He had to ring the doorbell twice before anyone came to answer it.
When the front door finally opened, a white-haired woman of average height who was wearing what looked like a full-length colorful caftan stood in the doorway. The wide smile on her round, affable face drooped a little as she looked at the pair on her doorstep.
“May I help you?” she asked in a slightly uneasy voice.
“Mrs. Allen?” Finn asked her.
Powder blue eyes turned toward him. “Yes?”
There was no point in delivering the news twice. “Um, is your husband around?” Nik asked.
“He’s in the backyard, pruning one of our trees.” She nodded toward the rear of the house. “It’s a hobby,” she confided. “I told him to hire someone, but oh, no, he has to do it himself. Says he needs to save money because Theresa—that’s our daughter—spends it like it’s going out of style.” She smiled tolerantly. “I told him it was just typical for someone her age.”
She was rattling on, Finn thought. The woman was nervous, as if she sensed what was coming. “Mrs. Allen,” Finn said, interrupting her, “maybe you should ask him to come join you.”
The last of the woman’s smile vanished. Her expressive eyes moved from Finn to Nik and then back again. “Why?” she asked in a hushed, frightened tone. “What’s this about?”
Instinctively Nik moved in closer to her. “We have some bad news, Mrs. Allen.”
“What kind of bad news?” she asked, spacing each word apart as if she was trying to find the courage to say the next one.
“It’s about your daughter, Theresa,” Finn began.
He got no further. Tears instantly sprang to the woman’s eyes and she shook her head violently. “No,” she cried. “No!”
“Mrs. Allen—” Finn moved toward her, attempting to place a hand on her shoulder, but the woman pulled away. “No!” she yelled, covering her ears with her hands. “I’m not listening!”
A man raced toward her from the rear of the house. “Joannie, what’s wrong?” He looked accusingly at the duo on his front step. “What did you say to her?”
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, sir, but we’re here to notify you and your wife that your daughter, Theresa, was found in an alley this morning.” He could see the horror building in the man’s face. “She was stabbed to death.”
Instantly, the big, barrel-chested man looked as if the very life had been drained out of him, even as he put one bracing arm around his wife to keep her from collapsing.
Chapter 13
“You’re right, that had to be one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had,” Nik told Finn as they left the Allen house. It was close to an hour later and she felt emotionally wrung out and almost totally drained. “I felt so awful, so helpless,” she confessed. It was even worse than what she had felt when she had gone to talk to Marilyn’s mother. At least with Marilyn, there was still hope that things might turn out for the better. “I just didn’t know what to say to those poor people.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Finn told her. He glanced over his shoulder back toward the house, although he honestly tried not to envision the couple he had left there. “The only thing you can do at this point is offer them closure by catching the person or persons responsible for killing their daughter.”
Nik looked at him as they reached the car. Something suddenly occurred to her. “So you are letting me hang around?”
He raised an eyebrow, scrutinizing her. Like he had a choice, he thought—outside of threatening to arrest her in order to make her leave. “If I told you to back off, would you?”
She paused for a moment, then admitted what he already knew. “Not really.”
“Then I won’t waste my breath,” Finn said. “Besides, it seems that for some reason, Uncle Andrew and Uncle Sean are rather impressed with you, so I really can’t get rid of you.”
About to get into his vehicle, Nik stopped short. “All right,” she said, “now I know you’re just pulling my leg.”
His mouth curved ever so slightly. “I wouldn’t dream of pulling anything on you.”
She stared at him, genuinely surprised. That was a joke, wasn’t it? “Then they really are impressed with me?” she asked Finn. “Why?” she asked. “What did I do?”
He sighed. At times he asked himself that same question. But there was no denying that the two men—not to mention several others on the task force—were taken with this open, friendly insurance investigator. “I’ll let them explain it at the party.”
“Party?” she repeated as she got into the car.
“The one you’re coming to next Saturday,” he reminded her, closing the driver’s side door. He started up his car.
Nik had gotten so caught up in investigating the second murder that she had forgotten all about the invitation. She noticed that Nik referred to it as the one she was coming to. Apparently, her attendance was not up for debate.
Despite the weight of the situation she had just been through, Nik smiled. “I forgot,” she confessed.
“Well, now you’ve been reminded,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to the squad room,” he told her, laying out his immediate agenda once he got back to the police station. “There are reports that are waiting to be written up and if I don’t get to them, left on their own they have this nasty habit of just multiplying. I can drop you off at your place,” he volunteered.
She had a different idea. “I can come with you to the station. Maybe I can help you remember some details that might have slipped your mind. In any event, I can help you tackle the reports.”
Paperwork and writing up reports in general were the most tedious parts of his job. Finn usually avoided having to face them until he ran out of options. This time around, though, because the case involved Seamus, he felt that tackling the chore sooner than later was a better way to go.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the offer,” he told her, as he continued driving to the police station, “but don’t you have a job to go to?”
