Becoming a Cavanaugh

by Marie Ferrarella

  “That’s what I think.” Finishing her breakfast, she retired her fork and took one last sip of her coffee. “What about the Count?”

  That was the least complicated of the murders. “Wrong place at the wrong time,” Kyle guessed. “Maybe the Count just crossed the killer’s path. Or maybe the killer knew him, too. Hard to say but you’re right, the murders weren’t done at random.”

  “Nice to be in agreement,” she commented. Rising, Jaren brought both plates over to the sink. “You’re the guest so you can have the shower first.”

  He placed the two coffee cups next to the stacked dishes in the sink. “There’s a drought on,” he reminded her.

  Nothing new there, she thought. California had been tottering on the brink of a drought for years now. The governor had just made it official. Turning around to look at Kyle, she wasn’t sure just where he was going with this.

  “I suppose we can both walk through a car wash but that might cause too much of a commotion.”

  Kyle fought back the urge to fold his arms around her. He had no idea just what was going on. Displays of affection were not what he was about, yet something had definitely happened last night—something that changed him.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of showering together.” He watched as the smile bloomed on Jaren’s face.

  “Showering together,” she repeated. When he nodded, she laughed. “You are a constant source of surprise to me, O’Brien.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” he confessed.

  Without another word, she linked her fingers with his and led him to the bathroom.

  When they arrived at the precinct an hour later, the lieutenant told Kyle that Brian Cavanaugh wanted everyone to gather together in the conference room.

  As the various detectives and officers filed in the mood was somber. The usual banter and jokes were conspicuously absent. It hadn’t taken long for word to spread and Sanchez’s murder was on everyone’s mind.

  When the room was full, Brian went to the front beside the bulletin board and began.

  “As you all know, Detective Diego Sanchez was murdered last night, the latest victim of the so-called vampire slayer.” He scanned the sea of faces, some mourning, some angry. None were indifferent. The killer had hit them where they lived. “I don’t have to tell you that this case has now taken priority over everything else. I am authorizing extra hours, extra manpower. Whatever we need, we get in order to bring this psychopath in. Alive, if possible,” he stressed. “Nobody is going off the reservation on this. I want no loose cannons, do I make myself clear?”

  Muttered affirmative responses came from around the room.

  Brian addressed each and every one. “There’ll be no vacations, no time off until this case is solved and Detective Sanchez’s killer is brought to justice.”

  Kyle raised his hand. When Brian nodded, he asked, “What about Sanchez’s funeral? Does anyone know about the arrangements?”

  “Not yet,” Brian told him. “I’m going to go see Mrs. Sanchez as soon I finish here. There’ll be a notice posted with all the information when I find out.” He took a breath. Since he’d taken on the mantle of chief of detectives, not a single detective had died while on duty. This had hit him as hard as it had any of them. “According to my information, Sanchez’s mother is a widow and he was her only child. I’m sure that all of you will find some time to stop by her home and pay your respects. The woman is going to need an awful lot of emotional support. Okay,” he announced, “now let’s go get that bastard.”

  As the others began to file out, Brian turned toward his stepdaughter. “Walk with me, Riley,” he urged, leaving the conference room.

  Startled by the sound of his voice, Riley turned to face him. “Sure, Chief. You want to talk to me?”

  Brian nodded. Married to his former partner, Lila McIntyre, for less than six months, he was still trying to work out the logistics of taking on four stepchildren in addition to his own four grown children.

  Part of this involved trying to arrive at what to be called by Lila’s children, children he’d watched grow up into fine adults as well as law-enforcement agents. He might be their chief of detectives, but first and foremost, he was their stepfather and he intended to be more of a father than their real one had been. For the most part, he’d unofficially held the role for years now.

  Walking out into the hall with Riley, he took her aside and, concerned, asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Sure.”

  The assurance came out much too quickly, like an automatic response when someone asked a stranger about their health. “According to what I heard, you were the one who discovered Sanchez’s body and called the others.”

  He watched as Riley unconsciously clenched her hands at her sides. As if steeling herself off from the memory. “Yes, I was.”

  His manner was completely sympathetic. “That had to be hard on you.”

  Riley raised her chin defensively. “I’ve seen dead bodies before, Chief.”

  He saw through her. “But you never shared a police vehicle with one of them. Never went out to lunch with one of them,” he pointed out. “What I’m saying, Riley, is if you need some time off-”

  She looked at him in surprise. “I thought you said that nobody’s to take any time off until this guy’s behind bars.”

  “That was a pep talk for the team,” he clarified. “And for the most part, I meant it. But I’m not about to drive any of my people to the point that they snap. That includes you.”

  “That’s favoritism,” she protested.

  “No,” he contradicted, “that’s just being a good leader. I’m not concerned because you’re my stepdaughter, I’m concerned because you’re one of my detectives, and I’m not about to sacrifice you or any of the other detectives to solve this case. We can do that without incurring any more casualties,” he said pointedly. “Now, if you need—”

  Riley shook her head. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but what I need right now is to have that lowlife sitting in a jail cell, contemplating getting a needle in his arm.”

