Cavanaugh Hero (7 page)

Rather than diminish, the burning sensation seemed to increase by the second. She grabbed at one of the bottles of water Declan had bought when he’d purchased the two lunches. Popping the top, she consumed almost half the bottle in under thirty seconds.

Only then did the fire in her mouth
begin
to feel as if it was receding.

Sensing she’d just had a practical joke played on her, Charley glared at her new partner. “What
was
that?”

“Ortega’s specialty,” he told her.

“His specialty is setting people on fire from the inside out?” she demanded, more than a little annoyed.

Charley liked always being in control. She didn’t like losing her composure around people, even when it involved something so minor as being caught off guard by an overly spicy meal.

He laughed, really amused at her reaction. “You’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not even beginning to do it justice,” she informed him. Rewrapping it, she deposited her so-called lunch back into the bag it had come from. “Seriously, how can you eat that?” she asked.

He found the meal a little spicy, but certainly nothing he couldn’t handle. Declan shrugged in answer to her question. “A cast-iron stomach, I guess.”

“More like an asbestos-lined mouth,” she quipped with feeling. Her own mouth still felt as if it was smoldering. She drained the rest of her water, still feeling the effects of the one bite she’d taken.

Had they not been partnered, he would have told her that she was free to try it out and see for herself whether or not his mouth was lined with asbestos—because she most certainly looked as if she could deliver the heat.

But they
were
partnered, which meant that he had to behave himself and not let his mind wander in directions it ordinarily felt very comfortable wandering in. However, because things were the way they were, he had to refrain from “business as usual.”

And, as a newly minted Cavanaugh, he felt he had things to prove, not the least of which was that he could conduct himself professionally no matter what sort of temptation he was confronted with or how close by it turned out to be.

In this particular case, he couldn’t help thinking, temptation was sitting in the passenger seat right next to him.

Chapter 6

E
veryone they found to question in Matthew Holt’s immediate neighborhood was willing to talk. However, no one said anything that was even remotely useful—because no one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary that day or the day before.

The woman who lived across the street from Matt, Kay Bishop, had noticed an unfamiliar car parked a few houses down the block, but her description was decidedly vague and she had seen no reason at the time to write down the license plate number.

“It’s a good neighborhood,” she’d immediately said in her own defense after telling Declan that she hadn’t taken note of the license plate. “Nothing ever happens here, or at least, it hadn’t,” she amended, stealing a covert glance to Holt’s house. Yellow crime-scene tape draped across the front door forbidding entrance. It stood out like a sore thumb. “I mean, the house down the block used to belong to a couple who argued every weekend, but it’s been quiet since they moved.

“And Matthew was a cop,” she interjected in a voice that said it was taken for granted that police officers weren’t supposed to get hurt, especially not in their own home. “We all felt safe because of that. Who was going to mess with a police officer?” she asked. “It’s a terrible thing, terrible,” Kay repeated, shaking her head. She ran her hands along her arms, as if fighting off a chill. “I don’t think I’ll ever really feel safe again.”

Charley did her best to appear sympathetic, but she was wrestling with her own problems in dealing with Matt’s death. She had little left over to spare for a stranger.

“What it does,” Declan told the woman, “is make you very aware that you shouldn’t take anything for granted and that you should live life to the fullest every day. It also should make you realize that things that you mean to do or say shouldn’t be put off to another day, because that ‘other day’ just might not come.”

Mrs. Bishop seemed properly impressed and moved by what the detective had said to her.

She was still nodding her head, most likely mentally examining the meaning behind his words, as Charley and he finished with their questioning, walked away and headed back to Declan’s car.

“That’s pretty profound for you,” Charley commented, looking at him over the hood of his vehicle.

Declan opened up the door on his side and grinned. “Impressed?”

“Almost,” she allowed, getting into the sedan. “You’ve been reading Hallmark cards again?”

“That’s cold, Charley.” Adjusting his seat belt, he buckled up and closed the door. “You wound me to the quick.”

She turned in the seat to look at him. Her seat belt clutched at her tightly, as if bracing for an accident. She found herself drawing short, shallow breaths.

“Do you and your wounded quick have any idea what to do next?” she asked, growing serious. “We’ve talked to everyone along the block as well as behind this block and come up empty.”

His hands on the wheel, Declan hadn’t started the car yet. Instead, his eyes swept along the length of the block they’d just covered. Nothing out of the ordinary came to mind. He hated when that happened, but no one appeared to be withholding information or lying. All too willing to talk, they were just not volunteering any sort of information that was in any way useful to their investigation.

