Cavanaugh's Bodyguard

by Marie Ferrarella

  That, and a little amnesia, should do the trick, she thought. Or at least she hoped so.

  Chapter 9

  The Lady Killer’s first known victim, a twenty-five-year-old redhead named Phyllis Jones, came complete with a distraught fiancé who, according to Detective McGee’s notes in the file, had an alibi for the time of her murder. And while Bridget hated the thought of dredging up her murder again for the man if he actually was innocent, they still needed to interview the man to see if he had alibis for the time of the two most recent murders.

  If he didn’t, they’d take it from there.

  It still wasn’t an interview she was particularly looking forward to.

  “I’ll go with you,” Josh volunteered when she announced where she was going and why.

  “You don’t have to,” she told him. “God knows there’s enough work here to keep you busy even if you worked at warp speed—which you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I do ‘have to,’” he said stubbornly. “On the outside chance that you turn out to be right,” he added.

  Pulling her jacket from the back of her chair, Bridget stopped and looked at him. “Are you telling me that you don’t think I can take care of myself?”

  The edge in her voice did not go unnoticed. “You?” he laughed. “Hell, if you’re right, I’m going along to protect the ‘suspect.’ Given the way you feel about these murders, you’re liable to put a bullet between his eyes just as soon as bring him in.”

  She squared her shoulders as she gave Josh a frosty glance. “I can control myself,” she informed him. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who can’t.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the squad room.

  “Uh-huh.” The word might have indicated he agreed with what she’d just said, but there was very little conviction in it.

  For now, Bridget gave up and let him come along. Two opinions were always better than one.

  * * *

  Ryan Roberts, a freelance architect and the first victim’s fiancé, was home, working, when they rang his bell forty minutes later. He opened the door a crack, an uncertain expression on his face until Bridget held up her identification. Absently, she noted that was the first time she’d used her new ID since she’d had the name on it changed.

  “Detectives Youngblood and Cavanaugh. We’re with the Aurora Police Department’s homicide division,” she told Roberts, putting her wallet back after a beat.

  Still wary, Roberts opened the door and stepped back. “Why are you here?” And then he answered his own question with another question. “Did you find him?” he asked, looking from one detective to the other. “Did you find the bastard who killed my Phyllis?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Josh answered with more compassion than he usually employed, Bridget noted.

  “Then I don’t understand.” Average in height and slight in build, the man became reticent again. “Why are you here?”

  “We just needed to ask you a few more questions, Mr. Roberts,” Bridget told him, slipping into her friendliest tone to put him at his ease.

  It didn’t work. There was still a look of suspicion on Roberts’s face. “I already told the other detectives everything I knew three years ago. They’d grilled me over and over again like they thought I was the one who did it, wasting all that time instead of going after the real killer.”

  Josh moved in a little closer to the man. “You sound as if you know who that was.”

  “I don’t know his name,” Roberts admitted, “but I know what he looks like.”

  Bridget exchanged looks with Josh. This was something new. There was no mention of another man in the file they had gone over. “How do you know that?” Bridget asked.

  “I know because the little creep kept following her around, trying to talk to her, to get her to pay attention to him.” A flash of anger was in his dark green eyes. “Phyllis was nice to everyone. Too nice. I guess because she did talk to him, he thought she was interested. He asked her out and she told him that she couldn’t go out with him. That she was already engaged to me. He called her a liar, that he didn’t see any ring.” There was a tortured expression on Ryan’s face when he told them, “I was saving up for one. I wanted it to be special, like she was.”

  A ragged sigh broke free from his lips. After all this time, Roberts was apparently still beating himself up. “I should have given her a cheap one until I could have afforded better. He would have never bothered her if he’d seen the ring. It’s my fault she’s dead.”

  Moved, Bridget put her hand on his shoulder. “It is not your fault,” she insisted. “This man is sick. Chances are he would have still stalked Phyllis and killed her anyway.”

  A weak attempt at a grateful smile came and went from his lips. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  “Would you happen to know if this guy asked Phyllis out on Valentine’s Day?” Josh asked.

  Ryan cocked his head slightly, thinking. “Yeah, he did. That was the day.”

  “And she never mentioned his name?” Josh pressed, hoping that Roberts might remember a chance reference to the other man.

  Roberts shook his head. “No. She just referred to him as ‘that sad little man.’”

  Josh tried another approach that might lead them to a few answers. “How did she meet him?”

  Roberts was silent for a moment. It was obvious he was trying to remember. “I think she said he came into her store—she managed a pet shop that specialized in food for exotic pets. He told her that he had a pet cockatiel that was sickly. He kept coming back with more questions, most likely just so that he could talk to her.” Roberts’s voice trailed off.

  This was definitely a possible suspect worth looking into, Bridget thought. “Would you mind if we got you together with a sketch artist?” she proposed. “See if we can come up with a picture of this guy?”

  “I’ll do you one better than that,” Roberts countered. He walked over to the large, tilted desk he had set up in the living room where he did all his work. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll sketch this guy for you myself.”

