Internal Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

  Something drove her to egg him on. He was irritating the hell out of her. “And you’d know this why? Because of your vast acting experience?”

  “Look, the guy’s an operator. I’m not saying he’s not a good congressman, but he’s a man married to a demanding wife, and this pretty young thing bats her eyes at him, making his blood rush and just like that—” he snapped his fingers “—he’s off to the races.”

  “I still say he was too stunned when you told him about the baby. That was real.” About to buckle up, Maggi stopped. A strange look appeared on Cavanaugh’s face, one she couldn’t begin to read. “What?”

  Instead of saying anything, Patrick let actions do his talking for him. Very slowly, he extended his fingers and just barely touched her cheek, all the while looking into her eyes. Holding her prisoner.

  Maggi felt her breath stop in her lungs.

  Any demands she might have made as to what the hell he thought he was doing never made it to her lips.

  Time stood still. Her pulse didn’t as it went into rapid overdrive, hammering hard. When he finally leaned in to her, she felt herself going into a complete meltdown even before his lips touched hers.

  At the last moment, he drew back. Disappointment created a huge void in her.

  His eyes were knowing, as if he didn’t need her to agree to the kiss. He was right and he knew it.

  “Made you believe I was going to kiss you, didn’t I?” he asked.

  Maggi felt as if she were stepping out of the Twilight Zone and still not sure if she would find solid ground or empty space beneath her feet. She stalled for time, trying to pull herself together.

  “What?”

  “Just now, you thought I was going to kiss you. Even though nothing’s gone down between us, even though we mix together like oil and water. You still thought I was going to kiss you.”

  Maggi’s breath returned in tiny dribbles and she husbanded it before saying in what she hoped was a normal voice, “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “Because I wanted it to.”

  And maybe, just maybe, he added silently, because the idea was not exactly abhorrent or foreign to him, either. It had buzzed around in the back of his mind now like an annoying itch. One he instinctively knew that, if he scratched, would just increase. He’d been testing himself more than the theory he was tendering to Maggi.

  “And you weren’t even predisposed to believe I’d do that. Wiley already knew you were buying his act, hook, line and sinker.” When she cocked her head, silently asking for an explanation, he said, “You were practically playing his maid, for God’s sake, dumping out his ashtray like that.”

  “I was playing detective,” she countered with every fiber she could muster.

  Damn, but he’d just about undone her. She should have pushed him away, should have laughed in his face, not just sat there holding her breath.

  Waiting.

  She should have had more than doughnuts for breakfast. Sugar always did make mush out of her brain.

  Patrick’s expression told her he wasn’t buying what she was selling. “And how’s that?”

  It was her turn to play out the line and reel him in. “We need Wiley’s DNA, don’t we? To see if it matches the baby’s.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Think the lab can get something useful from one of these? I’m assuming there’s got to be a little bit of saliva on at least one of them.”

  And then, before he could ask her what she was talking about, Maggi opened her hand and produced three of the butts that had been in the congressman’s ashtray.

  Chapter 8

  He stared at Maggi’s opened hand. On her upturned palm, a smattering of ashes were mixed with the remnants of three cigarettes, smoked all the way down to the filters. “How did you get those?”

  “I palmed them. From Wiley’s ashtray.” Taking out her handkerchief, she placed the evidence in the center, then carefully folded it and placed it back in her pocket. She made a mental note to have her jacket cleaned.

  Patrick shook his head as he turned over the engine. “Damn but you’re more resourceful than I gave you credit for.”

  Satisfied with herself, Maggi smiled. She supposed that was as close to a compliment as she was going to get from the man. “I’m a lot more things than you give me credit for. Apology accepted.”

  He studied her for a moment, then they left the parking area. “Hacker, thief, anything else I should know about you?”

  Yes, that I’m really here to spy on you. The thought exploded in her chest with the force of a magnum bullet. She kept her face impassive and brazened it out. “Lots of things. You’ll learn as we go along.”

  He had no idea why he found that promise sexy. Maybe it was because he found the woman sexy. Maybe because he’d rattled more than just her cage with that near kiss. He hadn’t allowed it to come to proper fruition, not from any lack of interest on his part, but from a strong sense of survival. Sex had no business here, or in his life right now.

  All he wanted was to be a good cop. Everything else, beyond his existing family ties, was just so much extra complication he wasn’t willing to take on. And a relationship, any sort of a relationship, meant complications.

  He set his mouth grimly and stared straight ahead as he wove his way through the traffic. “Let’s get these to the lab.”

  His curt tone took her by surprise. Maggi tried to tell herself this made her job more challenging, more interesting, but right now she was getting more frustrated.

  Nothing good ever came easy, her mother used to say to her. Too bad the woman hadn’t lived long enough to make her own words come true, Maggi thought. One way or another, she was going to get some good out of this. She was either going to out a dirty cop or save the reputation of a clean, albeit ill-tempered, one.

  She tried not to notice how the silence ate its way further into the interior of the car.

  Processing the DNA evidence took longer than either one of them was happy about. While they waited, they went back to investigating the people who’d known Joanne, trying to catch a break, trying to find out if anyone knew the identity of her mysterious lover in case the DNA samples Maggi had brought turned out not to be a match.

