The Cavanaugh Code

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Your Boy Scout handbook have a theory about why there was a mass card left at the last murder and not at the other two?”

  Reaching his car, he pointed his key at it and pressed the button to disarm the security system.

  “Our boy is branching out?” It wasn’t a statement but a question.

  “Maybe,” Taylor allowed. “But what does leaving the card mean?” she pressed. Not waiting for an answer, she used him as a sounding board—the way she would have used Aaron had he been there. “Mass cards are given out as keepsakes at Catholic funeral masses. The name of the deceased is printed on the front. There was no name on the card.”

  He had no theory, not even a good guess. “Odd sense of humor?” he suggested.

  She didn’t hear him. There were too many questions crowding her head. “And why St. Thomas More? Because the card was handy and he had access to it for some reason—or was there some point to it being St. Thomas rather than another saint?”

  Laredo thought for a moment, sorting the vast amount of trivia he’d picked up in his lifetime. “St. Thomas was staunch about his faith. Maybe the guy that was killed strayed from the path and the killer left him a card so that St. Thomas can show him the way back.” It was only a shot in the dark, a wild guess at best.

  Taylor looked at him sharply. “So the killer was doing a good deed?” That didn’t sound likely.

  Laredo opened his trunk. There were several plastic boxes, their contents neatly organized. “Hey, even the most rotten scum have a little bit of good in them.”

  Leaning against the trunk, Taylor looked in. What the hell was this man carrying around? Frustrated in more ways than one, she blew out a breath. “Speaking from experience, Laredo?”

  “Just the optimist in me.” Finding what he needed, he took the small box out and closed the trunk. He held the print kit up for her benefit. “Let’s get started collecting prints.”

  Taylor fell into step beside him as they walked back to the entrance of the building.

  “I guess you are kind of a handy person to have around.” It was a compliment she paid grudgingly, but she knew he deserved it.

  Holding the door open for her, he let Taylor walk in first. “You just beginning to notice that?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” she warned, crossing the threshold.

  He followed her in. “No, ma’am.”

  The way he said it made her smile even though she tried hard not to.

  It wasn’t lost on Laredo. He leaned his head in toward her so that only she could hear. “See, I told you I’d grow on you.”

  That was exactly what she was afraid of, she thought, a shiver racing down her spine. And for the life of her, she wasn’t able to explain, even to herself, why.

  “ASAP, huh?” the crime scene investigator echoed Taylor’s request back to her a little more than two hours later.

  Taylor ignored the glib tone. “Sooner, if possible,” she added.

  The woman in the white lab coat, Wendy Allen, sighed dramatically. She waved at several neat although overwhelmingly high piles all lined up one beside the other on the steel-top table. Hardly any of the table was clearly visible.

  “See all this?” she asked. “Same instructions. And they’re all ahead of you.” It was a blatant dismissal.

  “Yes, but they’re all complicated,” Laredo told her, his low voice pulsing in the otherwise silent area. Taylor saw Wendy raise her eyes up to his face.

  Like a flower to the sun, she couldn’t help thinking. She watched as Laredo pushed the logbook toward the technician.

  “This is just a matter of dusting the book for prints and comparing them to the ones Detective McIntyre’s already brought you.” His warm smile widened just a touch. “Should be a walk in the park for someone with your education and talents.”

  Taylor was about to laugh and tell him to save his breath because Wendy Allen wasn’t the type of woman to have her head turned by a few flattering words. But even as she began to speak, Taylor saw the other woman, a staunch, no-nonsense technician, visibly melt. The smile on Wendy’s lips was reminiscent of the girl she’d once been several long decades ago.

  Wendy thought a moment, then asked, “Is this really urgent?” The question was addressed to Laredo, Taylor noted, not to her.

  “Really.” The single word undulated, warm and caressing, between them.

  Impatience drummed through Taylor, but she held her tongue, watching.

  The short-cropped hair bobbed just a little as Wendy finally nodded her head in response. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That’s all we can ask—” Laredo paused half a second as he read her name from the name tag on her coat “—Wendy.” He underscored the name with a quick, intimate pat on her hand, and then he withdrew, the words, “Thank you,” echoing in his wake.

  Her breath all but gone, Taylor turned on her heel and hurried after the private investigator. He was out the door before she caught up.

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she demanded once they were clear of the lab entrance and headed toward the elevator.

  He slowed his pace slightly. “Why?”

  He asked the question so innocently, for a second she thought he was oblivious to the effect he’d had on the crime scene investigator. But that was like the sun not knowing it cast light.

  “Because—because you came on to her to get her to process my evidence first,” Taylor accused him.

  He still looked like the picture of innocence. “No, I just stated your case for you.” And then, because she seemed not to get it, he elaborated. “I talked to her as if she was a talented woman instead of a faceless technician.” Reaching the elevator bank, he pressed the button on the wall. “People respond to that.”

  The man wasn’t fooling her. He was anything but innocent here. “Don’t you mean that women respond to that?”

