Look on the bright side, Jackson thought. At least you have dinner.
And then, as he let himself into his apartment, what he had just thought hit him with the force of a charging rhino.
He’d just told himself to look on the bright side.
Damn, Jackson thought as he put the pizza box down on the small kitchen counter. The woman actually was rubbing off on him.
He hadn’t been capable of looking on the bright side of anything for many, many years.
Not until now.
Chapter 14
Brianna was at her desk in the squad room early the next morning, researching the Old Aurora Hotel’s history. She was there earlier than usual because she had a feeling that Jackson would turn up early as well. She had no doubt that Jackson probably wanted to talk to her, and anything he had to say to her she wanted as few people to overhear as possible. When he got worked up, his voice tended to carry.
She absently took a sip of the coffee she’d picked up on her way in, her eyes on the screen. The coffee was already getting cold. Frowning, she put the cup down.
Brianna was only beginning to delve into the history of the work permits taken out for the Aurora Hotel when Jackson arrived.
Rather than going to the desk he was assigned to, he came directly to hers. She felt Jackson’s presence before he even said a single word and braced herself.
“How do you know where I live?” he asked, fairly growling out the question. He’d spent half the night expecting Brianna to pop up on his doorstep with some sort of dessert.
Brianna looked up at him, her eyes deliberately wide and innocent.
“What, no ‘hello’? No ‘how are you’? No ‘the pizza was good’?” she asked.
“Hello, how are you, the pizza was good,” Jackson parroted. “How the hell do you know where I live?”
“I’m a detective,” she told him cheerfully. “I detect.”
“Why did you detect where I live?”
There was no reason for her to have sought him out and left a freshly prepared pizza on his doorstep. They were working on a case together—most likely for only a short term. They meant nothing to each other.
“Well,” she answered, sounding serious, “after I picked up the pizza, I couldn’t very well go driving up and down the streets of Aurora, shouting, ‘Pizza delivery for Jackson Muldare. Come out, come out wherever you are, Muldare.’”
Jackson bit back a number of choice words. The woman won the prize—she was officially the most frustrating person he had ever tried to carry on a conversation with.
“That’s not the point,” Jackson insisted, struggling not to shout.
As far as Brianna was concerned, she had done a nice thing and he was biting off her head. She was in no mood for his temper tantrum.
“No,” she said, measuring out each word, “the point is I dropped off dinner for you and you come in this morning acting like a wounded bear.”
“I didn’t ask you to drop off dinner,” Jackson retorted.
She took a breath, counting to ten. She wasn’t going to lose her temper. “I didn’t say you asked me to do it. I did it because I figured you were hungry and sometimes it’s nice coming home to a warm meal.”
“I don’t need coddling—”
Okay, that did it. Being nice to this man definitely wasn’t working. “No, you need to be hit upside the head and taught manners and I’d love to be the one to do it, but hey, we all can’t have what we want,” she snapped, raising her voice in order to get through his thick head.
“Anything wrong out here?” Lieutenant Eric Hendricks came out of his small office to investigate the shouting.
Brianna tamped down her temper. “No, nothing’s wrong, Lieu. Muldare and I were just having a difference of opinion on how to proceed with the case.”
Rather than retreating to his office the way Brianna had hoped, the newly appointed lieutenant crossed to her desk. “And just how are you proceeding with the case?” he asked. “Winston Aurora called me last night asking questions about the department’s progress. I told him I’d get back to him. Give me something to get back to him with.”
She nodded. “He left a message on my landline asking the same thing while Muldare and I were out, questioning one of the hotel’s live-in residents.”
“And?” he asked.
“We’re checking out a few things,” Jackson said. When the lieutenant raised a quizzical eyebrow in his direction, Jackson elaborated, “Like the names of the various contractors involved in renovations on the hotel at different points in time. Lots of ways those bodies could have gotten into the walls.”
Listening, the lieutenant nodded solemnly. “I just hope none of those ways involved anyone from the Aurora family. Not that I like any of those snobs, but they can make life hell for the department if they think one of their own is under suspicion,” he told the two detectives. “Okay, carry on. Just not so loudly.”
“Yes, sir,” Brianna answered.
“Sorry. My fault,” Jackson told the lieutenant.
Hendricks nodded. “Nothing wrong with having a passion for your work, I guess,” he responded just before he closed the door again.
Once the lieutenant had returned to his office, Brianna turned toward the major crimes detective. “Why did you just lie to the lieutenant? I was expecting you to feed me to the wolves.”
Jackson shrugged carelessly. “Not my style. Besides, I didn’t lie. Everything I said we were doing we discussed last night on the way back from San Francisco.” Just about to cross over to the desk he was currently occupying, he paused to look at Brianna over his shoulder. He felt himself softening. Again. This had to stop. He had to put a stop to having these feelings about her that popped out of nowhere. “And the pizza was good,” he told her grudgingly.
Brianna smiled, pleased. “Good,” she echoed just before she got back to work.
