Cavanaugh's Missing Person

by Marie Ferrarella

  With the playbook rendered completely null and void, that meant anything was possible and just about anyone could be a killer.

  That unfortunately left the suspect pool wide-open, she thought.

  “Looks like this means we’re going to be keeping company for a little while longer, Kenzie,” Hunter told her.

  Kenzie jumped. For a minute, lost in thought, she had totally forgotten that he was there. Annoyed that Brannigan had managed to make her react like a skittish teenager, she asked him almost belligerently, “What makes you say that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? My killer is your killer,” Hunter pointed out simply. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to pursue the guy separately.”

  From where she stood, pursuing the killer separately made a lot of sense, Kenzie thought. Mainly because she didn’t want to work alongside Brannigan any more than she had to. In her opinion, the man was as shallow as a raindrop and she was in no mood to be subjected to his feeble attempts to impress her or to dazzle her with his so-called detective skills.

  “Why not?” she asked, challenging him. “This way, we can approach the crimes from two separate points of view.”

  “We can still do that, but together,” Hunter countered stubbornly. “And it’ll go faster if we don’t have to stop and call each other every time a new idea hits one of us. All we’ll have to do is look across the table—or however you intend to have your bull pen arranged,” he told her.

  Stunned, she realized just what he was getting at. “You’re talking about getting a task force together,” Kenzie cried, part of her still hoping that he would deny it.

  But he didn’t. Exactly.

  “That all depends,” Hunter answered loftily. “Do the two of us constitute a task force?”

  Suddenly feeling cornered, she searched for a way to put Brannigan off. “I need permission to get a task force together,” she told him.

  Hunter looked totally unfazed by her excuse. “You’re a Cavanaugh. Do you really need permission to do something?” he asked skeptically. It was obvious that the detective didn’t think so.

  So, he was one of those, was he? He thought she was privileged. Well, she didn’t think she was privileged and she certainly didn’t act as if she was, Kenzie thought, annoyed.

  “It’s because I’m a Cavanaugh that I need permission,” Kenzie informed him, incensed that Brannigan had the gall to put her on the spot like this. “Just because I have that last name doesn’t mean I’m privileged.”

  The smile on Hunter’s face seemed to mock her and she would have given anything to physically wipe it off his lips—with her fist.

  “The chief of Ds told you to say that, didn’t he?” Brannigan guessed. His expression made it abundantly clear that he got a tremendous kick out of what Kenzie was saying.

  She was not about to confirm Brannigan’s guess, even though she grudgingly admitted that it was dead-on. As things stood between them, she would rather die than come out and say that.

  Instead, she resorted to wordplay. “That doesn’t alter the circumstances,” she informed Brannigan with a toss of her head.

  “All right,” he obliged. “So go ahead, ask the chief for permission to put a task force together. The sooner you do, the sooner it’ll be granted—” he glanced down at the body parts that Jupiter had just unearthed “—and the sooner we’ll be on our way to finding the SOB who gets his jollies doing this sort of sick thing.”

  “SOBs,” Kenzie corrected pointedly.

  Hunter looked at her, confused. “What?”

  “You said there might be two of them, remember?” she reminded Brannigan. “I’m just trying to cover all our bases.”

  “Right,” he agreed. He had said that, Hunter thought. But at the time he was just making guesses. “Hard to believe there’re two people out there who are this depraved.”

  Kenzie looked at him, wondering if he was really on the level or if he was just pulling her leg, trying to get on the right side of her for his own reasons.

  The look on his face didn’t really give her a clue.

  She had to ask him. “You’re serious?”

  Hunter nodded. Since they were apparently going to be working together, he shared a little of his basic philosophy with her.

  “Gotta hang on to the light, or you wind up sinking into the darkness and before you know it, you wind up giving up.”

  That sounded deep, she thought. Too deep for Brannigan, she maintained. Kenzie was afraid to leave her defenses down, even for a moment.

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Kenzie told him flippantly.

  “Okay, so what’s your way?” Brannigan asked her as they watched the shepherd begin to dig into the earth for yet one more time.

  Kenzie looked at the detective. Sunlight was weaving through his hair. She did her best to ignore that, looking for his flaws.

  “My way?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he answered. Jupiter was growing more agitated. “How do you look at what you do?”

  She recited the mantra she liked to live by. “Catching the bad guys and making the world safer for everyone else.”

  Brannigan grinned at her and she was certain he was going to say something flippant or make fun of her. But instead, he surprised her by saying, “See, we’re not that different after all, you and I.”

  She did not want to be likened to this man by anyone, least of all him.

  “Oh, we’re worlds apart, Brannigan. Worlds apart,” she emphasized.

  Hunter pointed over toward Jupiter, who apparently had unearthed still another would-be grave.

  “I’d say that it looks like our worlds just got a little closer, Kenzie,” he told her.

  She clenched her teeth. “I told you not to call me that. Only my friends and family call me that.”

  “So how do I get to be part of your friends’ club?” he asked.

  “Simple,” she told him. “You die and come back as someone else. Anyone else,” she underscored.