  He looked surprised at the attempt to differentiate. “Women are people, too.” And then he smiled. “You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?” Taylor demanded. She was struggling to hold her temper in check. What was it about this man that set her off so easily each and every time? She could be perfectly fine and halfway into a conversation with him, she started seeing red.

  “Shooting sparks from your eyes.” He paused to take the sight in. “You know, you’re magnificent when you’re angry.”

  Taylor rolled her eyes. She expected more from him than something so mundane. “That has got to be the most trite saying—”

  The smile on his lips made the words on hers evaporate. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

  They stood by the elevator, but it might as well have been in the middle of a deserted island for all the foot traffic there was at the moment. For no particular reason—other than the look in his eyes—Taylor suddenly felt completely isolated.

  Completely alone with a man who raised her body temperature with a single raise of his eyebrow. Completely alone and thinking of only one thing. That she wanted him to kiss her.

  And then, the next second, Taylor wasn’t thinking it. Wasn’t thinking at all. She was too busy reacting to having her thoughts suddenly materializing and taking shape.

  Laredo had cupped her face in his rough hands and had brought his mouth down to hers, even as his eyes held hers. Her lids fluttered shut at the moment of contact.

  Fluttered shut just as her heart stopped beating for a long moment, then resumed with a vengeance, pounding so hard she was afraid that her heart would make a break for freedom and pop right out of her chest.

  The rest of her wasn’t interested in freedom. It was only interested in prolonging these wonderful sensations that she’d believed were possible only in dreams. Because this didn’t exist in real life. She’d kissed enough men to know that. To know that magic and lightning and whatever else went into fictional accounts of men and women lost in the heat of a kiss didn’t take place in the real world.

  Every man who had ever kissed her hadn’t even m
anaged to set off a minor rumble, much less be instrumental in an earthquake that made every part of her weak as it sent her head spinning.

  The earth actually moved. And then caught on fire.

  Why did this man set her world on fire? Why did it have to be this particular irreverent man who caused such chaos in her world?

  “Magnificent,” Laredo murmured again as he finally drew back.

  The elevator had arrived and its doors had opened. Having stood the obligatory several seconds, the elevator car began to close its doors again. Laredo stuck his arm in between the two steel plates that were drawing closer, interrupting the beam that governed the process. Touching his arm, the doors sprang all the way open again.

  Coming to, still dazed, Taylor managed to turn on her heel. She crossed the metal threshold, walking into the elevator car. She was grateful for the several seconds of silence that ensued as she valiantly worked to pull herself together.

  Had she had the strength, she would have cursed Laredo from the bottom of her soul.

  This was the second time he’d kissed her and both times he had, she found herself transforming from an intelligent, highly capable, extremely logical and sharp police detective to some tongue-tied idiot who was nothing but a mass of conflicting feelings, functioning without a single coherent thought in her head.

  The silence abruptly ended as they got out on the third floor.

  “It can’t end here, you know,” Laredo told her as they started to walk to the end of the hall, where her squad room was located.

  Relieved to be talking about work, she seized on the topic. “It doesn’t. There’s a trail out there somewhere that’ll lead us to Nathan-whoever-he-really-is. The way I see it, he’s the most logical candidate for the three murders.” But when she spared Laredo a glance, she saw that he was shaking his head.

  “I’m not talking about that,” he told her quietly. “I’m talking about us.”

  A blast of heat passed over her, singeing her very soul.

  “Us?” she echoed. Trying her best, Taylor banked down the nerves jumping around inside of her. The last thing she wanted was for them to be visible to this man who was to blame for it all. “There is no ‘us,’ Laredo.”

  “Oh, yes there is,” the infuriating man contradicted. “You can tell yourself anything you like, Detective McIntyre, but there most definitely is an ‘us.’ Moreover, I think you know where this is going, too.”

  She stopped walking and glared at him. Why was he messing with her mind this way? “To hell on a toboggan?”

  “Maybe eventually,” Laredo allowed.

  He never looked at relationships beyond a few days at a time, knowing he could count on nothing but himself. The uncertain world he’d lived in as a child had taught him that. After his mother had been killed in that automobile accident, he’d gotten up early every morning for a year and sneaked into his grandfather’s bedroom. Not to crawl into the man’s bed, but just to assure himself that his grandfather was still alive, still breathing. And then, reassured and relieved, just as quietly he’d tiptoe back out again.

  “But before then…” Laredo’s voice trailed off, allowing her to fill in the blanks.

  “There is no before then, either,” she told him tersely. “Look, I’m not one of those women—like Wendy, apparently—who are going to drop like some fly at your feet. For one thing, I have a mind. For another, I’ve got a killer to catch. Nothing else,” she emphasized, “is going to get in the way of that.” She took a breath. “Now, if you can help me with that, fine. If you can’t, I’ll thank you to get out of my way, stop trying to distract me and let me do my work.”

  “Distract you?” he repeated, amused.

  She threw up her hands and started walking again. Quickly. She’d said too much.

  Taylor was aware that Laredo didn’t drop back, didn’t turn and head back toward the elevator. Instead, he quickened his gait until he caught up and was walking right next to her. Going in the same direction she was. Obviously, he’d opted to keep working with her.

