A Cavanaugh Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  So she asked him bluntly, “You do know where you’re going, right?”

  Tom smiled at her question. He was blessed with a memory that retained everything—from the important to the ridiculous—but for now he saw no need to tell her that. Given what he’d glimpsed of her disposition, she’d most likely think he was bragging.

  “I always know where I’m going,” he told her easily.

  “How very lucky for you,” she murmured under her breath.

  It was a struggle, but Tom managed to keep his smile to himself.

  Drive! Car Rental was an independent agency that depended on word-of-mouth, repeat business and extremely low rental fees to gain new clientele and to meet the monthly mortgage payments.

  The agency certainly didn’t rely on any sort of inviting charm—or even basic cleanliness, Kait thought as they pulled up into the long, narrow parking lot that was behind the small, rundown building. The rental agency was located at the end of a long block that had once housed a thriving strip mall and now had only, except for the rental agency, a collection of empty, single-story buildings to whisper of past glory days and successful businesses that had moved on, or ones that had gone under.

  Tom automatically locked his car before they went in.

  “Hello,” the lanky clerk behind the counter said cheerfully. Slightly unkempt, with a stubborn, greasy stain in the middle of his lime-colored, wrinkled golf shirt, he sported a two-day growth he obviously thought made him look rugged, but in reality just added to the impression that hygiene was low on the list of his priorities.

  He quickly stuck the magazine he’d been perusing beneath the counter so that it was out of sight. “Looking for some wheels to get around our fair city?” he asked brightly.

  “Looking to see if you remember renting this vehicle to someone.” Kait placed the information she’d secured in front of the man, turning the piece of paper around so that he could read it.

  The sunny disposition immediately vanished. “Why?” the clerk asked, his eyes moving like loose black marbles from one face to the other. “You cops?”

  “Right on the first guess,” Tom mockingly marveled as he looked at the woman beside him. “You’re a bright young man.” Knowing what was coming next—a request for proof—Tom took out his wallet and held up his ID for the man’s inspection. “Now, why don’t you be a good citizen—Clark—” he said, reading the nameplate on the counter, “and go on that computer and see what kind of information you can come up with for us?”

  “Would if I could,” Clark answered petulantly. “But the computer’s down. Been down for the last two days,” he complained. “I think it’s dead. That’s why I’m reading a magazine,” he moaned, as if reading something that used actual pages was a prehistoric endeavor that he found distasteful and beneath him.

  “Mind if I take a look at it?” Tom asked.

  Not waiting for a reply, Tom came around to the back of the counter and faced the dormant computer. It looked like a holdover from the last decade, a relic by most standards. The desktop was coupled with a clumsy old-fashioned preflat-screen monitor.

  Business obviously had to be pretty bad lately, he judged.

  “When was the last time you had this upgraded?” he asked the clerk, feeling around the casing for an on button.

  Faded, tuftlike eyebrows came together in a squiggly, confused line. “Huh?” Clark asked.

  Well, that answered that, Tom thought. “Never mind.”

  It was very clear that the clerk knew nothing about the machine he’d most likely used to access porn more than anything else.

  Tom turned the machine off and then on again, attempting to reboot the computer by going into the operating system’s safe mode. As he worked, he secretly marveled at what a small world it really was. He was utilizing things he’d learned at an after-hours class that had been given at the precinct. The class had been led by one of his newfound cousins’ wives—Brenda Cavanaugh. He’d taken the class before he’d ever been made aware of his connection to the family.

  While he tried to get the computer up and running again, for the time being Tom left questioning the hapless clerk to Kaitlyn. He had a gut feeling that she was good at interrogations.

  Kait began with the most basic of questions. “Do you have any surveillance cameras on the premises?”

  “Got one out back.” Clark jerked his thumb toward the rear, indicating the parking lot that was just beyond the back wall. “Boss put it in after two of the cars in the lot got stolen.” Leaning in closer to her, the clerk lowered his voice and confided, “This ain’t the safest neighborhood, you know.” He said it as if he thought she wouldn’t have guessed as much from the neighborhood’s seedy appearance. And then he looked at her pointedly, as if she had it within her power to change things if she wanted to. “We could stand to have a few more cops around here.”

  “Couldn’t we all?” Kait acknowledged, then nodded at the camera that was mounted by the door. Its lens was pointed directly at the counter. Why hadn’t the clerk mentioned this one? “Where’s the feed from that camera?”

  The request confused Clark. He blinked. “The what again?”

  “The feed,” she repeated. “The old tapes or DVDs recorded by that camera. Where do you keep them?”

  “We don’t,” the clerk answered very simply.

  “Why not?” she demanded, then came up with a possible answer. “You reuse them?”

  If they were recorded over, the situation could still be salvaged. The computer tech at the police station might be able to undo the layers, separate them so that the recordings beneath could be viewed. At least it was something to hope for, better than nothing.

  Clark shook his head, strands of his hair, which was on the long side, moving about his thin face independently.

  “No, I mean that’s just a dummy. The camera’s just for show,” he said, seeming so proud when he elaborated. “People think twice before jumping you if they think it’s all gonna be caught on video.”

