“Good question,” he agreed. “By the way, Seamus isn’t my grandfather. He’s my grand-uncle,” Finn reminded Nik. “But that doesn’t change the question you raised.”
A tall, stately-looking woman wearing a conservative gray suit walked past them as she went to reopen the office located just across from Dr. Garrett’s. As she unlocked her door, her eyes swept appreciatively over Finn and lingered for a moment.
“Can I help you with something?” the woman asked. Her question sounded as if it was intended for both of them, but she was still only looking at Finn.
Nik took the lead. “We were looking to talk to Dr. Garrett.”
The woman laughed, obviously amused. “Good luck with that.”
“Would you know where he is or when he’ll be back?” Nik asked the woman.
“According to gossip,” the woman told Finn, taking a step closer in his direction, “he’s probably out tomcatting around. As to when he’ll be back, well, that’s anyone’s guess. Don’t get me wrong,” she said a bit quickly. “James is a very good doctor—when he’s doctoring,” she qualified. “But he gets these...let’s call them restless periods, and he just takes off. When he gets it all out of his system,” she went on, “he comes back and picks up the reins of his practice as if nothing’s happened.”
Finn and Nik exchanged looks. “Does he do this sort of thing often?” Finn asked the woman.
“Actually, there was just that one time that I know of—until now,” she added with just a touch of drama. In Nik’s opinion, she was milking the situation for Finn’s benefit.
“Hasn’t anyone thought of disciplining him for this?” Nik asked.
The woman tossed her a look, then told Finn, “James is a charmer. He can talk his way out of anything, doesn’t matter if it’s a male or a female on the receiving end of his monologue.” She shrugged, turning back to her own door. “I suppose it’s harmless. He does have someone covering for him in case an emergency comes up. And I’m told that his patients were all rerouted until he returns.”
“The doctor who’s covering for Dr. Garrett, that would be Dr. Day, right?” Finn asked, glancing back at the sign on the door to make sure he had gotten the name right.
The woman nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I heard that James and Dr. Day went to medical school together.” The woman’s look lingered on Finn again. “Anything else I can do for you?” she asked.
It sounded more like an offer than an actual question to Nik.
“No, thank you,” Finn replied. “You’ve been a great help, Ms.—” He waited for the woman to fill in her name.
“Doctor,” she informed him proudly. “Dr. Julia Bishop,” she said, extending her hand to him.
Finn had no choice but to shake it. “Detective Finn Cavanaugh,” he told her. “And this is—” He got no further because Dr. Bishop interrupted him.
“Yes, yes,” she said, totally ignoring Nik. “You know where to find me if you have any more questions, Detective.”
And with that the woman went into her office and closed the door.
“Well, looks to me like you just made a friend, ‘Detective,’” Nik commented.
“If I did, it’s all due to you.” He saw the puzzled look on Nik’s face and explained. “Don’t look now but I think you’re rubbing off on me.”
“It’s not me that Dr. Bishop would like to be rubbing against,” Nik murmured under her breath as they went to the elevator.
“So, what are you thinking?” she asked Finn as they stepped back into the elevator and took it down to the first floor.
He wasn’t sure if she was referring to the overly friendly doctor in the hallway, or if she was talking about something else, so he asked, “What do you mean?”
She looked up at him as she stepped off the elevator. “You’ve got this look in your eyes, like you’re working through something. Did something Dr. Sexy say get to you—I mean other than the obvious?”
He ignored the latter part of her sentence. “Bishop made it sound like Garrett is a ladies’ man.”
“And?” she asked. But before he could actually answer her, Nik had another question for him. One that had begun to buzz around in her own head. “You think he’s involved in these murders?”
“I don’t know,” Finn answered honestly. “But my gut says that there’s something off here.”
“Your gut,” she repeated. They walked out of the building and headed to where he had parked his car. “Wait, I think I’ve heard of this. The famous Cavanaugh gut, right? It’s what you and your family call feelings that have absolutely no logical basis for existing, but you still fixate on them. Right?”
He had to laugh at her description. “You know, for an optimistic, cheerful person, you have a really downer way of putting things.”
“Sorry,” she apologized, flashing a smile at him. “I didn’t mean to throw mud on a sacred institution.” They had reached his vehicle and she paused at the passenger side. “So, what do you want to do next?”
“Off the top of my head, I’d say talk to Dr. Day and see if he can give us some insight into his old friend so we know whether or not we should continue on this path,” Finn answered.
She nodded. It sounded like a good idea to her. “Provided we can get past his bulldog of a receptionist,” she pointed out.
Finn patted his pocket where he had his badge pinned. “We will,” he assured her.
“You could always try charming her,” she told him.
He scowled, knowing she was referring to his exchange with Dr. Bishop. “Get in the car, Kowalski,” he instructed.
She saluted. “Yes, sir.”
He knew she was just kidding, but he still smiled and said, “You’re learning, Kowalski.”
