Cavanaugh Encounter

“And did you?” Luke asked.

She paused, anticipating a lecture. But she wasn’t about to lie, either. “Yes, I did. But I said that I promised. I didn’t include either one of you in the promise.”

“Want to hog all the glory yourself, is that it?” Luke deadpanned.

“No,” she protested. “I just didn’t think that you’d appreciate my making any promises in your name,” she told him.

“He’s just yanking your chain, DeMarco,” White Hawk told her. “And as for making promises, I’ve heard him say the same thing to the grieving relatives of other victims. It’s hard to walk away, indifferent, in the face of that kind of gut-wrenching grief. You did what you had to, newbie. It’s not just protect and serve,” he told her. “Sometimes that includes comfort, too. Consider it all part of the job description.”

“Is that what he believes?” she asked White Hawk, nodding at O’Bannon.

“Yeah,” the detective assured her. “Even if he doesn’t say it. Trust me,” he added.

“And me without my violin,” Luke murmured sarcastically.

Frankie merely shook her head. The sooner they found the killer, the sooner she’d be able to get back to her own department.

Chapter 5

“Hey,” Luke said suddenly, directing the question to the woman sitting directly behind him as a thought occurred to him. “You’re not one of those people who insist on having vegetables on their pizza instead of cheese, are you?”

The idea was abhorrent to her, but the tone of O’Bannon’s voice was challenging and she wasn’t one to just submissively allow a challenge to go unanswered. “And if I was?”

His answered surprised her. “Then we’d have to go someplace else, because the place I’m taking us to doesn’t serve that kind of pizza.”

Since he was being so nice about it, Frankie decided to let the matter drop rather than drag it out a little longer.

“Well, luckily for all of us,” she said, “I like my pizza the traditional way—lots of cheese, pepperoni and super-thin crust.”

“Wow,” Luke responded. “Finally something we can agree on.”

“Probably the only thing we can agree on,” she murmured under her breath. She didn’t think he heard her, but he did.

Luke stopped at the light and glanced over his shoulder at her for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find something else eventually.”

She had no idea why the way he looked at her—even though it was only for a split second—sent such a hot shiver zigzagging up her spin.

Almost in self defense, she told him, “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

She expected a sarcastic retort from O’Bannon. Instead, he made no response whatsoever—which wound up unsettling her even more.

The pizzeria he was taking them to was just around the corner on the next block. It was in the middle of what had once been a thriving strip mall but the stores on either side of Gino’s had changed hands several times and the stores on either side of those stores stood empty, with For Lease signs prominently displayed in their windows.

Frankie noticed that the sign in the window that they passed by first appeared dusty, a testimony that the property had been vacant for a while now. She wondered if people in the area were just losing interest in supporting their neighborhood stores, or if this was now an ongoing trend because people preferred doing their shopping online instead of in actual buildings of brick and mortar. She’d read that somewhere, and the thought of that happening made her sad. She could remember hanging out at the mall all day with Kristin.

Everything was changing, and not always in a good way.

It felt about ten degrees warmer inside Gino’s when they walked in. It was also dimmer. The sun was bright outside, but it seemed as if someone had flipped a switch the moment they came in and the front door closed behind them.

In contrast, the person behind the counter seemed to light up when he saw them. He also appeared to be standing just a little taller by the time O’Bannon approached him.

“Why don’t you two find a table?” Luke suggested to her and his partner.

Frankie scanned the small restaurant. Finding a table wasn’t going to be a problem. Every other table in the place appeared to be empty. Was it always like this or had they come in at a bad time?

“After you,” White Hawk told her.

“Is this place always this empty?” she asked White Hawk as she sat down at the closest table.

“You’ve never been here before?” Luke asked, joining them and taking a seat. “This place makes the best pizza in town. I thought since you liked pizza so much, you would have found this place yourself.”

Frankie noticed that he hadn’t answered her question, just asked one of his own, possibly to throw her off. She shrugged. “I live in the other direction,” she said simply. “There’re a couple of decent pizza parlors between the station and my place.”

“Pizza parlors,” Luke repeated, the corners of his mouth curving.

She had no idea why that would amuse him but she braced herself for some kind of a cutting comment. “That’s what I said,” she replied crisply.

His smile only seemed to widen. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

She wasn’t, but she wasn’t ready to admit anything until she knew why he was asking and what he would do with the information once he got it.

“And just what makes you say that?” she asked.

“They’re not called pizza parlors out here,” he told her. “That’s something people say back East. Are you from back East, DeMarco?” he asked, looking at her. “You don’t sound like you are.”

