Cavanaugh Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

  Just to be sure the deed was done.

  * * *

  The landline on her nightstand rang insistently, intruding into a hard-won slumber that had claimed Charley as well as the man sleeping beside her. What had begun as a one-time effort to comfort her had turned out to be something beyond that. Something with a little more breadth and substance than just a mutually enjoyed seduction.

  After putting in a more than full day today, going through all the surveillance tapes they had confiscated, neither Charley nor he had any desire to say good-night. So Declan had come home with her. Again. And he had made love with her. Again.

  Charley silently lectured herself not to expect this to turn into a regular pattern. She knew better than that. Thought she knew him better than that. But while it was happening, she intended to enjoy every single second for as long as it continued.

  Disoriented for less than a second, Declan, not Charley, sat up and reached for the phone, picking the receiver up by the third ring and placing it to his ear before his eyes were fully focused on anything.

  And when they were, it was on the woman in bed beside him. Charley had turned out to be one hell of a wild woman in bed—who knew?

  “Cavanaugh,” he said automatically, momentarily forgetting that it was Charley’s phone, not his, that he had answered.

  “Declan?” the deep male voice asked uncertainly.

  The voice registered at the same time that a feeling of dark foreboding took hold. Something was off.

  “Shane? What are you doing, calling at this hour?” And why was his brother calling Charley?

  Charley sat up, watching Declan, feeling the same sense of restless, formless fear that he was dealing with. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut.

  “It’s Andrew,” his brother said grimly. “He’s been shot.”

  Declan felt his stomach drop down to his toes. “When?” he asked. “How? Is it serious?” He fired the questions rapidly as he looked around the room, trying to remember where his clothes were.

  “We don’t know yet. He’s in surgery. Aurora General,” Shane replied.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Declan said. Shane was still talking as he dropped the receiver back into the cradle.

  “What’s happening?” Charley asked.

  Declan was already hurrying into the clothes he’d hastily shed last night, when the only thing that mattered at the time was making love with Charley again, of revisiting the incredible exhilarating feeling being with her generated.

  Now that seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Someone shot Andrew,” he told her. “Shane said he’s in surgery. I don’t know any more than that.” But he intended to find out.

  Charley’s feet hit the ground as she grabbed for the first clothes that were handy. She was dressed half a beat after he was. She could be exceptionally quick when the need called for it.

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  He didn’t argue. There was no time for that.

  * * *

  They made it to the hospital in what amounted to record time. There was very little traffic on the road and Charley had flown through the yellow lights as well as the green ones.

  When they reached the hospital’s parking lot, it looked as if it was the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night. The lot right behind the E.R. entrance, as well as the one adjacent to it, was crammed with vehicles. Vapors of heat still hovered over the hooded engines of a large portion of them.

  Parking as best she could, she and Declan hurried out of her vintage vehicle and hurried to the E.R.’s automatic doors.

  There was no need to say anything to the receptionist on duty. The second they entered, the woman in the blue livery pointed to the doors on her left that led down the hallway.

  “Can’t miss it,” she assured them as she continued typing something into her data program.

  The second they went through the swinging doors, Declan saw what the woman meant. It looked like another one of Andrew’s get-togethers, except that everyone there seemed grim.

  A very harried-looking nurse was trying to find a way to contain the ever-growing crowd. This wasn’t her first time at the rodeo.

  “Please, people, find waiting rooms to disperse into. You’ll be notified the second the chief is out of surgery. I promise.”

  No one made a move, not wanting to be the last to receive any sort of word, good or bad, all waiting for someone else to step aside.

  Failing to get anyone to leave, the fifteen-year nursing veteran sighed, shaking her head. “You people need to get your own hospital,” she muttered under her breath, retreating into one of the side rooms that lined the hallway.

  Declan saw his father and Rose, Andrew’s wife, at the same time. Undecided for a moment who to speak to, he approached his father. He didn’t want to say anything that might possibly upset the chief’s wife any more than she already had to be.

  “Dad?” Declan said the second he and Charley were within hearing range. “How is he?”

  Sean shook his head. “They won’t tell us. All they said was that he was still breathing.”

  Well, at least that was good, Charley thought. “What happened?” she asked.

  “We think the cop killer ambushed him,” Sean answered grimly. He motioned toward someone to his left to come forward. “I’ll let the guy who saved him give you the details.”

  Declan and she turned in unison to look at the man Sean was referring to.

  Disheveled, with matted hair and a week’s growth, the aromatic man who stepped forward was the kind who faded into the background of any urban street. Here, amid the Cavanaugh family, he stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, looking every inch the homeless man he’d been portraying for the past six months.

  Only the intelligent, alert eyes gave up the persona he was projecting.

  “You’re undercover?” Declan guessed.

  The other man grinned, shaking his head. “It’s not supposed to show,” he said, knowing he’d pretty much blown his cover if anyone had been watching when he rushed to the former chief of police’s aid. “Brennan,” he said, shaking first Declan’s hand, then Charley’s.

