Cavanaugh In The Rough

The teens complied.

“How did you two happen to be in the building?” Chris asked casually as they crossed to the abandoned department store. “It’s supposed to be locked up.”

Bill laughed nervously. “Yeah, supposed to be.”

“But it wasn’t,” Chris assumed. This was prime real estate. Most of the strip malls and stores in the city were. He couldn’t see the building being left haphazardly opened so that anyone could have access to it. A great deal of destruction could be done in a minimum of time. That could generate a costly problem for anyone who’d just bought the property. “Did you break in?”

“No, it was already open,” Allen told him. “I swear,” he quickly added.

Chris was still having a hard time buying that. “How did you know?” he asked. “Or did you just keep trying different doors until you got lucky?”

“We figured we’d find it open because this was where the big bash was last night,” Allen told him matter-of-factly.

“What big bash?” Chris asked.

Were they pulling his leg, after all? But there was no mistaking the look of fear he’d seen. That had been very real and there had to be a cause behind it. How did it connect to this so-called “big bash” they were talking about?

“The big one.” When Chris gave no indication that he was any clearer on the subject than he had been a moment ago, Allen stressed, “The floating one.”

“A floating big bash,” Chris repeated. It still wasn’t making any sense to him.

“Yeah, man,” Bill said almost impatiently. “These rich guys, they find these big, empty venues to hold these big, flashy parties. Lots of food, lots of dancing, lots of really gorgeous women in expensive clothes with expensive jewelry. None of this fake stuff, you know?” he asked, as if trying to make himself clear. “Everything about these women is super-real.”

Chris stopped walking, his suspicions aroused. “And you know this how?”

“We’ve seen them,” Bill said. Allen hit him in the ribs with his elbow. “What’s that for?” he demanded.

The answer to that was evident by the way Chris looked at the teens. “You’ve been to these parties?”

“Not exactly,” Bill said, with far less bravado. “We kinda hid out and watched them all go in.”

Chris looked from one teen to the other, waiting. “Go on.”

Allen picked up the thread as they began walking again. “When it was over and everyone left, we thought we’d go in and, you know, scout around. See if anybody left anything behind, like maybe dropped some money or some jewelry we could sell.” He looked to see if the detective understood what he was saying. “We weren’t stealing or nothing.”

Chris used a more descriptive word. “You were scavenging.”

“We were hunters,” Bill said, with just a touch of indignation, attempting to glide right over the fact that they were both trespassing on what was at bottom private property.

For now, Chris went along with the euphemism. “Okay, and exactly what was it that you two big game hunters found?”

The teens’ bravado was gone again, vanishing like the first blush of spring beneath a sun grown too hot too fast.

And then Chris saw why.

They were inside the deserted department store now, and rather than finding the debris that was usually left behind after a building was all but gutted, Chris saw glitter strewn across the floor like the confetti left after a parade.

And over in the corner, hidden behind a long table that had been brought in to accommodate food or a VJ or something along those lines, was the unclad body of a young woman whose color had been drained out of her less than a day ago.

Chapter 2

Taking out his flashlight, Chris crossed over to the body quickly. While there was some light coming in through the store windows, they were far enough away to make visibility around the body rather dim.

Chris panned around the area slowly. The dead woman appeared to be a blonde in her midtwenties. There was nothing to distinguish her from any of the hundreds of other hopeful, beautiful blondes who flocked to Southern California each year, their heads full of dreams, searching for fame and fortune.

This blonde’s search had been traumatically and permanently terminated, Chris thought, wondering who she was and how many lives were going to be affected by her death.

He squatted down to get a closer look at the immediate crime scene, searching for anything that could give him a glimmer of insight as to why she’d been killed and why she’d been left like this.

Behind him, the two teenagers who had led him here were becoming antsy. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t getting ready to flee.

“She was like that when we found her, honest,” Allen cried the second Chris made eye contact with him.

Bill added his agitated voice to his friend’s testimony. “We didn’t do anything to her!”

