Cavanaugh on Duty (8 page)

After three years of living solely by his wits and going with gut instincts, Esteban was accustomed to following his own rules. By-the-book procedure was something he vaguely remembered coming across at the academy, but he hadn’t ever followed that in the field. It didn’t really make much sense, especially not when it came to dealing with life-or-death situations.

“You mean we just have to sit here and cool our heels?” he asked impatiently.

She nodded her head. “That’s just how it’s done.” She didn’t like it any more than he did, but she liked having cases thrown out of court even less, especially when she busted her tail to put the cases together in the first place.

He snorted dismissively. The look on his face was
not
impassive at the moment, and it told her exactly what he thought of how “things were done.”

“Not in my world,” he responded.

“But we’re not in your world anymore,” she informed him, making the best of an irritating situation. “We’re in mine. And in case you think you can argue me out of following proper procedure, I think you should know that my dad’s the head of the CSI day unit.”

She couldn’t quite fathom the look he gave her, but it definitely didn’t even remotely fit under the heading of agreeable.

Or even resigned.

“Of course he is,” Esteban responded curtly. Looking down at the hold she still had on the cuff of his shirt, he said, “You can let go now.”

No, I can’t, not yet,
she thought.

She continued clutching his sleeve. “And I can trust you to back away from the body and just wait for the unit to arrive?”

He didn’t like it, but he’d do it. He’d had enough friction for the time being.

Shrugging, he told her, “Pay’s the same whether I wait or not, so yeah, you can trust me to back away from the body and wait for the crime unit to come with their cameras to take their pretty pictures—even if the whole thing’s dumb.”

Kari let go of his shirtsleeve, dropping her hand to her side.

“It’s only dumb,” she corrected him, “when you see the case you’ve toiled tirelessly over being thrown out of court because one stupid misstep has crucial evidence being ruled inadmissible.” Her head was beginning to ache from the smell assaulting her. “Off the record, I agree with you, but that’s just the way things are.”

She’d managed to mildly spark his interest—besides, he had to do something while waiting, and asking questions was as good a way as any to pass the time.

“It happened to you?” he asked, then clarified when she gave him a quizzical look. “Having something thrown out as inadmissible?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah, it happened to me.” And no amount of appealing to just about everyone she could think of had changed that. Taking out her cell phone, she pressed one preprogrammed number on the keypad, then waited as the phone on the other end rang. She silently counted off the rings, getting up to three. When the fourth ring came, she knew she was being connected to voice mail and sighed with displeasure because she hated talking to machines. But just as the fourth ring was fading, clearing a path for the robotic voice that was about to ask her to “please leave a message at the tone,” Kari heard the cell being picked up on the other end.

And then a deep voice announced, “Crime lab, Cavanaugh.”

Her father had taken to his new/old name like a duck to water, she thought. All those years of feeling as if he wasn’t quite in sync with the rest of his family finally made sense now. They, the Cavellis, really
hadn’t
been the rest of his family.

At least, not in total.

He was a Cavanaugh no matter what his birth certificate had initially stated. She was just glad for his sake that the error had finally come to light, giving him the opportunity to claim his birthright if he wanted it.

“Hi, Dad,” she said without bothering to announce herself. “I’m in need of your stunningly focused expertise.”

There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation on the other end of the call. A hearty laugh was immediately followed by, “Ah, Kari, my most perceptive offspring. You have a crime scene for me.”

It wasn’t a guess but a statement of fact. With rare insight, Sean Cavanaugh knew each of his children inside out.

“All but gift-wrapped,” she told him. “My new partner and I found a dead body wrapped up in what looks like an old Persian rug. Rug and body are currently stashed in a storage facility on Edinger and East Yale Loop. I need you and your team of roving experts to process the crime scene for me so I can get on with the case.”

“Address?” he asked. She rattled it off for him, having already committed it to memory. “All right, Kari, the team and I will be there as soon as I finish up here,” he promised.

