Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Your serial killer’s victims are all women in their twenties, not men. And your serial killer doesn’t stab or shoot his victims,” she concluded.
Luke leaned back in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m impressed. You’ve done your homework on me.”
“Correction,” she retorted. “I’ve done my homework on your case. And since I think the woman I found is another one of your killer’s victims, I thought we could work together to find this piece of filth before he kills anyone else.”
“So you are with the police department.” Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure about that.
“Major Crimes,” she informed him.
“And why would Major Crimes be interested in having one of their own work with me on this case?” he asked.
“Turns out that Debra Evans, one of the victims, is the niece of one of the state’s senators,” she replied.
“You really have done your homework on this case,” he said, duly impressed. “Well, I have no objections to you throwing your lot in with mine, but just to play by the rules, we’re going to have to clear it with Lt. Handel when he gets back.”
From what she’d learned, O’Bannon wasn’t one who really cared about playing by the rules unless it suited him. But she wasn’t about to say that and risk getting on the man’s bad side. She really needed to work this case. She owed it to Kristin.
“I assumed as much,” Frankie replied.
He flashed another broad grin at her. “That’s what I like. Someone who’s on their toes. I take it that you have the victim’s name.”
“Kristin Andrews,” she replied. “She is—was—” Frankie corrected herself, doing her best not to let O’Bannon see that having to refer to her cousin in the past tense really bothered her “—twenty-five and she was a nurse working at Aurora General.”
“You are thorough,” Luke said. He was beginning to see past her good looks and was taking stock of her as a detective. “Any theory about her cause of death?” he asked, curious to see if there were similarities to his killer’s victims and the one that this knockout on two shapely legs was bringing him.
“There was a syringe in her arm,” Frankie replied, every word burning on her tongue.
“So you think it was a drug overdose,” Luke concluded.
“No, I think it was made to look like a drug overdose,” Frankie replied tersely, correcting him.
“And you know this how?” he asked.
He was leaning back in his chair again, studying the brunette with the piled-up, impossibly sexy hair that seemed to be falling every which way and yet somehow remained in place. Whenever possible, Luke was always open to accommodating pretty women, but not at the expense of his job. That always came first, as did the victims he had sworn an oath to do right by.
“Her roommate told me that Kristin, the victim, had had a painkiller problem dating years back to a knee injury she’d sustained in high school, playing soccer.” Frankie answered him slowly, careful not to allow her emotions to get the better of her. She needed to lay this out for him carefully so that she didn’t trip herself up and allow her actual involvement in the case to slip out. “Her roommate also assured me that Kristin had kicked that habit years ago and hadn’t taken any drugs since then. Kris had been clean for years,” Frankie emphasized.
The detective she was talking to nodded slowly and appeared to be listening. Frankie couldn’t escape the feeling that he was examining every single word that was coming out of her mouth—as well as studying her as if she were a slide mounted under a microscope.
“When did all this happen?” he finally asked, after a prolonged pause that admittedly made her uneasy.
He didn’t believe her, Frankie thought. Determined, she pushed on. “The roommate came back from a three-day weekend and found the victim, unresponsive, on the living room floor this morning. After trying to revive her for several minutes, the roommate began to panic, at which time she called me.”
Frankie noted the skeptical expression on O’Bannon’s face. “If you’re friends with this woman,” he asked, “why do you keep calling her the roommate?”
Frankie never missed a beat. “I’m just trying to keep the details simple for you. And, for the record, we’re not friends.” She corrected the detective. “We’re acquaintances. I already told you that.”
Luke pretended to glance down at his notes. “So you did.” He raised his eyes to meet her magnetic blue ones. “Where’s the body now?”
The body.
It was hard for her to think of Kristin that way. She had always been so full of life, so ready to always laugh. Kris had a very infectious laugh that left no one untouched.
“Detective?” Luke prodded when he thought the woman had drifted off.
Frankie roused herself and flushed for the momentary lapse on her part. “Sorry. I called the ME. He told me he’d be doing her autopsy right away, which, with any luck, means today.”
“You know the ME?” Luke asked her, curious.
“Some of them,” she answered, wondering if he was trying to trip her up. The department had three medical examiners, one of whom they tended to share with several of the other, smaller cities in the county.
“Well, you’ve covered all the bases,” Luke told her. “Tell you what, pending the lieutenant’s approval of all this, we’ll call your find victim number seven.”
Frankie frowned. “She has a name,” she told O’Bannon stiffly.
“They all have names,” he replied mildly. “What they no longer have are lives. Those were stolen from them and it’s up to us to make that up to them by catching the bastard who’s responsible for cutting those lives short.”
She couldn’t make up her mind whether he was being a crusader or a wiseguy. Either way, she nodded and quietly told him, “Sounds good to me.”
“Oh, there’s just one more thing,” Luke said as she began to walk out of the squad room. She had yet to clear this temporary move with her own lieutenant, wanting to make sure that she could convince O’Bannon to take on this case first.
