Cavanaugh Stakeout

by Marie Ferrarella

  Murmurs of “That’s great” and “Thank God” echoed throughout the area.

  Andrew held out the phone he had taken to Brenda. “This is my father’s phone,” he told her. “Pull whatever you can off it so we can retrace his steps before he was attacked.”

  Brenda immediately took possession of the cell phone, wrapping it in her handkerchief to avoid smudging any possible fingerprints that might be on it and didn’t belong to anyone in the family.

  “Right away, sir,” she promised.

  “Once the chief of police, always the chief of police,” Brian commented to his older brother with a smile.

  “Look,” Andrew began, “I know that technically I don’t have the authority to ask anyone to do anything, but—”

  “Sure you do,” Shaw, the current chief of police and Andrew’s son, said, interrupting his father. “Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll find the SOB who did this to Grandpa,” he promised. “There’ll be so many of us out there combing the area, we’re going to wind up tripping over one another. But we’ll find him.”

  Andrew looked over toward Finley, who had been keeping silent, but Andrew could guess what was going on in the young man’s mind.

  “Finn was the one who was first on the scene,” he reminded the others. “That makes him the lead detective on this.”

  “Once I realized who the victim was, I knew that there would be no shortage of help with the investigation.” Moving toward the center of the group, the tall, good-looking, dark-haired young man’s green eyes swept over the people standing closest to him.

  Finley Cavanaugh belonged to the other branch of the family, the branch that Andrew had uncovered when he went to search for Seamus’s younger brother, Murdoch. Murdoch and Seamus had been separated at a very young age when their parents divorced, splitting the family in two and going their separate ways.

  Things didn’t always have fairy-tale resolutions, despite the best intentions. Murdoch died before the two brothers could be reunited. Even so, Murdoch’s four children and their families slowly migrated to Aurora and eventually became, to a great extent, part of the city’s police department. Some had already become police detectives before they transferred, while others were eager to prove themselves in this new venue.

  All were happy to become part of a larger whole.

  And now they found themselves united in a less joyous undertaking: trying to find and bring to justice the cold-blooded carjacker and would-be killer who had done this to one of their own.

  “This isn’t a matter of territory and I’m not about to try to pull rank here,” Finn told the group. “We all want to get whoever did this to Seamus and then left him to die in a deserted parking lot,” he said, his voice growing cold and steely.

  Several voices resounded in the group, agreeing with what Finn had just said.

  Riley shivered. “If that man hadn’t been walking his dog when he was...” Her voice trailed off, as she was unable to finish her thought.

  “But he was out in the right place at the right time,” Brian told his daughter. “Focus on that.” Wanting to say something further to Finn along those lines, Brian turned toward the young detective. But the man was no longer there.

  Seeing the perplexed look on Brian’s face, Sean asked, “Who are you looking for?”

  “Finn. He was just here,” Brian said, still looking around to find Finn. He hadn’t seen the young detective leave.

  “Looks like he wanted to get started looking for the person—or persons—who did this to Dad,” Sean said, supplying his take on the matter.

  Brian nodded. “He’s got the right idea.” He raised his voice to address them all. “Let’s put all our resources together and see if we can make short work of this. Those of you who have them, talk to your CIs.” He glanced at the members whom his order applied to. “I want answers, people. Was this a random mugging or was Seamus targeted? If it’s the latter, find out why he was targeted and by whom,” the chief of detectives stressed. “We have got one of the finest police departments in the country,” he reminded the people gathered around him. “Let’s put that to good use.”

  Everyone knew that wasn’t a suggestion—that was a quietly issued order.

  * * *

  “Well, that certainly didn’t take long,” Sean commented to Finn several hours later as he and two other members of his crime-scene investigation team carefully circled around the abandoned, badly battered vehicle that had been tracked down. The car had been discovered less than ten miles away from the parking lot where Seamus had been found.

  Finn had been the one who had found the car, after beginning his search the moment he had left the hospital. As soon as he had verified that the vehicle was the one that had belonged to Seamus, he had immediately placed a call to Sean.

  Sean and his team were out there within twenty minutes, snapping photographs and documenting anything that could even remotely be considered evidence.

  “When do you think I’ll be able to run prints?” Finn asked Sean. “Provided you find them,” he qualified.

  “When we find them, you’ll be the first to know,” Sean assured him. He looked thoughtfully at the smashed-up vehicle. “You know, for a carjacker, this guy was certainly very careful not to leave any incriminating fingerprints around,” he observed.

  “No matter how careful, there’s always a slipup,” Finn told the older man, trying to smother the impatience that was mounting within him.

  “I hope you’re right,” Sean replied. “By the way, thanks for the heads-up when your men came across this,” he said to Finn.

  “My dad always said that if you want the best results, make sure you go with the best,” Finn answered, never taking his eyes off the members of the CSI team as they systematically worked in and around the vehicle. He kept his fingers crossed.

  “I’m sorry I never got to meet your father,” Sean told Donnal Cavanaugh’s son.

