all but disappearing. “What did you say the patient’s name was again?”
“Paula Richardson,” she repeated, then recited, “Her date of birth is oh-three, oh-six, nineteen eighty-six.” Taking a breath to help steel herself off, she said, “She was found dead today.”
Startled, the pharmacist immediately asked, “And you think that the prescription was responsible? I assure you, every chemical used is of the highest grade. It couldn’t have been our—”
She held up her hand to stop him. When she spoke, it was in the small, soothing voice she’d once used to chase away Paula’s nightmares.
“No one is accusing your pharmacy of anything. We’re just trying to gather as much information as we can right now.”
Temporarily placated, the pharmacist returned to his computer. Hitting the keyboard, he scrolled down several pages.
“Well, she’s here in our records—we filled a standard antibiotic for her at the beginning of the year. Amoxicillin. For the flu,” he said, still staring at the screen. He hit several keys that took him back and forth between a couple of screens. “Nope, no sleeping pills,” he verified. “You’re sure that was her name was on the bottle?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Her mouth curved for a second in a semblance of a smile, doing her best to silently reassure the man that no one at the pharmacy was in trouble. She had the information she needed. “Thanks for your help.”
He seemed a little confused. “But I didn’t find anything.”
No, on the contrary, you did, Destiny thought. The pharmacist with the baby face had indirectly found that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble and had carefully staged her sister’s death scene. The person had even gone to the trouble of replicating a prescription medication.
That meant that someone had planned to kill her sister. Had actually targeted Paula.
But why?
And to what end?
This didn’t sound like the work of an obsessive serial killer, because there were too many details adhered to. Besides, as a rule of thumb, a serial killer didn’t try to make a murder victim look like someone who committed suicide. Covertly or blatantly, serial killers were usually quite proud of their sick handiwork and enjoyed showing it off. Enjoyed basking in splashy headlines. At the same time, they usually were daring law enforcement agents to try to catch them.
This had been covered up, its sole purpose appearing to have been to kill Paula.
Again, why?
It was half an hour later and she was back mentally staring at that question. And back driving toward the police station.
With this new information, there were things she needed to check out, to look into. The precinct was the only place she knew of with the kind of wealth of information and access to that information that she needed.
* * *
The precinct parking lot looked almost emptier this time than it had just a little while ago. Blocking the effects, Destiny hurried up the stairs for a second time, eager to get started. Eager to get to her desk.
She needed to document what she’d discovered. In the morning, she’d get in touch with Cavanaugh—she assumed the good-looking detective would be the one to work her sister’s case—and let him know that the prescription he’d found in the medicine cabinet and felt went a long way in supporting his suicide theory didn’t belong to her sister.
It belonged, in one way or another, to the killer. The prescription number, when she’d finally prevailed upon the pharmacist to look through the pharmacy chain’s archives, had once been the number on a bottle of cough medicine that had been prescribed for a child with bronchitis.
She couldn’t help wondering if there was some obscure connection there. Tracking down the name on the actual prescription would be her first order of business, she decided.
Armed with coffee from the vending machine and her determination, Destiny got off the elevator when it came to a stop and opened in the basement. Trying to think only of making progress and not about her sister, she made her way down the winding corridor to her office.
It never occurred to her that she might fail in reaching her objective. Because, as the popular saying she believed with all her heart went, failure was not an option here. She wouldn’t allow it to be.
Chapter 5
“So, Dad, how’s it going?”
Walking into the newly redecorated, state-of-the-art criminology lab at the ungodly hour of 7:00 a.m. the next morning, Logan crossed to the middle of the room. His father stood over a table that was rivaled only by the enormous one in Andrew Cavanaugh’s dining room.
The head of the crime lab was busy testing the contents of some substance Logan wasn’t even going to try to identify.
Wearing his white lab coat, Sean glanced up to see his son approaching. Surprised, he looked over Logan’s head at the clock on the wall behind him.
Well, this was unusual
.
“You’re in early,” he commented. Logan was the one they used to have to dynamite out of bed to get him to school on time. As far as he knew, his son still loved sleeping in. Early was not a word Logan regarded with any semblance of approval. “Something to do with the case?”
Logan moved his shoulders in a vague shrug. “In a manner of speaking, I guess, but I wasn’t asking you about the evidence just now.”
Still working, Sean raised a quizzical eyebrow in response. “Oh?”
“No,” Logan told him, “I was asking you ‘personally’ how it was going.”
“Fine.” There was a note of amused caution in Sean’s voice. Then, because he did possess a measure of curiosity and Logan was behaving rather strangely, Sean pressed for details. “Are you asking about anything specifically—personally?” he tacked on, deliberately highlighting the word Logan had used.
Oh, the hell with it. He might as well just blurt it out, Logan decided. “Kenny said that you and Matt’s mother are seeing each other,” he said, referring to his sister, Kendra. “Regularly,” he added in case his father was going to try to pretend not to know what he was talking about. “I just wanted to ask how that was going.”
So, that was it. Sean had wondered how long it would take for word to spread. Apparently not very long at all. The Cavanaugh grapevine seemed to have an even faster connection than the Cavelli grapevine did.
“Sabrina Abilene and I are more than ‘seeing’ each other, Logan,” he informed his son, doing his best to sound serious and keep the laughter at bay.
Logan sighed dramatically, leaned his hip against the long, sleek stainless-steel table that displayed a host of mysterious instruments and said to his father in a low, serious voice, “Well, young man, I think it’s time that we had ‘The Talk.’”
Sean laughed then, affectionately cuffing the back of his son’s head the way he’d sometimes done when Logan and his brothers were younger and had been guilty of doing something stupid.
“That’s enough out of you, or there’ll be some serious consequences, Detective Cavanaugh. Go, make yourself useful.” He pointed toward the door. “Do some detective work and earn that big, hefty salary the city’s paying you.”
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