Cavanaugh Hero

Chapter 2

The sound of raised voices greeted Declan the minute he got out of his car, thanks to the wide-open door leading into the victim’s house. Someone was having an argument, he thought, listening closely as he made his way up the walk.

“Look, Detective, there’s no pulse,” the paramedic with the two days’ growth on his face argued. He gestured in exasperation toward the body on the sofa. “The officer’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for him. You’ve already made us apply the paddles once. There is no jump-starting this guy,” he enunciated. “He’s gone. You don’t need an ambulance for him, you need the coroner’s wagon. He’s dead.”

Declan looked from the two frustrated paramedics to the woman they were arguing with. The woman who, with her back to the entrance, was deliberately blocking the paramedics’ exit.

“Try the paddles again,” she ordered.

There was something vaguely familiar about the voice and the woman’s stance, even though she had her back to him. Declan had the feeling that he knew her or, at the very least, that their paths had crossed once.

“He’s gone, Detective,” the other, older paramedic insisted, although his voice was gentler, more understanding than his partner’s.

The woman rested her hand on the hilt of the weapon holstered at her side. The inference was difficult to miss.

“Just one more time,” she told them evenly. “You can’t be in that much of a hurry to leave.”

The two paramedics exchanged looks, and then the younger one saw him standing in the doorway behind the detective. A silent appeal went out to Declan.

Declan inclined his head as if to say, “Humor her.” The hope was that she would be easier to deal with if she was humored.

With a sigh, the taller of the two paramedics took out the defibrillator again, set it up to three hundred and held the flat surfaces out so that his partner could apply gel to the paddles. The first paramedic waited for thirty seconds, then cried out, “Clear!” just before applying the paddles to Matt’s chest.

The officer’s lifeless body jolted macabrely, rising an inch or so from the sofa, then fell back again, as devoid of any spark of life now as he had been the first time the paddles had been applied.

Still holding the paddles, the paramedic looked at her. “See?” he asked.

“Satisfied?” the other paramedic asked, more than ready to wrap things up and be on his way.

Charley closed her eyes, struggling to keep the hot tears back. She wasn’t going to cry over Matt until she was alone, away from any prying eyes. She owed her brother that much, to conduct herself with dignity in public. Matt hated scenes.

“No,” she said in what amounted to a strangled whisper. She wasn’t satisfied at all. “But you can go.”

The voice finally registered, setting off a chain reaction in Declan’s head. He knew who she was now.

“Charlotte?” Declan asked, coming around to look at the detective’s face. “Charlotte Randolph?” he asked for good measure, although he was fairly certain that he’d guessed correctly, identifying the powerhouse of a detective as the rookie he’d met while attending the academy. She’d been a go-getter back then, too—and married as he recalled. She was the one unattainable goddess all the male rookies fantasized about.

Charley looked up, climbing out of the temporary mental haze she’d descended into as the two paramedics made their way out of her brother’s house, pushing the empty gurney before them. It took her a second to clear the fog from her brain.

Once she did, she immediately recognized the man who’d said her name. Declan Cavelli. Tall, gorgeous, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped Declan Cavelli. Best-looking would-be rookie cop at the academy. She vividly remembered wondering what it would have felt like, slipping her fingers through his thick, midnight-black hair, touching the silky straight strands. There probably wasn’t a woman who crossed his path who didn’t have fantasies about the man. And she was no exception.

Because routine was all she had now, she nodded her acknowledgment of his presence. “Cavelli.”

Declan grinned. Thanks to his father, Sean, Declan and his siblings had discovered that due to a mix-up at the hospital where his father was born, they were actually Cavanaughs and not Cavellis as they had previously thought. It took some getting used to, but he was fine with it now. They all were.

“It’s Cavanaugh now.”

“You get married?” she deadpanned, doing her best to divorce herself from the very real body that was still on the sofa, waiting for proper documentation before the final fateful pickup conducted by the coroner’s office.

“Long story,” Declan quipped. “I’ll tell you sometime—over drinks,” he added. “Unless that jealous husband of yours still objects.”

Even as he said it, he looked down at Charley’s left hand. He was surprised to discover that it was as devoid of any jewelry as her right.