The insurance investigator had been with him for a couple days now and he would have thought that she’d be getting back to her day job. Apparently, Finn surmised, he’d thought wrong.
“I took a sabbatical,” Nik explained. “I didn’t feel I could do what I had to if I had to divide myself between my job and looking for Marilyn—so I made a choice. Besides, I have a great deal of vacation time accrued.”
“Very conscientious of you,” he quipped.
Her eyes met his. “I don’t like to do things halfway,” she told him simply.
Finn nodded. Dark brown hair fell into his eyes and he pushed it back. “Good to know,” he murmured.
At least, he thought, forewarned was forearmed.
* * *
Leaving his vehicle in his designated spot, Finn rode up to his floor and brought Nik into the robbery squad room. Looking around, he found her a desk.
“Take that one,” he said, gesturing toward it.
The desktop was neat, but was far from empty. Nik looked at it uncertainly.
“Won’t whoever sits here want their desk back?” she asked. She didn’t want to settle in only to be told that she had to move again before the day was out.
“Monroe might want it back,” Finn answered, “but right now, he’s home, recovering from a broken leg. He probably won’t be back for a few weeks at least.” A bemused expression crossed his face. “He likes to make the most of situations like this.”
“What happened to him?” Nik asked.
He heard the sympathy in her voice and wondered how she could possibly feel sympathy for someone she’d never met and didn’t know. “He was trying to chase down a robber driving away from the scene of the crime when the guy suddenly turned his car around and drove straight at him.”
She could visualize that in her mind’s eye and shiv
ered. “Oh, wow! Did the robber hit him?” she asked.
“Almost. Monroe jumped out of the way and avoided getting hit by the car, but he didn’t avoid tripping over a pile of rubbish that was right there. He came down hard and wound up breaking his thighbone.”
Nik winced. Her sense of empathy made her feel the shock of the blow. “Ouch!”
Finn laughed dryly. “That wasn’t exactly the word that Monroe used, but I guess the sentiment was similar.” He realized that she’d managed to pull him into a vortex. Given half a chance, he had a feeling that Nik would have him giving her background stories on all the people who worked in the squad room. “Okay,” he declared, “let’s get you settled in so you can provide that backup you promised.”
“Absolutely,” she responded.
* * *
Nik’s presence in the squad room did not go unnoticed right from the start. Whenever she looked up, she found herself on the receiving end of interested looks as well as an occasional nod and/or smile. She had a natural tendency to engage in conversations and found that she had to block that tendency in order to help Finn fill out the reports she’d told him that she’d help with. But it wasn’t easy. Especially since there seemed to be an endless parade of people who were either milling around the area or coming into it from another floor.
She immersed herself in working on the reports, getting involved in writing them up to the total exclusion of everything else.
She didn’t even hear Finn at first when he tried to talk to her.
When his voice finally penetrated her brain, she blinked, looking up. “Did you say something?” she asked him.
Finn raised his voice, deliberately speaking more forcefully. “I said you don’t have to finish them all in one day.”
“I don’t like leaving something to be finished at a later time,” she told him. When he looked at her quizzically, she elaborated. “You never know what might crop up down the line, interrupting your work. It’s better to get it all done while it’s still fresh in your mind.”
Finn regarded her thoughtfully. “Maybe you are a long-lost Cavanaugh after all.”
That, she thought, might raise a whole different set of problems. “Lord, I hope not,” she said, more to herself than to him.
Even so, it almost felt as if her voice rippled right through him, creating a mini-tidal wave. “Me, neither,” he agreed quietly.
Neither one of them said anything further on the subject, but it was obvious to each of them that, at least when it came to this, they were on the same page.
* * *
The next victim wasn’t found until almost two days later. Another attractive young woman in her twenties, dressed for a fun night out that obviously ended all too abruptly. Technically, Finn thought, Homicide should have taken the lead on the case. But because of its similarity to the other two cases, Brian Cavanaugh, the chief of detectives, made an exception and assigned Finn and his team members...including Nik.
He called Finn into his office to tell him about this newest twist. “Because you and your people have been working on this, I’d say that you’re the most familiar with the details here. I take it that that insurance investigator is still helping out.”
Finn answered Brian’s questions without allowing himself to make any comments on the situation. “Yes, sir. We have reason to believe that the young woman Ms. Kowalski was initially looking for—Marilyn Palmer—is somehow involved in all this, either as one of the victims, or possibly as something more.”
Brian looked interested. Very little happened in his precinct that he didn’t know about and this definitely wasn’t a exception. “And by something more?” he asked, waiting for Finn to fill in the blanks more succinctly.
“One theory is that she might be working with the killer.” He paused, then added, “It wouldn’t be the first time a woman tried to cull the favor of a killer by helping him.”
