Nik held her breath until he finally finished. And then she allowed herself to react.
Finn had to honestly admit that he wasn’t prepared for the amount of wattage that suddenly seemed to burst out all over the woman’s already more-than-attractive face as she smiled.
“Thank you!” she cried.
He wasn’t expecting that, either. Or the quick embrace that went with the words.
Releasing him, Nik asked, “What time do these things usually begin?”
“Anytime after dawn,” he said. “And before you ask, they last for as long as anyone wants to remain at the old homestead. People have been known, on occasion, to stay until the following morning. The parties are without any bounds—not unlike this investigation,” he said with a sigh, bringing the discussion full circle.
Right now Nik was feeling much too happy about the invitation to be brought down by his last statement. She had heard a great deal about the people who comprised the inner framework of the Aurora Police Department. This would be an opportunity to watch them when they weren’t working a case, which to her was as important as gaining access to them when they were working one.
Seeing the medical examiner, Finn strode over, wanting to catch the man before he loaded the victim into his van.
“Hey, Doc, do you have an approximate time of death for the victim?” he asked Grady.
“Best guess now is sometime around two this morning,” he told Finn. “I can be more precise once I get her on my table.”
But Finn was mulling over the medical examiner’s first assessment. “Just like the last one,” he mused. “Hey, Doc,” he said, stopping him again just as the man and his assistant were about to load the gurney into the back of the vehicle. “Can you do me a favor?”
“That depends,” the ME said. “What’s the favor?” he asked.
“Can you do a tox screen on the victim?”
“I always do one,” the ME answered. “It’s standard procedure.”
“I know,” Finn said, not wanting to get into a discussion. “I mean a full one.”
The medical examiner frowned slightly, thinking over the request. “Okay, but that’s expensive. You looking for anything in particular?”
“How about evidence of a date-rape drug?” Nik asked, speaking up.
“All right, but from what I could tell, the victim wasn’t raped,” the ME said. “So looking for a date-rape drug would be a waste of time.”
She thought otherwise. “Not if the killer used the drug to ensure that the victim wouldn’t fight back when he went to kill her.” Nik glanced over at Finn to see if he agreed.
The look on Finn’s face was inconclusive, but the medical examiner sounded as if what she had just proposed made sense to him.
“Okay, you’ve got it,” he said. “Looks like your new assistant scored a few points,” he said to Finn. “I’d keep an eye on her if I were you.” And then he chuckled. “But then, you’re probably doing that already,” he said, eyeing Finn.
Finn shut down any further speculation when he asked the medical examiner, “How long before you have the results of the report?”
“It’ll be ready when it’s ready,” the ME answered, sounding somewhat annoyed. “This isn’t some TV show where I can get the answers to you magically by the time the first bunch of commercials roll across your screen. Cavanaugh or not, this is still real life, you know. And there are tests that are waiting to be done ahead of yours.” The man looked at Finn sharply. “Remember that,” he said as he climbed into the van and slammed the door shut.
“I guess someone forgot to give him his morning coffee,” Nik told Finn.
Finn shook his head. “I guess so.”
Chapter 12
“Well, the medical examiner certainly doesn’t sound like he’s in any sort of a hurry to get us any answers,” Nik commented as she and Finn rode the elevator from the morgue back up to the first floor. “Most likely, the reverse is probably true. He’s going to deliberately drag his feet, isn’t he?” she asked.
She saw a glimmer of a smile curving Finn’s mouth. She was getting to him, Nik thought, feeling a little shiver of triumph despite the situation.
“I think it’s a safe bet that he’s going to take his time with this,” Finn answered. “In his defense, I hear he’s swamped.”
From what she’d heard, that wasn’t exactly anything new. “Aren’t they all?” she countered.
Finn inclined his head. “You have a point,” he agreed.
She was surprised that he was taking this so calmly. When she’d met him, he’d seemed as if he was eager to put this whole case to bed...fast. “Isn’t there someone you could turn to, you know, someone who could lean on the ME to at least run the tox screen if not do the actual autopsy?” she asked Finn.
“That’s not the kind of thing we do,” he told her.
By “we” she knew he was referring to being part of the Cavanaugh family. They had a higher standard than most. Nik had to admit that she was surprised by his attitude. If anyone would have asked her, she would have said that Finn was the kind of detective who pulled rank whenever he needed to in order to solve a case, not refrain from that sort of behavior.
That Finn didn’t pull rank actually raised his stock in her eyes—but since she was trying to find answers for her friend, not to mention find that friend’s daughter and bring the girl home, Finn’s attitude also frustrated her.
“Do you know what time that last restaurant opens today?” she asked suddenly as they reached the first floor.
He thought for a moment. “The sign on the door said that the doors opened at eleven, so I’m going to take a wild guess here and say...eleven,” he answered.