Because of the lack of blood in the immediate area, Chris assumed that the woman had been killed somewhere else and then moved.

The question now was who moved her, the killer or these agitated teenagers. Turning off his flashlight, Chris got back up to his feet and faced them. “Did either one of you touch her?” he asked.

“You mean, like when she was dead?” Allen cried, his brown eyes widening. The idea clearly horrified him. “Hell, no!” he declared emphatically. “She’s dead.”

Chris turned to the other teen, waiting for his answer. Bill looked as if he was in danger of swallowing his own tongue—or throwing up. He shook his head vigorously. When he finally regained his ability to talk, he said, “We got out of here as soon as we saw her. We’re not freaks.” Stunned by the suggestion Chris had made, he cried, “Hey, man, what kind of people do you know?”

“Not the kind that you would invite to a party,” Chris murmured. Taking out his phone, he started to put in a call to his precinct. But he stopped when he saw that the teens were about to leave. “Where do you think you two are going?”

Bill and Allen exchanged looks. “We got class,” Bill told him, as if that was their get-out-of-jail-free card.

His call temporarily put on hold, Chris moved to block their exit. “Not right now, you don’t.”

Allen appeared distressed. “But I’ve got a second-period test,” the teen complained, then all but wailed, “I can’t miss it.”

“I’ll write you a note,” Chris told him dismissively. “Stay put or I’ll have to cuff you.” He didn’t trust them to obey. “Now stand over there where I can watch you,” he instructed, indicating the wall right behind the dead woman who had sent them running.

The teens regarded the body nervously.

“Could we stand over here instead, not so close to her?” Allen asked, pointing to an area in the opposite direction.

“Death isn’t catching,” Chris informed him in a no-nonsense voice. “Unless, of course, you and your friend try to run.”

Pinning them with a look that all but nailed the two teens to the spot, Chris completed his call to the precinct and started the ball rolling.

* * *

Dispatched by Sean Cavanaugh, Dirk Bogart peered into the lab, looking for the woman he’d been told by his boss to fetch.

Spotting her at the far end of the room, Bogart smiled as he called out, “Put your papers aside, Suzie Q. We’ve got a live one. Or rather,” he corrected with a grin that went from ear to ear, “a dead one. Boss man says to tell you that you’re up. I’ll drive.”

The words came out like rapid gunfire, one after another, barely allowing Suzie to absorb one sentence before Bogart had already moved on to the third.

Replaying the words a beat or so behind their actual lightning-fast delivery, Suzie nodded and grabbed the gear she personally packed and then repacked after each trip to a crime scene. Experience had taught her that anything else would already be in the car and ready to go.

Because she liked being in control of any situation she found herself in, Suzie preferred driving to the crime scene and she preferred to do that driving alone. But she knew that making waves, even little waves, put people off, and in this case she had to admit it really wasn’t worth it. She was careful to pick her battles and fought only those that really needed to be fought.

This was not one of them.

Although, she thought several minutes into the drive, she would have done a lot better on her own. If there was anything that Dirk liked better than the sound of his own voice, Suzie had a feeling it hadn’t been discovered yet.

The two-year CSI vet talked the entire way to the crime scene. He talked about the weather, the state of the country and how he was a thrill junky, which was why, he went on to tell her, he’d taken this job in the first place.

For the most part, Suzie managed to tune him out, and made appropriate noises that might have been taken as agreement only when it sounded as if he was ready to challenge her if she didn’t concur with his many stated opinions.

When Bogart finally brought the vehicle to a stop at what was clearly a roped-off area, Suzie was quick to get out of the car, clutching her crime scene case to her. She was glad to see that Sean was already on the scene.

Spotting him, she made a beeline for the man.

“I see we managed to get you away from your paperwork,” Sean observed pleasantly.

“Could we get me away from Bogart now, as well?”

The words just slipped out, surprising her as much as they obviously did Sean. Ordinarily, she wasn’t given to complaining and she could see that her request immediately registered with the man.

