Cavanaugh Cold Case

Malloy hoped that was all that it was, although it was getting on in the day and if his partner was going to be here, he would have already made it in.

It wasn’t traffic.

When Malloy asked Julie Myers about his partner, he found out that Weatherbee had called in. But the word “traffic” had never entered the conversation.

However, something else entirely had. Something else that Julie went on at length to explain. As he listened, Malloy’s mouth dropped open. Talk about rotten timing.

“He did what?” Malloy asked, staring at the woman who had been with the department longer than his uncle Brian had been the chief of detectives.

Patiently, Julie repeated—verbatim—what she had just told the annoyed-looking detective. “Weatherbee said he broke his leg and can’t come in.”

The hell he couldn’t, Malloy thought in disgust. He’d seen some of his cousins power through with gaping holes in their sides, not taking a break until the case they were working on was all wound up and closed.

Didn’t people believe in work ethics anymore?

“I need him,” Malloy argued. “Hasn’t Weatherbee ever heard of crutches?”

Julie gave him a sympathetic look. “The detective said he was too banged up to use them.”

That had Malloy momentarily reconsidering his reaction. “Was Weatherbee in a car accident?” he asked Julie.

The older woman shook her head. “No, a bike accident. From what he told me, he and his wife collided while they were biking through the Los Angeles Forest.” There was a drop of sympathy in her voice as she told him, “Weatherbee’s mother is taking care of both of them.”

“Biking?” Malloy echoed incredulously, still working with that piece of information. “What’s he doing on a bike? The guy’s as coordinated as an octopus crossing the Painted Desert.” He blew out a breath. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn annoying and inconvenient. “Of all the stupid, harebrained—”

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” Julie protested, raising her hands to ward off his words before they became too colorful. “I just took Weatherbee’s call. I didn’t rent him the bikes.”

Malloy nodded, a somewhat contrite expression on his face. He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations—or Weatherbee’s stupidity—out on her. Julie had nothing to do with the situation. It wasn’t her fault that his partner was one sandwich short of a picnic.

“Yeah, sorry, you’re right.”

Malloy frowned to himself as he looked back out at the squad room. It was small, as far as squad rooms went, with fewer than half the number of detectives that departments like Homicide and Robbery had.

Everyone was up to their eyeballs in caseloads.

He looked back at the older woman. “Hey, Julie, how would you like to get out from behind that desk and go out in the field to work a case with me?” he asked, only half kidding.

Humor quickly dissipated in the face of the less-than-eager look the woman gave him. “I know, I know,” Malloy sighed. “What was I thinking?”

Julie answered without even sparing him a glance. “Probably some illicit thoughts about the hot little number you spent the weekend with would be my guess.”

Taken by surprise, Malloy stared at the administrative assistant. “How did you know about that?” he asked, both amused and slightly mystified.

“Because, Malloy, you always have a hot little number to spend the weekend with,” Julie answered. There was a note of affection in her voice as she told him, “If you were my son, I’d have sent you to a monastery a long time ago.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” he contradicted with far more blatant affection, “because then you wouldn’t be able to see my bright, shining face every week.”

Julie shook her head in amazement. “You really do flirt with every woman you come across, don’t you?”

“Only if they’re breathing—” and then he winked “—and lovely, like yourself.”

“This is April, Cavanaugh, and way too early for you to be shoveling deep piles of snow. Go work your case before it gets any colder,” she advised, waving him on his way.

He had been right earlier, Malloy thought as he walked away. This definitely did not have the makings of one of his better days.

Hopefully, he thought as he got into his car again five minutes later, this day wasn’t going to get any worse.

* * *

It didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better, either. The man he had driven over to see, Roy Harrison’s lawyer, was not in his office.

“When will he be back?” Malloy asked the inert-looking young woman at the front desk of William James, Esq.’s office.

The young woman, who Malloy assumed was either the lawyer’s administrative assistant or his younger sister attempting to work off a debt, mechanically mouthed an answer to his question. “Monday.” Then added, “Two weeks from now.”