  Brian suppressed a sigh. Riley was just as stubborn as her mother. “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure.” She forced a smile to her lips. “But thanks for asking—Dad.”

  Being addressed that way obviously pleased him. Brian smiled at his wife’s younger daughter. “Okay, the first sign of battle fatigue and I’m pulling you out. Understood?”

  “Understood,” she answered solemnly. A little of her smile reached her eyes as she said, “I always told Mom you were a good guy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

  Brian nodded. He had to get going himself. He’d promised Lila that he would stop by to pick her up. She insisted on going with him to pay their respects to Sanchez’s mother.

  Parting with Riley, he walked toward the elevators. Even with his wife at his side, he knew this was going to be difficult.

  There were days that he liked being chief of detectives less than others.

  The funeral was held in the morning three days later. The sky was properly overcast, threatening a cloudburst that never materialized. Every detective and police officer from the Aurora Police Department turned out for the ceremony. This was only the third time in twenty-eight years that a police officer had died in the line of duty. Sanchez’s murder left its imprint on each and every one of them.

  In the church, Brian and his wife were on one side of Mrs. Sanchez, and Andrew and his wife, Rose, sat on her other, silently offering their support. There was no shortage of people to eulogize the fallen detective. By the time the ceremony was over, there wasn’t a dry eye or an uncommitted heart left in the entire church.

  The solemnity accompanied them all as they returned to the precinct and their duties.

  The phones had been ringing off the hook and there was no shortage of tips to follow up on. True to his word, Brian had provided extra man power in order to track them all down.

  But they we
re no closer to cracking the case than they had been three days ago.

  That afternoon, though he loathed to do it, Kyle had to temporarily put his part in the investigation on hold. A case he’d worked on over a year ago had finally reached the trial stage and he was due in court to give his testimony.

  Before he left, he stopped at Jaren’s desk. “I want you to stay here and go over the testimonies we’ve gotten in. See if you can find inconsistencies.”

  Busy work, she thought. He was giving her busy work. He couldn’t possibly want her to stay at her desk, reading through reams of reports.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if I just talked to these people again? People tend to slip up when they talk.”

  “Only if you get someone to go with you,” he cautioned. “I was serious about nobody going off alone. We’re too much of a target. The killer knows us, we don’t know him.”

  Everyone around her was out on the field. They’d lost no time right after the funeral.

  “How about if I dress up like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? No mistaking me for a threatening vampire then.”

  Kyle frowned at her. “I’m not taking a chance on losing any more people. Just stay put,” were his parting words to her.

  Inside, she fumed, but she nodded. “Can I go to the bathroom by myself?” she called out as he crossed to the door.

  “No.”

  She muttered under her breath as she went back to the stacks of notes she’d taken. Wading through the combined names of interviewees and reviewing their connections to the first two victims, she found no overlaps.

  The only name that was even remotely connected to both victims turned out to be a dead man. Not only that, but Jackson Massey had died before either one of the victims had.

  Still, since it was the only name connected to both victims, Jaren decided to do a little more digging into the man’s past. Part of her felt as if she was spinning her wheels but then, most police work was just that, working blindly, hoping for a breakthrough against all odds.

  Availing herself of various newspaper archives that were stored on the Internet, she discovered that the late billionaire was a dynamic man who made his mark in the world early in life. He’d earned his first billion before he turned twenty-five and was regarded as a golden boy by his contemporaries.

  But despite his incredible good fortune and keen business acumen, his life was not without its tragedies. The young wife he adored died when her appendix ruptured while they were vacationing in a remote part of Africa. She died while being transported by helicopter to the closest hospital. That was scarcely a year after Massey’s twin sons were born.

  As she continued reading, she found that the twins became the focal point of a statewide search when they were kidnapped at the age of four. Though the FBI had been called in, Massey himself actually rescued Finley, the only surviving twin. His brother, Derek, had accidentally been killed just a few hours before Jackson and his hired mercenaries had stormed the kidnapper’s hiding place.

  They’d talked to Finley, she recalled while going over the list of the neurosurgeon’s patients. This was what had been nagging at her that first time. She remembered reading about this!

  Questions began forming in her head.

  Jaren managed to unearth some rather choppy footage that had appeared on national news stations right after the rescue. Jackson emerging from a run-down, abandoned warehouse in San Francisco, holding his son in his arms. Finley had his face buried in his father’s chest, frightened by all the attention.

  When one zealous reporter shoved a microphone at the boy and asked if his captor had hurt him, Jaren thought she heard Finley utter a single, muffled word. “Monsters.”

  Curious, she searched for more details on the rescue.

  Most of what she discovered was repetitive but eventually, she found something more. It was an interview with Finley conducted on the fifteenth anniversary of his rescue. In it, he freely praised his father, once again calling Jackson his hero. She remembered that was what he’d said when grieving over his father’s death. Finley went on to describe how, at four, he’d thought his kidnapper was a demon, a vampire who had killed his twin and that his father had slain him.