Did that mean she was divorced, or just trying to preserve her wedding ring?

Charley saw where the detective was looking and knew what he had to be wondering. “Long story,” she said, echoing his words back to him.

Except that her story wasn’t long. It was nonexistent.

She’d never been married to begin with, but the class of rookies she had attended the academy with were a particularly aggressive group with testosterone all but swirling to overflowing—and Declan had been the biggest offender, as she recalled. It was a great deal easier just saying she was married than coming up with excuses and perpetually fending off the class of would-be Romeos. She attended the academy to learn everything there was about police work. Going out with any one of a number of the rookies—especially Declan—would have only served to blur her focus.

So she opted to pretend she was already off the market and married. Only a handful had tried to change her mind about remaining faithful to her vows and they soon gave up when she showed no signs of coming around to their way of thinking.

“I like long stories,” he told her. “We’ll trade them.” Then, turning his attention to the reason he’d been called out to begin with, he nodded at the dead man. He would have had to have been deaf and blind to miss the distress in her voice and on her face and he was neither. “He a friend of yours?”

“We knew each other,” Charley answered, keeping her reply deliberately vague. If she admitted to Declan that Matt was her half brother, she knew that there wouldn’t be a chance in hell she would be allowed to work on his murder. And right now that was the most important thing in the world to her.

Declan took her answer in stride. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked.

Charley looked up sharply, recognizing the tone Declan was using. It was deliberately laid-back, conversational—and moving in for the kill because, as the person who called in the murder, she was suspect number one.

She told him the truth—as far as she was willing to take it.

“I heard Holt hadn’t shown up for his shift in the last couple of days and his lieutenant said he hadn’t called in, either. That wasn’t like Holt. I knew he was having a hard time because of a breakup he was going through, so I decided to stop by to check on him. It was on my way.” It hadn’t been, but Cavelli—or Cavanaugh—didn’t need to know that part, Charley thought.

“A breakup?” Declan echoed, looking at her thoughtfully. “With you?”

The question was so unexpected, it made her laugh. The laugh was devoid of any humor.

“Hardly. Her name was Melissa. They didn’t quite have the same goals and expectations. When Holt looked at her, he heard wedding bells ringing. When she looked at him, she heard the sound of a cash register going off.”

“Not a match made in heaven,” Declan agreed. He looked down at the man thoughtfully. “You think he killed himself?”

“He wasn’t the type.” He wouldn’t have done that to her, no matter how badly he’d been hurting. He wouldn’t have taken himself out of her life like that.

“Then you knew him pretty well,” Declan concluded.

She didn’t want Declan to go veering onto that path, but rather than deny it, she gave him another answer. “There was a note,” she began.

Declan eyed her, his interest escalated. “A suicide note?”

“No,” Charley snapped, the edge of her temper growing frayed at an increasingly faster pace. She knew she wasn’t being fair to Declan. It wasn’t his fault that Matt was dead.

It bothered her greatly that there were no defensive wounds on the body. That meant that Matt hadn’t fought back. Most likely, he’d been passed out when the killer had struck.

She hadn’t had time to do anything with the note except carefully remove it so that it wouldn’t get damaged when the paramedics worked over her brother. Taking her handkerchief out, she picked up the edge of the paper she’d placed out of the way and held it up for Declan to read.

“Just the beginning,” Declan repeated, and raised his eyes to her face. “You think it’s a budding serial killer making an announcement?”

“Could be,” she allowed, then told him the last detail. “It was stapled to his chest.”

That didn’t sound right. Was she getting muddled because the discovery of the body had hit her hard? “You mean to his shirt.”

“No,” she said, taking out her cell phone and selecting the photos app. “To his chest.”

She flipped through the photographs to the one she’d made herself take of Matt, knowing it was an important detail that just might help them solve Matt’s murder.

Finding the one she was looking for, she held it up for Declan. “There. See?”

“Wow.” The word just slipped out of its own volition. He took the smart phone from her—or tried to. “I won’t damage it,” he promised her.

She was really going to have to get a better grip on herself or she wasn’t going to be of any use to Matt, she upbraided herself.

