He worded his answer carefully so that there would be no misunderstanding between them.
“What happened here has nothing to do with the precinct or the hunt for the serial killer, so I don’t see how it’s going to be a problem—unless you feel uncomfortable about what just happened,” he told her honestly.
Sierra smiled, her smile lighting up her entire being. “I’ve never felt so comfortable about something in my life.”
Ronan leaned forward and slowly smiled into her eyes. He realized that he was feeling like himself for the first time in two very long years.
“Then there’s no problem,” he told her just before he lowered his mouth to hers again.
He’d only intended to kiss her a little more, to hold her body against his and find solace in the warmth being generated between them. But he should have known better.
Because one kiss led to another, which led to the next, and each kiss was a little more urgent, a little more intense than the last, until, before Ronan was fully aware of it, they were making love all over again. Languidly this time, like they knew all the steps and were reveling in each one as it came to pass.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, the shroud that had been wound so tightly around Ronan that it made the very act of breathing painfully difficult for him just fell away like so much rotting cloth.
And he was finally free.
* * *
SIERRA HAD ALWAYS been a light sleeper so when she felt the mattress shifting ever so slightly near her, she immediately opened her eyes. She found herself looking at Ronan’s muscular back. He was doing his best to noiselessly slip out of bed so he could go into the living room and gather up his clothes.
Daylight had pushed itself into her bedroom. It was time to get rolling.
“Making good your escape?” she asked.
She’d caught him off guard, but only for a second. Ronan turned around to look at her. He should have known she’d wake up.
“You’ve got ears like a bat.”
“As long as the rest of me doesn’t look like one,” she answered.
Sierra sat up, bringing the sheet up against her. After making love twice on her sectional, they had made their way into her bedroom where he had made love to her one last time. In her opinion, that had been the best out of the three.
“You’ll be happy to know that it doesn’t,” he told her, pausing to brush his lips against hers lightly.
She sighed blissfully, then said, “It’s early. We’re not due in for another couple of hours. Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll make you breakfast?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got to get home. I’ll shower there and get a change of clothes,” he told her. “Why don’t you go back to sleep for another hour?” he suggested as he began to head for the hallway.
“Said the naked man in her bedroom.” She smiled wickedly at him as he turned back to her and she got up on her knees on the mattress. “Like that’s going to happen now.”
His eyes slid over her, taking in every inch that he had already previously committed to memory. You’d think that after all that activity between them last night he’d be somewhat immune to seeing her like this. Instead, the exact opposite seemed to be true.
“Oh, hell,” he said, slipping back into bed and taking her into his arms. “I’ll skip the shower.”
Sierra deliberately and urgently pressed her body against his, feeling all the dormant fires igniting all over again.
“Good plan.”
* * *
BECAUSE SHE LIVED closer to the precinct than Ronan, when she arrived and didn’t see his car in the lot, she just assumed she’d made it there before him.
Walking into the building, Sierra logically knew that nothing had actually changed, but somehow, everything just appeared brighter to her. Even sunnier despite the fact that the day was relatively overcast.
She could have sworn she was still tingling. And it was all she could do to keep from humming. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said that this was what it was like to fall in love.
She told herself to slow down and get a grip, but she just wasn’t listening.
Her good mood, however, took a nosedive within moments of walking into the squad room.
Carver came charging out of his office the moment he saw her. “Don’t you turn on your damn cell phone?” he demanded.
This couldn’t be good. Taking out her cell, she looked at it. There were no bars. “I guess the battery died.” She had a spare, fully charged auxiliary battery in her desk and took it out, connecting it to her phone. “Sorry, Lieutenant. What did I miss?”
He seemed annoyed at her question. “What did you miss? I’ll tell you what you missed. There’s been another damn homicide, that’s what you missed,” he growled. “That serial killer your team hasn’t managed to catch yet is at it again.” He gestured at the empty desks around her. “O’Bannon, Martinez and Choi are already at the crime scene. I got hold of them as soon as I heard,” he informed her angrily. “You, however...” He looked at her accusingly.
“Sorry, won’t happen again, sir,” she promised. “Just give me the address and I’ll go. I take it that it’s the same MO?” she asked.
He nodded grimly. “A bullet to the back of the head and one hand severed.”
She closed her eyes for half a second, absorbing the news. “I was really hoping he’d stop killing gang members,” she said.
“He didn’t kill a gang member this time,” Carver informed her grimly.
She didn’t understand and looked at him quizzically. “But that’s part of the serial killer’s MO. He kills gang members.”
“Not this time,” Carver barked.
“But you still think it’s the same killer?” she questioned.
“Oh, it’s the same one, all right,” Carver said. There was no arguing with his tone.
She was almost afraid to ask. “If it’s not a gang member, who did he kill this time?”
