Charley could feel it again, could feel her throat threatening to close off, clogged with tears again. She did her best to shake off the sensation, occupying her mind with the details of the case and praying that they would, somehow, lead them to Matt’s killer.
“What do you think the note meant?” she asked Declan abruptly.
Just at that moment, the elevator arrived. Declan waited for her to get in first, then followed on behind her. Reaching around her, he pressed for the floor they needed.
“What note?” he asked her.
She blew out an impatient breath. Was she paired with a detective who didn’t pay attention? “The one that was stapled to his chest.” It was hard for her even to mention that without wincing in empathy—even though she knew Matt hadn’t been alive at that point and wouldn’t have felt the sharp ends of the staples sinking into his flesh like tiny shark teeth. “Saying that this was just the beginning,” she prompted further.
“Looks to me like we still have the same two choices—it’s either a serial killer, boasting, which means we’ve got one hell of a bumpy road ahead—or the killer is trying to throw us off by making us believe Holt was just part of a larger whole.” He regarded her for a moment. “You wouldn’t know if Holt had been part of a task force, or was with a group of people who fancied themselves in charge or responsible?”
It sounded scattered and he knew it, but he was throwing everything he could come up with out there, trying to make something stick, something that could be vaguely connected to a motive.
But she shook her head.
“You don’t know, or he wasn’t?” he asked since what she meant wasn’t clear to him.
“He wasn’t—unless he was keeping it a secret from me,” she said.
“Why would he do that?” he asked, sensing again that the relationship between Charley and the dead officer was a lot deeper than Charley was letting on.
They arrived at Declan’s floor and got out.
“The only thing he belonged to was the police force,” Charley said simply. “He wasn’t a joiner.”
There were joiners, and then there were joiners. “He didn’t belong to any clubs, or organization, or church groups?”
“Nothing,” she said in response to the first two things he’d mentioned, “and he wasn’t a churchgoer,” she added, addressing the third item. “Said if he ever walked in on a service, the roof would undoubtedly collapse and he was actually doing a public service by keeping away.”
Declan was about to ask her just how close she and the dead man had been because from where he was standing, it sounded as if they were very close. But upon reflection, all he would probably get out of asking her that would be a denial.
So he kept his peace for now, biding his time.
She had her own theory, such as it was. “Could be someone just hates cops in general and just happened to single Holt out, figuring he would make an easy start,” she guessed, remembering the shattered glass on the floor. Had there been lipstick on the corner of the rim and she’d just missed it? Was there something she was overlooking? Maybe, in an effort to forget about Melissa, he’d brought home a woman he’d picked up at a bar and she—Charley stopped abruptly. She was just grasping at straws now.
“In Holt’s own home?” Declan asked her incredulously.
Charley shrugged, searching for a plausible explanation that didn’t give her away at the same time. “He either knew his killer and let them in. Or...”
“Or...?” Declan prodded, ready for just about anything to come out of her mouth.
“Or the killer followed him home from a bar,” she finally suggested.
Declan inclined his head, mulling over what she’d said. “It’s possible.”
Suddenly, the air was filled with the instrumental theme song of an action series from the late 1970s, early ’80s. Declan’s cell phone was ringing, trying to gain his attention—as if that theme song could be ignored.
“Catchy,” Charley commented as the detective took his phone out.
He had a reason for programming what he had into his phone. “This way I know it’s my phone that’s ringing, not someone else’s,” he told her, taking his phone out.
Taking the opportunity to review a few things in her head, she gave Declan his space so he could talk to whomever was on the other end of his phone. Maybe even a girlfriend, calling to find out if she could expect him over tonight.
Girlfriend.
What if Matt had come home with someone from a bar? she wondered. If that was the case, would it have been a stranger, or someone he knew? He was—had been, she corrected herself, hating the fact that she had to—a friendly enough person, but sober, he kept most people at arm’s length. He wouldn’t have invited anyone back to his house—unless he was drunk and not thinking clearly.
Or maybe he didn’t even know someone had followed him home and he had forgotten to lock the front door?
She was accustomed to Matt being careful, but alcohol changed people, made them careless, sloppy and erased their memories or replaced them with ones that had never happened.
The killer could have taken advantage of that.
But why Matt? Was it personal, or just a matter of opportunity? Was Matt just a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Or...?
Damn it, all she had were questions with absolutely no idea how to get answers to any of them right now.
You’re going to have to help me out here, Matt. Give me a clue, something to work with, she thought in frustration.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Declan returning his phone to his pocket as he turned around to face her. His expression was grim.
She braced herself. “What is it?”
“We just caught another one.”
Chapter 7
“Another one,” Charley repeated in an almost robotlike tone as comprehension of what the words meant eluded her—or maybe she just didn’t want to let it in. “Another what?” she asked him.
