Cavanaugh Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

  They had opted to remain with Rita and wait until her sister arrived to stay with her. The latter had been exceedingly grateful that they had been so kind to her younger sister.

  “My more experienced ex-partner tended to inform the family. So, she was my first,” Declan revealed.

  “Your first,” she repeated, surprised at the amount of patience he had displayed. “Back in the academy I wouldn’t have guessed that you had it in you.”

  “Had what in me?” he asked.

  “Compassion. Empathy.”

  Back then, he seemed to be all about having fun. She’d thought that he would wind up washing out. He just didn’t seem to be the dedicated type from what she could see.

  Declan laughed softly to himself as he thought back to the way he’d been at the time. “Yeah, I guess I did stroll along the wild side a little too much back then. But that changed just before I graduated. When you lose someone, it changes you, gives you a different perspective on things,” he told her.

  He took the thoroughfare rather than use the freeway for the short distance they had to cover. He always preferred driving around the city, taking in the local streets to flying along on the freeway. For him it was rarely about the destination, it was always about the journey.

  Declan was serious, she realized. Rather than verbally backing away, respecting his privacy, she had to ask, “Who did you lose?” She expected him to say something about a fiancée or a close friend. She hadn’t expected to hear what Declan told her.

  “You writing my biography, Randolph?” He slanted a quick glance at her before looking back on the road. “Because if you’re not, then you really don’t have any right to delve into the details of my life.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude.” She had that dig coming, Charley thought. If the tables had been turned, she wouldn’t have liked having him pry into her life.

  “You’re not sorry,” he told her mildly. “But you are asking a lot of questions and I still haven’t gotten an answer to mine.”

  “What question?” she asked him point-blank.

  “When we were at the academy, every guy had the hots for you,” he told her bluntly.

  He saw a little pink creeping up her cheeks and was utterly fascinated by that. He would have bet money that women didn’t blush anymore. Maybe they didn’t, but Charley did.

  This one didn’t operate under any standard rules, he thought.

  “But it was hands off because you were married. I’m just wondering what happened to the person the entire male section of the graduating class all thought of as the luckiest guy on earth.”

  Charley began to laugh despite the kind of day it had been. The laughter felt like a release. “Boy, you still really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?” she marveled.

  His expression was the soul of innocence. “I’m just remembering it the way it was, that’s all,” he told Charley. “You made a lot of us lose our train of thought whenever you walked by with those tempting, trim hips of yours.” He rolled over the question he’d put to her and came up with his own answer. “I’m thinking you must have dumped him because no man in his right mind would have dumped you.”

  Charley inclined her head, deciding not to make a full confession of it all at once. Instead, she picked her words carefully.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, I did dump him. Because I didn’t need him anymore.” A suppressed smile flickered over the corners of her mouth.

  “Wow, that’s pretty cold,” Declan assessed. Something didn’t ring just right to him. What she was telling him didn’t jibe with the woman he’d known back then. “You used him?”

  She wasn’t sure just how long she could keep up a straight face. “‘He made a great shield.”

  He made a left turn at the intersection. “I’m thinking that he also had to be one thick-skinned guy.”

  Okay, she decided, enough was enough. It was time to come clean.

  “Actually,” she confessed with an amused smile, “he had no skin at all.”

  What was she saying? That she skinned him? That didn’t make any sense.

  “You’re going to have to explain that to me,” he told her flatly.

  “He wasn’t real,” Charley told him. “I made him up. If you remember, there were only a handful of women in that particular class and the guys were pretty persistent. I knew that if I didn’t do something drastic pretty quick, I’d be swept up in the, let’s say, ‘extracurricular activities,’ and studying would become secondary. So I invented Steven, bought a plain gold band at a pawn shop and became off-limits. It was as simple as that,” she confessed.

  “There were times when I did regret being married,” she admitted, although she wasn’t about to admit that he was the cause of the regrets she’d had, “but I graduated near the top of the class, so in the long run, it was worth it.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, digesting what he’d just been told. And then, still driving, he asked, “So you’re not married.”

  “No,” she replied.

  Declan wanted to get this matter straight once and for all. “And you never were married, not even for a little while.”

  Charley shook her head. “Nope.”

  He nodded more to himself than to her. “Interesting to know,” he murmured.

  She had no idea what Declan meant by that, but she had a feeling she was going to find out.

  And soon.

  Chapter 8

  “It’s getting late,” Declan told her out of the blue. He’d been silent in the car for several minutes now and she’d begun to wonder if he was annoyed with her for some reason. “Why don’t I drop you off at the station so you can go home?”

  She’d kept quiet because he looked as if he was working something out in his head. Apparently what he’d been working out was how to get rid of her for the remainder of the evening.

  “And what will you be doing while I’m going home?” she asked.