* * *
“Man,” Del Campo declared, walking into the squad room some thirty minutes later, “I wish all our suspects were out in wine country.”
“Mr. McNamara wasn’t a suspect,” Brianna pointed out to the other detective. “He was supposed to be a possible witness.”
“Not in his present condition, he wasn’t,” Del Campo told her. “The guy couldn’t tell cartoons apart from regular people.”
Del Campo had completely lost her. “Come again?” Brianna asked.
Johansson was walking in right behind Del Campo. “The old guy was watching some cartoon movie when we came to see him,” he explained. “He kept getting confused when he saw the commercial breaks, thought the actors were chasing away the cartoon characters. That’s when he started narrating, trying to make us understand what was happening.” Johansson shook his head. “Because he thought we weren’t following what was going on.”
“Yeah,” Del Campo recalled. “There was this old guy and this young girl in the cartoon. McNamara kept telling us what was going to happen next.” Del Campo frowned, shaking his head. “For an old man, McNamara had one hell of a grim imagination.” He underscored his statement with an exaggerated shiver. “That part really sucked,” he murmured before he finally walked off to his desk.
But Brianna’s interest had been piqued. “Why?” she asked, following Del Campo. “What did he say?”
Del Campo shrugged. “Just all sorts of weird stuff. McNamara was telling the girl—she was a squirrel, by the way,” he interjected with an incredulous laugh. “He was yelling at the TV, telling her to be careful. That the old guy—a polar bear, by the way—was going to make her disappear. Bury her inside a block of ice. Just weird stuff,” he reiterated.
“Did you try to get him to talk about what made him say that?” Brianna pressed.
Maybe McNamara was reliving something he might have witnessed going on at the hotel, she thought. Brianna was aware that she was g
rasping at straws—but sometimes straws turned out to be a lot more durable than first imagined.
“No,” Del Campo answered. “Because that was about the time McNamara got this really blank stare on his face, like he wasn’t there anymore.” He must have realized that Brianna was taking this seriously. “Hey, Bri, this was all just in the guy’s head.”
“Yes, but maybe some of it got in his head because of something else,” Jackson suggested.
Johansson made a face as he shook his head. “That’s reaching. You should have seen him. The guy was three sandwiches short of a picnic.”
Brianna didn’t doubt it. It sounded like McNamara had dementia—but even dementia patients had their lucid moments. As the other two detectives went over to their desks, Jackson remained standing next to hers. He had a knowing look on his face.
“You’re thinking of going to see him, aren’t you?”
She didn’t have to ask who Jackson was referring to. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea. If we don’t find anything else to go with,” she qualified. “Right now, we have at least three construction companies and subcontractors to look into. I want to find out just what sort of services these companies rendered.”
Jackson gave voice to what was obviously on both their minds. “You think one of these companies’ contractors sealed those bodies into the wall?”
“Well, they didn’t get there by themselves,” she pointed out. “And unless the killer was also a contractor, someone had to seal the victims into the walls and do it well enough not to have those bodies detected all these years.”
Jackson pointed out, “You’re forgetting one thing.”
Offhand, she couldn’t think of anything, but she was willing to listen. “Which is?”
“Some of those bodies are not as old as the others,” he reminded her.
That opened up the possibility of more than one killer—certainly more than one person sealing those bodies into the walls. “Oh damn,” Brianna exclaimed. “I did forget.”
Jackson snapped his fingers. “And just when I was thinking you were perfect,” he said, doing his best to keep a straight face.
“That’ll be the day,” she laughed drily.
Her eyes sparkled when she laughed, he noticed. There was something almost compelling about the way that looked. Annoyed by that thought, he shifted his attention.
“Well,” he said, “maybe close to perfect.”
Brianna couldn’t help noticing the way Jackson had almost sounded sincere.
She knew he wasn’t, but still... Knock it off, Bri. It’s too early in the day for fantasies, and you’ve got a killer—or killers—to catch. Killers with their own contractor in tow, Brianna thought sarcastically, momentarily feeling overwhelmed.
Doing her best to rally, she decided to drop by the morgue.
“I’m going to see Kristin to find out if she has a final body count yet,” she told Jackson as she rose to her feet. She made a split-second judgment call. “Want to come along?”
Rather than say yes or no, Jackson thought about it. “The morgue, huh?” he asked.
“That’s where the bodies are,” she told him flippantly.
Jackson never liked being stuck behind his desk. He preferred being out in the field, even if that field, in this case, turned out to be the morgue.
“Sure. Why not?” Jackson answered. “I guess I can’t say you never take me anywhere,” he quipped.
Bemused, she walked out of the squad room with him.
“Are you forgetting yesterday?” she questioned. “The road trip? Mrs. Jessop?”
There was a long pause before he responded by saying, “I never forget a thing.”
She had no idea why, but the expression on his face made her feel as if he was putting her on some sort of notice.
