“People are alone,” he told her firmly.
“Maybe so,” she conceded, because she didn’t want to get sucked into a philosophical argument neither side intended to lose. Instead, she emphasized, “But they don’t have to feel that way.”
Esteban laughed shortly. “So you’re going to kiss their hurts, put Band-Aids on them and make them all better?”
He was baiting her, she thought, which was why she managed to remain unfazed. “If it helps, I can be there to listen.”
“And if you’re so busy ‘listening,’ when are you going to do your job? Or don’t you intend to ever sleep?” he asked.
“I’ve learned how to catnap,” she countered, keeping her own expression unreadable.
Kari paused for a moment as they got into the car. She knew she was going to be treading on dangerous ground, but she was never going to find any answers by keeping quiet.
“What you said before,” she began. “About people being alone...is that how you really feel?”
He didn’t appreciate her probing him. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” he bit off.
“Do you feel alone?” she pressed.
How many different ways did she want him to say it? He was beginning to think that saying anything at all had been a huge mistake.
“Back off, Hyphen,” he warned, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t need a shrink.”
Not every psychiatrist turned out to be helpful, and she knew without being told that her partner was not the sort who would ever seek help to begin with. “No, but maybe you need a friend.”
“What I need,” he emphasized, “is a partner—if I have to have one—who doesn’t talk so much.”
She smiled. Slowly but surely, she was beginning to understand him—at least a little. It allowed her to say, “Well, there I’m afraid that you’re out of luck.”
Esteban slanted a long look in her direction, then faced forward, gazing out the windshield without really seeing anything.
“Don’t count on it,” he told her.
She took a deep breath, summoned her courage and forced herself to ask, “What happened between high school and here?”
“Life,” was all he said. He made the single word sound ominous and volatile. He also didn’t trust himself to say more.
Turning the key, she started up the car and backed out of the space. “What—?”
“Drop it, Hyphen,” he ordered. His voice left no room for any give-and-take. That part of the game was over.
She’d pushed him as far as he’d go today, Kari realized. There was always tomorrow, but in order to get to tomorrow, she had to remain his partner today.
She backed off.
“You in the mood for Mexican or Chinese?” Kari asked cheerfully, thinking of the two best take-out places between the hospital and the police station.
He’d never been ruled by his taste buds and he shrugged now in answer to her question. “Doesn’t matter,” he told her.
“You don’t have a preference?” Kari asked, clearly surprised.
When he was hungry, he ate what was in front of him. “Not worth the time picking one over the other,” he said, then added, “You pick.”
“Okay,” she answered after a beat. “I will.”
* * *
Esteban stared at the chopsticks his partner held out to him. Served him right for abdicating control. “What makes you think I want to spear my food like some backward hunter?”
“Pretty limited hunting grounds,” she pointed out. “Besides, I thought maybe you knew how to use them.” Everyone she knew was fairly proficient with chopsticks, so she’d just assumed he was, too.
She should have known better, she upbraided herself.
“I suppose you do.” The way he said it was almost an accusation—if not an indictment.
She refused to let him make her feel guilty because she knew how to do something he didn’t. “It’s really not that hard once you pick it up.”
“Well, I didn’t pick it up—and I don’t intend to,” he added stubbornly. If he had a pet peeve—and he absolutely hated that term—it was people who tried to change him to suit their needs.
As Kari nodded, she opened up a side drawer and took out a wrapped, white plastic utensil. “How do you feel about a plastic fork?”
“I don’t have feelings about utensils,” he informed her crisply, nonetheless taking the white plastic fork she offered.
Kari shook her head. It was hard to reconcile this rough-spoken man with the laughing, jovial senior she remembered. “Boy, if Marnie Wilson could only see you now.”
Esteban looked up from his lunch, a scowl furrowing his brow. “Who’s Marnie Wilson?”
She hadn’t really expected him to remember the name. “She was one of the adoring females who had a mad crush on you in high school. She was sure that you walked on water on a regular basis.”
He gave her a disgruntled look. “I told you, I’m not this guy you’re talking about.”
Yes, he was. She would have been willing to bet her soul on that.
But because she didn’t feel like getting embroiled in yet another argument with him today, she merely nodded. “Whatever you say, Fernandez.”
“Finally,” he declared. “First agreeable thing I’ve heard you say all day.”
“Then you haven’t been listening,” she countered with a grin that was far too wide.
It was time to get back to work. Nibbling on the spring roll in her hand, she walked over to the bulletin board she had so painstakingly put together after they came back to the precinct.
“What is it that these two victims have in common that got under the killer’s skin?” she asked, the question directed more to herself than to her devilishly handsome partner.