Frankie braced herself and slowly turned back to face him. Deep in her soul, she felt she was going to regret coming to this man. She knew all about him. Lukkas Cavanaugh O’Bannon was oil and she was water and there was no way that they were ever going to find a way to mix.
But for Kristin’s sake, she would do her damnedest to try to work with this man until such time as the scum who was robbing all these young women of their lives could be found and put down.
Taking a deep breath, Frankie kept her expression unreadable as she said, “Yes?”
Luke’s lethal smile unfurled slowly. He knew the kind of effect it had on women. This one, though, seemed to be immune to it. She would definitely be a challenge, he thought. The idea spurred him on. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
Ignoring the smile that had been the undoing of more than a score of women—or so the legend went—Frankie kept her eyes on his. “I thought you knew everything,” she said crisply.
“Close,” Luke agreed, not rising to the bait she’d cast. “But in this case, close isn’t good enough. So, what is it?” he asked. “Your name,” Luke prodded when the brunette with the attitude didn’t volunteer the information immediately. “Unless you want me to refer to you as ‘Hey You’ while we’re working together,” he said, giving her a less than desirable option.
If she had her way, Frankie wouldn’t have wanted O’Bannon to refer to her as anything at all, but that wasn’t being reasonable. The man was smug and annoying from the get-go, but at bottom, she knew that her prickly attitude was because she was still devastated over her cousin’s death. Not only had she been close to Kristin, but Kristin was also the last family that she had. With her cousin murdered, she had no one left. Both her parents were gone, as wer
e Kristin’s.
She was alone.
Stop it, damn it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. That isn’t going to bring Kris back and it sure as hell isn’t going to help you solve her murder. Get a grip.
She saw that O’Bannon was still waiting for an answer. If they were going to work together, she had to attempt to be civil to the detective—no matter how annoying she found him.
“My name is Detective Francesca DeMarco,” Frankie informed him. “And, as I told you, I’m from Major Crimes.”
The major crime here, Luke thought, was that he had never noticed her before. The building wasn’t that big. He made up his mind to make up for lost time when the opportunity arose.
“The detective part was a given,” he acknowledged. “Francesca, huh?” Luke rolled the name over on his tongue as if he was tasting the first slice of a rich, homemade chocolate cream pie—his favorite. “Pretty,” he commented, and she couldn’t tell if he was referring to her name—or, given his reputation, to her. “You don’t seem like a Francesca.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Just an observation,” he responded mildly. “Francesca belongs to a lady in some ivory tower. You look more like you’re a go-getter. A Frannie or a Fran or—”
She winced at both names, names she’d been taunted with as a child.
“Frankie,” she told him, unwilling to listen to a further litany of possible nicknames he could come up with carving up her formal name. “People call me Frankie.”
The moment she said it, bells went off in his head. He’d heard some of the detectives referring to a Frankie—except that he’d thought the name belonged to one of the guys. This, he thought, regarding her again, was not one of the guys.
“That wouldn’t have been my third guess,” Luke admitted glibly, and then he shrugged, “But if you like that name—”
“I like it better than Fran or Frannie,” she informed him coolly.
Luke nodded. The first rule of working with another detective, as far as he was concerned, was getting along with them, and if that meant calling an out-and-out knockout by the unlikely name of Frankie, then so be it. He wasn’t about to argue the point and create tension. It wasn’t worth it.
“You’re right. You don’t look like a Frannie. Okay, Frankie it is,” he told her agreeably, with a smile that definitely lit up his entire chiseled face.
Looking at him, Frankie experienced a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t help thinking that by asking to work on this case with O’Bannon, she had just voluntarily sold her soul to the devil.
Chapter 2
“Looks like you get to talk to the head guy himself after all,” Luke said to her the next moment.
Frankie looked at him, confused and not sure where he was going with this. “I thought you were the head guy.”
A tall, imposing man with straight blue-black hair gave the chair he was sitting in a swift push with his boot, sending it closer to Luke’s desk. Rick White Hawk, Luke’s partner, had been listening to the exchange in silence for several minutes now.
“Don’t flatter him. His head’s already too big to fit into the elevator car when it’s crowded,” he told the detective from the Major Crimes division.
Luke ignored his partner’s crack. “I was just telling Major Crimes here that the lieutenant walked in through the door,” he pointed out.
Frankie turned to see the man O’Bannon was referring to. Lt. Mike Handel, a tall, gaunt-looking man with a perpetual two days’ growth of beard was just entering the squad room. Because Frankie was five-one, everyone had a tendency to look tall to her.
Handel, a twenty-one-year veteran of the Aurora Police Department, looked neither to the left nor to the right as he crossed the room. He appeared focused on reaching his office, preferably without being engaged in conversation.