So, he’d already scored another crime scene. There was a time, according to the stories her father had told them, that the only crime in Aurora revolved around littering.

“Busy morning?” she murmured.

“Too busy,” he answered. But he wasn’t one to go on about his work, so he said, “Be there as soon as we can,” and then terminated the call.

“How long?” Esteban wanted to know the moment Kari returned her cell phone to her pocket and headed back to him.

Sugarcoating it got her no extra points and she knew it. So she went with the truth.

“Not sure,” she confessed.

Esteban was already growing impatient, and they were still within their first fifteen minutes at the crime scene.

“And we’re just supposed to stand here, staring off into space until they get here?” he groused.

“You can handle the staring part if you want,” she told him glibly. “I’m going to go and see what I can get out of that manager guy. He struck me as someone who liked sticking his nose into everyone’s business. Maybe we can get that to work for us,” she said as she walked out of the storage unit.

The second she did, her eyes stopped stinging. She wondered how big a job it was to disinfect an entire storage unit. Jennings was not going to be a happy camper, she couldn’t help thinking.

The all but silent footfall behind her meant that her partner had opted to leave the storage unit, as well. It came as no surprise.

Obviously, Mr. Macho’s had enough of this smell, too,
she thought, amused.

Chapter 6

W
hen she and Esteban strolled into the small office where the manager of the storage facility spent most of his time, Jennings was already at his desk, hunched over his computer.

The staccato sound of keys being struck in less than a rhythmic fashion told her that the poor typist was either busy spreading the word that his storage facility had been the scene of a gruesome murder, or he was searching through old records to see if he could uncover anything about the poor old sap who had been renting the unit. Jennings suddenly looked up, startled, when the sound of the door slamming shut—thanks to a gust of wind—reverberated through the dust-laden office.

Surprise swiftly turned into annoyance. “You’re still here,” he complained.

“Yes, we are,” Kari acknowledged, deliberately sounding cheerful. She could tell that irritated him, which seemed only fair since Jennings’s noncompliant attitude irritated
her.
“I see you’ve had a chance to look up the deceased’s name.”

Kari actually couldn’t “see” anything of the kind, but she surmised that it would have been the manager’s first order of business the second he got back into his cubbyhole of an office. The flushed expression on his face told her she’d guessed right.

“What is it?” she asked him, her eyes all but nailing him to his chair.

Jennings squirmed uncomfortably. He evidently didn’t like being read like a book. “William Reynolds,” he answered, not without a trace of reluctance.

“And what’s the late Mr. Reynolds’s address?” she wanted to know.

A nervously defiant look came over his face. “That’s confidential,” Jennings informed her. “I can’t go around giving out our customers’ addresses.”

Esteban leaned over the thin, gouged beige counter that separated the man’s office from the small space in front of the outer door.

“We’re not asking for ‘addresses,’ we’re asking for
an
address,” he told the manager, “and the information’s not ‘confidential’ unless you’re a priest and it was given to you while taking Reynolds’s confession.” Esteban spoke softly, but each word he uttered carried weight and, strung together, they came very close to sounding as if there was a threat waiting in the wings.

Beginning to sweat, Jennings sucked in his breath and then hit a series of keys on the keyboard.

“There!” he declared, gesturing at the screen. “Satisfied?” His derisive question was intended for both of the detectives who’d so vexingly invaded his minor domain.

Kari raised her cell phone and took a quick picture of the information on the monitor. She caught the quizzical look on her partner’s face.

“It beats writing,” she told him. “Besides, I’ve got pretty terrible handwriting,” she added.

It was the kind that, unless she actually remembered what it was that she’d jotted down earlier, she had difficulty deciphering.

“You should work on that,” Esteban commented.

Maybe she liked him better when he didn’t talk, she thought, not quite sure if he was being serious or sarcastic. In either case, she didn’t welcome the unsolicited advice.