  The word slain jumped out at her.

  Jackson Massey had, in fact, told the police that he had been forced to shoot the man holding his son captive. The kidnapper never regained consciousness and had died before the ambulance arrived. None of the men who had been hired by Massey to help find his son contradicted his story.

  Jaren felt a rush of adrenaline as she reread the article. The words vampire and slain stood out in huge neon lights.

  Chapter 14

  Jaren struggled not to get too excited.

  This had to be it.

  But even as she thought this, she told herself that stumbling across the article was almost too good to be true. However, every so often, things did fall into place, Jaren thought, and miracles did happen.

  She looked at the article again, skimming it from beginning to end. Finley Massey did have a connection to both the neurosurgeon and the CEO, the vampire slayer’s first two victims. All right, the connection was an indirect one through his father, Jackson, but even so, it was legitimate.

  And Sanchez had talked to him at least once.

  She needed to talk to Finley Massey face-to-face again.

  During the first interview, when she and O’Brien were going down the list of the neurosurgeon’s patients, she remembered that the young man had struck her as unstable. But then, she cut him a little slack because his father had just passed away. She vividly remembered what it was like for her those first few weeks after her father was gone. She had difficulty finding her place in life until she could finally redefine herself in new terms. If you loved a parent-she suspected that whether he was a billionaire or a fragile human being-the feeling of emptiness and being abandoned was the same.

  What if Finley actually was unbalanced? And more than just a little bit. What if Finley blamed the surgeon for his father’s death and had gone to confront the man in his office? Maybe the shock of his father’s passing had unhinged Massey and when he saw the copy of the vampire book on the doctor’s desk, that had sent him over the edge.

  She knew it sounded a little bit far-fetched but right now, there wasn’t anything else to go with. All the tips that had been called in by an eager-to-help public had gone nowhere.

  Looking around, Jaren realized that she was still the only one in the conference room. Everyone else was partnered up and out in the field.

  As she reached for her oversize purse, Kyle’s parting words replayed themselves in her head: “Nobody goes out alone.”

  Indecision rippled through her.

  If she waited for someone to show up, she could very well lose an opportunity. If Finley took off for some reason, or killed someone else, she would never forgive herself.

  Damn it, she wasn’t some naive, vulnerable college freshman, she was a police detective, skilled at defending the public as well as herself. She couldn’t just sit here, twiddling her thumbs until someone showed up to hold her hand on this detail.

  Torn, Jaren glanced toward the doorway. She wasn’t about to go in search of another detective and ask him or her to accompany her on an interview like some second grader who needed a partner in order to take the hall pass and go to the bathroom.

  But if she went on her own, Kyle would be furious.

  Since when did that matter?

  Maybe Kyle was finished testifying. If he was, then he could meet her at the Massey estate.

  Mentally crossing her fingers, Jaren pressed the keypad with the number to his cell phone. The second the connection was made, it immediately went to voice mail. She frowned, listening to the recording. This could only mean one thing. His phone was off.

  Most likely, he was still in the courthouse since all cells were required to be turned off.

  Frustrated, she exhaled slowly. And then she had an idea. She decided to cover her
tail and leave Kyle a message just in case he did get out early and came back to the precinct. If he saw that she was gone, she knew he’d assume the worst and this time, he’d be right. But if she left him a message, then she was in the clear. Sort of.

  “O’Brien, I think I just might have found us a lead. No, scratch that, I think I’ve solved the case. Finley Massey and his twin brother were kidnapped when they were four years old. His brother didn’t survive the ordeal. The kidnapper accidentally killed him. When Finley was rescued—FYI, by his father and a band of mercenaries Massey’d hired—the four-year-old said that monsters, specifically vampires,” she emphasized, “had killed his brother. Little footnote, the twins were kidnapped on Halloween while making their trick-or-treat rounds with their nanny. Could be that the kidnapper was disguised as Count Dracula. Gives you chills, doesn’t it?” she asked. God knows, it did her. “I know this isn’t going to exactly thrill you, but I’m going to go to the estate to talk to Massey again.”

  Anticipating what O’Brien would say to this piece of information, she added in a slightly lower, more seductive voice, “I’m a big girl—as I think you’ve already figured out.” The next moment, O’Brien’s voice mail cut her off. She’d exceeded her time limit.

  So be it, Jaren thought, flipping her phone closed and tucking it back into her pocket.

  Please let it be Finley, she thought as she double-checked the address to the Massey estate. Grabbing her purse, she left.

  Jaren was out of the room, and halfway down the hall on her way to the elevator when she suddenly stopped and retraced her steps. Going to her desk, she opened the bottom drawer and took out the copy of The Vampire Diaries. She’d never bothered to take it home. Questioning Finley Massey might not get her anywhere, but if he saw the book in her possession, that just might trigger something in his head. At least, she fervently hoped so.