“Think, Nik. Think!”
She had to be missing something. But what?
The thought throbbed in Nik’s head until she finally fell asleep on her sofa minutes shy of midnight, surrounded by notes and scribblings that had gotten less and less coherent the later it got.
* * *
When her phone rang at five the next morning, the first thought that occurred to Nik’s semiconscious, exhausted brain was that she had somehow gotten caught up in a broadcast of the movie Groundhog Day.
But as she forced her brain back into a conscious state, that notion disappeared...only to make a reappearance when she heard the voice on the other end of the call.
It was Finn.
He was calling her, just as he had the previous morning.
His voice was almost weary. “It happened again!” he declared.
She blinked, trying to focus and shake off the last remnants of sleep. He just couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying...could he?
“What happened again?” she asked, fairly confident that the next words out of his mouth were going to totally dispel this lingering nightmare buzzing in her head.
“A patrolman found another dead woman. She was stabbed through the heart, just like the first victim.”
Nik caught her breath. Her heart was pounding wildly. “Was she in a Dumpster?”
“No, but the body was dumped in the alley behind another restaurant. She was stabbed like the last one,” he said. “I just got the call. I’m heading to the crime scene,” he told her.
She could hear the rustling of his clothing. He was getting dressed even as he was talking to her. She kicked off her own covers and headed toward her closet. “Where’s the restaurant?”
“Rafferty’s. Over on Main and Jeffery,” he told her.
She blinked again, trying to focus on the clock back on her nightstand in an attempt to kick-start her brain. “I can be there in thirty minutes.”
“That’s all right,” he said, negating what she’d said. “I can swing by and pick you up.”
The offer to come and get her was unexpected and she hesitated for a moment. If he came to pick her up, then he’d know where she lived.
He probably already did, she thought. Which meant that there was no point in telling him no. Besides, the man was obviously trying to extend an olive branch for the way he’d behaved toward her.
“Sure, why not?” she finally said.
“I need an address,” he told her.
Then he didn’t know where she lived. Oh, well, that ship had sailed, Nik told herself. The next minute she rattled off her address to him.
“You don’t live all that far from me,” he revealed.
“I know,” she replied. “Let me go get ready,” she said just before she ended the call.
For a split second, she thought about calling Kim with this latest bit of news, then decided to let the woman sleep—providing she had been able to, Nik amended. In any event, this latest murder could have nothing to do with Marilyn’s being missing. In addition, she wouldn’t be doing Kim any service by frightening her with the possible scenarios that might have taken place involving her daughter. For one thing, they might not have happened in Marilyn’s case.
It was best for the woman to hang on to hope for as long as she could. If Marilyn did turn up alive, all the better.
And if the opposite turned out to be true, well, she wanted her friend to be able to hang on to the slim shreds of hope while they were still available to her.
“That does it,” she told herself as she rushed into her clothing so that she’d be ready by the time Finn knocked on her door. “I am definitely not having any kids. My nerves wouldn’t be able to stand this kind of tension.”
But even as she discounted the hypothetical scenario that might or might not be in her future, she knew she didn’t really mean it. She liked kids too much to reject the idea of having them someday.
It was finding a father for those kids—or kid—that was going to be the problem, Nik decided.
The doorbell rang just then.
Chapter 11
After checking through the peephole to make sure it was Finn standing on the other side of the door, Nik unlocked it and slipped out of her apartment. “You came.”
He heard the surprise in her voice and couldn’t help wondering why it was there. “I said I would.”
That still didn’t change the fact that part of her doubted that he would show up. Yet here he was, she thought.
“You know,” she told him as she locked her door, resetting her alarm system, then began walking ahead of him, “we really should stop meeting like this.”
Finn stared at her as she turned around, confused by her comment. “I called to tell you I’d be here.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “You really don’t have any sense of humor, do you?”
“I don’t see anything humorous about my line of work,” he told her flatly. The woman said the strangest things, he thought. “My car’s over there,” he said, nodding toward one of the general parking areas.
“You have to find humor in everything,” Nik told him, trying to explain why she felt the way she did as she followed him to his car. “Otherwise, you’ll lose your sense of humanity.”
He stopped in front of his vehicle and pressed a button on his key fob. All four car door locks popped up at attention, signaling that the doors were open. He spared her another glance as he prepared to get in. Thinking of what she’d just said, he told her, “My family would really love you.”
“I take it you mean that as a compliment,” she said a little uncertainly. “Anyway, I’m going to take it that way.”
“Do whatever you want with it,” he muttered. He waited for her to get in on her side, then got in and started the engine. Pulling out of the spot, he asked, “Do you want to hear about the latest victim or not?”
She didn’t usually get sidetracked like this. “Please,” she answered. “Give me the details.”