Now that sounded more like Finn, she thought. Sarcastic and flippant. She could deal with that since she knew what to expect.
“So we’ve got some time to kill before we can talk to anyone inside the place,” she concluded, thinking out loud. She turned toward him as ideas began forming in her head. “Why don’t we talk to various people around that vicinity, see if any of them have surveillance cameras facing the restaurant, or the restaurant’s alley. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them caught our dead woman with a companion.”
“You mean with the guy who murdered her?” Finn asked bluntly.
She nodded. “It’s worth a try. For that matter, we could also go do the same thing around the first restaurant, see if anyone stands out there.” She could feel Finn’s resistance and she couldn’t tell if he was resisting because he didn’t think it was a good idea—or because it was her idea. “Besides,” she added in a lighter tone, “what else do you have to do?”
Finn gave her a dark, quizzical look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’ve been known to do that,” Nik admitted. “But not this time. We scan all the available footage to see if anyone stands out.” Maybe she wasn’t explaining herself correctly. “You know, if the same face pops up in both places.”
But Finn shook his head. “We can’t arrest anyone because of a coincidence,” he pointed out.
“No,” she agreed. “But we can use that as a basis to allow us to ask that person more in-depth questions that might lead us somewhere.”
He shrugged. He supposed she had a point. And, she was right. As far as this case went, they were at a standstill for the time being. “All right,” he agreed, “let’s go.”
She looked at him, stunned. That was way easier than she thought it was going to be. “I convinced you?” she asked incredulously.
“Let’s just say you had a point when you said we’ve got nothing else to do right now,” Finn conceded.
“But—”
“Kowalski, take the win and quit while you’re ahead,” he told her.
Grinning, she did as he said.
* * *
The people who ran the shops th
at littered the immediate area around the restaurant were of little help. The surveillance cameras they had mounted either didn’t work, or the footage was shot from a vantage point that didn’t give Finn and Nik a view of the people who came and went from the site where the second body had been found.
The restaurant, when it opened, wasn’t really any better.
Max Baldwin, the assistant manager who opened the restaurant’s doors and let them in, looked rather doubtful when they explained what they were looking for.
“We’ve got a camera out front and one facing the back alley, but we don’t have one inside the actual restaurant. Our customers don’t like to have their privacy invaded,” Baldwin explained.
“As a private citizen, I can sympathize,” Finn agreed. “But as a cop, this definitely interferes with being able to solve a crime,” he said.
Nik held up her phone for the man to view. She slowly swiped through three of the photographs. “Can you tell us if you’ve seen any of these women in here?”
“You mean last night?” the assistant manager asked.
“Anytime,” Nik told him. “Say, did they come in here anytime in the last few weeks?”
Finn looked at her, puzzled. “What are you doing, Kowalski?”
“Trying to establish whether or not these women knew each other, or even talked to one another in passing.” She paused, trying to be clearer. “I guess I’m trying to find some kind of connection between them.”
Finn looked at the assistant manager. “Well?” he asked, waiting for Baldwin to respond.
The assistant manager shook his head. “I didn’t see them together—or apart,” he admitted. “But Henri has the evening shift and he closes up. Maybe he saw them,” Baldwin said, stepping back from Nik’s phone.
“All right, where can we reach Henri?” Finn asked the man.
The assistant manager didn’t hesitate in his answer. “Henri’s off today.”
“Of course he is,” Finn said, struggling to hold on to his patience. “Where does he live?” he asked. Now that they had decided to go down this road, he was determined to track down this Henri and talk to the man.
“I’ve got an address for him,” Baldwin said. “But he won’t be there,” he added, preventing Finn from asking the next logical question—what that address was.
“And why is that?” Finn asked, already fairly certain that he wasn’t going to like the answer he was going to get.
The assistant manager looked intimidated. He answered the question in a less-than-confident voice. “Because he said he was going to go hang gliding in the desert with his friends.”
Nik couldn’t tell if the assistant manager was on the level, or if the man was covering for one of his own. Anything was possible.
“Now all we have to do,” she said to Finn as they left the restaurant, “is pray he doesn’t break his neck before we get a chance to ask this ‘flying squirrel’ a few questions.”
Finn allowed himself a lopsided grin, which he aimed in her direction.
“Ah, always the optimist,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.
“I like to think so,” she replied. “There is something else we could do.”
He was open to any suggestions that could be doable. “Go ahead.”
“We could canvass the area around the first crime scene, see if there is anyone that pops up on those surveillance camera videos that might vaguely resemble Marilyn.”
She was being more specific than she had been. He considered her suggestion with interest. “So are you thinking that your friend’s daughter is a victim, or a perpetrator?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she responded. “I’d like to think she’s a victim, but in reality, I really can’t say for sure. Other than those partial fingerprints that were found on the back of the rearview mirror and the note, there’s nothing to suggest that she is part of all this. For Kim’s sake, I’m trying really hard to keep an open mind,” she confessed. “Right now, I would just like to collect any evidence that is available to help make up my—our,” she corrected, glancing at Finn, “minds.”