“Two weeks?” Malloy echoed. Was the man representing an out-of-state client? “Just where is he?”

The woman’s expression couldn’t have looked more bored if she’d rehearsed it for hours in her mirror. “He’s on vacation.”

Damn, had the whole world suddenly gone vacation crazy? Was he the only one who had missed that memo?

“Can you give me the number to his hotel or wherever it is that he’s staying? I have some questions for him regarding one of his clients.”

The young woman made no move to retrieve anything. “I’m sorry, that won’t be possible,” she said in a singsong voice. “Mr. James can’t be reached by phone. He said he needed this time to unwind.”

Maybe it was his suspicious mind, but that sounded entirely too convenient. Refraining from making a comment, Malloy handed the woman his card.

“If he calls in, give him my number. Tell him to call me, day or night. It’s about Roy Harrison. I need to clear up a few things. Tell him dead bodies are involved.”

He’d thrown in the last line to get the woman’s attention, since she appeared to be half asleep, on her way to oblivion.

He succeeded. Her eyes opened so wide, it looked as if she might have trouble closing them again.

“Really?” she asked breathlessly.

“Really,” he confirmed with just the right touch of disinterest.

“You said ‘bodies.’ Plural.” Her eyes were glued to his face. “How many?”

“Many,” was the only word Malloy offered. “Make sure you tell him to call me the minute he makes contact with you,” he emphasized.

Her hand covered the card he’d given her almost possessively.

When she answered him, her voice had dropped down a level, sounding almost conspiratorial. “The second I hear from him,” she promised. “Absolutely.”

He wasn’t going to hold his breath, Malloy thought, leaving the two-story building where the lawyer’s office was housed. But then, maybe he’d succeeded in getting a little movement going in that area, making James’s secretary see how important the situation was.

Without anything tangible to go on, Malloy decided to pay the ME’s office a visit to see if the sexy medical examiner had gotten any further with her examination of the mound of body parts.

Hopefully she could offer him something more to go on than she had in their last encounter.

It felt like he was spinning his wheels. While he had always been a fan of road trips, they involved real wheels and an actual physical destination. Spinning his wheels figuratively while trying to get somewhere on a case had the exact opposite effect of a real road trip. It only succeeded in making him feel exceedingly frustrated.

Malloy took a chance that the good doctor had returned to the morgue and had gotten started on making heads or tails out of the collection of bones she and the CSI team had gathered together. This was his first stop when he drove back from the lawyer’s office.

Getting off the elevator in the basement, he followed the signs leading to the morgue. Malloy was faintly aware that there was music being piped into the building’s corridor. It wasn’t classical music, the way he might have expected—something soothing to quiet any unsteady nerves or a queasy stomach—after all, this was where the morgue was located—but something twangy.

Since he listened to music only occasionally and then to just whatever was currently on the pop stations, it took Malloy a moment to place just what genre he was listening to.

Country.

And whose idea was that? he wondered. Was that supposed to be some subtle commentary on the great circle of life? Down-to-earth folks returning to the earth, or some such circular reasoning?

Well, it didn’t really matter one way or another. He didn’t care for the music, but he wasn’t here to indulge his aesthetic sensibilities. He was here for some sort of answer, or at the very least, a hint of a direction to go in. Right now, he had nothing, and he found that incredibly frustrating.

The door to the morgue was closed. For a moment, he debated leaving it that way and coming back later. He didn’t want to disrupt anything that might be going on behind those closed doors.

But then, maybe it was business as usual and the medical examiner was just working with a giant, life-size jigsaw puzzle. In that event, he could even be of some help.

Anatomy wasn’t his thing, but jigsaw puzzles were.

With that in mind, he knocked once, then turned the doorknob. When he found it to be unlocked, Malloy entered the room.