He went around a car that was traveling much too slowly in his opinion. He could feel his impatience building. Was it because he was handling a murder case, something outside his usual purview, or because he hadn’t solved the case yet? He really wasn’t sure. “The patrolman who was the first one on the scene and found the body noticed the similarities to the first victim. He called it into Dispatch, and they called to alert me.”
“Similarities,” Nik repeated, trying to keep things straight. “You’re talking about the fact that she was stabbed through the heart, right?”
“That’s just the first similarity,” he told her. “The victim was around the same age as the first woman, and she was dressed up just the way victim number one was.”
He certainly liked to use a minimum of words, Nik thought. “You mean she was wearing the same clothes?”
“The same kind of clothes,” he explained. Pressing down on the accelerator, he made it through a yellow light before it turned red. “You know, like what a woman would wear on a night out. Sexy dress, heels, that kind of thing.” He glanced at Nik to see if she understood what he was saying.
Nik was considering the significance of what he’d just told her. “So you think this might have been a date that went bad?” she asked.
He felt it was more diabolical than that. “I think our perp is a serial killer who picks up his victim at a fancy restaurant or bar, gets them drunk and then satisfies his bloodlust.”
“That sounds plausible enough. Gruesome, but plausible,” she said. She had one question, though. “How does Marilyn figure into this?”
“That part I haven’t figured out yet,” Finn admitted. The restaurant was still two long blocks away. He started to look for it. “Maybe she was actually his first victim and we just haven’t found her yet.”
Something didn’t add up for her, Nik tho
ught. “But the killer didn’t try to hide the other.”
Technically, that wasn’t true. “He put Julie into a Dumpster,” Finn reminded her.
“That’s not really hiding,” Nik said. “He would have known that she’d be discovered sooner or later—most likely sooner,” she told Finn.
She was reasoning this out on the fly, he thought, and he grudgingly told her, “You know, you’re not half-bad at this.”
Nik pretended to clutch her heart and throw back her head in shock. “Two compliments in one day and the sun’s barely risen,” she cried. “I don’t know if I can stand this.”
Finn scowled at her. “Okay, I take it back.”
“Sorry, too late,” she responded with a laugh.
He turned the corner and then pulled up in front of the restaurant. Despite the early hour, the area was already busy, but not because of customers. There were three patrol cars as well as the crime-scene van and the coroner’s wagon.
Nik leaned forward, taking it all in. “Looks like the party’s already in full swing,” she noted grimly. She was out of Finn’s vehicle the second he brought it to a full stop.
“Remember, don’t contaminate the crime scene,” he warned, calling after her. He felt like a parent with an eager child in tow.
The fact didn’t annoy him as much as he would have thought it would.
“Not my first rodeo, remember?” Nik said over her shoulder as she approached what she assumed was the scene of the crime.
Why did he keep doing this to himself? Finn silently demanded. He didn’t have to let this woman know about these crimes when they happened. There was no law, written or unwritten, that said he needed to notify her. He’d done it simply as a courtesy, nothing else.
Maybe, he told himself following behind her, it was time to stop being so damn polite and just focus on the crime he had accidentally managed to get pulled into. It was robbery, not homicide, that was his regular line of work.
Hearing the sound of people approaching, Sean Cavanaugh looked up. “Ah, Ms. Kowalski, I didn’t realize you’d be gracing us with your presence,” he said, smiling at her. “I thought you were looking for your friend’s daughter, the young woman who was involved in my father’s carjacking.”
Nik smiled back at the genial investigator. “We think this might be connected somehow. At least that’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“We?” Sean repeated, both curious and intrigued. Then he saw Finn coming up behind the woman he had greeted. “Finn, are you part of the ‘we’?” the head of the CSI’s day shift asked the younger man. By the amusement on his face, it was obvious that he felt he already knew the answer to that.
Finn bristled, not because of what the man said, but of the implied assumption. He and this woman were not a pair in the usual sense.
Rather than attempt to argue that point, he ignored it altogether and asked Sean, “What do you have for me?”
For the sake of family harmony, Sean diplomatically refrained from making any further mention about the elephant in the room. Instead, he turned his attention to the details he had already uncovered.
“I can tell you that whoever did this was really angry. The stab wounds in the victim went in really deep.”
“Could a woman have done the stabbing?” Nik asked.
Sean considered the question. “If she was enraged enough, I’d say it was possible. But as far as what your average woman is capable of, the answer is most likely not. The stab wounds looked as if they were delivered using a great deal of force.” In his mind’s eye, Sean re-created the scenario. “Most women would have difficulty overpowering another woman and at the same time stabbing her to this extent. Of course, there are always exceptions,” he added.
Finn knew what Nik was trying to do. She wanted to rule out Marilyn without actually saying the words. It was obvious that she wanted Sean to do it.
