Cavanaugh Encounter

by Marie Ferrarella

  Still, she told him, “Bribery is not going to get you anywhere.”

  “It’s not bribery, Val,” he protested, wounded. “It’s thoughtfulness. Take a sip,” he urged. “It’s still warm.”

  She looked at the container and then back at him. “You got this from the vending machine,” she accused.

  He didn’t bother denying it. Instead, he argued, “But it’s still warm.”

  Valri sighed. “You are incorrigible.” After removing the lid, she took a deep sip. “This is very good.” Still, she teased, “I pity the woman who’s going to wind up with you.”

  “Never going to happen,” Luke told her. “I would never be able to find a woman who could come anywhere close to measuring up to you, Valri—even though we are cousins.”

  Valri shook her head. “You lay it on any thicker and I’ll have to get a shovel to make my way to the door.” She sighed, giving him her full attention. “All right, Lukkas, what kind of a puzzle did you bring me this time?” she asked.

  “I come bearing laptops,” he told her, indicating the two sealed envelopes he’d placed on her desk. “They belonged to two women who were recently murdered. In each case, the murderer made it look like it was a drug overdose.”

  “But you think it wasn’t?”

  “Questioning one victim’s mother and going by information from someone who knew the other woman—” for now, he was deliberately keeping DeMarco’s name out of it, although he did mean to get back to that “—they swear that both women had conquered their drug problems and were leading normal, productive lives.”

  She made the logical leap. “You think the two cases are connected?” Valri asked him.

  “I’m pretty sure, but that’s what I’m hoping you and your magical ways are going to find out and prove for me. And, just for the record, there aren’t two cases, there are seven.”

  Valri eyed him. “Seven?”

  He nodded. “Seven. All were dark-haired young women in their twenties, all were found dead from a drug overdose with a syringe either in their arm or lying near them. The scenes were all staged,” he said, telling his cousin what his gut had led him to believe.

  “It could all just be a terrible coincidence,” Valri commented.

  He gave her a patient, if somewhat patronizing, look. “And what was it that we all learned when we were growing up?”

  She glanced at the container of chai tea on her desk. “Beware of good-looking men bearing gifts?”

  “No,” he corrected. “There are no such things as coincidences.” Luke paused as he played back her words in his head. “You think I’m good-looking?” he asked, amused.

  “In a motley sort of way,” Valri told him. “Now go,” she ordered. “Leave me to my work before I find a way to bury these laptops under a pile of paperwork,” Valri warned.

  Luke was already out the door. “You’ll call if you find something?”

  “I’ll call if I find something,” she told him. It was a given. “Now go!”

  She found herself talking to empty space. Luke had left.

  “I should have said that in the first place,” she murmured under her breath as she got back to work.

  Chapter 6

  When Luke walked back into the squad room, he found the newest member of his team standing in front of the bulletin board. The board was periodically hauled out of storage whenever one of the homicide detectives were dealing with a killer who had multiple victims, or they had one murder with multiple suspects.

  Currently, Luke had been the one to press the bulletin board into service.

  There were seven photographs mounted at the top of the board, one for each victim who had died at the hands of the serial killer they were hunting. The latest victim’s photograph had just been put up.

  He really hoped that it was the last one.

  DeMarco had her fisted hands on her hips as she moved from one column to the next, reading the highlights listed beneath each photograph. She appeared to be committing everything she read to memory.

  “Come up with anything?” he asked the woman, coming up behind her.

  Frankie congratulated herself for not jumping. O’Bannon hadn’t made any noise when he had come up behind her.

  Still studying the board, she answered, “Yes, that the milk of human kindness is in very short supply when it comes to some people.” She had certainly dealt with homicides before, but she’d never dealt with any one single person who had been guilty of committing so many murders. “How can anyone do this?” she asked Luke, turning around to face him. “How can he—or she—kill all these people and still look at themselves in the mirror every morning? I don’t understand that kind of behavior,” she confessed.

  “We don’t have to understand it,” White Hawk told her kindly, coming up to join them. “We just have to stop the killer before they can kill anyone else.”

  Frankie didn’t agree. She turned to look at the tall detective. “But if we don’t understand,” she pointed out, “then how do we stop the next one from starting a killing spree?” she asked. “Or the one who comes after that?”

  “Good point,” Luke commented, nodding his head. “Understanding why the killer kills helps us to prevent other sprees—or so the theory goes,” he allowed. He’d been at this too long to feel that anything was foolproof. “Maybe someday we’ll be able to get the jump on a would-be serial killer in the making, but right now, I’ll settle for stopping this one,” he told both of the other two detectives.

  “That’s our Detective O’Bannon,” White Hawk said as an aside to Frankie. “A man of few requirements.”

  She hardly heard White Hawk. Her mind was on another matter. “The laptops yield anything?” Frankie asked.