Frankie didn’t really feel like sharing any personal information with O’Bannon, no matter how harmless it was, but she knew that he wasn’t going to back off until she satisfied his curiosity.

One glance at White Hawk told her that she was right on that score.

“I was four when my family moved out here. My mother loved pizza and she called them pizza parlors. I guess I picked that up from her.” She was not about to elaborate any further on either of her parents. And when she asked, “Any more questions?” it sounded almost defensively waspish to her own ear.

“I’ll let you know when I think of them,” Luke told her mildly.

Frankie had no doubts that he would do exactly that, no matter what those questions involved. And she was just as determined not to answer them. The next moment, she saw him standing up next to his chair.

“Here comes our pizza,” Luke said, waving at the teenager in the stained half apron who had emerged from behind the counter. He was carrying a large, banged-up silver-colored pizza tray in his hands and had a lost look on his tanned face.

“What do I owe you?” she asked O’Bannon when the teenager placed the extra-large pizza on the table before them. She reached into her pocket to extract her wallet, but it turned out not to be necessary.

“Your undivided attention when I need some work done,” Luke replied.

Her eyes narrowed. He was playing games with her. “I meant for the pizza.”

Luke’s smile was wide and innocent—and didn’t fool her for a moment. “So did I.”

“Look—” Frankie tried again, not willing to be in anyone’s debt, least of all O’Bannon’s. “I asked for a pizza, you got the pizza, now I want to pay my share of the pizza—”

“Just accept it, DeMarco,” White Hawk advised, helping himself to a slice. “Nobody’s ever won an argument with this guy. You might as well not let your pizza get cold,” he told her. “Or your blood pressure go up.”

She thought of O’Bannon’s response when she asked what she owed him. She didn’t like owing someone something that sounded so vague, but she supposed she had no choice—at least, for now.

“I’ll pick up the next one,” she told O’Bannon.

She expected the lead detective to offer an argument of some sort over that, too, but all O’Bannon said was, “Okay.”

Frankie picked up a slice and began eating, not trusting herself to say anything further to the man. Having her mouth full was a way to curtail that.

“You’re right,” she grudgingly admitted several moments later. Much as she hated to do it, she had to give the man his due. “This is good pizza.”

“I’m always right,” Luke replied. And then, because of the look that she had just shot him, he added, “At least, usually.”

* * *

Less than forty-five minutes later, all three of them were pulling into the rear parking lot of the police station.

Once back in his parking space, Luke popped open his trunk and carefully removed the two laptops he had placed there. Each was securely wrapped within a large plastic envelope to preserve possible prints, although the odds of getting a set of useful ones were small.

“Are you sure I can’t help out by taking one of the laptops to work on?” she asked, giving it one last try. “The search’ll go twice as fast if each of us takes one laptop.”

“Not that Valri wouldn’t appreciate you volunteering,” Luke told her, “but she has a certain way of doing things.” Ways he knew that she didn’t want interfered with, he thought. In her own unassuming way, Valri was a tyrant when it came to operating her area of the computer lab. “And as for the search going twice as fast, you’ve never seen Valri work. That woman’s fingers fly over those keys almost faster than the speed of light—or, at least, it seems that way,” he said, deep admiration resonating in his voice as all three of them walked to the back entrance of the building.

“She’d appreciate hearing you say that once in a while, you know,” White Hawk told him.

Luke looked at him as if his partner was talking nonsense. “Valri knows how good I think she is. How good everyone thinks she is.”

Frankie laughed shortly. She agreed with White Hawk. “Knowing is not the same thing as hearing,” she told him. She couldn’t help thinking that O’Bannon was just being thick.

“Speaking from personal experience?” Luke asked her, his expression unreadable.

“As a human being, yes,” Frankie retorted, opening the door to the stairwell. “But, hey, you do whatever you want to.”

He was about to press for the elevator, but stopped as he looked at her. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Well, since you don’t want me working on one of those laptops,” she reminded him, “I’m going up to the squad room.”

He’d figured that was where she was going, until he saw her opening the stairwell door. “Why are you taking the stairs?” he asked.

She assumed that the answer was self-explanatory. “That was a filling lunch. I thought I’d walk off a little of the pizza.”

If she was looking to burn off the calories, she needed to do a lot more than that. “It’s only five flights up to the homicide squad room, not fifty.”

Frankie shrugged. “Gotta start somewhere,” she told him philosophically.

He didn’t want to take a chance that she was up to something. “White Hawk, you go with her,” he told his partner.

Instead, White Hawk pressed the Up button for the elevator.

“Why?” he asked. “She’s not a suspect. What do you expect she’s going to do?”