He laughed, an understanding look on his face. “Couldn’t stop talking, could he?”

Following her superior into the abandoned department store, Suzie shook her head. “Not for a second. I didn’t know a human being was capable of saying that many words a minute.”

Sean walked toward the taped-off area. “I thought that maybe being in your company, he’d pick up a few tips on how to be silent. Guess not,” he concluded philosophically. “Next time, you can ride with me.”

“I think I’d really like that.” She tried to sound neutral about it, but didn’t quite succeed. She heard the older man laugh again.

“He’ll hit his stride, given enough time,” Sean told her.

“What if that is his stride?” Suzie asked, far from comfortable with that thought.

“People transfer out of the department on occasion,” Sean answered, as if that was something that might give her hope. “The crime scene is right over there.” He pointed ahead of them.

Relieved that Bogart hadn’t caught up to them with the rest of the equipment yet, Suzie hurried closer to Sean.

“Do we know anything yet?” she asked, assuming that whoever had called the crime into their division had given a few details.

“Only that apparently Aurora has a whole nightlife I know nothing about,” said a man who walked up behind them. “According to the two kids who found the body, there are supposedly decadent ‘floating’ parties being thrown in abandoned, high-end buildings all through Southern California.”

Sean nodded, taking the scene in. “Anything else, Chris?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” the newcomer replied. That was when his voice finally struck a familiar chord for her and Suzie turned around.

About to say something else to his uncle, Chris could only stare at the young woman who had come in with Sean. Recognition came, riding a thunderbolt, in less than a heartbeat.

The woman from last night’s party.

The one he hadn’t been able to get to first base with.

First base? Hell, he didn’t even get to pick up the bat to begin to play the game. Their entire interaction had consisted of a great many back-and-forth exchanges that had passed as banter, at least to his ear. Looking back, he realized that it might not have necessarily seemed that way to her.

As a matter of fact, since she had disappeared the way she had, he was sure of it.

Yet here she was, standing in front of him, looking very different in the light of day—and yet enticingly the same, except that she was wearing jeans and a jacket instead of the clinging cocktail dress she’d worn last night.

“You,” Chris stated.

A great deal was inferred in that single word. It spoke of the party she’d attended and the time he’d spent attempting to get to know her. It spoke of his bewilderment when he’d turned away just for a moment, only to find her gone. He’d scanned the area, trying to find her, before he finally gave up and moved on.

Moving on had ultimately proved more fruitful, which was why he was so tired this morning.

Tired, but far from satisfied.

He had to get it into his head that he wasn’t eighteen anymore, Chris told himself, and that any all-nighters he pulled had to be centered around work, not partying.

“Me,” Suzie replied with a smile, neither her expression nor her voice giving anything away.

For all Chris knew, it could be just an automatic response. Except that it was her, the woman who had, like a very old song had once said, drawn him from across a crowded room. He was sure of it.

Sean looked from his nephew to the young woman he felt had all the earmarks of becoming his best investigator, once whatever baggage she was secretly carrying was unpacked and put away. “You two know one another?” he asked, interested. It certainly sounded that way to him.

Chris was the first to speak up. “Apparently not,” he admitted, thinking of the way last night had gone and the vanishing act she had pulled. He’d waited around before ultimately moving on, but his mystery woman never made a reappearance. He’d just assumed she had left the club. “But not for lack of trying,” he added significantly, still looking at the woman who had come in with his uncle. From the way she was dressed, she was obviously part of the department. Something else that hadn’t come up last night.

Rather than being annoyed or feeling as if he had been played, Chris found himself intrigued.

“Then let me introduce you,” Sean proposed, looking from his nephew to the young investigator as he quickly assessed the situation. He’d been exposed to enough younger Cavanaugh males and their robust hormones when it came to dealings with the opposite sex to pick up on what was going on—and what possibly hadn’t, as well.