She said something else under her breath, but he thought it wise to leave it alone.
* * *
“Wait, you can’t go in there!” the receptionist declared indignantly. “Doctor’s in with a patient!”
“Fine,” Finn replied, stopping. “Then tell him to come out. I...we need to speak to him,” he told the rather stern-looking woman.
The thin woman drew herself up to her full height of five foot three. “And what is this about?” she asked.
Nik smiled at the woman, answering for Finn. “You don’t have a need to know that, ma’am,” she informed the receptionist “politely.”
Daggers shot from the woman’s eyes at Nik as the receptionist turned on her heel and went to one of the rear examination rooms.
“Nicely done,” Finn told Nik.
Pleased, she flashed a wide smile at him. “I have been waiting for a long time to say that to someone,” she confided. “It always irritated the hell out of me to be on the receiving end of that line.”
Finn laughed softly under his breath. “Remind me to keep you in the loop.”
“I will,” she promised.
A couple of minutes later, a small, aristocratic-looking man with a pencil-thin moustache hovering on his upper lip came over to them.
“I’m Dr. Day,” he said. “Stella tells me that you’re looking for me.”
“I’m Detective Cavanaugh, this is investigator Kowalski,” Finn said, introducing himself and Nik. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asked, looking around.
“My office,” the doctor responded. He led the way to another room in the back. “Will this take long? You might have noticed that I’ve got a waiting room teeming with patients.”
“Yes, we know,” Nik acknowledged. “You’re doing double duty at the moment, taking on Dr. Garrett’s patients as well.”
“Yes.” And then Dr. Day looked at her over his shoulder, perplexed. “How would you know that?”
They were in the doctor’s office now and Finn took the liberty of shutting the door. “Dr. Garrett has a sign on his door, referring his patients to you. T
ell me, does Dr. Garrett take off like this often?” Finn asked, wanting to hear Day’s response to see if it jibed with what Dr. Bishop had told them.
“No, hardly ever,” Dr. Day answered rather quickly. “As a matter of fact, I can’t remember the last time he did this. Jimmy works really hard. He puts in longer hours than most. He’s exceptionally dedicated,” the doctor told them. “I guess he just needed to recharge his batteries, so to speak.”
Finn played along. “Do you know where he goes to do this ‘recharging’?”
To Finn’s disappointment—although not to his surprise—Dr. Day shook his head. “I really don’t know. But he’ll be back soon enough if you need to talk to him for some reason.” He looked from Finn to the woman beside him. “What’s this all about, anyway?”
Finn remained deliberately vague. “Sorry, we have some questions to ask him that only Dr. Garrett can answer.”
“Questions about one of his patients?” Day asked, hoping to get a reaction.
“Something like that,” Finn answered. “Well, if you hear from Dr. Garrett, ask him to give me a call,” he told the man, then handed the doctor his card.
Dr. Day glanced down at the card and then he put it away. “I will.”
“Thank you. We won’t take up any more of your time, Doctor,” Finn said. He glanced at Nik. “Let’s go.”
* * *
“You know,” Nik said, thinking out loud as they drove back to the police station, “you could ping Garrett’s phone, get a location on him.”
“I’d need probable cause before I could do that,” he reminded her.
“Probable cause.” She shifted in her seat to squarely face him. “That’s so you can get a warrant to ping his phone, right?”
He glanced at her. She knew that as well as he did, he thought. But, for the sake of argument, he answered her. “Yes.”
“From a judge, right?” Nik said, continuing her thought.
Okay, no more games, Finn thought. “What are you getting at?”
“Don’t you people have judges you know, or in the family?” she asked. “I mean, if you wanted to go strictly the legal route.”
“That would be the best way to go,” he said sarcastically.
She smiled, making him think of pure mischief personified. “But not the only way.”
It struck him that for all her irritating ways, she was still rather adorable. “You know, you’re as devious as my sister and some of my cousins,” he told her.
Her eyes crinkled. “I’ll take that as another compliment.”
Finn laughed, shaking his head. “You keep this up and you’ll become an honorary Cavanaugh,” he told her. They were on their way to the squad room, but he could easily delay that for thirty, forty minutes. He’d been feeling his stomach pinching him for the last hour or so. “How about some lunch?” he suggested.
“We’re past lunch,” she told him. “This would be an early dinner.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” he said, turning his car down a street and heading toward a fast-food restaurant he favored, already assuming that she was going to take him up on his suggestion. “Do you want to grab some?”
Now that he mentioned it, the idea of getting something to eat sounded really good. “I never say no to food,” she answered.
“Good to know,” he told her.
* * *
“That was some good work back there,” Finn told her as they sat at a small table in a fast-food restaurant.
The restaurant they’d gone to wound up being one that Nik favored—and it was closer than the one he had planned to go to. There was a logo of an adorable rabbit with huge eyes looking down at each customer as he or she walked through the door.