“Would a one-hundred-and-ten-pound woman of average strength be such an exception?” he asked Sean. He could see that he had surprised Nik with his question.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no,” Sean told him. The man paused for a moment, looking over at the latest victim as she was being zipped up into a body bag. “Did the last victim have a full tox screen run on her?” he asked Finn.
Tox screens were standard. However, full ones weren’t. “Not that I know of,” Finn answered.
“Have them run one,” Sean told him. “There were no defensive wounds on this one. She might not have seen the guy switch gears just before he killed her, but my guess is that she was too out of it to really see anything at all or realize that she was in trouble until after the fact.”
Finn agreed. “I’ll ask the medical examiner to run a full panel.”
Sean nodded. About to get back to work, he suddenly remembered something just before the duo left him. “Oh, by the way, I’m supposed to tell you that Andrew’s throwing a party next Saturday for Seamus.”
The information surprised Finn. “I was under the impression that Seamus didn’t want a party, or any fuss made over him, either,” he said to Sean.
Sean shrugged. “You know Andrew. When he gets his mind fixated on something, nobody’s going to talk him out of it no matter what. I think that he just wants to express his gratitude that his dad came out of all this safe and sound.”
“Well, safe and sound,” Finn said, “but I wouldn’t say that he’s exactly his old self.” He looked at Sean to see if the other man agreed, or if there was something new that he didn’t know about.
But it was Nik who spoke up, bringing up what she felt was an important point.
“Maybe this party is just what he needs,” she said more to Finn than to the other man. She realized that Finn might not appreciate her putting in her two cents, but on the other hand, she felt she had nothing to lose here and it was her opinion that the presence of his family and friends might just help the older man heal and realize how lucky he really was. “If Mr. Cavanaugh is around his family and friends on a large scale, maybe he’ll appreciate being alive instead of the alternative,” she said.
“I’d say that the lady is on to something,” Sean said with a chuckle.
“Oh, please don’t encourage her,” Finn complained.
Sean did a quick assessment of his own. “You want my opinion, that one doesn’t need any encouragement from anyone,” he told his nephew. “She knows exactly what she has to contribute to the game at any one given time,” he said with a wink.
“I like your uncle,” Nik said as she and Finn began to walk toward the medical examiner’s vehicle.
“Oh, Finn,” Sean called after him, raising his voice. When Finn paused to turn around in his direction, the older Cavanaugh said, “Andrew also said to tell you to be sure to invite the insurance investigator you brought with you to the party.”
Nik looked at Finn, surprised and delighted. “Does he mean me?”
“Looks that way,” he told her flatly. “We currently don’t have any other insurance investigators hanging around.”
Nik’s eyes crinkled as she looked back toward Sean. She called out, “I’d love to come.”
Sean gave her a thumbs-up.
“I’m sure he never doubted it for a minute,” Finn told her.
Something in Finn’s voice caught her attention. “Would it bother you if I went?” she asked him.
“Could that stop you?” he countered, although he was certain he knew the answer to that.
Or thought he did, because the one Nik gave in response to his question didn’t jibe with the one he had assumed she would say.
“Actually, yes,” she told him.
Finn abruptly stopped as they headed toward the medical examiner’s vehicle. He turned so that his words were more private.
“How’s that again?”
“I said yes, it would stop me,
” she answered in all seriousness. “If you didn’t want me to attend the party, I wouldn’t go.”
Like he believed her. Finn took a guess at the altruistic reason she would give. “You’re going to tell me that you don’t want anything to damage this ‘wonderful working relationship’ we’ve developed, right?”
That was the general thought, but those were not the words she was planning to use, Nik thought. She put it into plainer language.
“Well, very honestly, you’re not exactly Mr. Sunshine right now and I’m afraid that if I did anything to tick you off any further, you’d ban me from the case and then I won’t be able to keep my promise to Kim about finding her daughter. Or at least,” she continued in the spirit of honesty, “it would be a great deal more difficult if I had to try to work this without your resources.”
He looked at her for a long moment and she found she couldn’t make an educated guess as to what was going on in his mind.
And then he told her.
“I’m impressed. You’ve really thought this all out, haven’t you?”
She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her, or if he was being serious. All she could do was level with him. “Whether you believe it or not, loyalty’s very important to me. I gave my word to Kim that I was going to find Marilyn and I intend to move heaven and earth to do just that.” The smile on her lips was tinged with sadness. That sadness bothered him, and that, in turn, surprised him. “If that means passing up on an invitation to one of Andrew Cavanaugh’s famous get-togethers, then I guess I’ll just have to pass it up.”
Either she was serious, or she was one hell of an actress. He decided to go with the former. “Well, good news. If the chief wants you there, I’m not going to be the one to stand in your way. My having to spend the entire time explaining to the chief, his wife and heaven only knows who else why I was the one responsible for you not taking him up on the invitation is not something I would relish—so you get to come,” he told her.
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