A Cavanaugh Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Damn it!”

  Sequestered in an almost claustrophobically small, darkened video room where they had been sitting side by side, Tom’s head shot up when he heard Kait bite off the curse. He realized belatedly that he’d almost nodded off from boredom.

  Looking at her monitor now, he searched the screen, trying to see what had prompted that reaction from her. “You find him?”

  The triumph she’d anticipated when she finally located the son of a bitch who had taken Megan was pointedly missing.

  “Yeah, I found him,” she grumbled.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Look at him!” she cried, waving her hand angrily at the screen. “He’s wearing a ski jacket with the collar turned up and a hat. All he’s missing is a ski mask.” She suppressed the second curse that rose to her lips. “He could be anybody,” she said in disgust. “For all we know, that could be a woman or even a dog trained to walk on its hind legs.”

  He could understand her frustration, but something could be gleaned from the segment. “Hold on, now. Rewind that. We might not have a clear shot of his face, but maybe we can pick up something else from the clip.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she dared him to find something positive from this. “Like what?”

  “Rewind the tape to just before he opens the back door to the lot,” Tom instructed.

  Frowning, she did what he asked even though she thought it was a huge waste of time. When she’d rewound it to just before the man emerged from the rear of the building to claim the van he’d requested, she hit Play.

  “Slower,” he told her. “Play that in slow motion,” he added, watching her screen intently.

  “What are you looking for?” Kait asked.

  “Something. Anything.” His eyes remained trained on the monitor, straining to catch the one telltale detail that might put their search into the proper perspective. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Terrific,” she muttered under her breath. In other words, he hadn’t a clue.

  Trying to work her way past the encroaching hopeless feeling, Kait rewound the tape a third time. When she played it this time, it advanced a frame at a time. Kait stared at the screen, hating that she didn’t see what the other detective apparently was looking for.

  “You getting anything out of this?” Kait finally asked.

  There were tiny bits and pieces of information. If put together, would they be larger than the sum of their parts? He had no answer, but he knew he had to play every angle. They were all that missing little girl had.

  “Well, he’s a short man,” Tom told her.

  He looked to be of average height to her. “How can you tell?”

  Tom hit the pause button and the video froze the man on the screen in an awkward position. “Look where his shoulder comes up to against that poster on the back wall,” he pointed out, tapping the screen. “When we were out in the lot, I looked down at the poster. The kidnapper had to look up to see it.” She’d begun advancing the film again. “There!” he cried. “Freeze it.” When Kait did, he ran his finger along the man’s basic outline. “He also either has a limp or one leg is just a little shorter than the other, because his gait is uneven,” he told her with finality.

  She’d been so intent on getting a clearer picture, she hadn’t even paid attention to the way the man moved. From side to side like some roly-poly clown doll.

  “Wow, Ronald would have been impressed with you.” To her, that was the highest compliment she could bestow on anyone.

  “Ronald?” Was that the name of a boyfriend? Tom couldn’t help wondering. Someone she’d left back home she needed to get back to? And why did the identity of this “Ronald” person pique his curiosity so much?

  She nodded. “My father.”

  Rather than answer questions, the revelation only raised more. “You call your father by his first name?” He found that a little odd.

  A bittersweet mood moved over her, taking her emotions prisoner. “Right now, I’d call him anything he wanted if he was just around to answer.” She saw the question rise to the other detective’s eyes. “He died four years ago.” He’d lived just long enough to see her made the youngest detective in the precinct. He’d been so proud of her. “Best man to ever walk the earth,” she said with no little feeling.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  It never ceased to strike him how very hollow those words sounded even when he meant them in all sincerity. The words, the sentiment behind them, didn’t begin to embrace the immense sorrow he knew that the loss of a parent or someone close had to generate. When his mother had succumbed to an insidious disease, the hole left in his family’s hearts had been insurmountable.

  “Really,” he added with quiet fierceness.

  Her eyes met his for a moment. The flip comment that automatically came to her lips faded before she could give voice to it.

  Instead, she told him, “I believe you. And I called him by his first name because I first knew him as ‘Uncle Ronald.’” She could see more questions forming in his mind. Maybe it did deserve an explanation. She wasn’t ashamed of her connection to Ronald. “I was about three or four at the time. He and his partner posed as a couple desperate to adopt a baby. I remember just before they came, my grandmother warned me that if I wasn’t nice to these people and they left without me, she’d stick a hot poker into my mouth to show me what happened to ‘bad little girls who didn’t listen to their grandmother.’ I remember being so scared,” she admitted. “Then there was a lot of commotion and there were all these policemen, handcuffing my grandmother and her boyfriend and taking them away. I started to cry. What I remember most of all were these big, strong arms lifting me up.”

  She pressed her lips together as she remembered and relived the moments. “He told me everything was going to be okay.”

  “And was it?” Tom asked. He studied her as she answered. Maybe this would give him more of a handle on the woman he was being paired with.

