Cavanaugh Cold Case

“Hi, I’m Malloy,” he told her.

The voice and sudden distracting shift of light caught her attention. After a couple beats, Kristin finally looked up.

If the exceedingly handsome, exceptionally confident-looking man with the sexy grin momentarily threw her off her game, Kristin Alberghetti gave no indication of that reaction.

Instead, her eyes met his, and she silently waited for him to explain why he was here blocking her light.

The name he offered nudged at something in the back of her mind. After a moment, recognition set in.

Malloy Cavanaugh. One of the Cavanaughs.

His reputation had preceded him.

“Of course you are,” she replied, turning her attention back to her work.

“And you are?” he asked after several seconds went by and she still didn’t volunteer her name, even though he had given her his.

“Busy,” Kristin answered crisply without looking up. “And you’re in my light,” she added rather impatiently.

“Funny, I would have thought that you cast enough light on your own to brighten up anything you needed to look at,” Malloy observed.

The blonde looked up again, her expression telling him that the remark—and his charm—left her more than just merely cold.

“Sorry, no,” she replied. Ice chips formed around each word. “Would you mind stepping to the side? I got the impression that the owner of this nursery wanted me to be done before I even got here, so if you move out of the light, I can try to accommodate him.”

“Sorry,” Malloy apologized, following her request. “My bad.”

“I imagine you probably say that a lot,” Kristin commented, sounding as if she were addressing the observation to herself instead of to him.

Feisty, Malloy thought. Ordinarily, he probably would have backed away. This was, after all, a case, and he wasn’t the type to waste too much time trying to break through a woman’s barriers. For one thing, life was too short. For another, he was being paid to be a detective, not a lover. And there were a great many willing women out there to choose from.

But, on the other hand, there was a certain appeal to the concept of “feisty,” especially when it was coupled with someone who looked the way this woman did.

Exactly who was she?

What was her official position in the department, and how did he get her to open up to him?

“You’re new,” he said, hoping to initiate a conversation.

Kristin spared him just the minutest of glances before she went back to her work. “Actually, I’m not,” she told him.

“I haven’t seen you around,” he told her. “And I always notice beautiful women.”

“Well, I guess you missed one this time,” she responded, carefully separating two bones that looked as if they had been fused together by grit and time.

Rather than annoying him, the flippant way she’d answered what was clearly a line—he hadn’t been trying to be subtle—seemed to oddly attract him to an even greater extent.

Crouching down beside the woman, he said, “Let’s start over.”

The look she gave him would have withered a lesser man.

“Maybe later. I’m working now.” Her expression turned impatient. “And you’re in my light again.”

“Right.”

To accommodate her, Malloy rose to his feet, taking care to allow the sunlight to stream over and bathe the bones laid out before her.

This one, he told himself, was going to be a tough nut to crack.

And he couldn’t wait to get started.

Chapter 2

But for now, as tantalizing as the woman kneeling over the boneyard was, Malloy knew he had to place his private plans on the back burner.

A really distant back burner.

For now, he had a crime to begin to unravel and, from the looks of it, a number of dead people to identify.

Growing up, Malloy had always loved puzzles, both the mental kind and the kind that came inside boxes that were labeled with intentionally daunting numbers like “1000 pieces.”

The older he got, the higher the number of pieces stuffed into the box became. But back then, no matter how many parts the puzzle came in, with enough tenacity on his part, they always wound up fitting into one another to form a unified whole.

He had come to learn years ago that life didn’t always imitate art. If he were being honest with himself, “hardly ever” was more the case. But each of these bones now spread out on the cloth went into forming a whole person. All he needed to do was find out who that whole person was, so that he or she could be laid to rest.

All he needed to do.

The words echoed in his head, mocking him. There was no “all” about this job, unless the word referred strictly to the number of bones that were even now piling up next to the medical examiner.

As he watched, the pile just kept growing.

It was like trying to look away from a train wreck. Horrific though it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Not because he didn’t want to, but because identifying the deceased was his job.