  “Declan Cavanaugh.” Declan introduced himself, then nodded at Charley. “And that’s Detective Randolph. You want to tell us what happened?”

  “Not all that much to tell, really.” What there was he had repeated several times over already, at this point he recited the words by heart.

  Brennan went over the details of the event as succinctly as he could. When he finished, Charley realized that as horrible as this all was, it could also represent their first real break in the case.

  Excitement vibrated through her as she asked, “You saw the shooter? You saw the guy who shot the chief? Can you describe him?” she asked, her voice growing in intensity.

  Before Brennan answered, she looked at Declan and said, “We can get him together with a sketch artist and maybe we can finally start cramping this SOB’s style.” Her eyes shifted to Sean. “We’re going to get him. I can feel it.”

  “Funny thing about that,” Brennan said. “I didn’t get really close, so I could be mistaken, but from where I was, the shooter looked like a woman—at least, the shooter’s movements made me think that ‘he’ was actually a ‘she,’” the undercover agent confessed.

  Charley’s mouth dropped open as her brain connected two stray items.

  “What is it?” From his vantage point—Sean was standing directly opposite Charley—he was the first to see the startled expression cross her face.

  Maybe she was forcing this—but her gut told her she was right. “Those surveillance tapes I was reviewing yesterday, the one from the restaurant where they found the last victim in the alley, it showed that teacher from the second murder, the o
ne we previously interviewed going into the restaurant. I thought it was an odd coincidence at the time,” she confessed, “but maybe it wasn’t all that much of a coincidence. Maybe that teacher is our cop killer.”

  She knew that her sentence bordered on the ridiculous—but stranger things turned out to be true. The woman was tall, she recalled. And big boned. Strong enough, Charley thought, to be able to move the body of an average-sized man.

  “What are you talking about?” Declan asked, trying to follow her line of thinking.

  In her excitement, she realized that she was getting ahead of herself. Charley took a deep breath. She needed to slow down.

  “The second victim was found in the parking lot of a middle school, remember?” Declan nodded as she continued, doing her best not to talk too fast. “We interviewed a teacher, a Mrs. Miller who was the only one who was at the school at the time the victim was found there.” The moment she said it, things began to fall into place. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” she cried.

  “Think of what before? Charley, what the hell are you trying to say?” Declan asked.

  “Take it from the beginning, Charley,” Sean advised.

  Her enthusiasm kept tripping her up. “I think that maybe we’ve been looking at this from entirely the wrong angle.”

  “I’ll bite, what angle should we have been looking at this from?” Sean asked. They were now joined by an extremely worried-looking Brian. Sean put his arm around his younger brother and said, “He’s going to be all right, Brian. Andrew is tougher than all of us.”

  “Yeah,” Brian replied, his voice sounding exceedingly hollow. He turned toward Charley. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?”

  Charley felt decidedly strange, airing her newly formed theory before men who’d been solving crimes since before she was born, but sometimes, the obvious was easily missed.

  “That maybe the killer isn’t a former police wannabe or someone who was let go or fired in disgrace. Maybe the killer is related to someone like that. A loved one of someone who became so despondent because they either washed out or were terminated that they went off the deep end or maybe even killed themselves. And this person is looking to avenge them.”

  She of all people should have seen that this was a possibility, Charley upbraided herself. After all, she had refused to sit out the investigation because she wanted to get justice for Matt. What if the killer, in her own twisted way, wanted the same thing? What if the killer was a woman who was looking to avenge a brother, a father, a husband or a son?

  Declan realized where his partner was coming from. “We need to get back to the precinct, review the records for any former policeman or academy washout who took his own life, say in the last couple of years,” he said to his father. It was a starting point, Declan thought, growing hopeful that they were finally on the right trail. “You’ll let me know the second Uncle Andrew’s out of surgery?” He made the request of Kendra, one of his sisters, feeling that his father and uncle had enough to cope with right now.

  “Count on it,” Kendra promised.

  Nodding at her, he turned toward Charley. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “I don’t know how I missed this,” Charley said once they were in her vehicle and peeling out of the parking lot. “It seems so obvious now,” she castigated herself for the umpteenth time.

  “Nobody else thought of it, either,” Declan pointed out. The reason for that was simple. “That’s because when people think serial killer, they usually think of a male behind the spree, not a woman.”

  Charley nodded. While serial killers were predominantly men, it was irresponsible of them to rule out a woman.

  “Obviously a mistake,” Charley agreed. “Ain’t equality grand?” she murmured sarcastically, more to herself than to Declan.

  “Damn,” he muttered, annoyed with himself. In his hurry to get to the hospital as fast as possible, it was as if he’d left his brain behind.

  “What’s wrong?” Charley asked, sparing him a quick glance.

  “I should have gotten that guy’s cell phone number—Brennan,” he interjected in case she didn’t know who he was talking about, “so we could send him a photo of that teacher you found on the surveillance tape, see if maybe he recognizes her from the shooting.” As he said it, Declan saw the corner of her mouth curving. Had he missed something else? “What?”