“So let’s go,” he told her, unlocking his vehicle and getting in.
* * *
Canvassing the first crime scene led nowhere. The available surveillance videos they gathered were, at best, unclear. As for the people they spoke to who worked within the restaurants, they had conflicting opinions. One waiter was positive that he saw the first victim come in with someone, but the hostess who greeted patrons as they came in and brought them to their tables said that the victim had come in alone.
A busboy swore that the woman was not only not alone, but when she left, she’d also been seen with a man and a woman.
“In other words, they had a threesome,” Nik concluded after the busboy left.
Finn laughed dryly under his breath. “Put your money down and take your pick,” he commented.
As they exited the restaurant, he noticed the thoughtful look on Nik’s face. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.
“I’m thinking that the busboy might have gotten it right,” she ventured. “Let’s face it, he’s low man on the totem pole and he doesn’t have much to focus on.” She could see that Finn didn’t quite understand what she was getting at. “He doesn’t have the responsibility of properly seating patrons and he doesn’t have to make sure that the food he’s bringing is still hot when it reaches the table because he doesn’t bring them their food. He’s also not trying to do anything that would get him any kind of a big tip. All a busboy has to focus on is cleaning up. That gives him time to study the patrons and form a quick opinion of them.”
“Or,” Finn said, going a different route, “he can just let his mind drift and make things up to entertain himself as he clears the table.”
Nik sighed. Finn did have a point. She really couldn’t argue with what he was saying.
“You could be right,” she replied. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on it. “So where does that put us?”
“The way I see it, I’d say that we’re stuck in first gear,” Finn told her as they reached his car.
At that moment, his cell phone dinged, announcing an incoming text message. When he looked at the screen, the corners of his mouth curved downward in what amounted to a half frown.
“What?” Nik asked, sensing that what had just come in had to be about the case.
He looked at his message again. “Valri just identified our victim.”
That was good, wasn’t it? she thought. So why was he frowning?
“We have a name?” she asked.
He nodded, then said grimly, “And a family to notify.” He put away his cell phone. “Theresa Allen was twenty-two and lived with her parents, Joannie and Bill.”
Something didn’t sit right for her. “Didn’t they notice she was missing?”
He shrugged. If this had happened in his family, even if the victim hadn’t lived at home, there would be members combing the streets, searching for her. But not all families were like his.
Out loud he said, “Apparently this wasn’t unusual behavior for Theresa. She stayed out often, sometimes crashing with friends instead of coming home.”
She knew that old dodge, Nik thought. “Or so she told her parents.”
Finn conceded that point. “Undoubtedly to avoid being lectured to,” he mused.
“Or to spare their feelings,” Nik said, speculating. “Or maybe she actually did crash with friends,” she said. “We don’t know.”
Finn had a skeptical look on his face as he got into his vehicle and then waited for Nik to buckle up.
“Nobody dresses the way the victim did just for friends,” he pointed out.
“Oh, I don’t know. Women can be pretty competitive. A ‘night out with the girls’ might really mean getting all dressed up just to bolster her own ego.�
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“I still have my doubts,” Finn told her as he turned the vehicle in the direction of the address that Valri had texted him.
* * *
“This is the part I really hate,” Finn said less than half an hour later as he and Nik pulled up in front of a quaint-looking two-story house. “Telling people someone they cared about won’t be coming home again.” He took a breath. “Ever.”
She wouldn’t have thought that he would have had to deal with that sort of thing. “I thought you said you worked in Robbery.”
“I do, but I deal with that sort of thing when things go sideways during a robbery, or a home invasion,” he told her grimly as he got out of his car.
Nik quickly got out on her side, matching his pace in an effort to catch up to him.
Surprised, Finn glanced at her over his shoulder. “You don’t have to come in with me,” he said, his voice distant.
“I’m coming in for support,” Nik explained.
That didn’t make any sense to him. He stopped short of the front door.
“You don’t know these people—do you?” he suddenly asked. It occurred to him that he hadn’t found that out, he’d just taken it for granted that she didn’t.
“It’s you I’m supporting,” she clarified. His eyes widened as he stared at her. Nik suppressed a sigh. The man needed a road map drawn for him. “You said you hated this. I thought having someone with you might make it a little less unbearable.”
She was serious, he thought. The woman kept surprising him. Ordinarily he would have said something flippant in response, or at the very least something to show his disinterest, such as “suit yourself.”
But this display of selflessness on her part earned something more than that in his view. He wasn’t comfortable with that, but he couldn’t very well ignore it, either. So he murmured, “Thanks,” and left the word just hanging there between them as he walked up to the front door.
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