So he watched as the CSI team members continued to find more and more body parts, carefully laying each part on the long, unfurled rectangular cloth beside the somber medical examiner. From all appearances—at least to his limited range of expertise in this particular field—time had been the butcher rather than some overzealous serial killer trying to bolster his sagging self-esteem by hacking apart people.

Rather than walk away and get back to the owner as he’d intended, Malloy retraced his steps to the medical examiner.

“Any chance that those overly observant construction workers ogling you over there might have stumbled across some old Native American burial ground while plowing up the ground with their bulldozer?” he asked her.

Kristin looked up to see if the cocky detective was joking. But the expression on his face, while exceedingly friendly, was apparently serious.

She turned back to her work. “If that were the case, Detective, it was a pretty exclusive burial ground. So exclusive that I highly doubt it existed.”

“Again, please,” Malloy requested. “In English this time.”

Impatient, Kristin rocked back on her heels. In order to be able to look at him, she shaded her eyes. “The bodies that have been dug up so far all belonged to women. While there were some tribes that were predominantly matriarchal in nature, I’ve never heard of any of them segregating their dead.” And then she shrugged as she added a coda. “Anyway, these bodies aren’t really that old.”

Malloy’s eyes swept over the various piles of bones. They looked dried and, in some cases, splintered. “Could have fooled me,” he murmured.

“I’m sure a good many things could fool you, Detective, but I don’t have time to discuss that,” she said, getting back to work. “I’d like to finish up here before the turn of the next century.”

Rather than take offense, Malloy merely shook his head. “That was cold, Doc,” he told her.

Kristin felt herself bristling. She didn’t like the note of familiarity in his voice. “That was accurate, Detective Cavanaugh.”

He didn’t back off, the way she’s hoped. Instead, he said, “Call me Malloy. All beautiful women do.”

At a loss as to how to respond or how to put this man in his place, Kristin retreated. Sighing deeply, she went back to ignoring him. She turned her attention to tagging body parts.

“Are you sure they didn’t unearth some kind of a cemetery when they broke ground over here?” Malloy pressed. There seemed to be just too many body parts for anything but a cemetery.

Kristin raised her eyes to look up at him just for a moment. She didn’t bother hiding her disdain. “You have trouble understanding the word ‘no,’ Detective? Or is it that you’re just not accustomed to hearing it?”

He didn’t answer her.

He didn’t have to.

The grin that found its way to his lips did it for him.

Kristin bit off a few choice words that rose to her own lips. This wasn’t the time to get distracted or get embroiled in a verbal exchange that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Especially when what she had before her could very well be the defining moment of her entire career. She didn’t have time to get sidetracked by a sweet-talking, sinfully good-looking, dark-haired detective who obviously thought that all he had to do was glance at a woman with those bone-melting, seductive green eyes of his and she automatically became his.

Her bone-melting days were definitely in the past.

Long in the past.

So rather than tell this man what she thought of him, Kristin restrained herself and asked what to her seemed to be an entirely logical question.

“Don’t you have work to do, Detective? Or has the department taken to paying its detectives to stand around like obtrusive lead statues that do nothing but get in the way?”

“Is there a problem here?” Sean Cavanaugh asked, coming up behind the unit’s newest—and in his estimation, brightest—medical examiner.

He’d interviewed and hired her himself after Jacobs, the department’s last medical examiner, felt compelled to accept a better position in the private industry. Outside of proposing to his second wife, he felt it was one of the best decisions he’d ever made.

“Just asking the doc here some general questions pertaining to this boneyard that’s being unearthed even as we speak.” He flashed a wide grin in her direction. “She’s giving me the benefit of her rather droll point of view.”

Sean looked from his nephew to the young woman he felt was capable of great things. He knew all about Malloy’s reputation. He’d raised several sons like that himself and knew firsthand that it took a while for the kinks to work themselves out. Malloy was a good cop and ultimately an even better human being. The name of the game was patience.

Sean, in turn, smiled at the young woman between his nephew and him. “I’m sure that Dr. Alberghetti will let us all know when she’s had time to formulate a scientific opinion regarding this unfortunate treasure trove of death that the construction crew stumbled across.”