There was only one living occupant in the room. A bright overhead light illuminated the main exam table. There were other tables, with other overhead lights, but they were turned off. In general, other than the one bright light, the oversize, somewhat chilly room was somberly in the dark.

* * *

Engrossed in trying to recreate just one body out of all the various parts that had been dug up and were now available to her, Kristin hadn’t heard the knock on the door.

She wasn’t even aware that anyone had entered the room until Malloy was less than a foot away from her. At that point, he cleared his throat to get her attention and very nearly caused her to knock over what had taken her over an hour to assemble—a less than half completed body out of all the bits and pieces that had been carefully laid out on all the other unlit tables.

Stifling a shriek, Kristin spun around and glared accusingly at the man who had very nearly caused her heart to pop out of her chest.

The cocky detective.

She might have known.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded angrily.

She didn’t like losing her poise that way, especially not in front of an audience—and most especially if that audience was comprised of a man she found to be unimaginably irritating for oh-so-many reasons.

“I’m interested,” Malloy told her simply, looking at the progress she’d made with the body parts. He was definitely impressed. This woman had serious jigsaw puzzle skills.

“I’m not,” she retorted coldly, her eyes narrowing as she continued to glare at him, hoping he would get the blatant hint and just go away. “I thought I made that clear this morning.”

When he raised his eyes to hers, Kristin instantly realized she’d made a gross mistake in her assumption. He wasn’t here seeking her out for her company. He was here looking for her expertise.

The first words out of his mouth confirmed it.

“I was referring to your professional opinion.”

Embarrassed—and hating it—Kristin could feel heat traveling up both sides of her neck as well as along her cheeks. She struggled, snatching up various unrelated thoughts to get herself focused on something other than what an idiot she’d just been.

“I knew that,” she murmured.

At any other time, he would have probably taken the opportunity to tease her a little. He liked the way her blue eyes flashed when she got angry.

But he was short one partner and his competitive nature wouldn’t allow him to remain stuck in the mud, not making any headway whatsoever, for long. Solving cold cases was what he was being paid for. He wasn’t about to drop the ball now.

But in order to keep from dropping it, he first needed to get a ball not to drop. And right now, he had nothing to grasp on to except for the bare bones—pun intended, he thought—of a mystery. He had all the questions without a clue as to where to even begin looking for some of the answers.

“So,” he began as if they were having just a friendly conversation, “what have you learned?”

Kristin made no reply. Instead, she just looked at him suspiciously. The detective wasn’t being cocky, he was actually asking the question. Was this just another tactic, or was this the genuine Malloy Cavanaugh beneath the jaunty bravado?

She couldn’t tell.

When in doubt, go on the offensive.

“Are you asking me to spoon-feed you answers?” she asked.

“Yes, please.”

He saw the skeptical look on her face intensify. Maybe he needed to play on her sympathies—provided she had any, he qualified. Right now, the jury was still out on that one.

“I’m down one partner, and the only possible lead I have is on vacation in some unknown location that apparently doesn’t have cell phone signals, internet or any kind of telephone service. I need something to go on,” he told her truthfully, then began with the most logical question. “Did you get a final count on how many bodies were in the ground?”

“At last count, there were ten. The CSI team uncovered ten skulls,” she told him. “But they’re not finished digging yet.”

That must be making Harrison happy, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Ten,” he repeated, digesting the idea. “That means—if we’re lucky—there are ten missing persons flyers to go with those skulls.”

She inclined her head, as if agreeing with him. But it wasn’t a wholehearted gesture. “If the reports were filed.”

Malloy laughed dryly. “Not much for positive thinking, are you?”

“Give me something positive to think about,” she countered, challenging him.

He would if he could, but he had nothing yet. “What else can you tell me?” he asked, then quickly qualified, in case they were still on the wrong foot, “About the case.”

“Of the ten people, nine of them are female,” she told him.

“And one male?”

Kristin bit back a few choicer comments and only said, “I can see why you’d be so sought after as a detective.”

He ignored the sarcasm, focusing on what didn’t jibe for him. “Don’t you find that kind of odd?”