There was only one course of action that came to mind at this point. “We go back and see if the autopsy yielded anything that might give us a little more insight into who killed Holt.” He paused for a moment, studying her. “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to, you know.”

She stared at him. That had certainly come out of left field. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”

“Well, for one thing, autopsy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,” he told her. She had no idea what she was in for, did she? She struck him as someone who didn’t have all that much use for caution, who went charging in just to bring the element of surprise to her opponent’s doorstep.

Charley sniffed. “If I want tea, I’ll get a tea bag.”

She had all this bravado, but he still had a feeling there was this frightened little girl beneath all the gutsy rhetoric. Starting the car, he was back on the road again.

“You ever witnessed an autopsy?” he asked.

She couldn’t lie, but she didn’t want to say “no,” either. So instead, she took the high road. “Always a first time,” she replied, doing her best to sound philosophical.

Inside, she was trying very hard to harden herself, to brace herself for what was ahead. Seeing Matt the way she never had before.

It’s just the shell, just the empty shell on the table. It’s not Matt anymore. He’s out, free. Matt’s free now.

“Besides, the M.E. isn’t going to be doing actual dissecting while we’re there, right?” Charley did her best to make it sound like a rhetorical question, but beneath the blasé attitude, she was actually putting the question to him.

If she was asking, then he owed her the truth, Declan thought. “From what I gather, yeah, it’s been known to happen.”

His older brother had a great story about Bridget, one of his sisters, turning a strange shade of green the time she’d walked in on the medical examiner taking out a murder victim’s liver. It was all she could do not to make a mad dash for the ladies’ room when he started to weigh it.

“I could call ahead, make sure everything’s back where it’s supposed to be when we stop by the place,” he offered.

She didn’t want special treatment because he could use that as a reason why she couldn’t come along, that she had to be treated with kid gloves. She was determined to pull her own weight.

“There’s no reason to go out of your way,” she told him.

He lost his patience. There was such a thing as putting up
too
brave a front. “Damn it, Charley, you said that Holt was a friend of yours. There’s no need for you to see your friend in pieces if you don’t have to. You don’t have to act like some steadfast little tin soldier 24/7,” he snapped.

It was an automatic defense mechanism. Charley lifted her chin. “Seems that you’re the one who’s losing it over the idea of walking in on an autopsy, not me,” she told him.

“Fine, have it your way,” he retorted, taking out his cell.

She realized he was still going to make the call regarding the condition of Holt’s body, requesting it be intact when they arrived—and that she was being much too defensive, doing a complete one-eighty in order to make it seem as if she was unaffected by Matt’s death and everything connected to it.

“You’re still calling ahead?” she asked him quietly.

“Yeah,” he barked. Then looked at her in surprise when she touched his arm as he was about to push a preset button.

“Thank you,” she said in a voice that was hardly above a whisper.

He merely nodded, thinking it was probably safer that way. Charley was definitely not the easiest cipher to crack.

* * *

Sergeant Holt’s autopsy had been completed by the time they arrived. Likewise, all the findings had been duly noted and recorded and were now waiting to be entered into a usable report.

“The lab results aren’t in yet,” medical examiner Dr. Donald Forest, a short, pudgy man, who seemed to be counting the days to his retirement, told them. “I can’t tell you whether or not the officer was drugged yet, but I’m assuming so because there were no signs of a struggle evident.”

For their benefit he reviewed his lack of findings. “No bruised knuckles, no skin beneath the nails. Death came from a single bullet, fired at close range. There was visible stippling around the wound so the gun was practically pressed up against his chest. And then there were the two staples in his chest,” he barely mentioned, “but those were done postmortem.”

The medical examiner wasn’t telling them anything that she didn’t already know. She’d taken in the single wound and had already decided that most likely, Matt hadn’t been conscious when he was killed. He almost looked peaceful, not like someone fighting for his life.

“His blood alcohol level will probably come back rather high,” she told Dr. Forest.

“He had a drinking problem?” the medical examiner asked, curious.

She had another way of wording it. “He had an ex-girlfriend problem which led to the alcohol problem. It wasn’t something that was going on in his life for a long time,” she told the older man. “He’s not—wasn’t—a diehard alcoholic,” she said, correcting herself again. God, but it was going to be hard, thinking of Matt in the past tense.

The M.E. nodded as if he had expected the answer. “I didn’t think so. His liver was in very good condition. Most likely in far better shape than mine is,” he murmured.

“Text me the lab results as soon as you get them,” Declan encouraged the medical examiner.