Turning her attention back to the less than cooperative storage-facility manager, she asked one final question. “Is there anything you can tell us about the deceased?”

Jennings was still guarded. “Like what?” he replied.

She couldn’t decide if the man was hiding something or was just uncooperative with the law in general. “Like did you hear him arguing with anyone? Did he look upset in the last week or so?”

He raised and lowered his shoulders in a vague, dismissive manner. “I only saw him maybe a couple of times.”

“Recently?” Esteban growled out the word, issuing it like a challenge.

“N-no,” Jennings stammered, clearly uncomfortable when Esteban addressed him. The manager thought for a moment, then said, “He paid his bill on time and never gave me any trouble.”

She supposed that was something—or a
non-
something. Nonetheless, she said thank-you as she took out one of her business cards. “If you do happen to think of something else, you can reach me at this number.” She placed the card on his desk.

Jennings picked it up and looked down at the number imprinted on the face of the off-white business card. “If I call this number, I’ll just get you?” he asked, raising one eyebrow as he looked up at her.

There was no way she was going to have the man thinking this was about anything but the murder. “That’s the precinct number for both of us,” she informed him in a clipped voice.

“Oh.” Suddenly disinterested, Jennings tossed the card onto the side of the desk just as they began to walk out.

“Looks like you just blew your chances for a date,” Esteban quipped. The smallest hint of a grin accompanied his wry observation.

Kari narrowed her eyes at him as she banked down her surprise. “You have a sense of humor. Reassuring,” she commented. “As for your remark, I’d rather eat dirt.”

If he was going to comment on her unappetizing choice of entrée, the words died unspoken as both he and Kari saw the Aurora Police Department’s white CSI van pull up onto the storage facility’s grounds.

“That way,” Kari called out to the driver, who was none other than her father. She pointed in the general direction of Reynolds’s storage unit.

Rather than say anything, Sean Cavanaugh briefly stuck his hand out the driver’s-side window and gave a quick wave in response before continuing on his way. Kari followed quickly behind the vehicle.

She didn’t bother looking over her shoulder to see if Fernandez had opted to wait for her in the car or to follow her lead.

Now that the scene was going to be thoroughly documented, she wanted to get at the body wrapped up in the rug. There could be something on the torso that could help them figure out who killed Reynolds and why.

Sean Cavanaugh and his two investigators were already inside the storage unit when she reached it. The sound of cameras clicking, freezing the crime scene in time, greeted her as she walked in.

One thing struck her immediately. The smell was just as appalling the second time around as it had been the first.

“Drumming up business for my department?” her father asked as he snapped another picture of the rug and the victim within it.

“Actually, I thought I’d make my new partner’s first day on the job an unforgettable one,” she jested.

“New partner,” Sean repeated. This was the first he’d heard about Kari getting someone new to work with. “That would be you?” he asked, looking over his daughter’s head at the tall and striking dark-haired man who was half a step behind her.

Kari turned around. Damn, but he was incredibly quiet, she thought for a second time. He didn’t seem to make a sound when he moved. If he stayed on, she might have to give serious consideration to getting him a bell to wear around his neck.

“So you did decide to come along,” she murmured.

Esteban ignored her for the time being, looking instead at the man who’d asked him a question.

“Detective Esteban Fernandez,” he said, extending his hand to the man he assumed was the supervisor of the CSI day crew. He had a very authoritative manner about him that lent itself well to the position.

“Sean Cavanaugh,” Sean introduced himself, taking the offered hand in his.

The younger man had a good, solid handshake, Sean thought. You could tell a great deal about a man by the way he stepped up and presented himself. He felt a little more at ease about his daughter being out in the field. This partner, he judged, would have her back.

“My daughter giving you a hard time?” he asked Esteban amicably.

“Not that I noticed, sir,” the detective replied with stoic resignation that was not wasted on Sean. He took a second look at the young man, and then looked at his daughter.
This could prove to be interesting,
Sean thought.