“Sorry,” Charley responded, releasing her hold on the phone.

“That’s okay,” Declan said. And then he took a closer look at the photograph that she had queued up for his perusal. “You’re right, the note was stapled to his chest. Who does that kind of thing?” he marveled, more to himself than to her.

That was an easy one to answer. It was all the other questions that were going to be difficult. “Someone who’s crazy.”

“Any more? Photos?” he asked rather than just arbitrarily flip through her array of photographs. In what he saw as her present, rather fragile state, he wanted to make sure he avoided doing anything that might upset her any further than she already was.

“Not of the crime scene,” she told him. There were other photographs of Matt, both with her and without her, but those she didn’t want this detective to see. If the matter came up, she wouldn’t deny her connection to Matt, but until then, she wasn’t about to advertise the fact that he was her brother, either.

Declan leaned over the officer’s body, taking in all he could without actually touching the man or rolling him over. The bullet seemed to have entered in the region of his heart. He had no way of knowing if there was an exit wound until after the crime-scene investigator released the body. He wondered if his father had been called in for this one. Seeing as how it was a police officer who had been shot—possibly executed—he rather thought it was likely that his father would be on the scene since he was head of the day lab unit.

“Think he means it?” Declan asked, straightening up again.

The detective had asked the question completely out of the blue. She stared at him, unclear what he was referring to. “Who?”

“The killer,” Declan told her patiently. “Do you think there’ll be more? That he really intends to kill other people?”

Charley shrugged, at a loss to form any real opinion. “That’s what his note says,” she replied, her voice eerily removed.

Declan nodded as he conducted a perimeter examination of the area where the body had been discovered. “Well, thanks for the input,” he told her. “I’ll keep you in the loop if I can.”

Charley didn’t budge as she gave him a glare that would have made Medusa shiver. “‘In the loop’?” she echoed incredulously. “I’m not going to be in any ‘loop,’ Cavelli or Cavanaugh or whatever name you want to go by,” she informed him. “I’m going to work this case.”

“What department are you with?” he asked her patiently.

She knew where he was going with this. “Narcotics. It doesn’t matter,” Charley insisted, immediately vetoing any objections he might have been inclined to raise. “I was the first on the scene and I’m...” she paused to search for just the right words to use in this argument she intended to win “...familiar with his...with the victim’s background. That is definitely going to prove handy.”

“This is a homicide,” Declan began.

There were a variety of reasons why she couldn’t work the case, objections he was rather certain his lieutenant would raise—unless Declan went to bat for her. He rolled the thought over in his head. He was officially minus a partner and this was not a one-man investigation—especially if it turned out that this killer had more bodies on his agenda.

Thinking it over, he decided that that would most likely prove to be the best argument to use when he spoke to his lieutenant.

“I know what it is,” Charley retorted, grinding out the words. “Look, I need to be included in this investigation—actively included,” she underscored before he found some cute little phrase to insultingly refer to her participation in this investigation.

She took a breath, knowing what she was about to do was going to make her vulnerable, but she had no option left to her. She owed it to Matt to find his killer—to avenge his death. “Look, I’ll be in your debt if you talk to your captain—”

“Lieutenant,” Declan corrected.

“Whatever.” Charley shrugged impatiently. Her eyes held his, waiting for a decision from him.

“In my debt,” Declan repeated thoughtfully. He did like the sound of that.

“In your debt,” she confirmed, her voice as devoid of emotion as she could make it. Later she’d figure out how to get around this deal with the devil she was making, but right now, she had to secure her position on the investigation.

“You want in that badly?” Declan asked, scrutinizing her closely. There were things she wasn’t telling him, but he was rather certain they would surface, by and by.

She raised her chin like a soldier about to charge into the unknown and, just possibly, not return again. “Yes.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to my lieutenant, see if he can get you temporarily assigned to Major Crimes. You just might be in luck. My partner handed in his papers today and he’s leaving the department for the private sector.”

Charley nodded, but she hardly heard a word of what the other detective was saying to her. The phrase “you just might be in luck” was echoing over and over again in her head.

She was never going to be in luck again.

Her brother, her best friend, her entire family lay on the sofa, dead.