“Of course, I would have picked a different restaurant, but then, you can’t be dead-on each and every time,” he said philosophically, looking around.
“I like this place,” she said defensively. “It meets my two basic requirements. The food is good and it’s not expensive,” she told him. “As for the first thing you said—thank you.”
He nodded, taking a healthy bite of his cheeseburger. “By the way, I was told to remind you that Uncle Andrew’s party is tomorrow. Do you want me to come by and pick you up, or do you remember the way there?” he asked.
“I remember the way there,” Nik answered. She paused for a moment, then ate a few fries and said, “But you can come by and pick me up.”
He looked at her, surprised by her answer. “I would have thought you’d opt for being independent.”
His reaction amused her. “You’re not taking me into bondage,” she told him. “You’re just bringing me to a party. The way I see it, I’m saving on gas and the immediate world is being spared having a little extra pollution if we carpool.”
“Carpool,” he repeated, his smile growing. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“What did you want to call it?” she asked, then took a guess at the label he would have used. “A date?”
“Definitely not a date,” he answered. And then he raised his eyes to hers. “Unless that’s what you think it is.”
They were in the middle of a homicide investigation, but she realized that she was enjoying this. “I find that it’s best to avoid labels in some cases,” she told Finn.
“Yeah, me, too,” he agreed.
They were both lying, and they knew it. From Finn’s point of view, it was just a matter of time before they admitted it.
He glanced at Nik’s tray. For a little thing, she could really pack it away quickly. The tray had had a healthy amount of food on it and it was now empty. “Ready?” he asked her.
She looked at him, a touch of suspicion entering her eyes. “For what?”
“I need to go back to the squad room and make a note of this latest bit of information about the doctor,” he told her.
“You do think he has something to do with this, don’t you?” she asked.
“Like I said, it’s a gut feeling.”
“Maybe we can question the other victims’ families, find out if any of them were acquainted with the good doctor.”
“That’s a long shot,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked. Was he changing his mind? “I thought you said you had a gut feeling about the doctor.”
“I do,” Finn confirmed. “But you’re missing the point.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“Does your father know the name of the doctor you go to?” he asked.
“He would,” she answered, “if I had a doctor.”
“You don’t have a doctor,” he said incredulously, looking at her.
“Nope,” she freely admitted. “I am as healthy as the proverbial horse.”
“Maybe,” he said skeptically.
“No maybe about it,” she assured him firmly.
“That still doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t establish a baseline, you know, have a bunch of tests taken that can be used to measure against future results.”
“I’ll look into it first chance I get,” she told Finn.
He gave her a look. “You’re just placating me, aren’t you?”
Nik smiled up at him. “Is it working?”
“No,” he retorted.
“Well, it was worth a try,” she replied with a smile that Finn found was definitely wiggling its way under his skin no matter how much he tried not to let it. “Let’s get back to the squad room and update that bulletin board,” she said, leading the way to the car.
Chapter 18
It felt, Nik thought as the hours ticked away, like an exercise in futility.
The photographs and notations on the bulletin board were all neatly compiled and lined up in orderly columns beneath each victim’s name. In anticipation of possibly finding even more victims—because there was always the outside chance that the
y would—the task force had made more room on the bulletin board. A second bulletin board was reserved in the stockroom just in case it had to be pressed into service in the near future, although neither she nor Finn, nor the rest of the task force, wanted it to come to that.
But by the end of an overly long day, nothing about the case became any clearer except that the person or persons they were pursuing were elusively more clever—for now—than they were.
“Let’s call it a night, okay?” Finn suggested to the others.
“Don’t have to twist my arm any, fearless leader,” Harley said.
“Hey, I’m already gone,” Ramirez told him, shutting down his computer.
“I’ve got a family that thinks I’m just someone their mother made up,” Ed Walters, a third member of the task force, said. “It’s as good a time as any to show them that I exist,” the detective added as he gathered up the papers on his desk and put them together in some sort of a semi-orderly stack.
Finn noticed that only Nik didn’t say anything in response. As he came closer to her desk, he saw she was writing illegible notes to herself on scattered pieces of paper.
“Hey, Kowalski,” Finn said, raising his voice a little. He noticed that she still didn’t look up. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked her. “We’re tucking away our brains and calling it a night.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, still continuing to write. “Good night,” she said as an afterthought.
Finn placed his hand on top of the pad she was writing on. Nik hadn’t struck him as the old-fashioned type who still used paper and pencil, but obviously, she was.
Because his hand was in the way, Nik had to stop writing. Raising her head, she looked quizzically at the man who was standing over her.
“Go home, Kowalski,” Finn told her.
“I will, I will,” she assured him with a touch of impatience. “Just give me a few more minutes. I’ve got this thought running around in my head and I wanted to get it down before I lost it.”
She had been working harder than any of the people who were officially attached to the task force. She needed to take a break.
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