* * *
Andrew Cavanaugh pushed himself away from the all-in-one computer in his office. When he had been the chief of police, before he’d retired early to raise his five children and search for his missing wife, computers were just coming into their own as a speedy way to get reports out. They even facilitated tracking fugitives—as long as nothing of a complex nature was involved. The information didn’t link up to databases from other states. There were a great many gaps that needed bridging.
In less than ten years, it appeared as if the computer—and especially its research component, the internet—had grown exponentially until it seemed as if it was invading every aspect of absolutely everything. And while it made law enforcement’s job easier on the one hand, on the other, it created a lot of the problems that law enforcement was challenged to work with and try to eliminate.
But tonight he had managed to do what he had been trying to do ever since his father, Shamus, had come to him with a problem wrapped in a request. Shamus wanted to find his long-lost younger brother, the child his father had taken off with to parts unknown right after his parents had divorced.
If this was right, Andrew thought, looking at the list of names his discovery had helped him compile, his father’s young sibling, Murdoch, had given birth to a very active branch of the family.
There really were enough Cavanaughs to populate a small town, he mused. Maybe even a large one. Not only that, but the whole bunch of them had been practically under his nose the whole time, working at, of all things, a police force located only one city removed from Aurora.
Grinning to himself, he picked up the phone and called his father.
The phone, a landline, was picked up on the other end just before the fourth ring.
“You know what time it is?” a less-than-cheerful voice on the other end of the line demanded.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. As I recall it, you taught me how to tell time when I was about three,” Andrew answered.
The man on the other end snorted, clearly disgruntled. “Didn’t I teach you better than to make crank calls in the middle of the night?” Shamus asked, sounding definitely cranky.
“Ten o’clock is hardly the middle of the night, Dad,” Andrew pointed out.
“Depends on who you are and how long you’ve been up,” Shamus countered.
“You want me to call back tomorrow?” Andrew offered, adding, “Maybe when you’re more human and a lot more receptive?”
But Shamus surprised him by not letting him hang up so quickly. “You might as well tell me what’s got you so excited you can’t see straight. Seeing as how you got me up and all.”
Andrew could almost see his father dragging his hand through his shaggy white mane, leaving it going every which way, like a man who had battled the wind and lost.
“What’s so all-fired important that it couldn’t wait until morning?” Shamus asked.
“You remember you asked me to look into seeing if I could track down your younger brother for you?”
“Murdoch,” Shamus supplied the name, but kept a tight rein on his emotions, afraid of getting his hopes up and getting too caught up in what was going on this evening.
“That’s the one,” Andrew acknowledged.
“Hell yes, I remember. I’m not senile, boy. I remember. What about it?” he asked.
Andrew felt justifiably proud of himself. It meant, among other things, that he had a career back if he wanted it. He was still a pretty decent detective. “Well, I did it.”
“You did what?” Shamus asked, confused. “Tried to track him down?”
“No, I tracked him down,” Andrew corrected. When there was no reaction, he worded his accomplishment a different way. “I found him, Dad. Or at least I found his family,” he amended, knowing that this was a bittersweet call with bad news laced through the good, because while he had managed to locate his uncle Murdoch’s last known place of residence, that place turned out to be a cemetery. “Dad? You there?”
“Where else would I be?” the hoarse voice asked. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Murdoch’s dead.” The last part wasn’t a question but rather a statement of fact Shamus knew he was going to have to accept.
“I’m afraid so,” Andrew told him, but he quickly followed up with the good news. “But his family isn’t. Seems that Uncle Murdoch was a very prolific man.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shamus challenged, finding himself protective of the brother he hadn’t seen in close to seventy years.
“It means that your list of Christmas gifts to your nieces and nephews has just tripled from what I can see.”
Shamus’s impatience came bursting through the line. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”
“Uncle Murdoch had four kids—two sons, two daughters—who had a bunch of kids of their own. It’s like a dynasty, Dad. You’ve got a whole lot of new people to meet.”
“I’ve gotta see this for myself, boy,” Shamus said. Andrew could hear the mounting excitement in his father’s voice. “Hang on, I’ll be right over.”
And then the line went dead, just like that. It was his father’s usual way of dealing with a telephone conversation. When he’d had enough or was finished, he just hung up.
Andrew smiled to himself. It looked like all of a sudden, ten o’clock wasn’t the middle of the night anymore.
Chapter 9
The persistent buzzing noise finally penetrated the layers of disorientation that had wrapped themselves around her head. The low buzzing sound, coming from her back pocket, went off three times, then stopped only to begin again.
Her ears heard the pulsing noise, but it wasn’t until her brain absorbed it that she realized someone was calling her cell phone.
Forcing open her eyelids—each of which felt as if it had been glued into place and weighed twenty pounds—Charley took in her surroundings.
She wasn’t in her bedroom.