  His answer was honest. “I thought maybe I’d take a look at the crime scene. Patrol was the first on the scene and the CSI unit went over all of it while we went to talk to Fitzpatrick’s widow, but I’m thinking we need to check it out for ourselves,” he said, then quickly added, “Not that I think I’ll see something that they missed, but you never know. Stranger things have happened.”

  She could see why he felt he needed to look the scene over for himself. What she couldn’t understand was why he wanted to do it without her.

  “And the reason I can’t come along is—?” Charley asked, waiting.

  “It’s not that you can’t come with me,” he corrected her, “it’s just that it’s usually very hard to make out too many details in the dark. I want to look at it while it’s still fresh and then come back tomorrow when it’s light and things are easier to see.”

  The light changed too quickly and he found himself pushing down hard on the brakes in order to stop in time.

  “But I feel kind of wired—” and the abrupt stop just now didn’t exactly help negate that feeling, Declan thought “—and I might as well put that to some sort of use,” he concluded, punctuating his statement with a shrug.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Charley responded. Nodding toward the open road before them, she made a suggestion. “Why don’t you just drive to where the body was found.”

  There was no room for argument in Charley’s voice. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight anyway and it was too soon for the M.E. to release Matt’s body so that she could begin making funeral arrangements. Going with Cavanaugh to the scene of the second murder seemed like a good way for her to keep busy rather than dwelling on her loss and what she could have done differently that might have prevented Matt’s murder.

  “You know, I don’t recall you being this pushy at the academy,” Declan comment
ed as he changed direction. Making a ninety-degree turn, he headed toward where Fitzpatrick’s body had been discovered in the schoolyard by a very traumatized eighth-grade teacher. According to what she told the first patrolman on the scene, she had opted to stay late to prepare the next day’s lesson plan and on her way through the parking lot to her car, she’d all but tripped over the dead police officer.

  Charley slanted a look at the lead detective. “Then I guess you weren’t paying very close attention,” she told him.

  “Oh, I did,” he assured her. “I did pay close attention.” Closer than he’d felt he should have, since he, like everyone else, had thought she was married. But married or not, there had been a magnetism about her that reeled him in. He would have had to have been blind and deaf to miss it—and he was neither. He’d been aware of it even in the midst of his very active, very healthy social life.

  There was something in Declan’s tone that stirred her. Charley blocked it as best she could. She had something far more pressing to tend to than taking note of any sort of physical attraction between Declan and her. She had a promise to Matt to keep.

  Still, Declan no-matter-what-his-last-name-was was one of those men who made it hard not to lose your train of thought once you were standing somewhere in his vicinity. She found that it took some effort to keep her thoughts focused on what she would have thought would have been the single most important thing in her life—avenging Matt and bringing his scumbag of a murderer to justice.

  “Well, if you really do remember, then this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you,” she told him matter-of-factly.

  Declan laughed shortly. “I guess maybe not.” She marched to her own drummer, he thought. Hell, she marched to a whole other band.

  But maybe that was where the attraction had come in.

  That and a killer body.

  And there was definitely attraction between them. He could all but see the electricity crackling between them, putting his body on notice that it was only a matter of time before something erupted between them. He was more than well aware of that.

  Right now, it was like trying to ignore the elephant in the room, an elephant that was only going to grow bigger until he and Charley finally got together.

  But not until this thing was solved and put to bed. And once they were no longer partners, then they could be put to bed as well.

  The thought made him smile, if only for a second and inwardly.

  * * *

  There were candles and flowers and notes piled all around the area where the yellow crime-scene tape extended, forbidding entry. It obviously didn’t deter the determined, Charley noted.

  Declan seemed to read her mind. “I guess yellow tape doesn’t mean what it used to to people these days,” he observed as he slowly surveyed the entire area.

  “People just want to pay their respects, let the victim’s family know that Fitzpatrick was well thought of,” Charley told him. This outpouring of affection would help the victim’s wife—and eventually, his son—cope a little with the tremendous sense of loss which had yet to find the widow.

  “Meanwhile,” Declan complained, “the crime scene has been compromised.”

  Charley took a small, high-powered flashlight out of her pocket and squatted down for a closer look at the sections of concrete that were still peeking out from beneath the overflow of gifts. Squinting, she looked closer still. And then she shook her head.

  “Can’t compromise what never was,” she told him.

  He came over to join her, to attempt to see what she saw—or didn’t see. “Meaning?”

  She shone the intense beam on the ground, slowly sweeping the area on one side of the tape. “Meaning unless Fitzpatrick had no blood, this wasn’t where he was killed. He was killed elsewhere and his body was dropped here.” It was her best guess.

  “Why?” was the first question that came to Declan’s mind.