  “I already got his number.” She’d obtained it as Declan was asking his sister to notify him when his uncle came out of surgery.

  Declan could only laugh shortly. “Of course you did.” He grinned his approval. “You’re turning out to be one hell of an asset, Charley.”

  “Is that what I am,” she said innocently, “an asset?”

  She was a hell of a lot more than that, he was beginning to realize. Funny how you could go through life, not realizing that something was missing until you found yourself face-to-face with it, wondering how you’d managed to go all this time without it.

  Declan didn’t intend to be without it any longer if he could help it. But now wasn’t the time to discuss what was on his mind. They’d talk once this case was safely resolved.

  “We’ll talk about that later, after we get this shooter,” he promised.

  “Whatever you say,” Charley replied. There was nothing more important to her than getting Matt’s killer—and nothing more important to him and the rest of his family, she knew, than getting the person—male or female—who’d almost succeeded in wiping out the Cavanaughs’ acknowledged patriarch.

  * * *

  “Hey, is it true?” Bobby Yu asked, hurrying over to them the moment he and Charley walked into the squad room. The tall, buff Chinese-American detective who prided himself on his martial arts proficiency, something he had been practicing since his eighth birthday, had been working with one eye on the door, waiting for Declan to appear and fill him and the others in on what was going on. Rumors were bouncing around the squad rooms like energized rubber balls.

  Like them, Bobby had come in to get an early start working the case. Unlike them, he, Sanchez and Callaghan hadn’t been roused in the middle of the night with an emergency phone call.

  He appeared genuinely concerned as he asked, “Did the cop killer get the former chief of police?”

  “The chief’s been shot,” Declan confirmed. “But when we left the hospital, he was in surgery.”

  “Then he’s alive?” Sanchez asked, hope entering his eyes.

  The detective quickly made the sign of the cross the way his mother had taught him to do when he was a very little boy. A hardened detective, Sanchez still took comfort and strength from the simple gesture.

  “He was when we left the hospital.” With Sanchez and Callaghan joining them, Declan addressed all three men. “Guys, we need to look at those surveillance tapes again, and comb through newspaper stories one more time.”

  “What’d we miss?” Sanchez asked.

  Declan looked at the man as he answered, “That the killer might be a woman.”

  Callaghan’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  “I never kid about murder,” Declan answered grimly, then paused for a moment, glancing in Charley’s direction. “It was Charley’s idea,” he told them, willingly giving credit where it was due. Then he gave them the best news so far. “There was a witness to the chief’s shooting, so maybe we’ll finally get this SOB whoever he or she really is.”

  And then he glanced at Charley. His thinking was out of sync, he realized as he said, “We need to get to the crime scene.”

  Having this hit so close to home had made him temporarily forget about protocol and the chain of events. He was putting last things first and vice versa.

  “I wonder if they’ve sent out a CSI unit yet to where Andrew was ambushed?” Yu posed the question to Charley.

 
“I’ll bet you breakfast-to-go that they have,” Charley replied, hurrying to catch up to Declan. She hadn’t realized until now how really long his legs were. “And I bet your father sent that Brennan guy back out there to work with the unit, since Brennan was there to begin with and saw it all go down.”

  “No bet,” Declan told her, never breaking stride as he made his way to the elevator.

  She was practically jogging now, but she wasn’t about to complain. Declan had had a scare tonight and she completely sympathized with him. “What’s the matter, Cavanaugh, don’t like losing?”

  Declan laughed as he hit the down button. “No, I don’t,” he admitted. “You’ve hit the nail right on the head, Randolph.”

  In more ways than one, he added silently as he slanted a quick glance in her direction.

  And once this was all behind them, he was going to tell her about all those ways. And do something about it.

  Chapter 17

  The CSI unit was already on the scene when she and Declan arrived, just as Charley had predicted. And Brennan was there, apparently waiting for them before he got started.

  “You want to walk us through it?” Declan requested.

  “Sure,” Brennan responded, nodding a silent acknowledgment toward Charley. “That’s why I’m here—but my part in this isn’t going to take up much time. I was over there,” he told them, pointing to the alley that had, until last night, practically been his home away from home. The undercover agent had what appeared to be the top portion of a twin mattress set that had seen better decades serving as his makeshift bed. His past couple of meals had come from the trash cans that were located aromatically close by.

  Looking the area over, Charley shivered involuntarily. “No offense, but I don’t think I’m looking to relocate to your part of town soon.”

  Brennan laughed. “None taken. And since I was most likely recorded rescuing the chief, I’m probably going to be forced to relocate myself.” He shook his head, looking around the alley. “Can’t say I’m really going to miss this.”

  “Back up,” Declan said. The DEA agent looked at him questioningly. Both Declan and Charley said the key word that had caught their attention at the same time. “Recorded?”