Slowly it came back to her. Because of all that had happened today, she hadn’t been able to fall sleep. But she was a stickler about avoiding any sleep aids to help usher her into a more relaxed state. So rather than pop some over-the-counter medication into her mouth, she had heated up a can of soup in the microwave and sacked out on the sofa, watching reruns of a popular procedural program.
Charley knew most of the episodes well enough to recite large portions of the dialogue verbatim, but there was something comforting about that, like visiting an old friend who could be counted on to come through each and every time they were needed.
Somewhere around 1:00 a.m. she’d fallen asleep.
When she opened her eyes again, there was a bright and all-too-chipper-looking news anchor on her TV making inane small talk with the traffic commentator about a possible trip to Las Vegas next weekend.
Unable to withstand such an onslaught of pure syrup so early in her morning, Charley felt around for the remote control. When she couldn’t locate it, she stumbled off the couch and turned the set off manually.
On her way from the couch to the forty-inch set her cell phone began its buzzing routine for the umpteenth time. With a sigh, she fished it out of her pocket just as it began its third vibration.
“Hello?” she breathed, her voice sounding lower and coated with the remnants of sleep first thing in the morning.
“Charley?” the male voice asked uncertainly on the other end.
“Yeah.” The anchor and the commentator disappeared midword as she jabbed the power button on the side of the set. There was a brief sigh of relief as she dragged her hand through her hair, trying to pull herself and the immediate world around her together.
“Finally. One more go-round and I was going to have you reported as missing.”
It was Declan.
Her new partner.
Tempor
arily.
It was coming back to her in snatches. Charley tried to focus on the watch on her wrist but her eyes hadn’t fully woken up yet. Because of the program she’d just turned off, she assumed it wasn’t seven o’clock yet. The brigade of frothy, so-called informative morning “news” programs hadn’t begun yet.
“Just how heavy a sleeper are you?” Declan asked.
“Cut me some slack, Cavanaugh,” she complained. “I didn’t fall asleep until after one. What’s so important that you felt you had to get in touch with me at the crack of dawn?” Charley managed to stifle a yawn at the last minute.
He didn’t answer her question, but he did correct her. “Dawn cracked a while ago.”
“Sorry I missed it,” she murmured. Barefoot, Charley began to head over to the kitchen when she heard the doorbell ring. According to her reflection in the mirror, she was frowning.
Now what?
“Hold on a minute,” she told Declan, banking down a wave of impatience. “There’s someone at the door.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s me.”
The last two words were said to her face as she pulled open the front door.
“Don’t you even ask who it is?” Declan asked, his tone accusatory.
Blocking his way into her house, Charley turned her face up to his and asked brightly, “Who is it?”
“Very funny.” Circumventing her, Declan made his way into the living room. Once in, he turned around and gave her appearance a once-over. Her clothes looked familiar. “Isn’t that what you were wearing yesterday?”
“Is that why you came over?” What was he doing here, anyway? She didn’t remember asking him to pick her up in the morning. “To critique my clothes?”
“I wanted to make sure we were color coordinated,” he cracked, gesturing at her clothes. The humor faded as he firmly told her the reason for his appearance on her doorstep. “And to tell you that there’s been another murder.”
Any residual sleep completely evaporated the moment she heard the last sentence.
Holding her breath, she asked in a low voice, “Another patrolman?”
He shook his head. “The killer just broadened his base. This one just made detective.”
Maybe the killer hadn’t broadened his base so much as he’d been uninformed. “How long ago did this latest victim make detective?”
Declan thought for a minute. “I think his C.O. said it just happened a month ago.” He didn’t see why that was important—which wasn’t to say that it wasn’t, he realized. “Why?”
But she was clearly in her own world, weighing things, juggling timelines. “A month ago,” she repeated. And then her eyes darted up to connect with Declan’s. “The shooter might not have known about the promotion.”
He was willing to concede that part of it. But where was she going with this? “So, what are you saying, exactly?”
She picked out what was probably the best theory, though far from the only one. “That maybe our shooter is a cop wannabe who washed out for one reason or another, or maybe flunked the interview, and he holds these policemen responsible for being turned away for some reason. If he wanted to join badly enough, in his mind he’s blaming these men for destroying his dream and now he’s getting his revenge.”
“In other words, he’s a nut-job,” Declan summed up.
“I think we’ve already established that part of it,” she said.
“We need to see if these men are connected in any way, then.” He mapped out their next course of action. And then he smiled his approval. She was turning out to be pretty good at this. “Not bad, Charley, not bad at all.”
“Gee, thanks, coach,” she responded, deliberately pasting on a wide grin.
Okay, maybe he’d sounded a little patronizing, Declan realized, but he hadn’t meant anything by it. He was going to say as much, then decided that it was better to drop the subject. There was no telling where that could lead and right now, her feelings and his inability to communicate correctly weren’t what was important. They needed to catch this killer.