  “No, but not because Ronald broke his word to me,” she said defensively. “Family court put me into the system and I got passed around to whatever foster family would take me at the time.”

  Tom watched the corners of her mouth curve ever so slightly in what had to be one of the saddest smiles he’d ever seen. “Ronald would always find me and come visit. He’d bring me food, or new clothes. Once he brought me a hairbrush because my hair was so knotted.” Fondness slipped into her voice as she recalled the incident. “He spent two hours trying to get the knots out without hurting me. Finally, I had to have my hair cut. I looked like a boy. He promised it would grow out and got me a hat to wear until it did.”

  Her words echoed back to her. Startled, she stared at Tom. Her tone changed abruptly. “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  It was too late to pull back. The damage had been done. She’d let him see her vulnerable side. “How did you manage to wheedle that out of me?”

  “I didn’t wheedle anything,” he told her calmly. “I just listened to you talk.” His eyes were kind as they held hers. “You were the one who volunteered all that information. I didn’t twist your arm.”

  Kait pressed her lips together. She wasn’t about to beg, and she knew that a threat was out of place here. Annoyed and flustered with herself, all she could do was appeal to his sense of honor.

  “I’d appreciate it if you kept what I just told you to yourself.”

  She was lucky that LaGuardia hadn’t been within earshot, Tom thought. The other man had a terrible penchant for not being able to keep secrets.

  “Wasn’t planning on having it pop up on my Facebook page.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I’m just kidding.” Tom bit his lower lip as he struggled not to laugh at the look on her face. “I was just being flippant.” He looked at her pointedly. “It’s a habit I seemed to have picked up just recently.”

  Kait released the breath she’d been holding. “Point
taken.” And then she mumbled a near inaudible, “Thanks,” before asking him in a louder voice, “So now what do we do?”

  “We go back to the fake driver’s license and take the photo we found there down to the tech lab to see if they can match it up with a face that is actually on a real California driver’s license.” Turning his monitor and the ancient VCR off, Tom rose to his feet.

  Kait was already moving toward the door.

  When she opened it, she was forced to squint at the brightness of the light coming in from the hall. She held her hand up before her eyes to help.

  “I had no idea the lights in the hall were so bright.” Very slowly, she raised her eyelids, trying to acclimate herself to the light.

  “Now I know how that gopher feels, popping his head out of that hole in February,” Tom commented. He closed the door to the windowless room behind him.

  “Groundhog,” she corrected, wishing she’d thought to bring her sunglasses with her.

  The word had been half grunted, half mumbled. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “What?”

  “It’s a groundhog, not a gopher,” she told him, enunciating more clearly. “That’s why it’s called ‘Groundhog Day,’ not ‘Gopher Day.’”

  He inclined his head, accepting her correction. He had a feeling she didn’t tolerate being wrong. The woman was undoubtedly very hard on herself. “I stand corrected.”

  She slanted a look at his face, trying to discern if he was having fun at her expense. Apart from Ronald and his wife, forming any sort of a relationship had always been difficult for her.

  “You’re humoring me, aren’t you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I doubt if that’s possible.” He had a feeling she handed people their heads for that, because she probably took it as their making jokes at her expense. “What I was just doing was admitting that I was wrong. I do that on occasion,” he told her. “If I’m wrong,” he underscored. Then, changing the subject, he urged, “C’mon, the sooner we get someone started on that facial-recognition program, the sooner we might come up with an actual name for this guy.”

  The fact that they hadn’t already taken the fake copy with its fuzzy photograph to the lab was on her, Kait thought, annoyed with herself. She’d held off because she’d hoped they would come up with a clearer, more focused photograph than the overexposed one that the rental agency had copied for their files.

  “Yeah,” she agreed, lengthening her stride to keep up with the detective again. “I’ve already wasted too much precious time.”

  She fervently prayed that this play for time wouldn’t cost Megan her life—or have her disappear out of sight forever.

  As they approached the elevator, Tom looked at the intense detective, and he could almost read her thoughts. He had to find a way to get her to lighten up. Otherwise she would self-combust on him.

  “Do you always beat yourself up this much?” he asked.

  He could see that his question had ticked her off. That wouldn’t have been his first choice for a reaction, but he’d take it. Being annoyed at him restored her fighting spirit, which was what he was trying to accomplish in the first place.

  “Where is this lab?” she asked.

  The elevator arrived just then and he waited for her to get in before getting on himself. When he did, he pushed the button labeled B.

  “Guess,” he said. A smile played on his lips as he said it. One that she could only describe as seductively mischievous.

  Too bad she was immune to that sort of thing, she thought.

  “The basement,” she answered with impatient annoyance. Why was he playing games? And why was that smile of his causing this odd sensation to sprout and grow in the pit of her stomach?

  “Very good.” As they rode down, Tom inclined his head as if he was bowing to her superior intellect. “You got it on the first guess.”

  Kait instantly resented his frivolous tone. A little girl’s life was at stake. Didn’t he get that? Or didn’t he care? She wasn’t sure which was a worse offense, stupidity or indifference.