  “That would be great,” Bridget told him. She saw the look on Josh’s face and immediately knew what he was thinking. This was beginning to feel a little too easy. Maybe Josh had a point. “Oh, by the way, since he was stalking your fiancée, when did you get a chance to see this guy? I would have thought that someone like him would avoid any kind of confrontations with other men.”

  Roberts explained without a second’s hesitation. “I looked out my window and saw him hanging around the corner. When I mentioned it to Phyllis she looked out the window and said that was her not-so-secret admirer. I wanted to call 911 or at least go down and tell him to get lost, but she said not to. That he was harmless. I should have realized people like that were never harmless.”

  “Like I said, not your fault,” Bridget assured him with conviction. “Now if you don’t mind doing that sketch for us, we’ll be out of your hair,” she promised.

  “Right away,” Roberts said. He sat down and started to sketch.

  * * *

  “You do realize that this looks like every second guy in the neighborhood,” Josh said to her, referring to the sketch he was holding in his hand as they went back to their vehicle.

  “Still, it’s something to go on. Cases have been solved on less.” Reaching the car, she took a second look at the drawing. It was rather unremarkable, she thought. Taking the drawing from Josh, she placed it in the folder on her seat. “Maybe if we show it at that pet shop, one of the employees might recall having seen him. Maybe the guy bought something there and used his credit card.”

  “Ever the optimist,” Josh said.

  “Hey,” she protested as she got in, “optimists are right sometimes.”

  Josh buckled up before putting his key in the ignition. “Do you find it a little odd that there was no drawing in the first victim’s file?”

  “Luke McGee was a really impatient man. Half the time he didn’t hear what you were s
aying because he was busy working out a theory in his head.” Bridget felt it only fair to give the man his due. “He was a good detective, but not exactly detail-oriented and he was definitely not the easiest man to work with. He had his own drummer that he marched to.”

  He looked at her, intrigued. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  She shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a time she liked to dwell on. “I was partnered with him for a little while.” And then she decided that he deserved to know a few more details. “He was hard-nosed and could be very difficult if he wanted to be. I gave serious thought to quitting the department once or twice.”

  Josh grinned broadly as they drove to the next light. “But then you hit the jackpot.”

  She laughed at the description. “Not exactly the way I’d put it.”

  “That’s why I said it for you,” Josh told her. “I know how shy you are.”

  He almost laughed out loud as he said the word. If there was ever someone who didn’t come across as shy, it was Bridget. But even as he thought it, the very word made him think of something else.

  “By the way, you are going to that gathering on Saturday, aren’t you?” he asked.

  For a minute, she’d almost forgotten about that. As much as she was into family, she was still working all of this out in her head, trying to reconcile herself with the fact that her family had suddenly quadrupled.

  “Why?” she asked. “Are you volunteering to take my place?”

  He grinned, turning left at the light. “I think they’d notice the difference.”

  “With all those Cavanaughs milling around? They wouldn’t even know that I wasn’t there,” she assured him.

  Josh was quiet for a moment, as if he was mulling over what she’d just said. Or perhaps how she had said it.

  “You need backup?” he asked her out of the blue.

  Bridget laughed. The idea of needing backup attending a so-called family gathering sounded comical, but then, as she turned the thought over in her head, it began to sound more than a little appealing. “Are you trolling for a family?”

  “Just kind of curious to watch you in action with yours,” he admitted. He thought of what she’d said was the reason for having this party. “Besides, it might be interesting to meet the man who’s responsible for this whole ‘Cavanaugh dynasty’ that’s sprung up in the police department. All those policemen who kept visiting my mom and me after my father died were all great guys—and they were almost like family. But the operative word here is ‘almost.’ It might be interesting to see the real thing.”

  He’d always struck her as being footloose and fancy-free, not someone who would welcome family ties. Maybe she should reevaluate her view of Youngblood.

  “Are you looking to ‘borrow’ my grandfather?” she asked him, amused.

  “I’ll let you know once I meet the man and get to know him a little,” he answered vaguely. “Besides, you seem less than thrilled about attending. I figure you might feel better about going if someone was in your corner.”

  She looked at his profile as he continued to drive. That was really thoughtful on his part. He kept surprising her lately. Especially the other day.

  She reined in her thoughts, refusing to dwell on what had happened. It would only make her want an encore and that, she instinctively knew, would be a very bad idea.

  “I guess you really can be a decent guy every so often,” she commented.

  His eyes on the road, Josh grinned at her flippant assessment. “It does happen occasionally, but not enough to ruin my reputation,” he assured her. “So, what time do you want me to pick you up?”

  “You really want to go to this thing, don’t you?”

  “Andrew Cavanaugh sets a fine table,” he reminded her. “I’ve been to a few of the Christmas parties he throws for everyone. Going with you to this little get-together, I get to eat a great meal and make sure you don’t get overwhelmed with all that family. It’s a win-win situation as far as I can see.”