Carver’s face clouded over, as dark as any storm cloud hovering over the desert and threatening a flash flood. When he spoke, it sent a cold chill down her spine. “He killed a cop.”
She froze. “A cop? Why would the killer suddenly change his choice of victims?” It didn’t make any sense to her.
“How the hell should I know? Maybe if you catch him, you can ask him yourself,” Carver all but shouted. “All I know is that if we have a cop killer on our hands, there’s no telling where this thing ends.
“The CSI unit hasn’t left yet,” he told her in the next breath. “Why don’t you get a ride to the crime scene with them? There’s already going to be plenty of cars there.”
“Right.” She hurried out the door.
“And, Carlyle,” he called after her, stopping her for a third time.
She was almost afraid of what he was going to pile on next. “Yes, sir?”
“I want this thing solved yesterday,” Carver ordered. “I know the new chief doesn’t want to start his career with an unsolved serial killer on his record.”
“None of us want that, sir,” she assured him, then hurried out of the squad room as quickly as possible before he could stop her again.
Sierra bypassed the elevator and took the stairs to the basement, going as fast as possible. She managed to catch Sean Cavanaugh just before he left the lab.
“I don’t have time to talk right now, Sierra,” he apologized, closing the case he took with him to every crime scene.
“I’m not here to talk. Lieutenant Carver suggested I catch a ride with you to the latest crime scene—if you don’t mind?” she added.
Sean smiled. “I know the last part’s not from Carver. Sure, you can ride with me.” Leaving the lab, he went to the elevator and pressed Up.
“Why aren’t you going w
ith the other detectives, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“They’re already at the crime scene. The lieutenant called them and sent them there. My battery died,” she explained.
Sean took the information in stride and even looked amused. “That must have made him unhappy.”
“I don’t think the lieutenant is capable of being happy. But right now, all I care about is finding out why our serial killer has suddenly stopped hunting gang members and started killing cops.”
Sean sighed heavily as he stepped into the elevator car along with her. “With any luck, we’ll find the answer to that question soon,” Sean told her.
With any luck.
The words echoed in her head. Lately “luck” seemed to be in very short supply when it came to getting the jump on this serial killer. If anything, all the so-called luck appeared to be completely on the killer’s side.
She fervently hoped that would change and soon. What they needed was for the killer to make just one mistake, a mistake that would enable them to finally track the killer down.
Chapter Seventeen
“Nobody moved the body,” Ronan said the moment he saw his uncle approach. “The ME hasn’t gotten here yet. We left him right where he was.” Seeing Sierra walking right beside the head of the CSI unit, he nodded at her, doing his best to give no indication to anyone that they had just spent the night together in the closest of circumstances.
“I was really hoping that the lieutenant was wrong,” Sierra said.
She approached the police vehicle slowly. It was parked at the curb not too far from an apartment complex. To the casual passerby, it might have appeared that the officer behind the wheel was dozing. Only a closer look would give lie to that first impression. The victim wasn’t dozing. He was slumped over the steering wheel, a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. The officer’s left hand was missing.
Sierra’s breath caught in her throat. “The victim really is a police officer.”
“Is the killer branching out or was this some kind of mistake?” Martinez asked aloud what all of them were thinking.
“Or maybe this is a warning, telling us to back off?” Choi suggested. At this point, everything was possible.
Sierra moved slowly around the perimeter of the vehicle, searching for something, anything, that could be a clue. When she looked in through the open window on the driver’s side, she caught a whiff of something strong.
“Is that bleach?” she asked, turning to Sean for confirmation.
“Certainly smells that way,” Sean agreed. He appeared rather grim as he took a closer look at the dead police officer. “Maybe the killer touched the back of the seat when he executed Murphy and he tried to clean up after himself.”
“Murphy?” Ronan repeated. “You know who this officer is?”
His uncle nodded grimly. “Officer Jimmy Murphy. He’s been on the force ten, eleven years,” he recalled. “He was a decent enough cop, but there was nothing about him to make him stand out.” There was a sad note in Sean’s voice when he added, “He tried taking the sergeant’s exam a couple of times, but he never passed it. He was divorced, no kids.”
He dealt with this sort of thing often enough, but it was always harder when it involved one of the department’s own. “Nobody should end up this way,” Sean said more to himself than to the others standing around him.
The look on Ronan’s face was dark. “That serial killer’s upped the ante if he’s after cops now.”
“Maybe he’s not after cops,” Sierra suggested, working something out in her mind.
Ronan turned to look at her. “What are you talking about? He just killed a cop.”
“I know, but maybe he was after this particular cop,” she stressed. “I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something we’re missing, some kind of pattern we’re overlooking. I keep thinking these victims are connected somehow.
“Otherwise,” she insisted, “if all this guy wanted to do was kill gang members, there’s plenty of opportunities he’s passed up, like setting off a bomb in a local gang hangout.” She glanced from one detective to another to see if they followed her thinking. “One well-placed homemade bomb would do it. There’s some kind of significance to the executions and the cutting off of the dominant hand.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but what?” Ronan asked her.