  When the call came from the lab, they lost no time in getting there.

  For once the regular technician appeared too overwhelmed with work to give in to his normal flair for drama. Instead, he merely handed Patrick the sheet of paper that was the end result of testing and typing.

  “Close,” he pronounced.

  Patrick looked at the summary. At first glance, it made no sense to him and might have just as well been written in Greek. “What do you mean, ‘close’? It’s either a match or it isn’t.”

  Harry Everett paused to take a drink from the capped bottle of water that seemed to be in endless supply by his desk. “I mean the baby’s DNA is not an exact match to what you gave me, but it’s definitely in the same family.”

  “Same family, you mean like a brother or sister?” Maggi asked. She glanced at Patrick and wondered what he was thinking. He’d been so certain Wiley was the baby’s father.

  Harry leaned back in his chair. It creaked in response. “Son, daughter, mother, father. You know, the old definition of family.”

  “So it’s not the congressman.” Maggi deliberately kept an innocent expression on her face. She could tell by the rigid set of Cavanaugh’s chin that this annoyed the hell out of him.

  Harry’s eyes shifted back and forth between two pages as he made one last comparison. “Doesn’t look like it.” He moved the printed page back, clearing the space for the next assignment he had to tackle. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “This’ll do, thanks,” Patrick muttered as he folded the sheet of paper and slid it into his breast pocket. He looked at Maggi as they left the lab and came to the only conclusion left to them. “If it’s not the father, it’s the son.”

  They’d interviewed Blake Wiley briefly, along with every
one else. Apparently he deserved a second look.

  “Wiley’s son is part of his staff,” Maggi mentioned, thinking out loud. Before Patrick could say they already knew that, she told him something she didn’t think he knew. She’d done her homework. “Only because he can’t seem to find work anywhere else. It’s one of those clichéd success stories. Dad makes good, son makes trouble. Doesn’t have enough backbone to do anything on his own, can’t handle living in the shadow of his famous father. Spends his whole life looking for himself when he hasn’t gone anywhere.” She smiled at him as they stopped by the elevator banks. “Have I impressed you yet?”

  He frowned at her as he pressed for the down elevator. The doors opened instantly. The car hadn’t gone to another floor while they were in the lab. “Takes a lot to impress me.”

  Maggi reached and pressed for the ground floor before he could. “I’ll keep working on it.”

  Talk about getting under his skin. She’d managed to accomplish that in a record amount of time. “Why? Why would you want to impress me?”

  Maggi gave him a half truth, just to see what he would say. “Because you’re my Mount Everest. I don’t climb to high places—they tend to make me dizzy—but everyone’s got to have a challenge and you’re mine.”

  “Why?”

  She laughed. When the elevator door opened again, there were several people waiting to get in. They threaded their way through.

  “You know you’re beginning to sound like an inquisitive five-year-old?” She saw that the observation didn’t win any points with him. This time, she told him the truth, or a least a tiny piece of it. “Because I never met anyone who didn’t like me—eventually.”

  Patrick noticed it had started to rain again. This kind of weather drove men to suicide. Or to relocate. He raised his collar. “So you’re saying that you’re out to get everyone you meet to like you?”

  “More or less.” She made the shrug look careless, but she had told him the truth. Because in an odd sort of way, it mattered to her. She did like to have people like her.

  He looked around for the car. Seeing it, he started to lead the way. A steady light drizzle accompanied him through the crowded lot. “It’s an impossible dream.”

  Hurrying after him, she raised her voice. “Hey, we’ve all got to have goals to keep us going. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a goal. It’d be a fact of life, and that’s no fun.”

  Turning, he looked at her for a long moment, not knowing what to make of her, or the feelings that stirred up inside him. Since he was treading on unfamiliar ground, he retreated and found another path. “We’ve got a murderer to catch.”

  Maggi smiled at him. “That we do.” She gestured toward the car. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  He said nothing, merely shook his head as he walked the rest of the way to the car.

  She reached it first, waiting for him to open the doors. Once he did, she got in, quickly shutting the door and keeping the fine mist out. “By the way, when do I get to say I told you so?”

  Buckled up, he refused to look in her direction. “Not anytime soon if you want to keep on living.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  Unable to stop, he glanced at her. “That includes smirking.”

  “I wasn’t smirking.”

  His frown deepened. Now she was lying outright. “Your mouth was curving.”

  “I smile a lot, or haven’t you noticed?”

  Turning, he looked behind them as he backed out. The rain made everything three times as hazardous. It seemed to him that no one knew how to handle a little precipitation in California. “Well, don’t, it’s distracting.”

  “What, smiling or smirking?”

  “Both.”

  Maggi settled back in her seat. A bolt of lightning creased the brow of the sky. It looked like they were in for it. “Okay, then you try smiling.”

  Busy with watching the road, he thought he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”

  “If we both frown,” Maggi explained, “there’ll be no yin and yang.”

  He knew she was making another pitch for camaraderie. He needed a friend like he needed an extra toe. Both made navigating difficult. “There’s not going to be a Starsky and Hutch, either.”