  “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” she demanded heatedly.

  He could see where this was going, and he didn’t care for it. He wasn’t just a fairly decent detective, he was a damn good one. That meant he cared. More than he actually should at times.

  “I am.”

  Kait laughed shortly. “By making lame jokes?” she challenged.

  Tom debated just letting the accusation hang in the air without answering it. To the undiscerning eye, he might appear laid-back, but he didn’t like having to explain himself and he certainly didn’t like to justify his actions. Especially not to his partner. A partner was supposed to have your back even if it was a matter of blind faith.

  And, for better or for worse—and for the duration of this case—this woman was his partner. He might need her to have his back. Especially if they wound up stumbling on a kidnapping ring. And if that did happen, then alienating her now wouldn’t be such a wise move.

  So he told her the truth. He told her why, at times, especially when all else might fail, humor ended up being his weapon of choice.

  “By not allowing my outrage, my sense of horror and my anger at the lowlife who would rip an innocent child from her family to get to me to the point that I am almost paralyzed and utterly useless when it comes to working a case.” And then he attempted to lighten the mood by adding, “And the jokes aren’t lame. They’re just not overly clever.”

  No one had gotten on or off, so they had ridden the elevator straight to their destination. The elevator doors opened as the car arrived in a corner of the basement.

  “They’re lame,” Kait insisted, but this time, he saw that there was just a hint of a smile on her lips, as well as one that he could just make out distantly in Kait’s voice.

  Tom silently congratulated himself. However minor, he was making headway.

  Chapter 8

  Ever since the bombshell had dropped into his world that he was not the son of the late Martha and Anthony Cavelli but was actually born into what had slowly transformed into the Cavanaugh dynasty, Sean Cavelli/Cavanaugh was forced to wrestle with a number of issues, including the so-called “simple” act of selecting which surname he was legally supposed to be using.

  For more than five decades, he’d thought of himself as Sean Cavelli, a man whose relatives on both sides of the family had their roots in Italy. Never mind that he didn’t resemble either of his parents or any of his three siblings.

  Currently, he could truthfully admit that he wasn’t quite comfortable with either last name.

  Still, as Thomas, his oldest son, had pointed out to him the first time they’d discussed this unexpected twist in their lives, he was still the same person he’d been before the discovery had been unceremoniously dropped on all of them. He still had the same abilities and insights, still had the background and training for the profession he both loved and did so well. Just because the letters of his last name had changed—and not even his initials, he thought, amused—that didn’t diminish his previous accomplishments or minimize anything he would do from here on in.

  He was still the same person, and whether that person was Italian or Scottish or some other ethnic nationality would not ultimately change anything.

  Sean carefully separated the fragments of a shredded garment he’d been given to work with this morning in the hopes that he would be able to extract some DNA from the fibers. He worked slowly, methodically, the way he always did.

  Sometimes wisdom didn’t come with age, he thought with a smile. Sometimes it was there all along, as in Thomas’s case. Unlike some of the others, this revelation about the hospital’s mix-up didn’t seem to faze his oldest son in the least.

  “Speak of the devil,” Sean said as he looked up and saw his son and a woman he didn’t recognize walking into the lab.

  Tom looked around. For once the lab appeared to be empty, except for his father, who headed up the crime-scene-investigation day
unit. It had been his father’s recent transfer from a neighboring forensic lab that had started the whole identity-discovery process in the first place.

  “There’s no one here. Just who were you speaking of the devil to?” Tom asked, amused.

  “Just thinking out loud,” Sean answered dismissively. “Never mind that, what did you bring me?” As he asked, Sean looked at the attractive, very serious-looking redhead behind his firstborn.

  Tom stepped to the side and gestured toward the detective with him. “This is Detective Kaitlyn Two Feathers. The case she was working on in New Mexico led her to Aurora, so here she is.” He held up the copy of the driver’s license photo they’d lifted out of the rental car agency’s files. “Do you think you can run this photograph through the facial-recognition program and find a name for us?”

  Sean looked at the reproduced photograph dubiously. He noticed that, as with all state licenses, there was a name and address next to the photograph. “The one on here isn’t good enough?” he asked.

  “It’s a fake,” Tom told him. “And so is the address.”

  “And he has such an honest face, too,” Sean bemoaned wryly. He studied the reproduction and frowned. The picture was fuzzy at best. “This is the clearest photo you have of him?”

  “It’s the only one we have of him,” Kait answered before Tom could. Sean gathered that the detective from New Mexico was not happy about that.

  Sean took the information in stride. In general, he tended to be optimistic, even when the outlook was bleak. “Well, something is always better than nothing. I’ll see what I can do with this and give you a call later. Sooner if something comes up,” he promised. He began to put the sheet at the bottom of his considerable pile of work. “What’s he done?” he asked, mildly curious about a case that would have a detective crossing state lines.

  There was restrained anger in Kait’s voice as she answered. “He abducted a little girl from in front of her house while she was playing with her friends.”