Easygoing almost to a fault, Brian Cavanaugh’s somewhat slightly older brother had just finished his sentence as a teeth-jarring, crowing sound pierced the air again.

The closest thing to a dirty look passed over Sean’s face as he glanced over his shoulder. “Doesn’t that blasted bird ever just stop making noise and go to sleep? That’s the third time he’s crowed since we got here. Isn’t he supposed to be tuned in to some inner clock or something?”

“I don’t know about an inner clock, but it’s too bad that he can’t talk,” Malloy commented, his eyes sweeping over the immediate area, then taking in the weather-battered trailer in the distance, as well. He had to be getting back to the unfriendly owner. “Maybe then he could give us some insight on what happened here.”

“He wouldn’t be able to,” Kristin said flatly, not bothering to look up. “Roosters live about ten years. Fifteen at most. These bodies all appear to be older than that.”

Taken aback, Malloy looked at her quizzically. “You actually know how long roosters live?” He raised his eyes to meet his uncle’s. “Wow, she’s just a regular font of miscellaneous information, isn’t she?”

Sean smiled in response. “She reads a lot in her downtime,” he told his nephew. “Although there isn’t going to be very much downtime in her immediate future, I’m afraid.”

“She also has excellent hearing,” Kristin interjected without pausing what she was doing.

“My apologies, Kristin,” Sean told her, willingly taking the blame. “That was rude.”

This time Kristin did stop what she was doing. When she spoke, her words were addressed only to the older man, who she considered to be her mentor despite the fact that he had no medical degree.

“You could never be rude, sir. He, however,” she went on, casting one dismissive glance in Malloy’s direction, “is an entirely different story.”

“Ouch.” Malloy pretended to wince. “Moving right along—”

“Please, do,” Kristin murmured just audibly enough to be overheard.

Roy Harrison picked that moment to approach the trio, a dark, impatient scowl all but embedded on his long, thin face. “Hey, when is she going to be finished?” he demanded, irritably waving his hand at Kristin.

Kristin was about to speak up and put the sour-looking man in his place when she heard someone else doing it for her.

“When she’s done,” Malloy informed the disgruntled new owner of the nursery in no uncertain terms, his tone far removed from his usual friendly cadence.

Kristin looked at the detective in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to come to her defense. Part of her waited for Malloy to add, “Just kidding,” but he didn’t.

“Is she going to keep on digging straight down to the other side of the world until she turns up all the bones from here to there?” Harrison retorted.

“Nope, just the ones that are buried along the perimeter of your property,” Sean told him pleasantly. His words didn’t match the chief’s expression.

Apparently, Malloy thought, sarcasm was wasted on the nursery’s new owner, because he took the head of the CSI unit seriously.

“My bulldozer can go a lot faster,” Harrison told them.

It didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that the man’s only interest in the matter was speed, and that he couldn’t care less about any sort of resolution as far as solving the crime went. The abrupt cessation of work was costing him a considerable amount of money for each minute that went by, and not only was money the bottom line, apparently as far as Harrison was concerned it was the only line.

“Your bulldozer can also crush a lot of those bones beyond recognition,” Malloy told him before Kristin could speak up.

In his estimation, Harrison was clearly a Neanderthal type, and anything that the medical examiner had to say, Malloy knew, wouldn’t carry any weight. There was no point in having her hit her head against a brick wall.

“It’s not like they’re exactly a pretty sight right now,” the frustrated nursery owner snapped.

“Mr. Harrison, the less time you spend standing here, talking and tying us up, the faster this’ll go and the faster you’ll be able to get back to building up your nursery,” Malloy pointed out. “Now, if you really want to talk, that’s great,” he continued cheerfully. “I have plenty of questions I’d like to ask you.”

At this point, the scowl on Harrison’s face was going clear down to the bone. Second-guessing the detective’s question, he snapped, “No, I didn’t kill anybody.”

