“And why are you here in my exam room, Ms. Kowalski?” And then a look of horror passed over Grady’s face as an answer occurred to him. “The deceased wasn’t a loved one, was she? Because if she was, I am so sorry that I—”
“She wasn’t,” Nik quickly assured him, stopping any apology that might have been on the tip of the man’s tongue. “The victim is part of a case that Finn and I are working on together.”
She heard Finn clear his throat, most likely registering his displeasure at her choice of words, she thought, but she didn’t look his way. Her attention was focused on Grady.
Interest was very evident in the medical examiner’s craggy features as he looked at her.
“‘Finn,’ is it now?” he asked with amusement as he turned toward the detective.
“Can we get on with this, Doc?” Finn requested tersely. “You said you did a preliminary autopsy on the victim. What did you find?”
It was obvious that the medical examiner would have rather focused on the detective’s companion, but he nodded. “Okay, we’ll do it your way.” He crossed over to the table that still had the body on it. “Cause of death was a stab wound to the heart. She bled out, although there were a few other stabs wounds to her chest that were shallower than the one that actually killed her. Time of death was between midnight and two. From what I can tell, she put up a struggle—all her nails are broken but, as you can see, she was obviously overpowered.” He looked up at them, glancing from Finn to Nik. “Anything else?”
“Are there any signs that she was sexually assaulted?” Nik asked. She wanted a clearer picture of the type of person they were dealing with. If the person who had killed the victim had also violated her, then they would turn their attention to the sex offenders who were currently at large.
“No, if that’s any consolation. This appeared to be a thrill kill,” Grady told them. And then the medical examiner said, “I’ve got a question.”
“Go ahead,” Finn told him.
Grady turned toward Nik. “Did you intentionally leave your ring at home,” he said, apparently very interested, “or are you single?”
Nik gave no indication that the question had caught her off guard. Instead, she smiled at the man. “I’m spoken for. But thank you for the compliment.”
He didn’t appear quite ready to back off just yet. “Sure I can’t change your mind?” the medical examiner asked hopefully.
Nik let him down gently as she shook her head. “No, sorry.”
Grady shrugged his wide shoulders, taking the disappointment in stride. “Ah, well, can’t blame a guy for trying. Oh, there’s one more thing,” he said, suddenly remembering something as he looked at Finn. “Her blood is a match for the blood that was found in the trunk of the chief’s father’s car.”
That stopped both Finn and Nik in their tracks. “That explains the carjacking,” Nik cried.
“How do you figure that?” Finn asked.
“The killer needed a car to transport the body to the Dumpster. That obviously wasn’t where he had killed her,” she reminded Finn.
He didn’t want to admit it, but that impressed him. “Good guess,” he told her.
“I like to think of it as a deduction,” she replied. Turning toward the ME, she said, “Thanks for all your help, Doctor. We’ll get out of your hair and leave you to your work.”
She walked out of the morgue leaving the medical examiner beaming, with Finn following.
“You’re married?” Finn asked, making no effort to hide the fact that he was surprised by that piece of information. They were in the elevator, on their way up to the first floor, before he decided to ask her about what she had said to Grady. The conversation with the medical examiner had been enlightening on so many levels, he thought.
“No,” Nik answered.
Okay, now he was confused. “But you just told the ME—”
“Something to spare the man’s feelings,” she explained. “The ME looked like the persistent type and I thought it would be easier if I just let him believe I was ‘taken’ instead of ‘not taken’ with him.”
“But you’re not. Taken,” he ventured, wanting to be perfectly clear on the subject.
“No,” she replied. Then her own curiosity got the better of her. This was probably the most personal the detective had gotten with her. “Does that make a difference?”
“Not to me,” Finn said, perhaps too quickly even in his own opinion. The elevator came to a stop on the first floor and they both got out. “Just trying to clear some things up, that’s all,” he added, avoiding her eyes.
The elevator doors closed behind them and the elevator car left.
“So now what?” she asked, turning toward Finn.
He looked at her, surprised. For a second, he thought the insurance investigator was asking him what was next for the two of them and then realized that she was talking about what was next with the case.
“Well, now that there appears to be a reason for the carjacking, I’m going to see if Uncle Andrew brought his father home from the hospital to let them know that Seamus’s car was taken to transport a body. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Seamus to get his version of what happened. He was drifting in and out of consciousness when I saw him. Maybe he did see who took his truck, and if he did, then I’ll get a sketch artist in with him to see if he can re-create a likeness. It’ll give me something to go on.”
Nik nodded. “That sounds good to me,” she agreed. She gestured toward the outer door. “Let’s go.”
Finn realized that she intended to go along with him. He tried to discourage her. “Look, if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”
Nope, not going to happen, she thought. He’d called her out on this and now he was stuck with her. “You won’t have to because I’ll be right there with you.”
“There’s no need to drag you around—” he began only to be cut off.