“What, you being sought after?” she asked. “Actually, yes, very.”

The woman had a smart mouth, and he found himself wanting to shut it in the most effective way. Later, he promised himself. He’d get to that later. It would serve as a reward for a job well done. “I was talking about the fact that there was a male in the group,” he told her.

Kristin shrugged. He had a point—not that she would say so to him. “Maybe our one male was a transvestite and managed to fool the killer. Oh, and there’s one more thing,” she said, leaving the best for last.

“Go ahead,” he urged gamely.

“The bodies weren’t hacked apart.” At least, not the ones she’d had time to assemble. She’d examined those sections very closely.

“So they weren’t murdered in a fit of rage.”

Waiting a beat, Kristin gave him the second part of her findings. “They were broken apart—while the victims were alive.”

“Then they were murdered in a fit of rage,” he said, amending his previous statement. And then he looked at her with a touch of impatience. “Well, which is it?”

Her eyes met his, and just for a split second, Kristin caught herself losing her train of thought.

Rousing herself again, she went on to tell him, “I just present you with the facts as I find them. It’s up to you to do the speculation.”

With that, she lowered her visor and got back to the business at hand, putting together ten dismembered Humpty Dumpties.

Feeling almost as if he was experiencing whiplash, Malloy watched her work for a moment. This case was definitely not going to be easy—for a hell of a lot of reasons, he told himself.

Chapter 4

Kristin could feel the detective’s eyes on her. Ordinarily, she could block out her surroundings and work under any conditions, adverse or not. But she had this distinct impression that the detective wasn’t watching her work, he was watching her, which was something else entirely.

And she didn’t much like it.

“Why are you still here?” she asked, not giving the man the satisfaction of looking up at him as she posed the question.

Malloy’s voice was mellow and easygoing as he replied, “I thought I’d broaden my education. You know, you can really learn a lot about a person by watching them work.”

Obviously the man’s supply of lines was endless, Kristin thought reprovingly. Since ignoring him was obviously not working, she decided to put Cavanaugh on the spot instead.

“Oh?” she said skeptically. “And what is it that you’ve learned by watching so intently?”

“That you’re precise and meticulous—and you don’t like being observed.”

“I don’t mind being observed. What I mind is the person doing the observing—especially when he should be working.” The look she gave him left no doubts about how she felt about his standing there.

Rather than backing away because he’d been rebuked, Malloy smiled engagingly. “Do I make you nervous, Dr. Kris?”

“You make me irritated, Detective Cavanaugh,” Kristin corrected. “Now, if you want me to come up with some answers for you to work with, you’re going to have to let me do my job,” she said, then added with finality, “alone.”

But rather than leave, the way he had initially begun to do, Malloy looked around at the other exam tables. There were six in all, brought in during the rampage of another serial killer several years ago. Now the tables were covered with bones that might or might not be part of the person whose skull rested at the top of each table.

As he glanced around at the various clusters of remains, a thought occurred to Malloy. “Do you think this might be related to a sex trafficking ring or something along those lines?”

Kristin stopped working and looked up. “Excuse me?”

“You know, sex trafficking,” he repeated, then went on to elaborate in case she missed his drift. “Unsavory types smuggling young women from around the world for the single purpose of making money by turning them into sex slaves.”

“That would be more profitable if they were alive,” she pointed out dryly as she got back to sorting. “For most men, dead women are not a turn-on.”

“Very true,” Malloy agreed amicably enough. “But maybe something went really wrong, and whoever was in charge of this group decided he or they had no other recourse except to kill all these women.”

Under normal circumstances, she supposed that the sexy detective’s theory was plausible enough. But not in this case. “There’s just one thing wrong with that,” Kristin said flatly.

“I’m all ears.”

No, he wasn’t. He was a great deal more than that, Kristin thought grudgingly. Malloy Cavanaugh was all broad shoulders, a quirky, sexy smile and whimsical green eyes that she found vastly disturbing when they were turned on her.