“Chris, this is Suzie Quinn, the newest crime scene investigator on my team. She’s a lot sharper than her very youthful appearance might lead you to believe,” he assured his nephew—or maybe it was more like a warning. “Nothing gets by her,” Sean said proudly. “Suzie, this is Detective Christian Cavanaugh O’Bannon, one of my nephews. One of my many nephews,” he added with a laugh.

She knew there were more than a few Cavanaughs scattered throughout the various departments of the Aurora Police Department, but up until now, she had to admit she hadn’t really paid all that much attention to the fact. It wasn’t something that seemed work-related to her.

“How many nephews do you have?” she asked, turning her attention to her supervisor rather than the guy who had tried to make points with her on her one and only venture into a social scene in the last three years.

She’d learned her lesson there.

Sean’s smile was almost rueful. “To be honest, I no longer know. Every time I turn around there seem to be more of them—nieces and nephews,” he clarified. “We have a very prolific family tree.”

“Apparently,” Suzie murmured.

“However,” Sean continued, turning his attention to the young woman whose death had brought them all here, “being prolific is something this poor individual will never get the chance to be.” He looked back at his nephew. “Do we know how she got here?”

“All we know at the moment is that according to those two kids—” Chris indicated the duo he had standing nearby “—there was something like a wild party here last night. I’m assuming that she attended that event, and somewhere during the evening or early hours, became a casualty.”

“Did those two boys witness anything?” Sean asked.

Chris laughed shortly. “According to them, everything and nothing. All I could get out of them was that they fell asleep waiting for the party to be over. When they woke up, everyone was long gone. They went into the building—which they claimed was unlocked—to see if they could find anything of value that the partygoers might have left behind.”

Sean saw that Suzie had moved closer to the dead woman and crouched down, studying her intently.

“She looks like she might have been valuable to someone,” she murmured, more to herself than to either of the two men next to her.

“Why don’t you try to talk to those two boys, Suzie?” Sean suggested when she rose to her feet again. “See if you can get anything more out of them than they told Chris.”

Although generally mild mannered and easygoing, Chris reacted to what he felt his uncle wasn’t saying aloud, but was inferring: that he had done less than a good job with the teens.

“I didn’t exactly use a rubber hose on them, Sean,” he protested. “I was my usual charming, persuasive self.”

“Then it’s a wonder those poor guys aren’t traumatized,” Suzie said wryly as she went to interview the two boys.

Torn between going with her just to see if she could do better with the duo, and hanging back to ask his uncle a few questions about the woman, Chris decided to go with the latter, but only for a few moments.

He had to admit that he was still feeling his way around in this brand-new family hierarchy. There were some people within the department who were less charitable. They referred to the Cavanaughs as a dynasty—and not in a kind way.

To Chris, the fact that he had so many relatives in the police department just made it the family business. A great many family members followed one another into a line of work. For his, that involved all different walks of law enforcement. That there were so many of them didn’t change the fact that they were still, at heart, a family. And as such, they shared things. Like information.

The information he required was of a very specific nature.

“How long has Suzie been working for you?” Chris asked as he followed his uncle.

Sean began to process the crime scene. Bogart had finally entered and was setting up the equipment he’d carried in.

“Nine months,” Sean replied.

That seemed like a short amount of time. Chris couldn’t help wondering where she’d worked before that, and asked.

“She wasn’t working for me.” Sean glanced up at him and smiled. “Arizona. Same field,” he added, before his nephew could ask. Obviously there was something about Suzie that Chris found intriguing. It wasn’t hard to see why. Sean had noticed that Dirk had been dancing around her, showing off like an eager puppy. To her credit, Suzie appeared to be oblivious to all of this. “Anything else?”

He might as well go for broke. “Is she married?” Chris asked bluntly.

Sean paused and looked at his nephew for a long moment. He didn’t want to see either of them getting hurt. “Don’t go getting ideas about this one, Chris.”

Chris came to the only conclusion he could. “Then she’s married.”

“I didn’t say that.”

He circled around to get in front of his uncle. “What are you saying?” he asked.

Sean thought of the impression he’d gotten more than once when he’d talked with Suzie. “That some people need to work things out before they can come out and play.”

