Ronan turned toward Sierra the second the lieutenant was back in his office. One look at his face told her what was coming.
“I don’t need you running interference for me, Carlyle.”
“Sorry, I was just doing what I’d want someone to do for me if I wasn’t feeling well.”
Ronan scowled at her. “I said that I was fine,” he snapped.
Exasperated, Sierra threw up her hands. “Fine, have it your way.” With that, she began to head out of the squad room again.
“And just where are you going?”
“To get some breakfast if that’s all right with you. I told you that this morning,” she reminded him.
He’d forgotten. “Yeah, fine. Go.” He waved her on her way.
Yes, Sierra thought as she left the squad room, O’Bannon was definitely back. And she should definitely have her head examined.
* * *
WHEN SHE RETURNED several minutes later, a container of coffee and a toasted muffin stuffed with all the basic ingredients that made up a filling breakfast—fried egg, ham and cheese—she saw that the other two detectives on the team had come in and were gathered around Ronan’s desk.
Was something up?
Sierra quickened her pace, crossing to her desk.
“Morning, guys.” She nodded at both Martinez and Choi. “What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Martinez told her. “We were just telling O’Bannon here that we showed that photo of the woman from the Shamrock around and a couple of people at the latest victim’s party thought they might have recognized her—maybe,” the detective noted with a less than triumphant look.
“Was that a hard and fast ‘maybe’ or a so-so ‘maybe’?” Sierra asked, sitting at her desk.
“I think it was more of an ‘if I answer this question the way you want, will you go away’ maybe,” Choi answered. “You ask me, that photo we took off the surveillance video isn’t very clear. I think I had an ex-girlfriend who looked like that. And, no, it wasn’t her,” the detective quickly added.
“You have enough ex-girlfriends to fill up the break room,” Martinez said to his partner. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think you two are getting punchy,” Ronan commented. It felt as if they were going around and around with this case. “Why don’t we go at it from the angle that someone wants to rid the streets of both of these gangs, and see where that gets us?”
“You mean like a real vigilante?” Choi asked.
“I was thinking more along the lines like there was a new drug gang in Tesla who were looking to get rid of the competition. Both of the known gangs deal in drugs to some extent, maybe someone is looking to go exclusive. Talk to your CIs, any DEA contacts you might have who owe you a favor...see if anyone knows anything.”
Martinez sighed as he nodded. “More hamster wheel activities.”
Confused, Ronan looked at him. “Come again?”
“You know, like running in a damn wheel, getting nowhere,” Martinez explained. It was obvious that was the way both he and his partner felt after coming up empty conducting the other canvasses.
Ever the optimist, Sierra said, “At least we’ll be running.” All three men looked at her in surprise. “And who knows, the forward momentum might actually wind up getting us someplace.”
Ronan turned to the other two detectives. “Can either of you get her to stop?”
“That’s above my pay grade, boss,” Choi told him, walking away.
“Not me, Fearless Leader. I know better.” Martinez winked at Sierra. “Besides, I’ve got phone calls to make, contacts to reestablish.”
“All I’m doing is just trying to spread a little optimism,” she told Ronan in her defense.
“You’re certainly spreading something,” he told her. The next moment, he rose from his desk.
“Did you decide to take Carver up on his order and go home?” she asked. Ronan still looked rather greenish to her.
“No,” he retorted. “I’m going to see if I can get some of that damn tea.” He gave her a silencing look, indicating he didn’t want her making any speculations. “Don’t say a word.”
Doing her best not to smile, Sierra mimed a zipper being pulled across her lips. She heard Ronan mumble something under his breath as he walked out, but the words were indistinct.
She was getting through to him, Sierra thought in satisfaction.
* * *
THE UNIFORM FELT oddly confining, not to mention itchy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had her dress blues on. It had to have been just prior to her becoming a detective, which, at this point, seemed to her like an eternity ago. She vaguely recalled that the occasion had been for some sort of ceremony, not a funeral the way this was.
Everyone had turned out to pay their respects and say goodbye to the chief of police who had died suddenly last week.
The church was large but it had still been filled to overflowing, not just with the members of the police department, but with city officials as well as an impressive number of state officials.
The eulogies, which ran long, were touching, remembering Walter Hudson, the man, as well as his service to the city he loved.
Sierra was only half listening. Her heart went out to the police chief’s widow who seemed to have shrunk into herself. The thin woman looked almost numb and so terribly lost as she’d hung on her son and son-in-law’s arms when she had entered the church. No matter how beautiful the ceremony, no words anyone could say would make up for the fact that the woman’s husband was gone and nothing was going to bring him back.
Because each department sat together, Ronan was sitting next to Sierra in the pew. The service was almost over when he glanced in her direction and saw that her cheek was damp.
“You’re crying,” Ronan whispered in surprise.