Her unbidden observation came out of nowhere, and she tried to banish it back to the same location, but without much success.

This whole case was making her tired.

“These women weren’t smuggled in from outside the country.”

The facts, Kris, deal with the facts. The scientific ones. It’s the only way you’re going to get him to go away.

“How do you know that?” Malloy asked, rounding the exam table in order to see what she was talking about.

Kristin drew in a breath. Cavanaugh was standing way too close to her, but telling him to back off might start him thinking the wrong thing—or the right thing, as was the case. She decided it was best to keep silent on that score. The sooner she got him to leave, the better.

“Their teeth,” she pointed out. “The ones who have had dental work done show that whoever worked on them did a decent job. The others just have good teeth. That isn’t usually the case for those whose backgrounds include poverty and malnutrition.”

He had an adequate enough imagination, but it was hard for him to envision the remains that were arranged on the exam tables once being living, breathing women.

“So it’s your opinion that this little band of not-so-merry women was homegrown?”

Kristin bit back a comment about his choice of descriptive words. Instead, she forced herself to make a dispassionate comment. “Appears that way.”

Okay, so far he had that the women were most likely from somewhere in the immediate area—or at least this country rather than somewhere out of the country, and that all of them, except for one, were women. It was something, he granted, but still not very much to go on.

“Can you give me a rough estimate of when they were killed?” he asked.

She really wished he’d take a few steps back and stop crowding her. But since he apparently wasn’t moving, as casually as she could manage, she did.

“Well, it wasn’t all at the same time,” she told him. “My preliminary judgment would be that this happened between twenty and twenty-five years ago.”

“So this wasn’t a mass grave,” he speculated.

His wording made her think. “More like a grave of opportunity,” she said. “The guy would keep coming back to bury his latest victim because apparently no one had discovered his previous transgressions.”

The medical examiner’s conclusion interested him. He had no problem adjusting his own thinking to factor in good points. Ego had never been a problem with him. “What makes you so sure it’s the same guy?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But judging from appearances—by that I mean the way he dismembered them—it looks that way,” she theorized. As if she suddenly realized what she was saying, Kristin stopped working and raised her eyes to his. “Are you through picking my brain, Detective?”

“I haven’t even gotten started,” he told her honestly, flashing a grin that held a great deal of promise, as well as sizzle.

Kristin found she had to struggle to ignore the unwanted effects he was having on her. How did she get rid of this man?

“That wasn’t really a question,” she told him. “Let me be more clear. You’re through picking my brain.”

“What’s the matter, Doc?” he asked her good-naturedly. “Haven’t you ever heard of teamwork?”

Her eyes narrowed to two blue lasers. “I have, Detective. Are you familiar with the concept of carrying someone?”

He cocked his head, as if that would somehow help him get into her thoughts, and asked her innocently, “Is that an offer?”

“That is an observation,” she informed him tersely. She was telling him that she was aware he was looking to her to do all the heavy thinking here and he was just absorbing her answers without contributing. “Obviously too subtle for you.”

His smile only grew more engaging. “I’m really not the subtle type.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she bit off. She didn’t know how to make it clearer than this. “Now, this might get you to first base or whatever base you’re aiming for with someone else, but I like to feel that I’m earning the money I’m being paid, so unless there’s something else you either want to ask me or share with me, please, leave,” she underscored.

Instead of going the way she would have expected any normal male to do, he stayed exactly where he was, as if she’d just given him a choice. “Well, the idea of sharing doesn’t sound bad to me,” he began.

She’d set herself up for that one, Kristin silently reprimanded herself. “Please, leave,” she repeated, and this time she made sure that there was nothing in her tone to leave any wiggle room for him to misinterpret her words.

Malloy inclined his head, as if he’d finally gotten what she was telling him. “Until the next time,” he told her as he began to take his leave.

“Heaven forbid,” Kristin muttered under her breath just loud enough to be heard.