The smile that flashed across Malloy’s lips was entirely superficial and empty. “That’s very reassuring to know, Mr. Harrison, but that wasn’t going to be my question.”

“Oh.” Harrison looked somewhat taken aback. “Well, what was it, then?” the nursery owner asked, trying not to look flustered.

To get out of the medical examiner’s way—and possibly on her good side—Malloy began to inch his way up the incline, leading the nursery owner back toward the uninviting trailer. “How did you come to be the owner of this property?”

Following the detective, Harrison looked at him as if he were simpleminded. “The usual way. I bought the damn thing.”

“From?” Malloy asked, attempting to coax more information out of him.

Harrison’s expression grew even more condescending as he looked at the man asking him these questions. “The person selling it.”

Malloy blew out a breath, trying not to let his temper get the better of him. This wasn’t anything new. He’d dealt with idiots before. “I need a name, Mr. Harrison. Who sold you the property?”

Harrison stopped walking. “My lawyer handled it. He dealt with some long-time employee who worked here. The guy was acting on behalf of the owner.”

The man was definitely a challenge to his patience, Malloy thought. “I still need a name, Mr. Harrison.”

“I don’t have a name,” Harrison snapped irritably. “I already told you. My lawyer handled all that. He does all my transactions.”

“All right, then I’ll need his name,” Malloy said, the calm timbre of his voice belying the way he really felt about this verbal square dance.

Part of him would have felt a certain amount of satisfaction if he could have discovered that Harrison was behind these murders. He made a mental note to investigate the man’s background and his general whereabouts twenty years ago—although he would have been very young at the time.

“Fine,” Harrison bit off. “I’ve got his card in that tin can of an office up there.” He waved his hand contemptuously toward the trailer.

“Lead the way,” Malloy said amicably, fairly certain that Harrison wasn’t aware that he was being led up to that trailer already.

Harrison frowned at the former owner’s living accommodations. “First thing in the morning, I’m having that piece of junk hauled off and getting a real RV set up in its place until I can have a building erected.” He aimed a penetrating glare at the detective next to him. “Unless that’s against the law, too.”

Malloy counted to ten in his head before he addressed the owner’s contemptuous statement. “None of it’s against the law, Mr. Harrison. There are just procedures that have to be followed.”

“Procedures be damned,” Harrison snorted. “I’m losing money here.”

“And I’m very sorry about that, Mr. Harrison,” Malloy responded, his voice almost singsong in tone, even as he deliberately assumed a contrite expression. “You could write a letter to the department, detailing the inconvenience that this investigation is causing you—not to mention the money it’s costing you,” he added, then approximated a sympathetic tone, saying, “Maybe they’ll reimburse you.”

Again Harrison stopped walking, wonder written across his dour face. “They’d do that?”

Malloy eased himself out of the corner with the skill of a savvy con artist, something he had picked up by observing the people he tracked down and arrested.

“I don’t handle that end of it, but nothing’s impossible,” he told the nursery owner innocently.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the amused look on Sean’s face. The latter had come closer and overheard him. It took effort for Malloy to maintain a completely unaffected and neutral expression as he followed Harrison the rest of the way up the incline and into the trailer.

The trailer’s interior had a musty smell, thanks to piles of papers that hadn’t been sorted and either filed away or disposed of in a long time. Harrison cursed roundly under his breath as he searched his desk.

“Here!” Harrison declared dramatically, finally finding the business card he was looking for. He all but slapped it into the detective’s hand.

“You might want to call ahead and tell him I’ll be stopping by,” Malloy advised. He slipped the business card into his wallet and tucked the wallet away. “Do you remember when you bought this property?”

Suspicion crowded the distrustful brown eyes. “Almost five weeks ago. Why?”

“That was going to be my next question,” Malloy told him, his voice deceptively friendly sounding. “Why?”

Harrison’s dark eyebrows drew together in a perplexed look. “You mean why did I buy it?”

“Yes.” It seemed a simple enough question on the surface, Malloy thought. “Was it a lifelong passion of yours to surround yourself with greenhouses full of exotic plants? Or were you looking for a business write-off when you bought this property? Or...?”