  He laughed, obviously getting a kick out of her—that was not what she had intended.

  “I’ll see what I can do about that,” Hunter promised just before he made his way over to Jupiter’s newest discovery.

  Chapter 5

  Chief Sean Cavanaugh, head of the crime scene investigation day crew, surveyed the very large area that had been cordoned off. Sporadic piles of dirt and mud pocked the entire terrain at this end of the park. Three investigators were moving around, documenting everything that could even remotely pass for evidence.

  “The park officials are not going to be happy about this,” Sean commented.

  Vacation season had just begun and there were tourists to think of, not to mention regular residents who normally enjoyed utilizing the park’s many attributes and were now prevented from doing so.

  It looked as if there were miles of yellow tape designating the entire area off-limits. It was the police department’s attempt to keep the public from accidentally trampling over any possible clues that hadn’t surfaced yet.

  Hunter nodded in agreement. This was his first professional interaction with the chief. “I’m not overly thrilled with this either, but I’m willing to bet it’s most likely for a completely different reason,” the cold case detective said.

  Kenzie was standing close by and she looked at Brannigan in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be thrilled to death with this turn of events, Brannigan,” she retorted.

  “Thrilled?” Hunter echoed, puzzled. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not a ghoul—or bloodthirsty.”

  Hunter stopped himself before he could say anything further. He wasn’t about to get into a possible shouting match with Kenzie in front of the chief. Instead, he turned toward Rayburn.

  The medical examiner had arrived shortly after the chief and his team had. Rayburn was looking at the various piles o
f bones—torsos and arms and legs for the most part—and he was shaking his head.

  “How many different people do you think Jupiter dug up today, Doc?” Hunter asked the man.

  Dr. Rayburn frowned. “Hard to say before I get all these—these pieces to the morgue and see if I can match the right limbs to the right torsos,” the medical examiner answered honestly. “Are you sure that the dog didn’t accidentally stumble across some old, forgotten burial ground?” he asked. It was hard to miss the hopeful note in his voice.

  “Way ahead of you, Doc,” Kenzie told the medical examiner. “I already called Valri,” she said, mentioning the name of the Aurora police department’s most gifted computer tech, “and had her dig up the town’s records for this area dating back almost a hundred and fifty years. There is no record of there being any cemetery or burial grounds in the vicinity.”

  Rayburn nodded. “I should have known.” He glanced toward the chief, who was now busy instructing one of his investigators. “You people are nothing if not thorough. As for how many former citizens we have here,” the medical examiner said, returning to Hunter’s question, “I’ll know more after I’ve had some time to examine all these different dismembered torsos and limbs.” He looked thoughtful at the various pallets filled with headless bodies and unattached arms and legs that were being prepared to be taken into the two waiting vans. “This is going to be one for the books.”

  “Hopefully a solved one for the books,” Brannigan murmured. It was almost numbing to look at all these body parts and realize that they represented lost lives and victims.

  Kenzie looked at Hunter, mildly surprised to hear him express his thoughts. “Why, Detective Brannigan, is that doubt I hear in your voice?”

  “There’s always doubt,” Hunter told her, refusing to rise to her bait. But then he allowed himself a smile. “Detective work is only as good as your weakest detective,” he said, his gaze deliberately lingering over her for an extra beat.

  Kenzie squared her shoulders. “Nobody asked you to be here, Brannigan,” she informed him. Her implication was that he was free to go at any time. In fact, she would have preferred it that way.

  “I always finish anything I start, Detective,” Hunter told her.

  Sean moved away from the investigator he was talking to and looked from Kenzie to Hunter. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

  “No, no problem, Chief,” Hunter replied cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to working on this case. I cut my teeth on jigsaw puzzles when I was a kid,” he told Sean.

  A tall man, like the rest of his clan, Sean nodded and smiled at the detective. “Then you should be in seventh heaven here.” Sean paused, his gaze sweeping over Kenzie, Hunter and O’Reilly. “There’s not much more for any of you to do out here. Why don’t you go back to the precinct and I’ll let you know what we find once we finish processing the area.”

  Sean’s smile deepened as he looked over toward Jupiter. Now that the dog had made his discoveries, the German shepherd seemed satisfied to just lie at his handler’s feet, watching as Sean’s team did their work. “Looks like Jupiter doesn’t even have a clue as to the kind of far-reaching dust storm he just managed to kick up.”

  Kenzie couldn’t resist glancing over in Hunter’s direction.

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” she commented. And then she asked her uncle, “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay?”

  “I’m sure,” Sean answered. Seeing the skeptical look on her face, he added, “You know what they say about there being too many cooks, Kenzie.” He could see that she was still undecided about leaving the scene. “My advice to the two of you is for you to save your strength for as long as you can. Something tells me that you’re both going to be knocking on a lot of doors, asking a lot of questions before long.”

  Kenzie nodded, surrendering. In her experience, the chief was usually right. “Call me when you get back,” she requested.

  “Count on it,” Sean told her. And then he looked at Hunter. “I’d stand back if I were you,” he said, lowering his voice. “She has a tendency of steamrolling over people.”