  Charley lifted her shoulders in a helpless motion and then let them drop. “Maybe because this was the last place he made a public appearance. Maybe the killer was trying to say Fitzpatrick was a fake, only pretending to care about the kids he was lecturing to and he had to be exposed. I don’t know,” she admitted frankly, “but he wasn’t killed here.” She’d bet her pay on that. Rather than answer her, she saw Declan pull out his cell and quickly tap out a number on the keypad. “Who are you calling?” she asked him.

  “Someone to verify your findings. If you’re right, that would explain why no one heard a gunshot in the area,” he said. And other than finding someone who might have seen Fitzpatrick’s body being thrown out of the car, there was no reason to contemplate fanning out to question the people who lived on either side of the school.

  The next second, hearing the other end being picked up, Declan turned away from the tenacious detective to talk to the person he’d called.

  Meanwhile, Charley had taken several photos of the immediate area with her phone, preserving the evidence as she saw it and also to send on to the policeman’s widow so the woman could see for herself how well regarded her husband had been in the community.

  He was going to be missed. Mrs. Fitzpatrick needed to be told that, Charley thought.

  Rising, she tucked her phone away again just as Declan ended his own call.

  “You’re right,” he told her as he walked back to her. “This isn’t the crime scene.”

  Well he’d certainly changed his mind fast, she marveled. “Who did you just call?” she asked.

  “The head of the day crime-scene unit,” he said casually.

  She congratulated herself for not laughing out loud. “You mean your father.”

  “Yeah, that, too,” he allowed. “Sounds more credible if I refer to him as the head of the crime-scene unit, instead of ‘Dad,’” Declan explained with a good-natured laugh.

  Charley smiled tolerantly, shaking her head. “You’re too old to feel embarrassed about checking with your dad when it comes to evidence that he’s processed. I mean, asking him is legitimate on your part. There are Cavanaughs throughout the whole department,” she pointed out. “You can’t walk without tripping over one or two of them. And from what I hear, it’s not like you’re still on training wheels and have to check with him before you do anything. You were just verifying information. Nothing wrong with that.”

  He watched her for a long moment, his eyes narrowing as they bored right into her. “You add ‘shrink’ to your résumé recently?”

  Declan had managed to make a put-down sound almost like a compliment. So for now, she took no offense. She just filed it away for future reference.

  “I’m more like a student of the human condition,” Charley said, making a point of ignoring the sarcasm in his voice. It really was getting rather late now. “Okay, we’ve seen, we’ve verified, maybe it is time to call it a night and go home. I’ll take that ride back to the parking lot now, thank you.”

  He’d offended her, he realized, taking note of her distant tone. He hadn’t meant to, but he didn’t like being examined under a microscope as if he was some large, single-celled plaything.

  They were both tired and it had been one hell of a long day. Two cops had been killed today—and there might be more victims soon. It was way past time to clock out, Declan thought.

  “You got it,” he told her.

  * * *

  Charley didn’t go straight home the way she’d indicated. Instead, once off the rear lot, she took a detour and drove one last time to Matt’s house. Because of the hour, most of the lights in the surrounding houses buffering Matt’s were off.

  But she didn’t have another round of questioning in mind, or even a quick reconnoitering of the area again. What she had seen at Fitzpatrick’s mistakenly labeled scene of the crime had gotten her thinking and she wanted to see something for herself.

 
She wondered if she was going to be the only one who placed one of those candles within a glass container on Matt’s front lawn. To that end, she’d stopped to buy one at a local supermarket.

  The store, part of a countrywide chain, sold everything, including foodstuffs, cosmetics, toys and various other miscellaneous items. In the center of the aisle that dealt with things that defied labeling were items with religious connotations—like candles to be lit for the dead.

  She bought one as well as matches and brought it over to Matt’s house.

  As she turned down his block, lights coming from an unusually low angle caught her attention. Driving closer, she saw not just one or two candles lit but more than a couple of dozen. Mixed in between the candles were cards, letters—some neatly written, most sporting almost illegible scrawl—all conveying sorrow and regret at his death. And love. Love tucked in amid teddy bears with drooping ears and black round eyes that stared back at the person looking at them. But in a good way, stirring up memories of childhood and a more innocent time.

  Getting out of her car, Charley took her candle with her, lit it and then stooped down to find a proper place for it. She placed it near the center.

  “You made a difference, Matt,” she said in a low voice, tears suddenly forming in her eyes. This time, she didn’t bother trying to wipe them away or keep them from flowing. The tears weren’t hers to wipe away. They belonged to Matt. “And people are going to miss you, really miss you. And I’m going to miss you most of all,” she whispered, her heart aching.

  Unable to talk anymore, her throat feeling as if it was closing up, Charley lapsed into silence. She stood there for a few minutes, the lights from the candles gathered before the makeshift shrine to her brother bathing her skin.

  “You made a difference,” she repeated when she could, feeling very proud of him.

  And wishing with all her heart that he was here.

  Taking a deep breath, Charley turned away and walked back to her car, her heart warmed by what she’d seen even as it continued to ache.