“I don’t know her well enough to know what she’s capable of doing,” Luke told him. He looked pointedly at the stairwell.

White Hawk blew out a breath. “If I keel over from a heart attack, it’s on you,” he told his partner, walking over to the stairwell.

“I’ll deal with it,” Luke said.

As far as he was concerned, the man was in a hell of a lot better shape than most of the men currently in the precinct. White Hawk just liked being melodramatic.

Waiting until his partner was inside the stairwell, Luke took the elevator down to the basement to take his cousin the two laptops. In addition to sealing them, he had also labeled them.

He sincerely hoped that at least one of the laptops would yield some sort of information that would finally lead them to a break in the case. They needed to find out just who was responsible for killing all these young women.

Walking out of the elevator, Luke made one quick stop at the breakroom, then turned right instead of left. Left led to where his uncle worked in the crime scene investigations lab. Turning right took him to the computer lab where the chief of detectives’ daughter-in-law, Brenda, and his cousin Valri, as well as several other gifted people, worked their magic uncovering secrets that were embedded within the hard drives of completely innocent-looking computers.

Stopping before the glass-enclosed office, Luke knocked lightly on the door frame. Since the door was already open, he peered in.

“How’s my favorite person?” Luke asked cheerfully.

“Not here,” the petite blue-eyed blonde replied, never looking up from her monitor.

“Yes, you are,” Luke said. “You know that I mean you, Val.”

Valri went on working. “What I know is that you mean trouble every time you turn up, Luke. You’re just like your brother Christian.”

After setting down the laptops he’d brought in, Luke dramatically placed his hand over his heart. He was holding a covered container in his free hand that he’d gotten from the breakroom’s vending machine.

“You wound me, Valri,” he told her. “Chris and I are nothing alike.”

This time she looked up, even though she didn’t stop typing. “You’re right. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat things the way that you do.”

“That’s just because he’s not as charming as I am,” Luke said, pretending to defend himself. “I brought you a big container of your favorite tea. Chai—with that creamer you really like.” He set it down to her right.

Still, she told him, “Bribery is not going to get you anywhere.”

“It’s not bribery, Val,” he protested, wounded. “It’s thoughtfulness. Take a sip,” he urged. “It’s still warm.”

She looked at the container and then back at him. “You got this from the vending machine,” she accused.

He didn’t bother denying it. Instead, he argued, “But it’s still warm.”

Valri sighed. “You are incorrigible.” After removing the lid, she took a deep sip. “This is very good.” Still, she teased, “I pity the woman who’s going to wind up with you.”

“Never going to happen,” Luke told her. “I would never be able to find a woman who could come anywhere close to measuring up to you, Valri—even though we are cousins.”

Valri shook her head. “You lay it on any thicker and I’ll have to get a shovel to make my way to the door.” She sighed, giving him her full attention. “All right, Lukkas, what kind of a puzzle did you bring me this time?” she asked.

“I come bearing laptops,” he told her, indicating the two sealed envelopes he’d placed on her desk. “They belonged to two women who were recently murdered. In each case, the murderer made it look like it was a drug overdose.”

“But you think it wasn’t?”

“Questioning one victim’s mother and going by information from someone who knew the other woman—” for now, he was deliberately keeping DeMarco’s name out of it, although he did mean to get back to that “—they swear that both women had conquered their drug problems and were leading normal, productive lives.”

She made the logical leap. “You think the two cases are connected?” Valri asked him.

“I’m pretty sure, but that’s what I’m hoping you and your magical ways are going to find out and prove for me. And, just for the record, there aren’t two cases, there are seven.”

Valri eyed him. “Seven?”

He nodded. “Seven. All were dark-haired young women in their twenties, all were found dead from a drug overdose with a syringe either in their arm or lying near them. The scenes were all staged,” he said, telling his cousin what his gut had led him to believe.

“It could all just be a terrible coincidence,” Valri commented.

He gave her a patient, if somewhat patronizing, look. “And what was it that we all learned when we were growing up?”

She glanced at the container of chai tea on her desk. “Beware of good-looking men bearing gifts?”

“No,” he corrected. “There are no such things as coincidences.” Luke paused as he played back her words in his head. “You think I’m good-looking?” he asked, amused.

“In a motley sort of way,” Valri told him. “Now go,” she ordered. “Leave me to my work before I find a way to bury these laptops under a pile of paperwork,” Valri warned.

Luke was already out the door. “You’ll call if you find something?”

“I’ll call if I find something,” she told him. It was a given. “Now go!”

She found herself talking to empty space. Luke had left.

“I should have said that in the first place,” she murmured under her breath as she got back to work.

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