  The expression on Luke’s face all but shouted You’ve got to be kidding. “Hey, hold your horses, DeMarco. Valri barely has had time to log them into the system. She certainly hasn’t even booted one of them, much less both.”

  “What did the other laptops yield?” Frankie asked.

  His eyebrows drew together in a puzzled line as he looked at her. “What other laptops?”

  “The ones belonging to the five other victims.” She saw the blank expression on O’Bannon’s face. She didn’t think she was asking anything particularly confusing. “You did pick those up so that Valri could make a comparison, didn’t you?”

  He could have lied, but he didn’t see the point. Lies always had a way of tripping you up at the worst possible time. “I didn’t. The CSI unit picked those up. I’m assuming that they were handed over to the computer lab once the unit had finished going over them for any useful prints.”

  “So then Valri has seven laptops and computers to review?” she asked, surprised. “Maybe I should go down there and volunteer my services,” Frankie said, already turning away from the bulletin board.

  “If you’re thinking of running down to the lab—don’t.” Luke advised. “Val’s got enough people to turn to if she needs help. Trained people,” he emphasized, “not just eager people.”

  Frankie took that to be a put-down, but she maintained her temper. “Nothing wrong with an extra set of helping hands,” she told him crisply.

  He wasn’t about to drop the matter—or to let her go down to the lab. While she was part of his team, he was responsible for her.

  Something didn’t feel quite right to him. “Just why is it that you’re so eager to get your hands on the laptops?”

  “What I’m so eager about is getting the slime bucket who killed my friend’s roommate and that poor woman’s daughter—not to mention all those other young women,” Frankie informed him angrily.

  “Tell you what,” Luke suggested, taking several files and dropping them on her desk, “why don’t you review what’s inside these files and see if we’ve accidentally overlooked or m
issed something,” he told her. “Take your pick. White Hawk and I will split and go over whatever files you leave.”

  She gave him a look and picked up not just the files he’d put on her desk, but the ones he’d left on his desk, as well.

  “Okay, DeMarco, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked her. He gestured pointedly at the files in her arms. “Those are all the files.”

  “Yes, I know,” she replied, uttering the words slowly, as if she was talking to someone who was having trouble processing her words. “In order to get a complete picture of the killer, I think I need to go over all of the files that were put together on the victims.”

  That was obviously a tall order. “You’ll be here all night,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she told him glibly. “I didn’t have any plans.”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” he responded, “but maybe your body did.”

  She looked at him as if he was talking nonsense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you’re not any good to me if you don’t get any sleep,” he said.

  She didn’t particularly like being dictated to or talked down to, but because O’Bannon was the lead, she did her best to try to placate him—in her own fashion. “I’ll take catnaps.”

  “Not too many cats get issued gun permits,” he told her. “You go home end of day, same as the rest of us, DeMarco. End of story,” he told her with finality.

  She was already busy reading one of the files. “Whatever you say,” she murmured, without bothering to look up.

  “Yeah, right,” he muttered under his breath. The woman wasn’t about to listen to him any more than she was about to take wing and fly.

  He was just going to have to make her, Luke thought.

  But before he could say anything further, his cell phone rang. Digging it out of his pocket, he swiped it open.

  “O’Bannon,” he declared once he heard something on the other end of his line.

  “Luke, I think you might want to come down and see this.”

  It was Valri. He hadn’t expected to hear from her for a while. Definitely not so soon.

  “You found something already?” he asked. He noticed that both White Hawk and DeMarco were looking at him. There was curiosity in the former’s eyes and something he couldn’t quite place in the latter’s. The woman sparked a lot of questions in his mind.

  “Just come down here,” Valri told him before ending the connection.

  “Valri find something?” White Hawk asked him.

  Luke slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered. “She just said to come down. She didn’t say why.”

  “I could go in your place if you’re busy,” Frankie volunteered.

  I just bet you would. What is it you’re hoping to find on that one laptop?

  DeMarco sounded far too eager and she really had his curiosity ramped up.

  “Thanks, but you’ve already got enough to do,” Luke reminded her pointedly. “I think I’ll just go see why Valri called for myself,” he told her. Glancing at White Hawk over his shoulder, he told his partner, “Hold down the fort.”

  White Hawk laughed. “Now there’s something my people never thought they’d hear your people say.”

  Pausing, Luke looked at his partner. “Haven’t you heard? There’s no more your people or my people, there’s just one great big us.”

  White Hawk’s smile widened. His friendship with Luke went back to their academy days.

  “I must have missed that memo,” White Hawk said dryly before he went back to looking at the file he’d been reviewing.

  “Must have,” Luke agreed, walking out of the squad room.

  He was very aware of the fact that DeMarco was watching every step he took as he left the room. Why was she so concerned?

  And about what?

  Luke made a decision. After the day was over, he intended to ask DeMarco to Malone’s for a drink. The relaxed social scene had a way of removing inhibitions and allowing reserved people to talk.