There was no such thing as luck anymore, she thought darkly.

She didn’t realize Cavanaugh was talking to her, didn’t even hear him, let alone have any of his words register until she felt someone touch her arm. Blinking she looked up, once again abandoning the haze she hadn’t even realized she’d slipped back into.

“Are you all right?” Declan was asking.

She roused herself, doing her best to look alert and generally unfazed. She had her suspicions she couldn’t quite carry off the impression that she’d come around. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

Declan began to enumerate the reasons that occurred to him. “Well, for one thing, you look like you’re a million miles away.”

Charley shrugged. She had that one covered. “That’s not exactly a pretty sight to emboss on my brain,” she replied flippantly, indicating the dead body on the sofa.

There was more going on here than that and Declan knew it. Moreover, he was fairly certain that she knew he knew it. But now wasn’t the time to get into it. He had to give her a little time to collect herself—while he did a little digging on the side into her background.

Keeping her close would turn out to be a good thing, Declan decided. Other than the fact that—strictly speaking as a man—she was even more of a knockout now than she had been back in the academy, she was obviously mixed up in this somehow. Whether merely innocently because she was acquainted with the victim or if there was more to it than that, he’d yet to decide, but she figured into all this somehow and he intended to use that to his advantage.

He was fairly confident he could sell this to the lieutenant. The man trusted his judgment and more important than that, he wanted to stay on the good side of the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh, and Brian took a personal interest in all his detectives, especially those bearing the same surname as his.

All that remained for him to figure out, once the dust settled and he—or they—found the killer, was what he intended to get in exchange for letting her come on board and work with him.

This was going to be very interesting, he decided as he heard the sound of what he presumed was the crime-scene investigative unit’s vehicle approaching.

Chapter 3

Sean Cavanaugh was the first crime-scene investigator in through the doorway.

Nodding at his son and the unfamiliar woman with him—was it him, or did it seem like there was always a woman with Declan?—the head of the day investigative unit looked grimly down at the body on the sofa. The dead man appeared to be in his late twenties, early thirties. Strong, well built and undoubtedly with a good future in front of him until a bullet ended all that.

What a waste, Sean thought, setting down the case he always carefully checked and restocked after every crime-scene investigation. It was time to get to work and find answers.

“So the victim’s one of our own,” Sean said sadly, addressing the remark to both of the occupants within the room.

Charley answered first. “Yes, sir, he was. Sergeant Matthew Holt,” she told the head of CSI.

Oh, Matt, Matt, what have you gone and let happen to you? Why’d you let your guard down like that? You always told me to be careful. Why weren’t you?

Charley felt her throat closing, suddenly clogged with tears. She fought them back.

Sean nodded, taking in the information. “And you are?” he asked.

“Detective Charlotte Randolph, sir.” Charley focused strictly on answering the questions put to her. Her voice sounded almost robotlike. “I was the one who called it in.”

Sean unlocked his case and lifted the lid. “Well, Charlotte—”

“Charley,” she corrected him, forcing a faint smile to her lips. “People call me Charley.”

Matt had called her Charley when she was a little girl and the name had stuck, she thought now. Damn it, she couldn’t tear up, she couldn’t, Charley ordered herself, digging her nails into her palms.

Think of something else. Think of anything else.

Sean looked at the woman, quietly studying her. This wasn’t just a casual acquaintance of the victim. His death was affecting her.

“Well, Charley,” Sean amended. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked gently.

“I already asked her that,” Declan interjected.

“Yes, but I didn’t,” his father pointed out calmly. Both his voice and his expression were sympathetic as he continued to regard the young woman.

Behind him, two more members of his investigative team came in, both well entrenched in what their particular duties were at a scene like this. They got to work quickly and quietly, moving as smoothly as the timing belt on a well-oiled engine.

Charley took a breath before reciting her answer. “I heard he hadn’t shown up for work for a couple of days and that he hadn’t even bothered calling in. I knew that wasn’t like him, but I also knew that he was going through a rough patch—”

“What kind of a rough patch?” Sean asked.

“He’d just broken up with a woman he was certain was ‘the one.’” Someone should have strangled Melissa a long time ago, she thought angrily. Before the witch ever came into Matt’s life.