  Finn paused for just a moment, recalling his father. “You would have liked him,” he told Sean. “Come to think of it, he was a lot like you,” he decided. The next moment, he cleared his throat. “I’d better stay out of your way,” he told Sean. “You’ve got my number if you find any prints.”

  “Like I said,” Sean told him, getting back to work as Finn began to walk to his own car, “you’ll be the first one I call.”

  * * *

  Finn picked up his phone the second that he heard it ring. He didn’t bother checking the caller ID—he just naturally assumed that it was Sean on the other end of the line.

  “Did you find any fingerprints?” he asked immediately.

  “It was the cleanest car I’ve ever dusted,” Sean admitted.

  He knew going in that it was only a slim chance that the crime-scene investigators would find a print, but even so, Finn felt deflated. “So then the answer’s no?” he asked, disappointed.

  Instead of a confirmation, Sean began, “Except—”

  Instantly alert, Finn interrupted the head of the crime-scene lab. “Except what?”

  “Except that whoever stole that car from my father didn’t stop to think when they went to adjust the rearview mirror. They wiped down every surface except for that one.” He could hear Finn all but champing at the bit, so he put him out of his misery. “We found just one partial fingerprint on the back of the rearview mirror.”

  “Do you have any idea who the print belongs to?” Finn asked. If anyone would have asked him for a description of himself, Finn would have said that, in general, he was usually a patient man. But at the same time, there was something about waiting that really got to him. Especially when he was involved like this.

  “Not yet,” Sean answered. “But we will. We’ve got Valri running the print, looking for a match. If whoever stole the car is in the system in any manner, shape or form, I guarantee that she’ll find them. Valri’s the best all-around computer te
ch that we have,” Sean said.

  Finn still saw a slight problem with that. “What if the person’s not in the system?”

  “Well, then we’re no worse off than we were before,” Sean answered. “But remember, there are a lot more people in the system now than there used to be. People need to be fingerprinted for any number of reasons these days. Keep a positive thought,” he told his nephew cheerfully.

  Finn pressed his lips together. “Right,” he murmured.

  “Oh, and, Finn?” Sean said just as Finn was about to hang up.

  “Yes?”

  “There was one more thing.” Sean paused and it was for effect, something he didn’t usually do, but given the nature of this case, he felt he could be forgiven this one time.

  “Yes?” Finn asked again.

  “We found blood in the trunk.”

  “Blood?” Finn repeated, stunned.

  “Yes. It looks like there was a body transported in the trunk,” Sean said.

  “Talk about burying the lead!” Finn cried. Pulling himself together, he asked, “Do you know who the blood belongs to?”

  “Not yet,” Sean answered. “We’ll call you about that, too,” he promised.

  “I will be waiting,” Finn said, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

  * * *

  More than an hour later, the phone rang again. Finn had just gotten up from his desk and was about to leave the robbery division’s squad room. The moment he heard his phone, he hurried back and yanked up the receiver. “Finn Cavanaugh.”

  “You know that positive thought I told you to keep earlier?”

  Finn recognized Sean’s voice immediately. Hope sprang up in his chest. “Yes?”

  “We found a match to that print,” Sean told Finn. “Or rather, Valri did.”

  Sometimes things really did work themselves out, Finn thought. “Who does the print belong to?”

  “It belongs to a Marilyn Palmer,” Sean answered. “There was only one arrest down in her file. Nothing too spectacular. She was part of some sort of group staging a college protest a few years ago. She spent the night in jail, then was released to her mother. As near as Valri could tell, there have been no repeat performances since that date.”

  “Until she stole Seamus’s car,” Finn reminded Sean grimly, “and carted off a body in the trunk.”

  “Right, until then,” Sean agreed.

  “Have you matched that blood yet?” Finn asked.

  “No luck so far, but we’re working on it,” Sean said. “Now, if you have a pen, I’ll give you Marilyn Palmer’s address.”

  “All right, shoot,” Finn said to the head of the CSI day unit, ready to copy down any and all information that Sean had for him.

  Finally, Finn thought in relief, they were beginning to get somewhere.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey, Finn,” Detective Joe Harley, Finn’s occasional partner, called out as he stuck his head into the robbery squad room. “There’s a woman out here who’s looking for you. She says she wants to talk.” Harley grinned at him. “Looks like you finally got lucky.”

  Finn was already on his feet. Armed with the address that Sean had just given him, he was just about to leave the precinct. He wanted to talk to the twenty-year-old who had just become his prime suspect. Unless this was really important, he didn’t have the time to waste on someone coming in to report something that she only thought was missing but in reality had just been misplaced. It didn’t matter how attractive she was. His focus was on something far more important.

  “You talk to her, Harley,” he told the other detective.

  But the ten-year veteran he sometimes teamed up with shook his head.

  “Believe me—” Harley glanced over his shoulder toward the hallway “—I’d like to, but she said she only wants to speak to the person in charge of the investigation concerning the stolen car found in Merryweather Park...and that would be you.”

