Czytaj książkę: «Cavanaugh In The Rough»

Chapter 1

Sean Cavanaugh was accustomed to being the first one in the crime lab each morning. As the day shift crime scene lab manager, he liked getting a jump start on the day, as well as any work that might have been left over from the night before.

He had a top-notch, highly skilled crew that needed no hand-holding or close overseeing, beyond what might have been deemed necessary from a general organizational standpoint.

However, he could no longer lay claim to being the first one in each morning, not since his newest crime scene investigator had transferred in from out of state a little over nine months ago. Susannah Quinn, affectionately referred to by the people who worked with her as Suzie Q, seemed to always be somewhere on the premises no matter what the hour. She came in before anyone else, and no matter how late Sean stayed, she frequently stayed even longer. She also pulled double shifts on occasion and thought nothing of covering for her fellow CSI agents if they called in sick or took an unexpected vacation day.

The fact that she didn’t rust in the occasional California rain was just about the only thing that convinced Sean the newest addition to the team wasn’t a robot.

Walking into the lab on the way to his office, Sean, father of seven, uncle of countless more, many of whom were on the Aurora police force, stopped by Suzie’s work area and set down a large covered cup of coffee he had picked up on his way in to work.

“Good morning. What’s this?” she asked her superior, nodding at the container.

He’d picked up a smaller container of black coffee for himself. Sean liked his coffee the way he preferred his cases: simple. Young people, he’d discovered, liked creative coffee.

“I’m told it’s the latest in fad coffee,” he told her.

“And you bought it for me?” Suzie asked uncertainly.

Was he doing it in order to soften a blow? she couldn’t help wondering. She’d come to like Sean Cavanaugh a great deal, since taking this position at the crime lab, but she had paid a painful price to learn to take nothing—and no one—at face value.

Sean nodded. “I knew you’d be here.” After removing the lid from his own coffee, he paused to take a sip of the black liquid, savoring the heat as it wound through his veins and kick-started his system. “You know, Suzie,” he went on, snapping the lid back on the container, “indentured servitude was abolished in this country about four centuries ago. People who get paid for what they do for a living get to keep regular hours—at least most of the time. That means—in most cases—they come in at a reasonable hour in the morning and then go home at a reasonable hour at night.”

She smiled at him. It was a sunny smile that lit up a room and was meant to put whoever was speaking to her at ease. For the most part, it did, but every so often Sean had a feeling there was something behind the smile that no one was supposed to see. A secret that only Suzie was privy to.

Since he was a firm believer in other people’s privacy, Sean made no effort to push through the barriers. He did, however, do what he could to make it clear to Suzie that if she ever needed to talk about anything—and that included subjects that had nothing whatsoever to do with work—she could always talk to him.

“I know that,” she responded cheerfully. Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled out the small messenger bag she kept there. Taking out her wallet, she asked, “What do I owe you for the coffee?”

“How about you go home early for a change and we’ll call it even?” Sean suggested.

It wasn’t a deal Suzie felt she could honor. She shook her head, sending her straight hair swinging.

“That’s okay. I don’t mind staying longer if the job calls for it,” she replied. “Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I left early.”

She thought Sean would drop the subject there, but she thought wrong. He actually had a list of suggestions ready for her. “You could get a hobby, get a pet, catch a movie, enroll in a cooking class, learn to windsurf.” The smile on his lips was nothing if not encouraging as he paused before adding, “The possibilities are endless.”

One by one Suzie addressed his points matter-of-factly. “My hobby is crime solving. With the hours I keep, I wouldn’t leave a pet alone all day—it wouldn’t be fair. There’s nothing currently playing in the movie theaters that I want to see. And FYI, I already know how to cook and windsurf,” she concluded. “Besides, I like my job, so why shouldn’t I put in some extra hours every now and then?”

Sean bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that it was a lot more than “every now and then.” It seemed she put in extra hours every day.

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” he said with a laugh.

Suzie was careful when she made her response. She didn’t want Sean thinking of her as being argumentative. “At least for the points you raised.”

Sean looked at the young woman thoughtfully. The way Suzie had worded her reply made him think that there was something she didn’t have an answer to, something she wasn’t willing to talk about. He was tempted to ask if he was right, but again, that would be prying, and if she wanted him to know more than what she’d said, she would have told him.

The woman was a puzzle, no doubt about it. But puzzles took time to solve. Time and patience. Fortunately, he had both.

“Then I’ll leave you to those reports.” He started to leave, but then paused to add one more thing. “You do realize that you’re probably the only one of my people who willingly sits down to face reports without being hounded and threatened to do it.”

That in itself had him wondering about her. Susannah Quinn was young, beautiful and smart. Surely she had to have a life beyond these four walls and the crime scenes she investigated.

But from all indications, as far as he could see, she didn’t. There were no pictures on her desk, no mention of family or friends. There wasn’t even a next-of-kin or the name of someone to notify in case of an emergency on her work application.

Why?

Suzie turned his comparison over in her head. “Paperwork isn’t exactly something people really aspire to do.”

“But you do it,” Sean pointed out.

To her, paperwork was something to do to stave off going home and being alone with her thoughts. With her memories.

But she couldn’t tell Sean this.

So she shrugged. “It’s part of the job.”

Sean laughed as he walked away. “I’m going to ask Brian if there’s any money to be found in the budget so I can have you cloned.”