“Okay.” It was obvious he’d been giving the matter a lot of thought, as well. “They’re both retired. By other people’s accounts, they both do volunteer work of some sort, although it sounds like she apparently did more than he did.” Esteban looked over at Kari, winding up his summary. “And they’re both dead.”
Kari sighed. “Besides that.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, thinking, completely oblivious to the fact that she looked damn sensual doing it.
But Esteban wasn’t oblivious to it, despite the fact that he wanted to be.
She ran down the list of possibilities. “Maybe they both go to the same church, the same club, the same supermarket.”
The last place sounded almost too ludicrous for consideration. “And what? A clerk decided to kill them for squeezing the produce too hard?” Esteban cracked.
Kari spared him a glare as she returned to her desk, frustrated. Picking up the carton of fried rice, she dove in. She was eating without tasting her food or being fully aware that she actually was eating.
It was all part of her thinking process.
“No, but there has to be some common denominator that we’re not seeing. Slashing someone’s throat is a very particular way of killing them. Seems almost intimate. It has to mean something.”
Esteban found himself agreeing. “Whoever it is has assumed the role of judge, jury and executioner,” he speculated. When she raised a puzzled eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation, he obliged. “That’s why the killer drew the scales of justice on the first victim and left that charm in the second victim’s hand.”
“Why a charm?” she wanted to know. “He’d have to buy it and risk someone remembering him doing it.”
“Not if he got it online,” Esteban said. “There’re countless sites selling things like this.”
“Why go through the trouble of getting the charm in the first place?” she pressed, curious to see what he would come up with.
“So that he gets his point across,” Esteban insisted. “Tha
t first drawing on Reynolds wasn’t all that clear and the blood almost obliterated it. It could have easily been missed. He wants us to know he’s taking the law into his own hands and is dispensing justice because the law failed him somehow.”
She looked at him, nodding. He could actually be on to something there.
“Hey, you’re pretty good at this when you put your mind to it,” she complimented. “I’m impressed.”
He looked at her, less than thrilled. “I’m not trying to impress you, I’m trying to get this psycho off the street.”
Well, at least they were in agreement on that point, she thought. “Nevertheless, I’m impressed anyway,” she told him. “Consider it icing on the cake.”
The laugh was less than warm. Warmth came, though, when she looked into his eyes. “Icing rots your teeth,” he told her.
Kari shook her head. Roguishly good-looking or not, how was she supposed to survive this partnership? “God, but you are a downer.”
He saw the look in her eyes, saw another question all but bubbling on her lips. She was going to ask him again what had made him this way. The memory was far too painful to unearth.
“Leave it alone, Hyphen,” he warned in a low voice, “or you’ll be looking for a new partner.”
She raised her hands as if in surrender and glibly said, “Okay, this is me, leaving it alone.”
He snorted, knowing that this wasn’t the last of it. People like Kari got things in their head and kept after it no matter what. Approaching it at all different directions, all different angles, until the item finally cracked open and was theirs.
But at least he’d gotten her to drop the subject for now and that was all he was asking for. Just a few short hours of respite.
* * *
Kari debated what her next step should be. Not with the investigation—she knew what to do there—but to get to the bottom of what exactly had transformed the charismatic high school quarterback she remembered into the sullen, brooding man she’d been partnered up with.
She knew she could always go back to Brenda. But she’d already imposed on her enough. Granted that the woman was the Chief of Detectives’ daughter-in-law, which meant that she wasn’t going to get into any trouble on the force unless she killed someone. But she didn’t want to put Brenda on the spot by asking her to delve into closed files that were deemed to be secret and redacted.
Besides, she needed to save the savvy computer tech for bigger things. No, this time around she was going to have to find another venue to obtain her information.
Still chewing on the problem of Fernandez’s drastic transformation, she decided to approach the man who in her opinion had all the answers. If there was an answer to dispense, the call, one way or another, was ultimately his.
Squaring her shoulders and summoning her courage, Kari went to see the Chief of Detectives.
* * *
Brian Cavanaugh was about to finally call it a day. His wife was waiting for him at their favorite restaurant. It was his way of paying her back for putting up with all the long hours that he was on the job and away from home. But then, Lila understood.
He’d met Lila on the force years ago. Eventually, she became his partner and after almost dying in his arms when she was shot by an enraged gunman, Lila was assigned to a desk job. But even there she knew all about the demands that were made on a law enforcement officer, especially a high-ranking one.
In all the years they’d been together, he’d never once heard her complain. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t times when she was rightfully resentful of having to share him with an entire department of men and women—and usually getting the short end of the stick.
So when he saw his brother’s daughter, Kari, standing in the doorway of his office, Brian was surprised as well as somewhat impatient.
With effort he banked down the latter for the moment and said, “I’m on my way out, Kari. Is there something I can do for you?”
Talk about awful timing, she thought with dread.
“I can come back,” she volunteered.