  She had no idea if that was a good or a bad thing. To an extent, he had destroyed her ability to think logically and coolly at all times. The man was like a burr under her saddle. And she was going to have to live with that.

  For now.

  Drawing a deep breath, she marched into the squad room and let the din absorb her.

  One of the detectives she occasionally worked with looked up the moment she entered. Kevin Wong rose and crossed to her before she had a chance to toss her purse into her drawer.

  “I was just about to call you,” he told her. “You got a hit.”

  It took effort not to look behind her, at Laredo. God, she hoped that she didn’t look as flustered as she felt.

  “Come again?” she asked Wong.

  In response, he dropped a folder with several pages in it on her desk. He smiled, obviously glad to be the bearer of positive news.

  “Those prints on the dead homeless guy came back with a hit.”

  “That was fast.” She picked up the folder, opening it. “Criminal record?” she asked just before she began to scan the pages herself.

  After making eye contact with Laredo, Wong looked back at her and nodded. “Yeah. His name’s Hank Dougherty. Or was. Been in trouble with the law ever since he stole his first car for a so-called joyride at the tender age of fourteen. He was two weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday,” Wong supplied. “I was bored,” he explained when she glanced at him quizzically. “It looked like interesting stuff.”

  “If you say so,” she murmured. “And he’s certainly not going to be in trouble with the law anymore.”

  Without bothering to sit down, Taylor scanned the next page and the few lines that were on the third before dropping the file back down on her desk.

  Just another penny-ante crook, not worth anyone’s second glance. Why was he singled out by the killer? Why that method, why that card?

  “Okay,” she said more to herself than to the detective who’d brought her the file, “I need to find out everything I can about Mr. Hank Dougherty and if there’s anything at all that ties him to Eileen Stevens and/or our teacher of the year, Terrance Crawford.”

  At first glance, her gut feeling was that Hank Dougherty wasn’t tied to the other two victims at all. The man was older, homeless, and looked as if the only contact he might have ever had with people from either Stevens’s or Crawford’s world would be to ask them for any spare change, but you just never knew.

  “Why don’t I take care of that for you?” Laredo offered, which seemed to surprise Taylor. He opened the file, spreading out the pages so that he could quickly go over each one. “I’ve got someone who’s pretty good about filling in the blanks in people’s histories. Especially if,” he added, glancing at the first page of the printout, “there’s a social security number to work with.”

  A social security number went a long way in making things easier for his contact. Or rather, his grandfather’s old contact.

  Old spies didn’t die, Laredo thought with a smile, they just went into security work.

  Taylor wanted to turn him down, wanted to send Laredo packing and on his way. But she couldn’t. She needed help and she knew it. Solving the case took precedence over her pride every time. It was just a hard fact of life. But she didn’t have to like it. Especially when something told her that she was allowing herself to slide into a dangerous situation without taking proper precautions.

  “Thanks,” she said. “But the file doesn’t leave my sight,” she stipulated.

  He seemed all right with that. “Then neither will I,” he told her, gathering the pages back together and closing the folder around them.

  A catchphrase from a hokey old science fiction series that lived in perpetuity on one of the classic cable channels came echoing back to her: Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!

  Amen to that. She was stuck with him in close proximity—and it was all her own doing.

  Yet, when Laredo sat down at he
r missing partner’s desk and made himself comfortable as he got down to work, it somehow seemed natural to her.

  She wasn’t too tired to recognize that was a very dangerous sign. She was really going to have to stay on her guard from here on in.

  Chapter 11

  T aylor had trouble concentrating. Try as she might to shut out all outside distractions, she couldn’t. Ordinarily, she was pretty good at tuning out everything else and focusing only on what demanded her attention front and center.

  But this time, her power of concentration had abandoned her.

  Most of the people in the squad room had gone home for the night, but Laredo, the source of her distraction, was still there, still sitting across from her. There was a decent separation between them, yet he felt closer than her own skin. At least, to her.

  And if that wasn’t enough, there were occasional, low-pitched sounds coming from what was really Aaron’s computer. What was that?

  Unable to stand it, Taylor pretended to go to the coffee machine just to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was transpiring on the computer screen.

  Laredo was playing solitaire.

  A card game?

  “You can do that at home, you know,” Taylor informed him tersely, her supposed planned trip to the coffee machine all but forgotten.

  “I know,” he answered cheerfully, “but then I’d have to come back once I got that information you need, so I might as well just hang around and stay put. Save on gas and all that,” he’d added, slanting a quick glance in her direction.

  As if I’d believe that he cared about things like the price of gas, Taylor thought, annoyed. What was he, twelve? “Why don’t you find something better to occupy your mind? Something intelligent?”

  “I’m saving myself for the case,” he told her, unfazed by the accusation in her voice. “Besides, cheating in solitaire takes a certain sharpness.”

  Her eyes widened. The man was unbelievable. “You’re cheating?”

  “Half the fun,” he responded. “Otherwise, this is a deadly dull game.” Pausing, he turned around in his chair to face her. “Where’re you going?”