“No, I’m not,” she denied stubbornly. Why was he looking at her? Everything worth seeing was happening at the altar in the front of the church.
“All right, then it’s raining on your face,” he observed, still whispering. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here.” He pushed the handkerchief on her. “You don’t want to be caught with rain on your face.”
Sierra had no choice, so she took the handkerchief, saying nothing as she sniffled. She absolutely hated crying, but there were times when she just couldn’t help it. Hearing the eulogies reminded her of other funerals she’d been to, usually for firemen her father and brothers knew who had died while saving someone.
It always seemed so unfair to her, having life taken away when there was still so much for them to do, to enjoy.
A few minutes later, the ceremony was concluded. As they filed out of the pews, she tried to hand the handkerchief back to Ronan, but he shook his head.
“Hang on to it. You never know when it might rain again. We still have to go to the grave site,” he reminded her.
She wasn’t sure if she was up to that. “I think I’ll just skip that and go back to the squad room to work,” she told Ronan. “Nobody’ll notice if I’m not at the grave site.”
“The lieutenant will notice,” Ronan assured her. “Not to mention other people. And you’re not going to solve this case in the next hour, so suck it up, Carlyle. You’re coming to the grave site.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order.
For a moment she debated her options, but to not go would be in direct defiance of O’Bannon’s authority. She decided it would just be easier to go along with what he’d told her to do than to resist and argue with him over it. For one thing, it would draw too much attention, something she wanted, in her present vulnerable state, to avoid.
“All right,” she said, giving in. “I’ll go to the cemetery,” she told him.
He hadn’t expected her to give in this quickly. “You okay, Carlyle?”
She kept her eyes focused straight ahead as she made her way out of the church. “It’s a funeral. I’m never okay at a funeral.”
Her comment touched something inside him.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
The words had slipped out before he could think better of them, think better of making such a personal admission. He slanted a glance at her. But if Sierra heard, for once she made no comment on what he’d said and for that he was grateful.
* * *
“HERE,” SIERRA SAID the following morning as she placed what appeared to be a freshly starched and ironed, folded handkerchief on Ronan’s desk. “I washed it for you.”
In the middle of powering up his computer, Ronan glanced down at the handkerchief he had given her in church yesterday.
“You didn’t have to do that.” It wasn’t as if she’d done more than just wipe away a few tears with it. “It didn’t look this good when it was new,” he commented, slightly amused as he picked the handkerchief up and tucked it into his back pocket.
Because he’d been nice to her, Sierra supposed she owed him a somewhat of an explanation.
“I didn’t mean to break down that way,” she told him, her voice a little gruff to hide her discomfort at displaying her vulnerable side. “It’s just that the funeral reminded me of just how fragile life is. And the chief’s wife looked so absolutely devastated, it just got to me. They’d been together since they were freshmen in high school and I know what she had to be thinking—that she didn’t know how she was going to manage to draw a single breath without him being somewhere close by.”
He remembered feeling that way once. Ronan deliberately kept a stony exterior as he said, “She’ll find out that she can.”
“Yes, I know.” Again, the image of the chief’s widow flashed through her mind. “But the amount of pain she has to be going through right now... I just wish I could help her somehow.”
“There is no help for something like that,” Ronan told her, his voice detached. “All you can do is put one foot in front of the other, go from one end of the day to the other, until it becomes almost automatic.”
His eyes met hers and, for a brief instant, Ronan couldn’t help wondering if she somehow knew about Wendy, knew about the circumstances surrounding his loss. The next moment, he shrugged it off. He was probably just letting his imagination get away from him. Carlyle was given to running off at the mouth. If she knew about Wendy, she would have said something to him. It wasn’t in her nature to keep that sort of information just to herself.
“All right, enough philosophizing things that can’t be changed. Where are we with this serial killer case?” he asked, throwing the question open not just to Sierra but to the other two detectives who had just walked in.
“Every one of those victims had people who wanted to see them dead, so we thought, until something else comes up, we’d start checking out their alibis around the times of death,” Choi volunteered.
“Great. How many names?” Ronan asked.
“About thirty or so—so far,” Martinez clarified.
That was actually less than he’d thought. “Let’s divide the names of every one of those possible suspects and see if we can come up with one genuine suspect,” Ronan told them.
“It bothers me that if it’s just one guy with a beef against another member of the gang, then why were all those other victims killed?” Choi commented.
“There’s that, but also what about that ‘new drug pusher on the block’ theory?” Ronan asked, looking at all three detectives.
“Oh, yeah,” Choi remembered. “Intel on the street says that there is no new wannabe drug lord trying to make his mark by getting rid of the competition. If there is one, it’s news to the DEA,” Choi told him. “And they’d be the first to know.”