“Body,” Declan said. “We just caught another body.”
There was only one reason they’d be given a second murder so quickly on top of the one they were investigating, and yet, it just didn’t seem possible.
“And it’s connected to Holt’s murder?” she asked, a doubtful note entering her voice.
At this point, she was trying to figure out who could have hated her brother enough to kill him, and now, if what Declan was saying was true, it didn’t have to involve anything personal.
Still, the idea that Matt’s murder and the murder of this latest victim were somehow connected didn’t seem quite right to her.
Declan nodded grimly. “The killer had the same M.O.”
“You’re kidding.” The words escaped her lips quickly.
A half smile curved the corner of one side of Declan’s mouth. Despite the gravity of the situation and everything they’d had to deal with today, there was something almost boyishly appealing about the way he looked. Charley was annoyed with herself for noticing. Matt was dead and she was noticing a boyish smile. What was the matter with her?
“Some people think I’m irreverent and don’t take things seriously enough, but I never kid when it comes to murder,” he told her.
Charley pressed her lips together as she nodded, trying to take it all in and having trouble absorbing the information at the same time. “By ‘same M.O.’ you mean there was a note stapled to this victim’s chest, too?”
Declan drew in a long breath before answering her. “Yes, and he was killed with a close-range, single shot to the chest. But there’s more.”
“What kind of more?” Charley asked warily, trying to brace herself without knowing against what.
“The victim was another cop,” he told her grimly.
“Oh, God.” That was going to shake everyone in the police department, not to mention every relative of a law-enforcement agent, right down to their core. “So, you think that someone out there is deliberately targeting cops?”
Declan hated saying it, but there was no use in burying his head in the sand. It wasn’t going to help catch the killer any faster, wasn’t going to stop the killings, either. He’d make book on it. “Looks like that to me,” he said.
Charley nodded her head grimly. “Then, barring a weird coincidence—” and she really didn’t believe in those “—it looks like we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”
“That would be my call.” Declan’s statement was completely devoid of emotion.
“How can you be that calm?” she demanded. What was he made of, ice?
When he turned his eyes in her direction, Charley could almost feel his eyes boring right through her. “Who says I’m calm?”
Maybe there’d been a hint of something else in his voice as well, she reconsidered. Still. “You certainly sound calm.”
“Because yelling and screaming isn’t going to solve the case any faster or accomplish one damn thing. If it did, I’d be the first one screaming my head off.”
Declan looked at her thoughtfully and she could see that he was weighing the pros and cons of an issue. Her instinct told her to leave it alone, that maybe it was better not to poke a beehive with a stick, but she had never been one to ignore what was right in front of her. Never been one to let sleeping dogs lie.
“What else is on your mind?” Charley asked, prodding him.
“What makes you think there’s something else on my mind?” Declan asked her innocently. “For all you know, I could be reviewing baseball stats.”
“Could be,” she allowed as they rushed outside to his car, “but you’re not. C’mon, out with it.” Even as she coaxed, she braced herself, knowing that whatever was on Declan’s mind, it probably had to do with her. Otherwise, he would have just said it straight out, wouldn’t he?
Declan stopped before his car and looked at her for a long, thoughtful moment. “If you want to sit this out, you can.”
She deliberately got into the car. He had to take her along, she wasn’t about to be kicked to the curb now. “Sit what out? I wasn’t aware that we were dancing.”
“Sit out getting involved with whatever this is turning into. It’s not just a simple murder anymore and I’m thinking that right about now, you probably feel you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”
Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him. “Well, if you had put any money on that supposition, you would have lost it. Don’t worry about my chewing,” she said, tossing his metaphor right back at him. “I can ‘chew’ just fine. And for the record,” she continued, her smile vanishing, “just because I haven’t worked a homicide—or homicides—before doesn’t mean I can’t. A decent detective is a decent detective, no matter what, and I don’t have tunnel vision, I don’t know how to do just one thing and nothing else.” Finished, she asked, “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” he replied, starting up the engine, “let’s get going.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” she told him with a grim cheerfulness.
* * *
Victim number two turned out to be an eighteen-year veteran of the Aurora Police Department, a police officer just like her brother.
Officer Gerald Fitzpatrick enjoyed what he did and had no desire to take on the extra headaches that went along with becoming a detective. Being a patrolman suited him to a T. Of medium height and trim build, Fitzpatrick had been shot while still in uniform. He had put in extra hours in order to address a local elementary school assembly. Fitzpatrick had been one of the first to volunteer when the mayor had pushed for a program where police officers came to local schools and educated students of all ages about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.
Widowed and childless, Fitzpatrick had married again five years ago and was the father of a three-year-old son he doted on.
Because they were in charge of the investigation, it was up to either Charley or him to break the news to Officer Fitzpatrick’s wife.