Chris wasn’t sure he understood. “What kind of things?”

“Things they don’t broadcast.” Suzie’s issues were her own. Sean wasn’t about to intrude or second-guess what was going on in the young woman’s head. “She’s very good at her job, Chris. I don’t want to lose her.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied, flashing a confident grin. “I have no intention of making her go away, Uncle Sean.” Chris reverted to the more familiar form of address, since they were alone. “In fact,” he said, walking off to see how Suzie’s interview with the teens was going, “it’s the exact opposite.”

“Just remember that I have your mother on speed dial,” Sean called after him.

Blowing out a breath, Sean shook his head. He supposed, if he thought long enough, he could remember being that young and feeling that invincible once. But right now, it seemed an eternity ago.

Maybe two eternities.

Sean roused himself. He had a crime scene to get back to and assess. And a young woman to avenge. Everything else had to take second place.

“Ah, Dirk,” he said, beckoning Bogart forward. “Just in time.”

He pretended not to notice the disappointment on the investigator’s face as he kept the young man from joining Suzie.

Chapter 3

It was totally unexpected. Striding across the former department store toward Suzie, Chris was just in time to see it.

To see her smile.

She turned around just as he reached her, and the smile on her lips was nothing short of dazzling. It actually seemed to light up the area.

“Wait right there, boys,” Suzie said as she left the two teens and joined him. “Detective O’Bannon will probably want to talk to you before he lets you leave.”

Reaching the crime scene investigator, Chris turned his back to the teenagers so that they weren’t able to overhear his conversation with her. He couldn’t help noticing that she seemed exceptionally pleased with herself. It piqued his curiosity.

“You’ve made yourself at home with my witnesses,” he noted.

“Crime scene witnesses,” Suzie corrected. “And I think I’ve got everything that you might want.”

He couldn’t contain the grin that curved his lips. “No question about that.”

Suzie’s eyes narrowed, telling him she didn’t find him witty, nor was she flattered. “I was talking about the crime scene.”

“Okay, we’ll go with that for now,” Chris agreed. “And what is it you’ve got that I wasn’t able to get?” he challenged gamely.

Suzie deliberately started small. “I have their names and addresses—”

He waved dismissively. “Already got that,” he told her.

She hated being cut off like this. He could have the decency to hear her out. “I wasn’t finished,” she informed him.

Chris inclined his head as if to tender an apology. “Sorry, go ahead.”

“I have their names and addresses,” she repeated, “so that we can send them their cell phones once our computer technician takes a look at them.”

He thought of the mind-numbing selfies that were probably on both cell phones. “And she’d want to do that because?”

Obviously, she was going to have to spell this all out for him, Suzie thought. The preening homicide detective wasn’t quite as brilliant as he thought himself to be. “Because our teen voyeurs and would-be enterprising thieves might not have gotten into the party while it was going on, but they were tenacious enough to find a window that wasn’t covered, and they took videos of the people attending. It might amount to nothing,” she said, “but then again...”

“It might be something,” Chris agreed, instantly hopping on her bandwagon. He looked over her shoulder at the teens waiting to be released, and frowned. “They didn’t tell me they took videos of the party attendees with their phones.”

The look on Suzie’s face said he should have figured that part out for himself because it was so obvious. “They’re teenagers with smart phones. They take videos of everything at this age.”

Rather than appearing annoyed the way she’d expected him to, there was admiration in the detective’s eyes. It took her aback.

“You’re good,” he told her.

He expected her to preen a little, because it was her due, given the circumstances. But she wound up surprising him by merely shrugging her shoulders. “Just doing my job.”

In his opinion, what she’d just done could make his job a whole lot easier. “If we didn’t have an audience, I’d kiss you,” he declared, looking at the two cell phones she produced. She was holding them gingerly with a handkerchief.

“Then lucky for you we have an audience, because otherwise I’d be forced to deck you,” Suzie responded, offering him a spasmodic smile at the end of her statement.