“You don’t need to drag me,” she assured him. “I can pull my own weight.” She tried to appeal to his kinder side. It had to be there somewhere, right? “Look, Detective, you saw Kim Palmer. The poor woman is teetering on the edge of a breakdown. I’ve got to be able to give her something to hold on to. Ideally, I’d like to give her her daughter to hold on to.”
Wasn’t she forgetting an important point? “A daughter who might have mugged Seamus Cavanaugh and stabbed a woman to death,” he reminded her.
“We don’t know that for sure yet,” Nik responded. “And besides, if she was involved in these horrible acts, she couldn’t have acted alone.”
He folded his arms in front of his chest, waiting to be convinced. “What makes you say that?”
Nik had met the girl briefly a few years ago. “Because she’s five foot three and maybe a hundred pounds. There is no way she could have lifted that dead woman up and tossed her into the Dumpster. That takes far more upper-body strength than Marilyn Palmer is capable of,” she explained.
“You have a point.”
Nik smiled, pleased that she’d finally convinced him. “I know.”
He scowled at her as he headed to his unmarked vehicle. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re really irritating?”
“You mean other than you?” she asked innocently.
“I didn’t say that to you,” Finn told her.
“No, not in so many words,” she agreed. “But your eyes did. Several times,” she added.
The woman had an answer for everything. “My eyes, huh? I had no idea I was so expressive.”
That was when she grinned again. “You are, but that’s okay. I won’t hold it against you.”
“Lucky me,” he retorted sarcastically.
“Well, now that you mentioned it,” she said, touching his face, “maybe you are.”
She’d had caught him off guard again, touching him like that. For just a single moment, he allo
wed himself to react to the feel of her fingertips on his skin.
But a moment later, for the sake of sanity, not to mention getting this case solved, he tamped down his reaction and silently insisted that he hadn’t reacted to this outspoken woman.
He found that denial was a hell of a lot safer.
Chapter 8
“Nice house,” Nik said as she caught up to Finn. He had pulled up into the chief’s driveway, but in the interest of leaving the man’s garage access clear, she had parked her car across the street.
Her comment had Finn looking at the house as if he hadn’t really taken notice it for a long time. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he agreed. He rang the bell.
The front door opened within less than a couple of minutes.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Andrew said as he opened the door wider. “Come on in,” he urged.
“Is your father up to talking?” Finn asked. He smiled at his aunt as Rose came into the foyer and joined them. “Because I’d really like to get his statement about what happened that night if I could. I haven’t been able to speak to him so far.”
The look on the former chief of police’s face was skeptical. “Well, Dad’s lucid but I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to get anything useful from him at the moment,” Andrew warned him.
“No recollection of the mugging?” Finn asked. “Temporary amnesia isn’t unheard of in these kinds of cases. I know I’m not telling you anything new,” he added, not wanting his uncle to think that he was talking down to him.
“It’s not amnesia so much as, well, withdrawal,” Rose said.
“Head injuries can cause that,” Finn said, doing his best to comfort the couple. “A lot of times it’s just temporary. There’s every chance that it’ll go away in time.”
“I’m afraid that it’s not so much of a head injury as it is a spirit injury,” Andrew explained.
Finn’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think I understand,” he confessed.
Nik knew exactly what the man was talking about. Sadly, she had seen this sort of thing before. “It was because he was caught by surprise and wasn’t able to defend himself, wasn’t it?”
Both Andrew and his wife turned in unison toward the young woman who had managed to hit the nail on the head as far as assessing what was wrong with Seamus.
“I’m sorry, who are you again?” Andrew asked politely. He had met a lot of people in the last few days and although he recalled this woman’s face, he wasn’t sure what her name was.
“Chief, this is Nikola Kowalski. She’s an insurance investigator,” Finn explained.
“An insurance investigator,” Andrew repeated as if each word represented a mystery to him. His father’s auto-insurance company had been notified, but he’d already spoken to someone while Seamus was still in the hospital. “I’m afraid I don’t see—”
“It’s a long story, sir,” Finn admitted, hoping that at least for now, he could skip having to go into an explanation.
Nik stepped in with a quick summation, hoping that would be enough to explain her presence. “A friend of mine is afraid her daughter is somehow involved in this. The Aurora crime-scene investigators found a partial print on the back of your father’s rearview mirror. The print appears to belong to my friend’s daughter.” She moved in a little closer as she continued explaining. “I thought if I could just ask your father to look at her picture, he might be able to identify her—or better yet, exonerate her,” she added. That was the result that she was secretly hoping for.
Andrew exchanged looks with his wife. The latter nodded, giving her consent and adding it to his.
“Well, I have my doubts, but it’s worth a try,” Andrew told the two people in his living room. “Follow me. For the time being, my father’s staying in the downstairs guest room.”
The room was just down the hall.
Andrew knocked on the door. At first there was no response, but after a couple of minutes and another knock, a barely audible voice said, “Come in.”