  So much for catching their perpetrator in the act of renting the vehicle. That meant the case was now riding on the surveillance recordings from the camera trained on the parking lot in the back.

  Struggling to harness her impatience, Kait glanced over toward Tom and the computer he was working on. The expression on his face didn’t give her much hope.

  “How’s that coming?” she asked, raising her voice in order to catch his attention.

  His fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. With a resigned sigh, Tom frowned. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to be much help.”

  So near and yet so far. Damn it, anyway. “It’s dead?” she asked him, not bothering to hide her frustration at this point.

  “Oh, no,” he contradicted. “I got it to run and even pulled up the transaction involving our friend and the white van.”

  That was exactly what she was hoping for. Yet Cavelli didn’t look like a man who’d just witnessed a breakthrough. She braced herself to receive the disappointing news.

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asked.

  “Well, if the address on the guy’s license is correct, then the guy we’re after lives in the middle of the bay. I mean really in the bay. Your missing little girl was abducted by Aquaman.”

  “That’s a lie,” Clark piped up. “Aquaman would never do that. I’ve got every one of his comics in my collection and he’s just too honorable,” the clerk insisted indignantly. “Besides, I don’t remember him coming in.”

  “I guess Mensa won’t be asking him to join their club anytime soon,” Tom quipped. And then he realized that maybe he was talking over the other detective’s head. He’d been guilty of that before, as his partner was always quick to point out to him. “That’s a club where the IQ has to be—”

  Kait cut him off. “I know what Mensa is,” she informed him coldly.

  Tom laughed softly. The sound rippled along her skin. She attributed it to her lack of a decent night’s sleep ever since she’d le
ft New Mexico.

  “That puts you one up on LaGuardia,” Tom told her. “He’s always complaining that half the time he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”

  She moved to the other side of the counter to see exactly what it was that the Aurora detective had pulled up on the screen. She found herself looking at a blurry photograph of a rather portly man who appeared as if he could run through a brick wall and shake the effects off.

  “The photo,” she said to the clerk, calling his attention to the screen. “Is that the face of the man you remember renting this van?” Kait tapped the paper with the vehicle information on it for good measure.

  Clark squinted at the screen. “I remember him from somewhere,” he admitted slowly. “Coulda been the guy who rented the van.”

  At this point, she was going to have to go with that. “Good enough,” Kait declared. “We’ll print it.”

  Tom was ready to oblige. There was only one problem. He looked around, but didn’t see what he needed.

  “Great,” he said to Kait. “Now all we need is a printer.”

  Clark instantly brightened up, like a puppy eager to do a trick and be rewarded for it with a treat. With a little bit of fanfare, the clerk reached under the counter, right next to his magazine.

  “Got it right here,” he announced. Taking the printer in both hands, Clark relocated it to the far edge of the counter.

  Kait looked at it, then at the clerk. Her expression was incredulous.

  “You’re kidding, right?” The printer Clark had produced was an early-model dot matrix.

  Crestfallen, he protested, “Hey, we don’t throw money away on luxuries. This works. Sometimes,” Clark added as an afterthought and in a much lower, almost inaudible voice.

  Beggars couldn’t be choosers, she told herself. “All right, print it up—and send a copy to this email address,” she added suddenly.

  The instruction was to Tom rather than the clerk. She suspected that was the only way she would be able to get a colored version of the license photograph, via email that she would print herself. As for the black-and-white copy that the dot matrix struggled with, that might just give them something to use with the facial-recognition program. With luck, they might be able to match the man to something or someone that wasn’t located out in the middle of the ocean.

  “You keep all the rental cars out back?” she asked.

  Clark bobbed his head up and down again. “We sure do.”

  She was taking nothing for granted. “And that camera you have mounted in the back lot, it works?”

  The clerk was beaming as he gestured toward the small screen that was feeding them back the picture from the parking lot. “Look for yourself.”

  Seeing something on the screen wouldn’t do her any good if the recordings hadn’t been kept. “Do you keep the recordings?” she asked again.

  This time Clark appeared a little sheepish. “I’ve been meaning to erase them so we can use ’im again. Quality ain’t too good after ten or twelve times, but like I said—”

  She suppressed a sigh. “You don’t have money for luxuries, yes, I know. I—we,” she corrected herself as she felt Tom glancing her way, “need the recording from the date the van was rented.”

  “Okay,” Clark replied in such a vague way, Kait had the impression that she was losing him.

  “Has it been brought back?” she asked, enunciating each word as if trying to communicate with someone who was more than a little mentally challenged.

  “Not yet. But he paid for two weeks up front, so I don’t figure it’ll be back before then.”

  So much for going over the van with all the technology the CSI had available. “Of course not.”

  A movement on the screen caught her attention as she took the black-and-white photograph that Tom had finally finished printing for her. When she got a better view of the surveillance monitor and saw what was happening, she was startled.

  The next second, she turned on the heel of her boot and raced out of the office and straight to the parking lot.

  Chapter 4

  Gut instincts had Tom taking off after the woman.

  “Why are we running?” he called after her.