He let his voice trail off. There was still the possibility that Harrison had somehow been involved in these murders that made up the cold case. Maybe the man knew about the bodies buried here and didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands. In his haste to make money, he’d forgotten that the bodies were on this side of the property rather than the developed side.

Malloy watched the nursery owner and waited for him to respond.

Harrison stared at him for a few moments, then shrugged. “I just wanted my own business, and I thought that being in charge of a nursery like this would be relatively stress free.” He punctuated the sentence with a dry, self-mocking laugh. “How’s that for a stupid move?”

“Not necessarily a stupid move, Mr. Harrison. Things’ll be resolved one way or another,” Malloy assured him. “So, you didn’t know the owner before the property changed hands?” he asked innocently.

“Didn’t know the owner after it changed hands, either,” Harrison retorted. “All I know is what my lawyer told me. The nursery used to belong to this collector who got too carried away collecting. He opened up a nursery and did a fair amount of business. He died some fifteen, eighteen years ago and left the place to his sister. She kept the place going, turning it into a real thriving business. When she got sick, she put one of the employees in charge. Eventually she asked him to sell it for her and then I got it. End of story.”

Malloy glanced out of the window down to the site of activity at the far end of the property. From this vantage point, he could see his uncle, the two other members of the CSI team, not to mention the doctor with the killer legs, still working the multiple grave site, all under the entertained eyes of the four construction workers.

The latter group gave no signs of moving, the former gave no indication that they were about to stop. All of which put a decided crimp into Harrison’s anticipated opening date.

He turned around to look at the new owner. “I’m sorry, I missed the last sentence,” Malloy apologized. “What did you just say?”

Harrison frowned at what he took to be the detective’s inattention. “I said, ‘End of story.’”

“I’m afraid not yet,” Malloy corrected, looking at the man pointedly.

Chapter 3

The Cold Case Division of the Aurora PD was not a very big department. Nor was it a very popular department to work for. Tracking down sometimes decades-old information was definitely not to everyone’s taste. Patience was at a premium.

When Malloy had been promoted to the rank of detective and put in his application to join that division, he’d viewed working cold cases as a challenge, a way to prove his mettle and his tenacity. Because of his last name, he knew he had to work harder. Cavanaughs were scrutinized closely and held up to a higher standard. This was his way of proving himself.

But there was just so much of a challenge that a man could be expected to take, and working a cold case that had all the earmarks of involving more bodies than were regularly found on a major league baseball team was, in his opinion, over and above the call of duty.

It wasn’t something that he really felt he could tackle alone.

So when Malloy got back to the squad room and saw that his partner was not sitting at his desk, he grew somewhat anxious and testy.

For the past week, Frank Weatherbee had been on vacation, but he was due back today. Malloy looked over toward his partner’s desk to see if there were any telltale signs of life—like Weatherbee’s ever-present bag of barbecue chips—on his desk. But there were no chips. Not a thing was out of place, which Malloy didn’t take as a good sign. When Weatherbee was in, everything on the detective’s desk was out of place.

Malloy scanned the squad room. “Anyone seen Weatherbee?” he asked, raising his voice so it would carry throughout the room.

The detective sitting closest to him, Wade Cooper, shook his head. “Haven’t seen Weatherbee since he went waltzing off on his vacation, the lucky SOB.”

“Well, he should have come waltzing back this morning,” Malloy pointed out, annoyed.

“Maybe he decided to take an extra day,” Cooper guessed, a vague, careless shrug punctuating his statement.

“He knows better than that,” Malloy said, rejecting Cooper’s suggestion. “We’re shorthanded in the department to begin with—and he knows I’ll kill him.”

Cooper shrugged again, his narrow shoulders hardly making a ripple beneath the wrinkled houndstooth jacket he wore. “Hey, I’m just guessing here. Why don’t you ask Julie?” he said, referring to the department’s administrative assistant. The woman’s desk was just outside of their captain’s cubbyhole of an office. “Maybe Weatherbee called her to say he’s running late because of traffic.”