Again she told herself that her pace was getting to her. She had to stop reading into things. Jackson was just talking to hear himself talk. He didn’t mean anything by what he said.
So why say it? Brianna questioned.
She hadn’t a clue.
* * *
When they walked into the morgue, which was located in the basement of the building across the street from the precinct, there was music playing softly. Rather than something somber, or the classical music one of the other medical examiners enjoyed when he was on duty, Kristin Alberghetti-Cavanaugh had classic rock on the sound system, just loud enough to keep the somber thoughts surrounding the business at hand at arm’s length.
There were only two gurneys out today, unlike the last time she and Jackson had visited the morgue. Kristin was working on a body on one gurney while an assistant made written notations about the other.
Also unlike the first time, when all the gurneys had held fragments of bones, the bodies currently awaiting autopsies still had flesh on them, still bore striking resemblances to actual people rather than disintegrating cadavers.
“More bodies from the hotel?” Brianna asked.
“As far as I know, these are the last of them,” Kristin replied. “The CSI team has gone through everything in that building and says there are no more bodies to be found in the debris.”
“No more in the walls?” Jackson questioned.
“No more walls,” Kristin replied. “And no more bodies anywhere else on the hotel grounds.”
“So what’s the final tally?” Brianna asked, even as she shook her head at the sound of her own words. She almost shivered. “Is it just me, or does that sound really gruesome?”
“It sounds gruesome, all right,” Kristin agreed. “But someone has to speak for the dead.” She had taken this job, rather than working in a hospital the way her mother had wanted her to, because she saw herself as an advocate for those who no longer could speak for themselves. “And this is the only way that’s going to happen.
“And,” Kristin continued, “to answer your first question, there were nineteen bodies in total. Fourteen people were murdered sometime between thirty-five and fifty years ago.” She frowned slightly, looking down at the body she was about to autopsy. “Five were killed within the last year or so. The one I did before this one met her death about six months ago.”
“Her death,” Jackson repeated, looking at the medical examiner with piqued interest. “By any chance, are they all—?”
“Female?” Kristin guessed. “Yes.” Pausing, she turned toward the two of them, giving them her full attention. “As near as I can tell, the fourteen were killed by someone fairly strong. When we finally put all the pieces together, I found that all the necks had been snapped.”
“And the other five?” Brianna asked.
“They were strangled.”
“But not by the same person who killed the other fourteen,” Brianna guessed.
“It’s highly doubtful,” Kristin answered. “It’s fifty years from the first murder to the last one. Even if it’s the same killer, he’s not as young or as strong as he once was.”
“So we are looking for two killers,” Jackson concluded.
Kristin lowered her visor. “That would be my guess.”
Chapter 15
The construction company that had originally built the Old Aurora Hotel was no longer in business and hadn’t been for at least a decade. However, Brianna discovered, the three companies that were on record for building additions on the initial hotel and making subsequent renovations were still around and doing business.
Or, at least, Brianna and Jackson found, versions of the original three companies were still around. As it turned out, all the present owners were out in the field, working.
Pulling together what information they could on the companies, Brianna and Jackson lost no time getting to all three.
First up was Matthews & Son, a company that’d had at least three changes of address since the initial owner had first been contracted to add on to the ori
ginal Old Aurora Hotel, nearly doubling it in size.
A call to the number on the website sent the detectives to a construction site. Parking as close as they could, they made their way over newly graded ground to John Matthews, a genial, athletic blond man who looked as if he could carry two-by-fours on his shoulders without any effort whatsoever.
“Actually,” Matthews said after introductions had been made and Brianna explained why they were there, “I wasn’t part of the company when the additions to the Old Aurora Hotel were made.” He laughed almost apologetically. “I wasn’t even born. My dad and granddad ran the business back then. Granddad was the original Matthews on the logo. Dad was the and Son,” Matthews told them with a touch of pride.
“Did either one of them ever talk about working on the hotel, or have any stories they like to tell?” Brianna asked.
Pausing, Matthews thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Only thing my dad ever said was that old George was a hard taskmaster and that he tried to stiff him and Granddad every chance he got. He also made a point of overseeing the work, even insisting on doing some of it. Supposedly old George got his start in construction before he ever moved out here. I got the feeling my dad didn’t much like the man, and my dad could get along with the devil himself if he had to.”
“Are you talking about George Aurora?” Jackson asked the contractor, just to be sure.
“Yeah. According to Dad, the old hotel was George Aurora’s baby. He had it modeled after some Southern mansion he lusted after, growing up dirt-poor in North Carolina.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” Brianna pressed.
Because it seemed important, Matthews did his best to recall. “If I remember right, my dad said that the old man was never satisfied. Every so often Aurora wanted another wing added on. Which meant more rooms. Not all at once, mind you,” he told them. “But every so often, in waves. I think if George Aurora hadn’t finally died, that hotel would be as big as half the city by now.”
“Has your company done any work on the hotel since you took over?” Jackson asked.
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