  It surprised him that she could run faster than he’d given her credit for. Tom found he had to step up his own pace to catch up—which he did just before she rounded the side of the rental building. She was obviously heading for the parking lot in the back.

  “There are three thugs trying to steal your car,” Kait tossed over her shoulder.

  “Good reason.”

  Tom had pulled out his service weapon and had it at the ready before she could even finish answering his question.

  What happened next, when Kait reviewed it in her mind later, had all taken place incredibly fast and yet, somehow, it felt as if it was unfolding in slow motion, as well.

  At least it did to her.

  One second she and the Aurora detective had just reached the back of the squat building where the parking lot full of secondhand vehicles stood waiting to be rented out for the right price. The next she heard Cavelli or whatever his name was loudly proclaiming a single word, “Gun!”

  Just like that, before she could hone in on where the weapon was and which of the thugs was pointing it, Kait felt herself being pushed down to the ground. Not just pushed down to the ground, but, at the same time, instantly having her body covered, as well.

  Covered by a rock-solid, warm body that all but obliterated everything else that existed around her.

  Had the air not already been knocked out of her, the pressure, both physical and otherwise, of the detective’s firm body against hers would have definitely managed to steal it away.

  Wasn’t this guy made out of flesh and bone like the rest of them? So why didn’t he feel that way?

  The thought moved through her startled brain as Kait found herself pinned to the cracked asphalt, unable to draw in a decent breath or proclaim her indignation at being shoved down.

  And then came an almost deafening noise right above her head. Three shots fired in rapid succession, sounding so loud, her ears started ringing.

  It took Kait a couple of seconds to orient herself amid the chaos and realize that the detective on top of her was the one doing all the shooting.

  Opening her mouth to demand that he get off her, she never got the chance to speak.

  Tom simultaneously scrambled to his feet, grabbed her forearm and yanked her to standing before dashing over to the fallen thugs, his revolver ready to fire at the first one who moved.

  All three were down and bleeding. And cursing a blue streak.

  Gun—and eyes—trained on the three men, Tom pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and carefully picked up the fallen weapon that was directly in front of the would-be thieves. The weapon that had made him fire his own.

  Never once taking his eyes off the suspects, Tom tucked the gun he’d picked up into his waistband. He moved closer to the thugs quickly kicking aside the “slim Jim” one of the would-be carjackers had dropped. The long, thin metal tool was used by thieves, police and car mechanics alike to open up locked car doors when keys were unavailable.

  On her feet, tension vibrating through her, Kait took out her own weapon. Not that she thought the detective needed her to back him up. He seemed to be very much in control of the situation. And, she thought with grudging admiration, it looked as if she owed him one. He had, quite possibly, saved her life.

  Replaying the scene in her head, Kait realized that she’d heard a crack just as Cavelli had pushed her face down, and the noise hadn’t belonged to a dried twig breaking beneath the weight of her foot. One of the thugs had fired in her direction. If this apparently not-so-laid-back detective hadn’t acted as quickly as he had, she figured she would have been in a world of hurt right now—if not worse.

  Tom turned his head a bare fraction of an inch, just enough for his voice to carry. “Call this in,” he instructed.

  Behind them, the cle
rk had wandered out to see what was going on and uttered a mesmerized, “Awesome!” followed by a much more fearful, “Whoa.” The latter was accompanied by raised hands as Kait, anticipating more thugs, swung around to aim her weapon at him.

  Seeing who it was, Kait frowned and turned back to the three prisoners on the ground.

  Her frown deepened. She had no idea what the precinct number was and felt frustrated by her lack of knowledge. Her frustration increased because she had to admit to her ignorance. She’d never liked confessing shortcomings, no matter how minor.

  “What do I…?”

  Taking a step back so that his line of vision was level with hers, Tom spared a glance in Kaitlyn’s direction. He saw that she had her weapon out. Good. He liked that she didn’t have to be told to back him up.

  Anticipating what she was about to say next, he told her, “Cover them, I’ll call the precinct.” Tom lowered his weapon just a shade as he pulled out his cellphone.

  The man on the ground closest to her had a particularly malevolent expression in his dark eyes. It seemed to mock her. Rocking forward, he looked as if he was starting to get up.

  Kait deliberately cocked her revolver, aiming the muzzle straight at him. “Don’t even think about it,” she told the thug, her voice low, threatening. “I’m not as good a shot as my partner is. If you make so much as a move, I’ll shoot. And who knows? I might just hit something important on you. Something you wouldn’t want to part with.”

  Cursing and threatening to get his revenge, the thug nonetheless sank down.

  In the middle of requesting a squad car and a couple of paramedics, Tom glanced in Kait’s direction. He had caught the offhanded compliment she’d just paid him and smiled to himself. Maybe being paired up with this woman wasn’t going to be so bad after all. God knew she was easy on the eyes. If she was good at her job, as well, so much the better.

  Finished with the call, Tom tucked away his phone again.

  “Go back inside and wait for the paramedics,” he told the clerk. The latter quickly vanished. Tom moved in closer to Kait. His eyes swept over her in quick, succinct scrutiny. “You okay?”