  * * *

  “What’s so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone and had to see me in person?” Luke asked his cousin when he walked into the computer lab. “I know it can’t be because you missed me—can it?” he teased.

  “I am not that hard up for company,” she informed Luke, then she proceeded to answer his question in earnest. “Look.”

  Turning the laptop in his direction so he had a better view, Valri pulled up a photograph she’d found on the hard drive.

  “Okay,” he said gamely, “I’m looking.” And then he glanced at her. “What is it that I’m supposed to be seeing?”

  Valri frowned. How was Luke missing this? She tapped the smaller of the two women in the photo. “Isn’t that the detective who’s working with you and White Hawk on the serial killer case?”

  Luke nodded. “Yeah, so?”

  “So, what is she doing in a picture with the victim?” she asked her cousin.

  That seemed simple enough to explain. “Her friend was the victim’s roommate.”

  “Why wasn’t DeMarco in a picture with the roommate?”

  He had no answer for that. “I don’t pretend to understand women,” he said with a sigh. “What bothers you about this?”

  She shook her head. “This doesn’t take understanding, Luke—at least, not deep understanding. Here, let me blow this up for you,” she suggested. “Maybe you can see my point then.”

  The next moment, Valri had made the photograph of the victim and DeMarco large enough to fill the entire computer monitor.

  But she wasn’t finished yet.

  “This is obviously a regular photograph taken by a camera, not a cellphone,” she told Luke. “It was probably scanned into the computer in order to save it.” Pressing a few keys, she made the photograph even larger for him. “Take a look at the lower right-hand corner,” she told her cousin.

  He obliged by lowering his head, focusing on the area that she’d indicated. “Okay, I’m looking.”

  “There’s a date there,” Valri prompted.

  “Make it larger,” he told her. When she did, he still found it to be a bit blurry. “Damn, I think I’m going to need glasses,” Luke complained. “All that close reading I’ve been doing. I—” He was beginning to make some of the numbers out. “Hold it,” he cautioned. “Can you make that any bigger?” he asked.

  “I can, but it’s going to get even more blurry,” she warned him. Even so, she did as he asked.

  He could make out the year. “That’s five years ago. That means that DeMarco knew the victim five years ago,” he said, talking to himself, not Valri. And then he looked at Valri. “According to my notes, the victim and DeMarco’s friend have only been renting that apartment for less than two years.”

  “Maybe they were friends before that?” Valri suggested.

  “No, DeMarco told me that the victim had answered an ad looking for a roommate almost two years ago. They didn’t know each other five years ago,” he said, frowning at the date on the photograph on the monitor. “Any chance that date could have been faked?”

  “For what reason?” Valri asked.

  Luke smiled at her. She was right. There was no reason to fake the date.

  “You know, you’re getting to be a damn good little detective, Valri,” he told her. “Your brothers and sisters would be really proud of you.”

  “They already are,” she answered.

  “You’re right.”

  Saying that, Luke turned on his heel and started to leave the lab.

  He was leaving her with more questions than before. “So, what are you going to do?” Valri called out, addressing his back.

  Luke sighed and just kept walking. “I don’t
know yet.”

  But by the time Luke was in the hall, he knew what he was going to do.

  Instead of going upstairs to the squad room, he looked in on his uncle in the CSI lab.

  The broad-shouldered, distinguished-looking man with a full head of grey hair spoke in his customary quiet voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Sean Cavanaugh asked his nephew as the latter walked into the darkened lab.

  “I need a DNA workup on the serial killer’s latest victim that was just brought in.”

  “I thought we had an ID on her.” Sean looked a little puzzled. “Why do you want a workup? We didn’t do one on the others,” Sean pointed out.

  “I know.”

  “What makes this victim so special?” Sean asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out,” he told his uncle. “Can you do it?” he asked,

  Sean smiled at him. “I can do almost anything when it comes to identifying a victim. Whose DNA will we be comparing the sample to?”

  “I’ll get that for you,” Luke promised. “For now, just do the initial workup.”

  Sean couldn’t resist asking, “Exactly what is it that you’re looking for?”

  “A possible familial match,” Luke told him.

  “To?” Sean asked.

  For now, Luke didn’t feel comfortable naming names. “Let’s just take it one step at a time, if that’s all right with you.”

  Sean looked at him thoughtfully, but as the head of the CSI day unit, he was accustomed to the “need to know” axiom and apparently, in this set of circumstances, he didn’t have a need to know.

  At least, for now.

  Nodding, Sean told his nephew, “It’s your call to make, Detective.”

  Luke smiled at his uncle. He appreciated the man’s restraint. He was well aware that there were some heads of departments who felt that they knew best and would insist on being in the loop at all times.

  “Thanks for that,” he told his uncle humbly.

  “Don’t mention it,” Sean replied. Putting his arm around the younger man’s shoulders, he gently guided him toward the door. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get back to processing the rest of the evidence from this sick son of a gun’s latest crime scene.”