“Maybe she’s right,” Choi said. “Maybe it had to do with a case Murphy was involved in.”
“Drugs?” Martinez suggested, mentioning the first thing that came to mind because of the gang connection.
“Speaking of drugs...” Sierra said suddenly, turning toward Sean. “Is there a needle mark on the side of the officer’s neck like there was with the last victim?”
Still waiting for the ME to arrive, Sean got into the back of the patrol car directly behind the fallen officer. With a small, powerful flashlight in one hand, he closely examined first one side the dead officer’s neck and then the other. The side closest to the passenger side had a small telltale hole just below the earlobe.
“And we have a winner,” Sean announced heavily. Turning off the flashlight, he backed out of the patrol car. “I’ll be sure to do that tox screen for the same paralyzing drugs that we found in the last two victims,” he told Ronan and Sierra.
Ronan nodded. “Get back to me as soon as you can,” he requested.
Then, going with Sierra’s theory, he turned to the three members of his team. He spoke first to Choi and Martinez.
“Find out everything you can about Murphy. Who he hung out with. If he owed anyone any money. He had a partner. Find out who that is and talk to him or her. Find out why he or she wasn’t on patrol with him. And see if that partner knows anything that could shed some light on these executions.”
He turned to Sierra. “I want you to comb through Murphy’s cases, see if anything stands out or if you can find any connection between Murphy and any of our other victims. You might have a decent working theory there.”
She didn’t hear the veiled compliment. Instead she heard that she was being taken out of the field. “You’re putting me on desk duty?” she cried, not at all happy about this new development.
“No, I’m putting your theory to the test and you’re better on the computer than these two lugs. If there was a connection between Murphy and those other victims, something might turn up in his cases. Also, I want you to find out if Murphy was answering a distress call, responding to a 9-1-1 call. It seems a little too convenient that Murphy just happened to be out here at the wrong time.”
“You think he was set up?” Choi asked.
“Something like that,” Ronan answered.
“He had to have picked up someone,” Sierra pointed out. “Someone he didn’t think would do him any harm. Other than that strong smell of bleach, there’s no sign of any struggle.”
Ronan set his mouth grimly. “Murphy never saw this coming.”
Sierra nodded. “Whoever this killer is, he’s very good. But nobody’s perfect and everyone makes a mistake eventually. We just have to hope he makes one before he kills too many more people—or even one more,” she corrected herself.
For one dark moment she thought that maybe it was time she got out of Homicide. But then she wouldn’t be able to stop the bad guys. And in the sum total of things, that was all counted, not how she felt at a crime scene but being able to prevent the next crime from happening.
* * *
THE STORY ABOUT the serial killer’s latest victim spread like wildfire. Police officers in patrol cars were told to patrol the streets in pairs at all times and everyone was told to be vigilant.
Murphy’s execution made the afternoon news, both on the internet and on all the local channels, as well as all forms of social media.
Ronan cursed roundly under his breath a
fter reading one such account by a blogger. “So much for keeping a lid on this,” he said angrily.
Sierra looked up from her monitor. She’d been wading through all of Murphy’s old cases and, so far, nothing seemed to stand out. She welcomed the break.
“Maybe this is a good thing,” she suggested, choosing to see the positive side. “With everyone aware that there’s a serial killer out there, at least they’ll be more cautious.”
Ronan wasn’t nearly as optimistic as she was. “You really believe that?”
“I’d like to,” she said, although her tone of voice indicated she wasn’t a hundred percent sold on the idea.
“Murphy was partnered with Gary Robertson,” Choi announced, hanging up the phone after finally tracking down Murphy’s commanding officer.
“Was?” Ronan questioned. “But not anymore? Did something happen between them?”
“Apparently,” Choi said, crossing to Ronan’s desk. “Sergeant Davis, their CO, said it was some kind of personal matter. Robertson requested a different patrol partner. So did Murphy.”
“Murphy was alone in the car,” Ronan said. “Who was his partner and where was he?”
“That would be Edward Wojohowicz,” Choi told him. “And he wasn’t with Murphy because he called in sick yesterday.”
“That seems rather convenient.” Ronan observed. He looked at Sierra. “Why don’t we go find out if Officer Wojoho—whatever the hell his name is—was really sick or if he was just setting his partner up.”
“You think that he could have?” she asked.
“At this point, I’m open to any and all theories and I’m willing to look at all the angles,” Ronan said. “Choi, get me this sick new partner’s address.”
Choi was already crossing to his desk. “You got it.”
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Ronan was knocking on Officer Wojohowicz’s garden-apartment door. When there was no immediate response, he knocked again, harder this time.
Cavanaugh Standoff Page 16