Andrew opened the guest-room door slowly. Looking in, Nik saw an older man sitting on the bed. The man had his back toward the door and he appeared to be staring out the window, which faced the backyard and extensive patio.
“Dad, Finn’s here,” Andrew announced. “He’d like to talk to you if you’re up to it.”
“I could come back if you’re tired, sir,” Finn offered.
The note of kindness evident in his voice surprised Nik. She found it encouraging. There was a heart inside that chest somewhere, she told herself.
Meanwhile Seamus shrugged indifferently at Finn’s offer. “Doesn’t matter,” he responded in a disinterested voice. “Come in.”
The older man sounded listless, as if all the energy had been leeched out of him, Nik thought.
Andrew looked at the two people he’d brought in. “He’s been like that ever since he regained consciousness in the hospital,” he told them. Andrew clearly looked distressed, as did his wife. “I’m afraid that he’s just not himself,” the chief confided.
The Seamus Cavanaugh everyone knew carried himself with confidence and verve, but this was a subdued, demoralized version of the man and it really distressed Andrew to see his father like this.
Seamus looked over his shoulder, a flash of hostility in his green eyes. But it disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared, almost as if it hadn’t existed at all. And when it went, it seemed to take the very light out of him along with it.
“So what do you want to ask me?” Seamus asked.
Nik stepped forward, holding up Marilyn Palmer’s photograph. “Have you ever seen this woman before?” she asked.
After a beat, Seamus took the photograph from her and looked at it. An image flashed through his mind, but he couldn’t catch hold of it and then it was gone. He continued to stare blankly at the photograph.
“Maybe,” Seamus murmured. He handed the picture back to Nik and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She tried to pin him down. “You didn’t see her the night you were mugged?” Nik persisted, searching the lined face.
“I didn’t see anything,” Seamus snapped. And then he seemed to physically withdraw. “I’m an old man. I need to rest now.”
He had all but told them to leave, Nik thought.
“Of course,” she replied, backing away from the man’s bed. “We’ll come back later,” she promised. Leaning in, she squeezed his hand.
Seamus looked as if he was a million miles away when he turned his head to look at her.
“Don’t,” he told her. “The answer won’t be any different then.”
Closing his eyes, he stretched out on the bedspread and seemed to quietly withdraw into himself.
The foursome walked out of the room. Andrew shut the door.
“He’s been like that since before we brought him home.” Andrew reached for the photograph and looked at it closely. “Is this the woman who mugged my father and stole his car?” he asked Nik.
“We’re not sure if she was part of the carjacking, or if she wound up being taken herself and was collateral damage in the carjacking.” Putting the photograph away, she told the former chief, “Her mother thinks she might have been abducted.”
“Did you check all the surveillance camera footage taken in the area that night?” Andrew asked.
Nik answered before Finn had a chance. “It was a dark night and although we made out what looked like a couple of images of your father’s car, it was too dark to see anything clearly. All we know is that there were two people in the car and that a woman was driving, whether willingly or under duress is still up for debate,” she admitted.
“Marilyn?” Rose repeated quizzically.
“Marilyn Palmer, my friend’s daughter,” Nik explained.
“What else do you know about that night?” Andrew asked.
“
Marilyn’s—the suspect’s—prints were discovered on a piece of paper that a dead woman was clutching when she was found,” Finn told them.
“Dead woman?” Rose repeated. “What dead woman?”
Nik told the chief everything that she knew. “The one who was found early this morning in a Dumpster.”
Andrew was still unclear about the details. “How is she involved in my father’s mugging?” he asked, looking from Finn to the woman he had brought with him.
“She might have been the reason for the mugging. There was blood found in the trunk—the blood belonged to the woman found in the Dumpster,” Finn explained.
“The theory is that your father’s vehicle was taken so the killer or killers could transport the body without attracting attention,” Nik added.
“Have you put out an APB on this Marilyn woman?” Andrew asked, looking at Finn.
“Not yet, sir,” Finn answered. “If she’s responsible for any of this, it might spook her and cause her to go into hiding.”
“And if she’s not responsible, but knows who is, the APB might help you find her,” Andrew countered. “One way or another, it’ll answer some questions for you.”
Nik raised her hand. Finn looked at her quizzically. “If we’re voting on this, I’d say go with the APB,” she said.
Finn frowned. “It doesn’t work that way,” he informed her coldly. “It’s not up for a vote—and even if it were, you don’t get to vote.”
“But the APB is a good idea,” Andrew told the younger detective with authority.
This was the chief of police. Retired or not, Finn was not about to argue with the man. After all, this was the man’s home territory and his father.
“Maybe you can talk to someone to get that moving, then, sir,” Finn said.
Rose smiled at what she found to be the young man’s naivete.
“Oh, I think he might know somebody, don’t you, dear?” she said, looking at her husband.
“Well, I don’t like throwing my influence around,” Andrew told them evasively.
Rose laughed, totally amused by the image her husband was attempting to project for the benefit of the two people who had come to speak to her father-in-law.
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