“Is this something that I can handle quickly?” he wanted to know. He’d never liked putting things off if he could help it. He’d learned the hard way that regrets were often tied to procrastination.
“That depends on your answer,” she told him honestly, rather than giving a blanket yes so that he would feel obligated to help her, only to discover that the matter needed more time than he could accommodate.
“On my answer to what?” Brian asked as he sat down behind his desk again. He was prepared to allow her fifteen minutes, the same he would allow any other police officer who came to him. His goal ever since he’d taken on this position was to treat everyone fairly.
“What’s Detective Fernandez’s story?”
He looked at her for a long moment, trying to ascertain exactly what she meant by that. “Which part?”
She stated it as succinctly as she could. “The part that changed him from a popular high school jock who got along with everyone to the scowling, closemouthed man riding around in my car.”
Something Kari had just said caught his attention. “You knew Fernandez before you were introduced the other day?”
Before Esteban had first partnered up with her, she would have said yes immediately. Now she felt she had to qualify her answer just a little.
“I believe I did, yes. But when I knew him, he wasn’t anything like this, so it’s hard for me to be sure. And, with the investigation in full swing, I don’t have the luxury of time to find out if it is the same man.” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “It looks like him and the name’s the same, but there’s a world of difference between the two. And if it is the same man, I just want to know what happened to change him so drastically.”
Brian nodded, taking in not only her words, but the expression on her face as she said them. “And wondering about this is interfering with your work?”
Was he telling her that it wasn’t any of her business and had no place on the job? She pushed ahead anyway. “Let’s just say I’m having trouble focusing a hundred and ten percent on the case.”
“Why don’t you just ask Fernandez?” he asked. It seemed like the simplest way to go, if somewhat awkward, a situation he was all too familiar with.
“I did,” she insisted. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Then maybe you should respect his wishes.”
There was more to it than that, and she wanted her uncle to understand that this wasn’t just idle curiosity on her part. “It’s hard to tread lightly when I don’t really know what subject I’m avoiding.”
“Fair enough,” Brian conceded. He didn’t have to look into the matter and get back to her later. He already knew the man’s history. He made it a point to know the backstory for all his law enforcement officers when he dealt with them. “When he was away at college, his younger brother, Julio, died of a drug overdose. His stepfather was so grief-stricken, he hunted the drug dealer down and shot him. The dealer’s boss retaliated by killing Fernandez’s mother. His stepfather was sent to prison.
“Esteban felt entirely helpless. The only way he could cope with what had happened was to go deep underground to bring the cartel down. But a week ago, as you know, his cover was blown so we had to pull him out. That didn’t sit too well with him.”
“That part I knew. The rest of it—” She blew out a long breath, shaking her head. “Wow. That seems like too much for one person to handle.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’m surprised that he didn’t just come apart at the seams.” He looked at her with a very intuitive expression on his face. “If anyone can help him come around, you can.”
She doubted it, despite the fact that the compliment felt good. “I think you have entirely too much faith in me, sir.”
“
I don’t,” Brian countered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet a beautiful woman for dinner before she gets tired of waiting for me and goes home.”
Kari quickly vacated her seat. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Chief,” she said, walking out with him.
“Anytime, Kari. Anytime.”
She felt he meant it. Backup, she thought, was a wonderful thing.
* * *
“What’s going on with you, Pop?” Andrew Cavanaugh asked his father as he came out to the patio carrying two bottles of chilled beer. He handed one to his father, then took a seat next to him. The teak rocker creaked a little as he sank down. Andrew made a mental note to oil the hinges with silicone later.
Shamus cocked a puzzled brow as he regarded his oldest son. Taking a long swig from the bottle first, he asked, “What d’you mean ‘what’s going on?’”
The question was just a little too innocent, his father’s attitude just a wee bit too defensive. He was right, Andrew thought. Something was up.
“You look a little off your game, Dad,” he told him, then took a guess at the cause. “The security business not exactly living up to your expectations? Maybe a little too tame for you?”
Shamus laughed as he studied the condensation on the side of the bottle. “I lived in a retirement community in Boca Raton for eight years, Andy. Anything’s more exciting than that.”
They’d take it slow, Andrew determined. His father never liked saying anything straight out. “Actually, I’m surprised you waited that long to strike out of that place.” Although, he had to admit that by the end of the seventh year, it looked as if his father had turned over a new leaf and decided that the quiet life was more to his liking.
“‘Strike out?’ Hell, boy, I ran away from there.” He grinned, pleased with himself and the action he’d taken in that respect. “Far as I know, those people who ran the place are still looking for me.”
If that was the case, then he would have already received a call from the woman who oversaw the community, asking if he’d seen his father. He had a feeling that the people in charge had breathed a sigh of relief when Shamus had left.
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