Forest gave him a rather withering, impatient look. “I don’t text, Detective,” he informed him. “I do, however, use the phone and I’ll have someone here call you when I get the tests back.”

Declan nodded. He couldn’t ask for more than that. “Thanks.”

A few more words were exchanged between them and then Declan took his leave, as did Charley.

Once they were back in the corridor, away from the drawers with their resident dead and breathing air that was relatively untainted with the smell of chemicals, he looked at the woman beside him. “You’re not green,” he marveled.

Charley wasn’t going to point out the obvious, that there had been no disjointed body in view to cause her stomach to upheave. “Disappointed?”

“Just surprised,” he corrected, then he shared a piece of his history with her. “I threw up the first time I came into Autopsy. Of course, the M.E. was right in the middle of performing one and he had a brain in his hand when he turned toward me. It was like a really gross scene out of
Frankenstein
. Not my all-time favorite movie,” he confided.

“The original version isn’t bad. It’s melodramatic enough to be funny,” she said matter-of-factly.

Her response surprised him. There was a lot about Charley Randolph that surprised him. “Old-movie buff?” he asked. He wouldn’t have picked her to be one.

“Partially,” she amended. She hadn’t been, not really. It was Matt who used to get a kick out of the movies that were generally referred to as “classics.” He would bring home a bunch of old movies that he found in the old video shop on Friday nights and they’d spend the weekend eating popcorn, watching old movies and taking them apart. And when it came to trivia about those old films, he beat her hands-down every time.

Charley could feel it again, could feel her throat threatening to close off, clogged with tears again. She did her best to shake off the sensation, occupying her mind with the details of the case and praying that they would, somehow, lead them to Matt’s killer.

“What do you think the note meant?” she asked Declan abruptly.

Just at that moment, the elevator arrived. Declan waited for her to get in first, then followed on behind her. Reaching around her, he pressed for the floor they needed.

“What note?” he asked her.

She blew out an impatient breath. Was she paired with a detective who didn’t pay attention? “The one that was stapled to his chest.” It was hard for her even to mention that without wincing in empathy—even though she knew Matt hadn’t been alive at that point and wouldn’t have felt the sharp ends of the staples sinking into his flesh like tiny shark teeth. “Saying that this was just the beginning,” she prompted further.

“Looks to me like we still have the same two choices—it’s either a serial killer, boasting, which means we’ve got one hell of a bumpy road ahead—
or
the killer is trying to throw us off by making us believe Holt was just part of a larger whole.” He regarded her for a moment. “You wouldn’t know if Holt had been part of a task force, or was with a group of people who fancied themselves in charge or responsible?”

It sounded scattered and he knew it, but he was throwing everything he could come up with out there, trying to make something stick, something that could be vaguely connected to a motive.

But she shook her head.

“You don’t know, or he wasn’t?” he asked since what she meant wasn’t clear to him.

“He wasn’t—unless he was keeping it a secret from me,” she said.

“Why would he do that?” he asked, sensing again that the relationship between Charley and the dead officer was a lot deeper than Charley was letting on.

They arrived at Declan’s floor and got out.

“The only thing he belonged to was the police force,” Charley said simply. “He wasn’t a joiner.”

There were joiners, and then there were
joiners
. “He didn’t belong to any
clubs, or organization, or church groups?”

“Nothing,” she said in response to the first two things he’d mentioned, “and he wasn’t a churchgoer,” she added, addressing the third item. “Said if he ever walked in on a service, the roof would undoubtedly collapse and he was actually doing a public service by keeping away.”

Declan was about to ask her just how close she and the dead man had been because from where he was standing, it sounded as if they were
very
close. But upon reflection, all he would probably get out of asking her that would be a denial.

So he kept his peace for now, biding his time.

She had her own theory, such as it was. “Could be someone just hates cops in general and just happened to single Holt out, figuring he would make an easy start,” she guessed, remembering the shattered glass on the floor. Had there been lipstick on the corner of the rim and she’d just missed it? Was there something she was overlooking? Maybe, in an effort to forget about Melissa, he’d brought home a woman he’d picked up at a bar and she—Charley stopped abruptly. She was just grasping at straws now.

“In Holt’s own home?” Declan asked her incredulously.

Charley shrugged, searching for a plausible explanation that didn’t give her away at the same time. “He either knew his killer and let them in. Or...”

“Or...?” Declan prodded, ready for just about anything to come out of her mouth.

“Or the killer followed him home from a bar,” she finally suggested.

Declan inclined his head, mulling over what she’d said. “It’s possible.”