  Maggi’s mouth dropped open. “You know about Starsky and Hutch?”

  Another mistake. He sighed. “Do you ever stop talking?”

  “Do you ever stop being grumpy?” she countered.

  He wondered what the manual said about strangling your partner and if it ever fell in the realm of justifiable homicide.

  Locating Blake Wiley proved to be relatively easy. They found him closeted with his secretary, examining the shape of her ear. She was on his lap at the time and he was using the taste approach. He was none too happy to see them and unhappier still when they sent his secretary back to her desk.

  “Look, I already told you everything I know,” he protested.

  “Notice how he’s telling the wall and not us?” Maggi said to Patrick.

  For once, Patrick played along. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

  Maggi got into Blake’s face. “Could be he’s afraid of making eye contact, afraid of what we might see if he did.”

  “My contacts,” Blake retorted flippantly. “You’d see my contacts and nothing else. My father can have you up on harassment charges, you know.”

  “Hiding behind Daddy?” Patrick asked, deliberately baiting him. “Don’t you get tired of that? Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like to stand up on your own two feet instead of letting him carry you?”

  Blake became incensed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” Patrick pressed.

  The door to Blake’s office flew open. “What’s going on here?” Congressman Wiley asked as he entered.

  “Does he always come in without knocking?” Patrick asked Blake. “No respect for your privacy, is there?” He was rewarded with an irritated, sullen look, directed not at him but at the congressman.

  “Blake, what are they asking you?” Far from the smiling man they’d encountered the other two times, Wiley appeared worried as he looked from his son to the two detectives.

  Patrick answered him before Blake could reply. “We’re having an interesting conversation with your son.” His eyes indicated the door behind Wiley. “You don’t have to be here, Congressman. He’s not a minor.”

  Blake snorted. There was nothing but contempt in his eyes as he looked at his father. “My father’ll tell you I’m not very bright, either. At least, he doesn’t think so.”

  Wiley clenched his hands at his sides impotently. It was clear that he wanted to say more but felt he couldn’t. “Stop talking, Blake.”

  As Maggi watched, Patrick shook his head. “Now see, that might have been your first mistake, Congressman. You named him Blake. If you’d called him something ordinary, like Jim or Bill, he might have stood a chance in this world. But right there, you doomed him. You made him stand out for all the wrong reasons.” Patrick glanced at Blake. “And he didn’t like it.”

  Wiley appeared at a loss. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He noted that Maggi looked both surprised and impressed at his dabbling with psychology. “Just a little theory my partner and I were working on.” He dropped the friendly tone. “The rest of it goes that your son here killed Joanne Styles.”

  Indignation reddened the congressman’s cheeks. Or was that fear? Maggi wondered.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Wiley cried.

  “She was carrying his baby.” Maggi had interjected so quietly, at first it was as if the congressman hadn’t heard her. But when his eyes shifted toward her, she saw no surprise in them.

  Figured it out, did you, Congressman?

  Blake shifted in his seat as if it was suddenly becoming warmer than he liked. “Small detail I forgot to tell you, Dad.” Though his mouth twisted in a mocking smirk, there was genuine fear in the younger man’s eyes as t
hey moved from person to person.

  “Not another word,” Wiley warned. “I’ll get Christopher on the line.” Picking up the telephone, he looked at Patrick. “He’s not saying anything until I can get my lawyer in here.”

  “He doesn’t have to say much.” Maggi’s tone was polite but firm. “We have the DNA, sir.” Wiley looked sharply at his son. “He didn’t give us his, we have yours.”

  Wiley looked stunned, then incredulous. “Mine?”

  She could see the denial that was about to come. “You really should cut down on smoking, sir.”

  The light dawned, ushering in outrage and desperation. “You had no right to take those cigarette butts.”

  “I’m afraid that once you throw something out, it becomes public.” Then, in case he’d forgotten, she added, “You had me throw out the cigarette butts. Our lab found that the baby’s DNA was close enough to be tagged in the family.” Both she and Patrick looked pointedly at Wiley’s son.

  Blake gripped the armrests hard enough that the leather groaned. “So I got her pregnant. That doesn’t prove I killed her.”

  Patrick didn’t bother talking to Blake. It wasn’t the son who was pulling the strings here. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, it’ll speed things along. Just a matter of time, Congressman. Science has made wonderful strides. Even somebody as thickheaded as me knows that,” Patrick said.

  Maggi couldn’t help wondering if Cavanaugh had thrown that in for her benefit.

  “Can’t hide from the evidence,” Patrick continued. “Your son’s best bet is to make a full statement now.” He looked at Blake, getting his message across. “It might go easier on him if he cooperates.”

  Wiley closed his eyes for a moment and Maggi could see that he was genuinely suffering. Life had gotten out of hand for him.

  When he opened his eyes, he looked ten years older. And determined. “All right, what’s it going to take to make this go away?”

  Patrick cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Wiley said, exasperation echoing in his voice. He reached into his inside pocket for his personal checkbook. “What’s it going to take? How much money do you want to just walk away from this?”