His scowl was meant to put people off and to guarantee swift passage across the room. To a great extent, it worked. But his ploy failed as O’Bannon rose to his feet.
“Lieutenant,” O’Bannon called out. “You got a minute?”
“No,” Handel answered curtly as he continued crossing to his office.
Not one to be brushed off, Luke told him, “You might want to hear this.”
Handel’s scowl looked as if it went clear down to the bone. He stopped, retraced the last five steps and glared at Luke as he retorted, “Fine,” then barked, “What?”
Luke gestured toward the rather petite detective who had approached him about another victim. “This is Detective DeMarco from Major Crimes,” he told his lieutenant by way of an introduction.
Handel bobbed his head in quick, dismissive acknowledgement. The scowl never lifted. “And?” he asked impatiently.
O’Bannon played out the line. “And she’s brought us something.”
Handel still seemed annoyed at being delayed. He glanced impatiently toward his office. “Like what?” he demanded. “Homemade cookies she baked?” Then, sparing the young woman under discussion a quick, appraising glance, he told her, “No offense meant.”
Frankie highly doubted that, but she needed to be part of this investigation, so, against her will she replied, “None taken. And I’m not bringing cookies, I’m bringing you another homicide.”
If possible, Handel’s scowl deepened, all but etched into his bones. “Just what I needed.” He glared at the woman. “Why is Major Crimes bringing me another homicide?”
“They’re not,” Frankie corrected. “I am. I believe that this victim was murdered by your serial killer.”
Handel looked at O’Bannon, seeking a contradiction. “Is this true?”
“I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet,” Luke answered, “but on the surface, it sounds like it might be one of his.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Handel asked. “Go! Check it out. And then get back to me.”
“You got it,” Luke said. He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it. “White Hawk, you’re with me,” he said to the imposing man he’d been partnered with for the last three years.
Frankie blinked. It felt as if everything was suddenly whirling around her and she was being left behind. That wasn’t why she had come to them with the case, and if O’Bannon and his superior thought that, then they were sadly mistaken. She had no intention of being left behind.
“Lieutenant,” she called out to the man’s back as he was walking away. “There’s one more thing.”
Exasperation etched lines into Handel’s sallow complexion as he turned to her. “What?” He all but bit off the question.
“I come with the case,” she informed him in a no-nonsense voice.
It was obvious by the look on Handel’s face that this was not something he had expected to hear. He wasn’t accustomed to being given conditions. “How’s that, again?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that O’Bannon and his partner had stopped moving and were listening, as well. And they appeared to be amused.
They were probably curious to see if Handel was going to have her for lunch was her guess.
Not likely.
“Major Crimes wants me to follow through on this. I was the first responder on the scene,” she told the scowling lieutenant.
Frankie braced herself for an argument and she was ready to hold her own if it came to that. Instead, Handel waved her on her way.
“Sure, fine. The more the merrier. Knock yourself out,” he told the woman invading his squad room. “Whatever gets this case off my plate.”
Moving again and picking up his pace, Handel hurried across the now-short distance to his office. He quickly closed the door before anyone else had a chance to further annoy him.
“Nicely done,” Luke commented as he
walked over to her side. “You do realize that we have to take you with us because you’re the one who knows where the body was found, right?” he asked her, clearly amused.
They were walking now. Frankie hurried to keep up as they entered the hallway. She had gotten so caught up in trying to convince the lieutenant to allow her to take part in the case, she’d forgotten about that small, practical matter.
“I know that,” she lied, her mind working fast. “But I thought Handel would appreciate being asked for permission.”
A glimmer of appreciation entered Luke’s green eyes. “So I take it that you’re not a newbie,” he said with an approving nod.
“No, I’m not.” Frankie answered him in no uncertain terms, insulted by the mere suggestion that she could be seen as a novice.
The elevator arrived and all three of them got in. They had the car to themselves. White Hawk took the opportunity to lean forward and whisper to her, “Don’t mind O’Bannon. He likes getting under people’s skin, but he’s not nearly as bad as he pretends to come off.” Extending his hand to her, he went on to introduce himself. “Rick White Hawk.”
“Nice to meet you, Detective White Hawk.” She shook his hand. “I’m—”
“Frankie DeMarco, yes, I heard,” White Hawk said, smiling at her.
“Okay, now that we’re all acquainted, let’s get back to the business at hand—checking out the crime scene and catching a serial killer—unless anyone has some objections,” Luke prodded just as they reached the ground floor.
“You’re the lead detective,” White Hawk told him agreeably.
Frankie suppressed the sigh that seemed to automatically rise to her lips. For the most part, she worked cases in Major Crimes on her own.
“What he said,” she murmured as agreeably as she could.
When they walked out of the rear of the building and headed for the parking lot, Frankie began to go in a different direction than the other two detectives.
Looking over his shoulder, Luke called to her, “Hey, DeMarco, where are you going?”
Cavanaugh Encounter Page 2