“No argument,” Ronan agreed. “Okay, so we go back to questioning gang members. See if someone slips up.” He wanted to let Carver see that every effort was being made to track down and capture the serial killer. “Let’s start herding War Lords and Terminators, bring them in for questioning,” he told the team. “The answer’s got to be out there somewhere,” he insisted. “Let’s find it before this bastard kills someone else,” he urged.
“Okay,” Sierra said, getting up from her desk. “We’ve got our marching orders, let’s go.”
“You sound like you’re enjoying this,” Ronan observed.
“What I’ll enjoy is bringing these executions to an end,” she said, taking one list of possible suspect names with her.
* * *
“I DON’T KNOW about the rest of you,” Choi declared as he powered down his computer late in the day four days later, “but I, for one, have never been so grateful to see Friday put in an appearance in my life. It’s going to be really great to get away from this case for a couple of days.”
It had been four days filled with one fruitless interview after another. With one dead end after another. And now, with more than a week having passed since the last victim had been found, there were no new leads to follow, no old ones to readdress.
The investigation had apparently come to a grinding standstill.
“Maybe the guy has decided he has enough blood on his hands and just abruptly stopped killing,” Martinez suggested.
“Or maybe a rock fell on his head and he’s dead,” Ronan countered. “That’s the more likely scenario. If bloodlust made him kill, there’s no reason to think that he’d just walk away from it.”
“But what if it wasn’t bloodlust? What if it was for a specific reason?” Sierra asked.
“Agatha Christie again?” he asked wearily.
“No.” She was sorry she had ever raised the idea, even though there was a part of her that felt there was validity to a hide-in-plain-sight sort of situation. But exactly what was it that was being hidden in plain sight?
“Then what?” Ronan asked.
“That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet,” she confessed.
“Well, keep working on it,” he told her, surprising Sierra. “See if you come up with anything. At this point, I’m ready to grasp at any straw,” he said honestly.
“I’m with Carlyle,” Martinez said. “Unless this is all just basic bloodlust—and if that’s the case, where is this guy?—there’s got to be something to tie these victims together.”
“Isn’t this where I came in?” Choi asked.
“Go home. We’ll get a fresh start on Monday,” Ronan told them.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Martinez said. “What I need now is a cold beer and a hot date.”
“You’re married,” Sierra pointed out.
“Never said I wasn’t. The hot date is with my wife,” he added with a wide smile. “See you all Monday.”
“Wait up, I’ll walk out with you,” Choi called out.
“As long as you don’t want to come on my date, sure,” Martinez answered good-naturedly.
Taking out her purse, Sierra looked at Ronan. “You’re still sitting at your desk.”
“There’s that keen eye of yours again,” he said cryptically.
“If you found an angle to work, I’ll stay and help,” she offered.
He didn’t even bother looking up. “Go home, Carlyle.”
Instead she came around to stand behind him to look at what he was working on. He was reviewing cases dating back two years that had to do with gang members involved in crimes in Tesla and in Allegro.
“Go home, Carlyle,” he repeated.
“This is after hours. I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Yes, you do,” he insisted.
“Sorry,” she told him, sitting and rebooting her computer. “I know that your lips are moving, but I just can’t hear you.”
“You’re annoying, you know.�
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She looked up and smiled just for a moment. “I know.”
Ronan gave up. And did his best not to smile.
Chapter Thirteen
The silence within the squad room was getting to her. She’d never cared for stone-cold silence. She worked far better with at least some sort of noise in the background.
Glancing up, she saw that Ronan was reading something on the screen. She debated going back to the silence, then decided she had nothing to lose.
“Are you going to the ceremony tomorrow?” Sierra asked.
He didn’t bother looking up. It was as if he was just waiting for her to say something. Anything. “I sort of have to,” Ronan told her.
Since being paired up with Ronan, she’d taken it upon herself to be more up on the Cavanaugh network than she had previously been.
“Because you’re related to him and showing up is a show of support?” she queried.
She couldn’t read his expression when he looked up. “Because my mother would have my head if I didn’t,” he told her honestly. Since she’d asked him about his attendance, he decided to do the same. “Are you going to be there?”
There was no hesitation. “Of course. It’s a show of respect for the new chief. I hear he’s a very fair, good man.”
“Yeah, he is. If you’re interested, the former chief of police—his father,” Ronan added, “is holding a celebration the day after the swearing-in ceremony. I hear he’s pulling out all the stops.”
She loved a good party, but she wasn’t about to crash one. “I’d have to be invited,” she pointed out.
“Well, you kind of are.” Even as he said the words, he didn’t know why he was saying them, given how he was trying to keep the lines between his work and his private life separate.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an open invitation to the entire police force,” he explained impatiently.
That sounded a little overwhelming. “The former chief is hosting a party for the entire department?”
“And their plus ones,” Ronan added, wanting to be entirely accurate.
That sort of thing could set someone back quite a bit, she thought. “I don’t mean to be crass—”
Cavanaugh Standoff Page 12