Brian Cavanaugh was his brother and Aurora’s chief of detectives. As such he was far more into the budget end of the police department than Sean was.

“Until then, I’ll just work faster,” Suzie promised, getting back to the report again.

Sean stopped just short of the doorway. “Don’t you dare. There’s such a thing as working yourself to death and you’ll do none of us any good—least of all yourself—if you do that. I’m serious, Suzie,” he told her, his voice dropping an octave. “I want you to go home at least at a regular time if not earlier today.”

Suzie made a noise in response that told him she had heard his voice, but hadn’t heard the words or the gist of what he was saying.

This wasn’t over, Sean promised himself. And then he laughed under his breath. He knew a lot of managers who would love being in his place, love having an employee who never seemed to get enough of work and always seemed to be tirelessly on the job.

But as a father, he just didn’t think that kind of behavior was healthy. If nothing else, Suzie was too tunnel-visioned. Suzie Quinn needed to have balance in her life. She was far too young to be strictly all about work, especially since she gave him the impression that she wasn’t doing it to get ahead. If he had to make a guess, he would have said she was doing it for the sake of justice.

It made him wonder if Suzie was hiding from something. Or more to the point, if there was something she was running from.

If things continued this way, Sean told himself as he walked into his office, he would have to do a little digging.

* * *

Suzie listened for the sound of a door closing. When she heard it, she released the breath she’d been holding and relaxed a little. She knew that her boss meant well when he tried to urge her to go home early, but he just didn’t understand. There was no reason for her to do so because there was no one and nothing waiting for her. No anticipated mail in her mailbox, no long-awaited email on her computer, no texts or messages of any sort from anyone she wanted to hear from.

Suzie heard from her brother, Lane, only on the occasional holiday—and not always then. Her mother was no longer among the living, but her father still was. However, she had absolutely no desire to hear from the senior member of her now defunct family. So there was nothing and no one to fill her off-hours.

Oh, a sense of curiosity mixed with desperation had made her actually give in and attempt to do something outside work, but that experiment, undertaken yesterday, had fallen rather flat, so there was no point in revisiting it.

All it had accomplished was making her come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t cut out for anything beyond work. She just wished that everyone else would come to the same conclusion and allow her to get on with her life the way she saw fit.

The immediate problem was that right now there was no case to occupy her mind or her skills, which was why, to fill the time, Suzie was doing the paperwork she had put off. It wasn’t that she was more conscientious than most of the people who worked in the crime lab. She just didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. At least not yet. Not until she learned how to herd them all into a cage and keep them there, away from the day-to-day fabric of her life.

Aurora’s criminal element, such as it was, wasn’t cooperating. Although she would have been the first to admit that a crime-free city was a wonderful thing, Suzie couldn’t help hoping that something would come up by the time she put the last of the stack of paperwork to bed.

More than anything, she really didn’t want to be left to her own devices.

* * *

It wasn’t all that long ago that Chris had been the exact same age as the boys he’d just cornered. What he couldn’t remember, though, was ever being as scared as they appeared to be.

At the moment, he was having a difficult time getting either one to be coherent, even after they had recovered their breaths and voices. Now the problem seemed to be that they were both talking over one another. The end result was an annoying cacophony that left him as unenlightened as he had been when he’d first cornered them.

Straining to follow both disjointed monologues, Chris finally gave up trying to make heads or tails out of the dissonance. He drew in a breath, whistled long and loud, until both teenagers finally stopped talking at the speed of a runaway freight train.

Stunned, they stared at the man who had pulled them over.

“Don’t you want to hear what happened?” they cried in unison. It was the first time since they’d come flying out of the building that they were both intelligible.

“More than you can possibly know,” Chris assured them, “but I won’t find anything out if you keep on talking over one another like two screech owls in a barnyard competition. You,” he said, randomly picking the taller of the two. “What’s your name?”

“Bill,” the teen answered nervously, apparently worried that he was being singled out. “Bill Peterson.”

“And I’m—” The other teenager began to give his name, but Chris held up his hand.

“You’ll have your turn. Okay, Bill Peterson,” he said, addressing the first teenager. “Why were you and your friend here flying out of the old Kresky building like the devil himself was after you?”

The question had the teenagers turning ghostly pale again. Bill cleared his throat before speaking. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“Try me,” Chris said patiently, giving the impression that he wasn’t about to go anywhere until he got the truth out of them.

The two teenagers exchanged looks.

“Look at me, Bill,” he ordered. “Look at me when you answer.”

Bill flushed. “Maybe we better show you,” he muttered.

Instead of urging them on, Chris glanced from one to the other. He figured it was time to get the second teen’s name just in case the two got it into their heads to take off again. If they went in different directions, he could go after only one. Having both their names—if they weren’t lying—at least gave him a fighting chance of bringing the teenagers in.

He had a feeling this wasn’t just some prank. Something definitely was going on.

“And your name is?” His no-nonsense stare seemed to glue the second teen’s feet to the ground.

“Allen, sir.” The youth actually swallowed. Any second, Chris expected to see his Adam’s apple dance. “Allen Kott.”

“Okay, Allen Kott, why don’t you and Bill here show me what got the two of you looking paler than Snow White.” When the duo looked as if they intended to walk back into the building behind him, Chris gestured that they were to lead the way. He wanted to keep an eye on them the whole time.

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.