Brian nodded. “You have a point,” he agreed. “Keep me posted, Finn. This one’s personal—for all of us,” he added.
Finn was keenly aware of that. “Yes, sir, I know. It is for me, too,” he said as he walked out of the man’s office.
* * *
While Finn talked to the chief of detectives about this newest development in the case, Nik was left to cool her heels in the squad room until he returned. By now, even though she was focused on the reports, she still managed to have conversations with the various members of Finn’s team as well as some of the other members in the Robbery squad room.
But even so, she wasn’t so distracted that she didn’t instantly know when Finn came back into the room. She raised herself in her seat the moment he crossed the doorway.
“Well?” she asked. The question referred to the reason that Finn had been called into Brian’s office in the first place.
“Looks like our serial killer struck again,” Finn told her. “Or rather, he struck before.”
Grabbing her shoulder bag, Nik crossed the room and was at his side in a matter of seconds. Her brow furrowed. Had she missed something?
“Mind saying that again?”
Finn obliged. “He struck before,” he repeated.
Nik shook her head as she looked up at the detective walking beside her. That they were going somewhere was obvious, but she didn’t ask about that. She wanted him to clarify his statement.
“That still doesn’t make any sense,” she confessed.
“Our killer killed this one before he killed what we thought were victims one and two. According to the chief of detectives, the medical examiner said that this one was killed around the same time frame that Seamus was mugged.”
“Are you saying that the person who mugged Seamus didn’t have anything to do with the other killings?” she asked, trying to get the information straight.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. He could have killed this woman just before he killed the other two. We just missed this body somehow.” It was obvious that he didn’t like things that didn’t seem to make sense to him. The one thing that seemed certain was that they were dealing with someone whose bloodlust was growing stronger.
“Does that mean he was better at hiding the body previously?” she asked, struggling to put the pieces into some sort of order.
“I’m not sure what that means,” he confessed.
She reexamined what Finn had said. He thought this was the same killer. That had to mean that there were similarities between the three victims.
“Was she stabbed?” Nik asked as she walked quickly beside the detective.
He nodded. “She was stabbed, she was attractive and she was dressed to kill...so to speak,” Finn said, adding the last phrase when he realized the way his words sounded.
Nik went to the next important detail. “What does her tox screen say?”
Finn shook his head as he pressed for the elevator. The car arrived almost immediately, its doors yawning open. “It’s too soon to tell. And this didn’t happen in a restaurant, either,” he told her as they went down to the ground floor. “The body was found behind a nightclub.”
“Surveillance cameras?” she asked hopefully.
“There’s some video available,” he answered, but before she could ask, he told her, “But from what I hear, the quality’s rather poor and the video looks pretty grainy.”
“I think they’re probably still worth a look,” Nik told him as they got out of the elevator.
Finn headed for the rear doors. “Are you volunteering for the job?”
Sitting still and going through numerous videos wasn’t something she relished, but it needed to be done, she thought. “If it helps bring this case to a close, then absolutely.”
“You realize that you just volunteered to go cross-eyed, Kowalski,” he told her. “I’m serious when I said the videos all looked rather poor.”
She was undaunted. Nik was focus
ed on the bigger picture: finding a killer. He had to be in there somewhere, she told herself. “Then it’s a good thing I have twenty-twenty vision,” she answered.
Finn laughed.
“What?” she asked. She hadn’t said anything particularly funny in her opinion.
“Valri’s going to love you,” he told Nik. “This is usually her job.”
“Then I’m glad I could make her happy,” she replied.
Nik didn’t see this as a chore to slog through; she saw it as an opportunity to bring this case one step closer to being resolved.
And hopefully, she thought, one step closer to finding Marilyn.
* * *
“Here,” Finn said several hours later as he stopped by the computer lab. He placed a bottle of water on the desk in front of Nik and a bottle of extra-strength headache tablets directly beside it. “I thought you might need these.”
Nik blinked her eyes twice as she looked up and then focused on what Finn had brought her. Her sigh resounded with appreciation.
“My hero,” she said in what sounded like sincerity to him. She opened the container, then shook out three pills into her palm and was about to pop them into her mouth.
“Hold it,” Finn said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to eat them like candy.”
She had a different opinion. “It’s either that, or ask you to hit me over the head with a hammer and put me out of my misery.”
He looked at her sympathetically. “That bad?”
“I’ll let you know how bad it is when I can focus on your face,” she told him.
“I’m making an executive decision,” he told her, turning her chair away from the computer screen. “I think you’ve had enough for the day.”
“But I haven’t found anyone,” she protested. “Not even that woman you showed me in the photograph, the one who is our new first victim...maybe,” she said, hesitating. At this point, she wasn’t convinced that there weren’t other, older victims who might qualify for the first space in this tragic lineup.
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