“You can sit this out if you want,” Declan told her as they pulled up in front of the late officer’s modest one-story house.
“Why do you keep trying to get rid of me?” Charley asked. He was probably trying to be protective, but she didn’t want to be protected, she wanted to solve this damn case and hanging back on the sidelines wasn’t going to do it. “I’m not playing at being a detective, Cavanaugh, I am one. That means taking on the bad as well as the good.” If there was any good to be found in all this, she thought grimly. “Besides, you look as if you could use the moral support.”
“I do?” Declan angled the rearview mirror down so that he could get a look at his face. “I don’t see anything different,” he said, straightening out the mirror again.
“It’s more like your aura, not your face,” she told him.
The laugh that rose to his lips was dry and it didn’t immediately call humor to mind. “I had no idea I had an aura.”
“You do,” she stated matter-of-factly, then added, “Everyone does,” just in case Declan thought she was trying to do something inane, like flirt with him.
Aura, huh? Did that mean she was one of those “new age” types who was into herbal tea, and vibes and who knew what all else? He had no time for that kind of nonsense. “I’ll take your word for it.” He looked out to the door. Right now, whoever was behind that door was happy and he was about to say something that was going to change all that. It was a hell of a responsibility, being the one to ruin someone’s world, he couldn’t help thinking. “Okay—” he opened his door “—let’s get this over with.”
But as he began to get out of the vehicle, Declan felt her hand on his arm, holding him back. When he looked at Charley in question, she said, “I can do this for you if you’d rather.”
Why would she want to? “You have a desire to have someone remember that it was you who ruined the rest of her life?” he asked.
“You’re not responsible for ruining her life,” she argued. “You didn’t kill her husband.”
“But she’ll remember that I’m the one who first told her about it.” With that, Declan drew his arm away and got out.
Charley got out at the same time and quickly matched his steps, accompanying him to the front of the house.
The moment she opened the door and saw the two detectives standing on her doorstep, their IDs opened and held out for her perusal, the smile vanished from her lips and Rita Fitzpatrick’s face turned pale. Her dark eyes darted from one detective to the other and she asked in a hushed, frightened whisper, “Is it bad?”
There was no way to sugarcoat this. “I’m afraid so,” Declan told her.
Charley caught hold of the woman as her knees buckled. Declan moved in quickly, taking the bulk of the woman’s weight. The next moment, he’d swept her up into his arms. Charley pushed open the door so that he could carry the woman into her house.
He saw the sofa and made his way over to it.
“I’m all right,” the woman sobbed weakly as Declan gently set her down. Conscious, she was obviously struggling to rally. “He’s not coming home?” she asked pitifully.
“I’m afraid not,” Declan told her. “He was shot leaving a middle school. He’d given a talk there earlier.” The patrolmen who had been first on the scene had found nothing to help identify Fitzpatrick’s killer. Neither had the one so-called witness who was still at the school, Donna Miller, a teacher who taught eighth-grade science whose husband was a cop. She was the one who had called the police, discovering the dead officer when she went to get her car.
A weak smile struggled to appear and then faded as the officer’s widow nodded. “He liked working with kids, liked the idea o
f making a difference in their lives. He was the first one to sign up when the mayor came up with that program,” she said proudly. “He always stayed until the last kid was gone, in case one of them wanted to ask a question and was too embarrassed to do it in front of the others.”
That would explain why the school was empty when he was killed, Declan thought. “Sounds like a good man,” he told the officer’s widow. “I have to ask, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”
She looked up at him, confused.
“Did your husband have any enemies?” Declan watched her face as he waited for an answer.
“Enemies?” she repeated as if it was a foreign word she couldn’t understand at first. “No. Everyone loved Gerry,” she murmured, and then her face clouded over again as anxiety entered her eyes. “What am I going to tell our son? Michael’s only three.”
“You tell him that his dad was a very brave man who always made a difference in the lives of the people he came in contact with,” Charley said softly. Because those were the words that gave her comfort about losing Matt, if any actually could.
“Is there anyone we can call for you?” Declan asked the woman gently. “Mother? Father? Sibling? Maybe a friend?”
Numb, Rita nodded. “My sister,” she said hoarsely. She began to recite her sister’s phone number, then stopped midway, realizing she couldn’t remember the order the numbers went in.
Declan was the very soul of patience, Charley noted with surprise. “Take your time,” he told the woman. “It’ll come back to you as long as you let yourself relax.”
When the phone number did pop up, intact, in her head the next moment, Rita Fitzpatrick quickly recited it to him. Declan placed the call.
* * *
“How much practice have you had notifying next of kin that they’d lost a loved one?” Charley asked almost an hour later as they drove away from the small house encased in grief.
Cavanaugh Hero Page 7