Guided by her tone, Sean made the only logical assumption. “But she wasn’t ‘the one,’ was she?”

“Not unless we were talking about barracudas, sir,” Charley replied, deliberately staring straight ahead, past the CSI chief’s head.

“No need to call me sir,” Sean said. That sort of thing created a formal atmosphere and right now, he was striving for the exact opposite. Nodding his head to indicate Declan, he added, “He never does.”

“I do, too. You just don’t listen,” Declan told his father.

“All too well, Declan,” Sean said, glancing at his son knowingly. “All too well. All right, if you two want to stand over there and wait until I finish processing the crime scene, it shouldn’t be all that long.” He glanced at the opened bottles of vodka and Kahlua on the coffee table. “A little early in the day to be getting into that right now. Was that his drink of choice?” he asked. “A black Russian?”

It hadn’t been, initially. All Matt ever drank—if he drank at all—was a beer, maybe on rare occasions, two. He hadn’t been very big on anything that allowed him to lose the tight rein he had over his control.

“It was a habit he picked up from Melissa,” Charley told him.

Declan scanned the room as if that could somehow answer his questions by the very nature of the vibrations that had been left behind. “Then maybe she was here, too,” he suggested.

“Only one glass,” Charley pointed out. “It was the first thing I checked for.” Once she could bring herself to leave Matt where he lay, she added silently. “Besides, there’s no lipstick on the glass.”

“Big on makeup, was she?” Declan asked, curious. This detective seemed to know a lot about the woman in question. Why?

“It helped to cover up her physical flaws,” she explained.

He laughed at the way she worded her answer. “Not a big fan of the woman in question, I take it.”

Charley saw no reason to deny or cover up how she felt about the woman who had deliberately broken her brother’s heart. What did it matter? Matt was gone and his feelings were the only ones that had ever mattered to her anyway. If she’d held her tongue before about Melissa, it was only to spare him.

In hindsight, maybe if she had said something, he wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Maybe he might have even been alive now because he would have been at work, not home and unprotected.

“I wouldn’t lift a finger to save her if she was drowning in a puddle of rainwater,” Charley told the detective.

“Talk about cold,” Declan couldn’t help commenting.

Actually, it was the exact opposite. Whenever she thought of the strawberry-blonde with the flat brown eyes who had led her brother around as if he were some sort of trained monkey on a leash, her blood pressure went up by at least ten points. Possibly even more.

“She cut out his heart and stomped on it. I have no reason to get all warm and toasty whenever I think of her—which is as infrequently as possible,” she informed Declan, her tone indicating that she didn’t want to discuss the woman anymore.

“Duly noted,” Sean said. For a minute, she’d forgotten the other man was still in the room.

The head of CSI took out the camera he’d paid for with his own money, preferring to use something he was comfortable with rather than the one the department had issued to him.

“Will you two be working the case together?” he asked mildly.

Declan said, “Don’t know yet” at the same time that Charley said, “Yes.”

Sean smiled. “A slight difference of opinion, I see. Apparently the situation is all tangled up, which is nothing new.” He lowered the camera for a moment to look at her. “I’ll keep Declan here posted and he can let you know what progress has been made, if any.”

She didn’t want to be on the receiving end of anything secondhand. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stop by the lab whenever you’re done processing the evidence.”

Sean glanced up for a moment, assessing the woman in front of him. Seeing the expression in her eyes. There was that pain again, he noted. Definite pain. This wasn’t just a fellow brother in blue she’d looked in on. This was someone important to her.

For now, he let it go at that. He had a crime scene to process. “Give me your card, Charley.” She was quick to oblige him, digging out one of the cards the department had issued to her.

Matt had his own made up for her at the same time. The cards were identical—except for the drawing of a teddy bear on the front. The image represented Barney the Bear, another toy he’d given her. One, he told her, that was supposed to keep her company and protect her whenever she felt afraid.

Barney was propped up on her bed where, even now, he spent his days and nights, a vivid connection to her childhood.

And now he would also serve as a reminder of the brother she’d lost today, she couldn’t help thinking.