  Although she had to admit, if only to herself, that she did like his company, she didn’t like the fact that he thought she might need moral support. It didn’t matter that she might, she still didn’t like him thinking it. It made her seem vulnerable.

  “I don’t need a keeper, Youngblood,” she informed him.

  He took her defensiveness in stride. “How about a friend? Or do you not need one of those, either?” he asked.

  He’d found just the right way to get to her. There was no point in protesting any longer. “Two o’clock,” she answered, shifting so that she was looking straight ahead rather than at him.

  “Two o’clock it is.”

  She could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “Now can we get back to work?”

  “We never stopped,” he told her cheerfully.

  Without her realizing it, they had arrived at the precinct. Josh pulled up into their spot in the parking lot. Shutting off the engine, he glanced at the folder where she’d tucked in the sketch. She’d mentioned showing it around the place where the first victim had worked, but now he thought of other places as well.

  “You know, it might not be a bad idea to show that around to the other victims’ relatives or friends, see if any of them remember seeing this guy lurking around somewhere.”

  She had been thinking the same thing. It amazed her how in tune they could be sometimes. Bridget nodded. “Worth a shot. Meanwhile, maybe we can have this run through a facial recognition program.”

  “Better yet, how about the database with the DMV photos?” Josh suggested. “Just the ones from Northern California.” Getting out of the vehicle, Bridget took out the sketch. Josh tapped it for emphasis. “I mean, this guy’s got to have a driver’s license, right? He doesn’t ride the bus to the scene of the crime and he doesn’t use the bus to transport the bodies.”

  What Josh said triggered a thought in her head. “Not unless he’s a bus driver and uses the bus after hours for his own purposes every so often.”

  Josh stared at her, amazed at how she kept coming up with these theories. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I think we need to look at this thing from all different angles,” she told him. “Something’s bound to click eventually.”

  “In the meantime, it can also make you crazy,” he pointed out.

  “I can’t argue with that,” she said as they walked up the stairs to the back entrance.

  “Sure you can,” he assured her with conviction. “You could argue with God about whether or not the sun comes up in the east.”

  Oddly enough, the comment didn’t bother her. Being viewed in that light was a lot better than being thought of as vulnerable.

  * * *

  Once in the building, rather than reporting to Howard the way the lieutenant had insisted they do each time they returned, Bridget and Josh brought Roberts’s sketch to Brenda.

  They found the woman still busy working with the last victim’s laptop.

  “What are you looking for?” Bridget asked, puzzled. “You already found the guy from the internet dating site’s IP address.”

  “Yes, but I also found something else,” Brenda answered rather proudly. “Totally by accident,” she admitted. She waited for a moment, as if to build up the suspense, before telling them that “Somebody hacked into her laptop.”

  “You mean like someone was trying to steal her identity?” Josh asked Brenda.

  “No.” Which made it all the more interesting. “From what I can see, this person hacked into her computer so he or she could read her email.”

  Bridget’s mouth dropped open. That was it. That was how the killer knew where to find her. “If he read her email, he’d know that she was meeting the internet dating guy at The Hideaway—and that’s why Diana never showed up for her date.”

  Josh nodded in agreement, picking up the thread. “He could have been waiting just outside the club, identified himself to Diana as her date—remember, she didn
’t know what the guy was supposed to look like—and say that he knew a better place for them to go.”

  Brenda was listening to both of them as they talked faster and faster. Raising her hand, she cut into their rhythm. When they both looked at her, waiting, she asked, “Wouldn’t that make her suspicious?”

  Josh had already thought of that. “Not if he gave her a good reason why he decided that some other club—or restaurant—might be better. Work with me here,” Josh urged the women. “This was how he got her to come with him. He knew all about her—”

  “Not to mention that she looked just like his first victim,” Bridget interjected. The photographs on the bulletin board she’d set up in the squad room had an eerie sameness to them, as if the women could have all belonged to the same family.

  “Which he would have known from that social network page,” Josh said, looking at Brenda. “Any way to find out if this guy looked at anyone else who looked like our victims?”

  “Maybe in a parallel universe, but it’s not anything that I can do,” Brenda said.

  “Can you find the IP address of the hacker?” Bridget asked.

  “It’s definitely not going to be easy,” Brenda warned her. She looked back at the laptop screen uncertainly. “Whoever this guy is, he’s really good.”

  “Yeah, but so are you,” Josh told the woman. The smile on his lips was warm and encouraging.

  “Flattery will get you somewhere every time,” Brenda told him with a laugh. She knew exactly what he was doing, but she also knew what she was capable of if she pushed hard enough. “But when Dax complains that he hasn’t seen me in a week, I’m sending him over to you so you can explain why I haven’t been home.”

  Josh grinned. “Leave it to me. You track down the hacker for me and I’ll personally send the two of you on an all-expenses-paid second honeymoon.”

  Brenda glanced up, humor glinting in her eyes. “What makes you think we’re done with our first one?”