  “Duly noted, Chief,” Hunter told the older man, giving every indication that he intended to take the advice to heart.

  Instead of saying anything to Brannigan, Kenzie walked away from what had at this point turned into an excavation site. Heading toward her car, she stopped to look around for O’Reilly. Finding him, she crossed to the handler and his dog.

  “I’m heading back to the station, O’Reilly,” she told him. “You two want a ride?” she asked, glancing at the dog as well as the handler.

  “My mama taught me to always leave with the lady I came with,” O’Reilly told her with a big sunny grin.

  “I think that actually refers to bringing a date to a dance,” Hunter told O’Reilly as he came up behind the handler and Kenzie.

  Kenzie’s eyes narrowed as she looked over her shoulder and glared at Hunter. “It refers to manners, something I’m sure you know next to nothing about, Brannigan.”

  “Ouch,” O’Reilly said, wincing. “On second thought, I think it might be safer for Jupiter and me if we hitched a ride back to the station with the chief,” the K-9 officer speculated. O’Reilly sounded as if he was only half kidding.

  “Don’t do that, O’Reilly. I know for a fact that Kenzie’s had her necessary shots so you wouldn’t be running the risk of getting rabies on the ride back,” Hunter told the handler with a straight face.

  Both men saw Kenzie’s eyes flash. But there was no outburst of temper the way they might have expected. Instead, her voice was rather cold as she told Hunter, “I have no idea why my brothers find you amusing, but I certainly don’t. I’m leaving now,” she informed the two men. “You can either come with me or find your own way back.”

  As she began to walk, Jupiter fell into place next to her.

  “Well, it looks like my partner’s made his choice,” O’Reilly noted with a laugh. He started to walk beside his dog. “I guess that’s good enough for me.”

  Hunter joined them.

  Officer O’Reilly raised a brow in his direction and the cold case detective told him, “I decided that there’s safety in numbers.”

  Without missing a beat Kenzie asked him, “Who says that the dog’s on your side?”

  O’Reilly’s laugh was deep and rich. “She’s got you there, Brannigan,” he said as they reached Kenzie’s vehicle.

  Hunter merely smiled as he opened the door on the passenger side. And then he paused. “Okay if I sit up front?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of in the trunk or strapped to the roof,” Kenzie said, buckling up. “But I guess I can put up with you sitting there for a few minutes.”

  * * *

  “You weren’t kidding about a few minutes,” Hunter commented when they pulled up into the parking space several minutes later.

  Kenzie had driven as if the car was on fire, squeezing through yellow lights just as they were about to turn red.

  Hunter took a second to get the air back into his lungs. “I think I lost my stomach back there.”

  “Too bad you didn’t lose your mouth,” Kenzie retorted shortly. She slammed the driver’s side door as she got out of the car. Her manner softened when she looked at O’Reilly and Jupiter as the duo climbed out of the back seat. “Thanks for all your help,” Kenzie said to the handler.

  “It’s been an experience, Detective Cavanaugh,” O’Reilly told her with a bemused smile. “It surely has. Be sure to let me know how the case goes.”

  O’Reilly’s last request was addressed to both detectives but Kenzie acted as if the handler had said the words to her only.

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” she promised Officer O’Reilly.

  Hunter waited until the handler had taken Jupiter back to the kennel and was out of earshot. Ca
tching her arm to keep her from taking off, he asked, “What do you have against me, Kenzie?”

  Kenzie shrugged his hand off. She seriously considered just walking away and ignoring the man and his question, but she knew that he wasn’t going to drop it and she had no desire to be confronted in the squad room in front of people she worked with on a daily basis. He was capable of that.

  So she turned around and faced Brannigan squarely as she replied, “Do you want that alphabetically, chronologically or in the order of magnitude?”

  He whistled softly, as if impressed. “Wow, you’ve been saving that for a while now, haven’t you?” Hunter asked. He saw Kenzie opening her mouth, but he acted quickly, beating her to the punch. “Tell me in any order you want to, Detective Cavanaugh,” Hunter said, deliberately using her surname the way she had requested.

  “I know your type, Brannigan.”

  He knew he was asking for trouble, but at the same time, he was rather curious what she had to say. “And just what type is that?”

  “You’re a narcissist who mistakenly believes that he is God’s personal gift to women and despite your intelligence, you’re not bright enough to know that you’re not anything of the kind.”

  His eyes met hers. She expected him to back off. Instead, she saw that smile of his slowly curve the corners of his mouth.

  “So,” he said, his smile growing, “you think I’m intelligent.”

  She threw up her hands and started to walk away. “You’re missing the whole point, Brannigan. Why am I not surprised?”

  But he wouldn’t let her walk away. This time, rather than take hold of her arm, he put himself in front of her, bodily blocking her path to the back entrance.

  “Oh no, I don’t think I am missing the point,” he contradicted. “You had one bad experience with a Class A jerk a little over a year ago who didn’t know how lucky he was and screwed up a really good thing. You let that color the way you view every other man who even comes near you and you judge them and shut them down before they ever have a chance to open their mouths.”