Steady, Charley warned herself.

Sean tucked the card into his pocket and went on taking photographs of the crime scene.

“Your friend have any enemies?” Declan asked as they walked out of the house.

She hated leaving Matt there, lifeless on the sofa, no longer regarded as a person, just a statistic. But she knew she had to. There was nothing she could do for him now—except find his killer.

“None,” she answered the detective.

“How about this ex-girlfriend?” he prodded. “Melissa?”

Charley shook her head. As much as she hated the woman, she knew Melissa wasn’t responsible for Matt’s murder. “Melissa didn’t do this.”

Declan looked at her with more than mild interest. “What makes you so sure?”

“To begin with, she’s not bright enough to know how to work a stapler,” Charley said sarcastically, referring to the note that had been stapled to Matt’s chest. “And the note said this was only the beginning. That means whoever did it was holding Matt accountable for something and he—or she—was obviously holding other people accountable, as well.”

“Accountable for what?” Declan asked.

Charley shook her head in complete frustration. “I don’t know.”

For now, he took her at her word. “Fair enough. But there’s also another explanation, you know.”

She looked at him, waiting. She certainly couldn’t think of any. “Which is?”

“Maybe whoever did it wanted to make it sound as if there were going to be other fatalities to throw us off. Maybe Holt was the killer’s only intended victim.”

The theory had merit, she supposed. “It’s a possibility,” Charley allowed, even though she didn’t want to. This gave them far too many possibilities, far too many avenues to investigate.

Well, at least he got her to admit that, Declan thought. Maybe this meant she wasn’t as terminally stubborn as she used to be. “This Melissa, you know her last name?”

“Merryweather,” Charley told him, then repeated, “She didn’t do it.”

Declan nodded, barely paying attention to her. He was busy forming plans in his head.

“So you said. Humor me.” And then he realized that she could still be of some more use. “You wouldn’t by any chance know where we could find her, would you?”

Charley’s expression was totally unreadable. “Other than under the first rock you come to, no.”

“That’s okay, I can look her up once I get back to the office.”

He didn’t ask her if she wanted a ride, because she had her own vehicle as far as he knew and besides, he was really hoping she’d given up the idea of working this with him. As gorgeous as the woman was, he had a feeling that working with her might be a challenge he’d save for another day.

Pulling out of the driveway, he left the other detective standing there, watching him take off.

* * *

Declan didn’t think about her again until he was pulling up in the police department’s rear parking lot. The woman he’d left behind him was now standing by the rear entrance into the building.

Stunned, he slammed the driver’s door behind him as he jumped out of his vehicle. He cut the distance to her in long, quick strides, hardly remembering making them.

“How the hell did you get here ahead of me?” he asked.

That was probably the easiest question she was going to field this week. She gave him a quick, pasted-on smile. “I drive faster than you do. You drive like a senior citizen,” she pointed out. “Let’s go up to talk to your lieutenant,” she said, reminding him of his promise.

“Might as well,” he said, resigned as he punched the number 3 on the keypad on the silver wall. “And I drive carefully,” he corrected, taking offense at her assessment.

“Whatever you say,” she replied.

When they got to the office, Lieutenant Jacobs was nowhere to be found.

“Personal emergency,” one of the other detectives in the department told them when Declan came out of the man’s office. “His wife lost control of her car—it wound up as window dressing in a boutique showroom. The lieutenant looked fit to be tied once he knew for certain his wife hadn’t killed herself. My guess is that he won’t be back today. You need help with something?” the man asked, giving Charley a scrutinizing once-over.

“No,” Declan answered. Turning toward the woman with him, he said, “Looks like I’m on my own here.”

“We’re on our own.” She deliberately emphasized the first word.

“Hey, Cavanaugh, wanna introduce me?” the detective he’d just been talking to asked, rising to his feet as he was taught in a bygone wonderfully polite era.

“No,” Declan replied succinctly as he walked away, headed to his desk. “Okay, let me see if I can find this Melissa Merryweather,” he said more to himself than to Charley.

He just didn’t give up, did he? she thought. Well, it was his time he was wasting. But she intended to try to follow up any shred of a lead the CSI people came up with.