He scrutinized Charley for a long moment, assessing her condition. She still looked about half-asleep. He needed her fully awake.
His first inclination when he’d heard about the third murder was just to take off and investigate it on his own, but he didn’t want her to think he was shutting her out. When he couldn’t get her on the phone, he came in person to see what was going on.
Now that he was here, he wasn’t leaving without her.
“How long is it going to take for you to get ready?” he asked. Before she could answer, he had another question for her. “You think you could make it fast?”
Charley banked down the urge to give him a flippant answer. After all, the man had stopped by for her rather than handling the investigation alone so she supposed she owed him for that.
“What’s your definition of fast?” she asked.
For some reason, the word fast produced an image of the two of them, their bodies entwined. It flashed through his head, coming like a bolt out of nowhere. His subconscious working overtime, he supposed.
“We’ll talk about that sometime,” he told her with a grin.
It was a remark she felt was best left untouched. Turning on her heel, she mumbled something about being right down, and then she hurried away up the stairs.
Charley showered and got dressed in what amounted to record time, even for her—and she had never been one to dawdle. When she came downstairs less than fifteen minutes later, it was to the sound of the coffeemaker going through its paces.
The rich aroma found her first.
She stopped on the bottom step, taking a deep breath, relishing the scent.
“Are you making coffee?” she asked as she hurried into the kitchen.
She was still holding her shoes in her hand. It took Charley a minute to get those on and she didn’t want to unnecessarily waste any time. What she did want was to sample the coffee in hopes that it tasted half as good as it smelled.
Declan turned from the coffeemaker and looked at her, clearly surprised that she was down here rather than still in her bathroom, getting ready.
“You’re finished?” he marveled, even though he could see that she was.
“Yes, why?” Putting her shoes down on the floor, she stepped into them, then secured the straps. “You look surprised.”
“I am,” he freely admitted. He knew a lot of women and had had occasion to watch most of them get ready in the morning. To his recollection, not a one could even come close to matching Charley’s time, much less beating it. “Most of the women I know take around forty-five minutes to get ready—except for my sisters, I guess.”
All three were detectives on the force and he’d always thought of them as exceptionally quick. Not a one of them held a candle to Charley—not that he was going to mention anything of the kind to any of them. Women reacted unpredictably when they thought you were comparing them—even sisters, he’d discovered.
He was staring at her hair, Charley realized. Why? “What’s the matter?” she asked, fingering the ends of her hair. “Did I leave some of the shampoo in?”
“No,” he told her. “I’m just noticing that your hair’s a little damp in places.”
And that it curled appealing along her hairline and the nape of her neck, he added silently. The next second, he was upbraiding himself because that had absolutely nothing to do with finding their cop killer which was his single and only priority at the moment.
“Hair dryer’s on its way out,” she explained, dismissing the topic with a preoccupied shrug. “Why did you make me coffee?” Declan still hadn’t answered that question.
“I thought it was the least I could do, seeing as how I woke you up.”
Was that it, or was there more to it? You
’re making too big a deal out of a cup of coffee, idiot, she admonished herself.
Outwardly, she was fairly certain she looked casual about it as she shrugged. “You didn’t have to. We could have stopped to get some on our way to the crime scene.” She turned her attention to the only thing that was supposed to matter. “Are we sure it’s the same guy?”
Declan was unshakable in this. “It’s the same guy. Same M.O.”
“He left a note?” If it was the same killer, he would have left a note.
When Declan nodded, she felt a slight chill descending over her heart. She hated this part of it even as she acknowledged that it might help in capturing the man sooner than later.
“What did the note say?”
He knew the short message by heart. “You guys can’t catch a cold,” he recited.
Charley laughed shortly. “Pretty cocky,” she assessed.
Declan nodded. “That’s my take on it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” she pressed, wanting to find out why Declan didn’t seem happier about the turn of events than he was.
“And why do you think that’s good?” he asked her, though he knew the answer. He just liked to listen to her.
“If he’s cocky, that means he thinks he’s better, smarter than the rest of us. Too much confidence never works out well for the perpetrator. It’s just a matter of time before he does something stupid, makes a careless mistake and slips up. And when he does—we’ve got him,” she said with relish as she anticipated putting an end to this monster’s killing spree.
Declan handed her her prize. The steaming mug of coffee, topped off with a shot of creamer. “You think pretty well on your feet for someone who hasn’t been up all that long.”
She took the mug from him using both hands and drank almost half the contents in one long pull.
God, that felt good. She was almost human instead of a pile of free-floating electrons and neutrons, searching for a home, for somewhere to set up housekeeping.
“Maybe you inspire me,” she said in response to the compliment he’d given her.
Cavanaugh Hero Page 9