  Finn immediately snapped to attention. Maybe this woman did have something significant to tell him after all. “All right, Harley, show the lady in,” Finn instructed.

  Harley pretended to salute as he sighed and retreated. “Y’know, some guys just have all the luck,” he muttered under his breath.

  Finn wasn’t sure just how to take that—until the detective returned less than a minute later. Walking beside Harley was a statuesque blonde with a knockout figure that could, in his opinion, bring strong men to their knees and make them salivate, as impossible fantasies began to dance in their heads.

  However, despite her other attributes, it was the woman’s clear-water blue eyes that instantly caught Finn’s attention. He knew it wasn’t possible, but her eyes looked as if they could see right through a man, and like the fictional superheroine with her golden lasso, would allow nothing but the truth to fall from his lips.

  Getting a hold of himself, Finn managed to regain the use of his tongue just as she came up to him. He put his hand out as he introduced himself. “I’m Detective Finn Cavan—”

  The woman slipped her hand into his and Finn could have sworn that there was a momentary spark of electricity shooting up his arm. He dismissed it as adrenaline, with everything that was going on.

  “I know who you are, Detective Cavanaugh,” the woman said, cutting him off as she smiled warmly at him.

  “Well, that puts you one up on me,” Finn told her. He didn’t like being caught at a disadvantage. “Detective Harley didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Well, that’s easily solved. I’m Nikola Kowalski. Nik, to my friends,” she added, putting her other hand over his as she shook it.

  Because she seemed so friendly, something within Finn backed off. He didn’t trust people outside the family who were this outgoing. They usually had some sort of a hidden agenda. Women who looked as exceptionally attractive as this one did were usually the type to use their looks to disarm people.

  Finn’s voice grew distant as he asked, “Do you know something about the car that was just recovered, Ms. Kowalski?”

  Nik picked up on his cool, reserved voice immediately. He was attempting to maintain distance between them. Too bad. She preferred a warmer, friendlier attitude, but she didn’t need him to be all warm and toasty in order for her to do this.

  “If you’re going to go the formal route,” she said, referring to his using her surname. “The w is pronounced like a v,” she informed him. “But ‘Nik’ is a lot easier,” she stressed.

  He guessed right. The woman who looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of a swimsuit magazine intended to use her feminine wiles to pump information out of him. But he had no intention of being pumped.

  “We’re getting off-topic,” Finn told her. “What do you know about the car that was found?”

  That hadn’t become public knowledge yet. The details about his grandfather’s brother being savagely attacked and left for dead were being kept tightly under wraps. If she knew about it, then she had to be involved somehow. He looked at her with heightened interest.

  She saw the spark in his eyes and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He hadn’t acted as if he was interested in her a moment ago. But she did answer his question just to move this along.

  “Well, for starters,” she told the steely-eyed detective in front of her, “I am fairly certain that Marilyn Palmer didn’t steal it.”

  Considering that he had only been given the woman’s name a few minutes ago, Finn’s suspicion that the blonde talking to him was somehow involved increased tenfold. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her.

  “How would you even know that we thought that?” he challenged. Not waiting for an answer, he decided to approach this squarely and asked, “Are you mixed up in this in some way?”

  “Only as a Good Samaritan,” she told him.

  “You’re going to have to elaborate on that, Ms. Ko-v
al-ski,” he said, deliberately stretching out her name.

  Nik winced a little at his belabored pronunciation of her last name. It was right even though, at the same time, it somehow felt wrong. Despite that, she wasn’t insulted. “‘Nik,’ please,” she corrected. She had a temper, but it took a lot to arouse it. She decided to just keep it in check. She had a hunch that she would get further that way. “Maybe I should have told you that I’m an insurance investigator.”

  His expression didn’t change, other than to allow some of the impatience he was feeling to seep in. “I still fail to see the connection here,” Finn told her between slightly clenched teeth. “It’s far, far too early for any insurance claim to have been filed.”

  She had a habit of jumping ahead and burying the headline. Nik took a breath and started again.

  “Marilyn’s mother is a friend of mine. She came to me with her concerns. She’s afraid that her daughter might be in over her head, running around with someone she feels might be taking advantage of her and getting her into some sort of trouble.” Her friend hadn’t given her any names yet, but when she heard through her sources about the carjacking, Nik immediately thought that might be a place to start.

  He thought of the way Seamus had looked when he’d been called to the crime scene. He’d been on the ground, unconscious, deathly pale, with the gash in his head bleeding profusely.

  “I’d say that it looks like she passed the ‘running’ part and is now smack-dab embedded in a very specific kind of ‘trouble.’ Where is she?” Finn asked.

  “I have no idea,” Nik answered honestly. “I’m trying to track her down.”

  He didn’t believe her. “You could be charged with obstructing an investigation, not to mention vehicular theft after the fact.”

  Rather than having intimidated her, Finn was surprised to hear the woman laugh. He hadn’t said anything remotely funny. When he looked at her, puzzled, she said, “I bet you say that to all the girls, Detective.”