Читать книгу Cavanaugh Encounter - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

Chapter 3

The yellow crime tape was still fastened across the door of the apartment where Kristin’s body had been found. Frankie silently drew in a breath as she watched O’Bannon pull aside the tape that announced to the world at large that a crime had taken place here and that no headway had been made because the investigation was obviously still ongoing.

O’Bannon unlocked the door and pushed it open, then entered the apartment. White Hawk was right behind him, but to Frankie’s surprise, the tall detective stepped back and instead waved her in ahead of him.

“Ladies first,” White Hawk said.

A small hint of a smile fleetingly graced her lips as Frankie murmured, “Thank you,” just before walking into the apartment.

It felt as if she was moving in slow motion along the bottom of a lake filled with Jell-O. She’d been to her share of homicides when she’d worked as a detective in Los Angeles before transferring to Aurora, but everything seemed eerie and unreal to her within the apartment.

Doing her best to appear unaffected, Frankie slanted a glance toward the living room floor where she’d last seen her cousin lying facedown right in front of the entrance at the rear of the apartment.

Damn it, snap out of it and get a grip on yourself. You’re a detective working a case, not a cousin mourning the loss of the last of her family.

“Something wrong?” Luke asked her, his deep voice disrupting her thoughts.

Rousing herself, she shook off her mood and made eye contact with O’Bannon. She would have to watch herself around him.

“No, just reviewing the crime scene, that’s all,” she answered.

He’d been watching her face since they had walked in. Something was off, Luke thought. “Something look out of place to you?” Luke questioned.

Yes. Kris shouldn’t have been killed, here or anywhere else.

“No,” Frankie said out loud. “Everything is just the way I saw it when the EMTs arrived to try to revive Kristin.”

An alert look came into his eyes. “You said she was dead.”

“She was, but Amanda called 911 and requested an ambulance before I was sure that Kristin was already dead,” she told him. Why was he trying to trip her up? “The ME was called in right after that.”

“And who called for the CSI unit?” Luke asked.

Frankie couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being grilled, but she knew it was important to keep her cool, answering his questions. There was nothing to be gained by losing her temper and telling O’Bannon to back off. “I did,” she told him.

“And you remained here while they canvassed the apartment.” It was more of a statement on his part than a question.

“Yes.”

Luke nodded his head. All the while his eyes swept over the immediate area. “Very thorough of you.”

Despite everything, Frankie could feel her temper flaring. She struggled to keep it in check.

“It’s not my first rodeo, O’Bannon. You needn’t patronize me,” she told him.

“Sorry,” he told her, raising his hands. “I wasn’t aware that I was doing that.”

“Yes, you were.” Her eyes met his. If she was going to be tossed out, she might as well speak her mind and be dismissed for a reason. “I work in Major Crimes, not the neighborhood sandbox,” she told him. “I don’t deserve to be talked down to like some kind of wet-behind-the ears novice.”

She heard White Hawk laugh, something she assumed would further anger O’Bannon.

“She’s got a point, O’Bannon,” he told his partner when Luke shot him a reproving glance for laughing at the woman’s retort.

Rather than contest the words, or give them both a piece of his mind the way that Frankie expected, O’Bannon merely shrugged.

“Sorry,” he said to her. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Just trying to be thorough on my end.” He paused for a moment, then asked her, “Do you know which is the victim’s room?”

“The second one right off the bathroom. Your uncle’s unit has already gone over the entire apartment,” she pointed out again. Not to mention that she had, as well. Exactly what did he hope to find?

“I know,” Luke replied. “But it never hurts to have another set of eyes going over the apartment—or, in this case, a fourth set,” he said, recalling that his uncle usually took at least two other members of the unit with him to go over any crime scene he was investigating. Luke turned his attention toward his partner. “Why don’t you look around and see if you notice anything out of place. Anything that might help us with the case,” he emphasized.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked O’Bannon when he didn’t give her any instructions.

“The same,” he answered. “Unless you’d rather sit in the car,” he added. Seeing the insulted look Frankie shot him, he dug into his pocket and took out a set of rubber gloves. He held them out to her. “Here.”

“I have my own, thanks,” she replied, taking a set of clear plastic gloves from the inside pocket of her jacket.

Luke smiled. “Brownie points for the new kid on the block,” he said with approval. “Okay, get busy, people. We’ve still got another crime scene waiting for us after we deal with this one.”

“Another crime scene?” Frankie questioned.

“When you came in this morning, we’d just caught another murder. Body’s with the medical examiner,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your victim’s apartment was on our way so I decided to stop here first.”

This was staggering. “How many victims did you say that this guy has killed?” she asked.

“Seven,” Luke answered. “And you’re jumping to conclusions that the killer is a man.”

She looked at O’Bannon, puzzled. “Then the serial killer’s not a man?”

“Most likely it is. But what I’m saying is that, in this modern age, nothing’s a given anymore,” Luke informed her. “There was a time when no one believed that a woman could be capable of doing something so heinous as killing one person, much less enough people to qualify being regarded as a serial killer.

“But the times, they are a-changing and there have been a number of documented female serial killers. It doesn’t happen very often—but it does happen. So, bottom line, rule out no one because of their gender,” he advised. “Keep an open mind at all times.”

“Sorry, just a figure of speech,” Frankie told the lead detective.

Luke nodded, accepting her explanation. “I’ll consider this as part of your learning curve,” he replied. He began to head toward the victim’s bedroom only to realize that Frankie was going in the same direction. “Why don’t you take a look around your friend’s bedroom? Sorry,” he caught himself before she could correct him. “I mean your acquaintance’s bedroom. I got the victim’s bedroom,” he said pointedly. Turning to the other member of the team, he said, “White Hawk, you’ve got everything else.”

White Hawk sighed. “I figured as much,” the tall detective acknowledged.

“Then let’s get to it,” Luke instructed, walking into the victim’s bedroom.

It was small, compact and orderly. The victim had been a great deal neater than he was, Luke noted, thinking of his own living quarters.

He reviewed everything methodically. If Kristin Andrews had done any entertaining in this bedroom the night she was killed, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of that fact at first glance.

But if she had been murdered by the serial killer he was currently hunting down, Luke had already learned that the man was methodical, not sloppy.

If it was a man, he added silently with a slight ironic smile.

En route here, Luke had had his uncle send him a list of things that the CSI unit had taken from the apartment to examine for possible clues as to why Kristen been chosen by the killer. Scrolling through that list now on his smartphone, he found no indication that a cell phone or a computer of any sort—laptop or tower—had been found on the premises and taken to the lab.

Luke stared at the list and frowned. That didn’t seem right. In this day and age, everyone had electronic gadgets. They were all but hermetically sealed to them. Why weren’t there any in Kristin’s room?

His first guess was that this meant whoever had killed Kristin had made off with her cell phone and whatever laptop, tablet or other electronic device she used to surf the net and entrust with her personal data.

Still, he went through her closet and her bureau drawers, just in case he was wrong. After all, the killer got his kicks terminating the lives of young women, not making off with their electronic gadgets.

The killer also didn’t sexually attack his victims, which only added to the mystery. Just why were these women killed?

Coming up empty in his search, Luke decided to check one last place—under the victim’s mattress. Lifting it as far up as he could, he reached in and felt around along the entire perimeter of the box spring.

The tips of his fingers came in contact with something hard and smooth.

“Eureka,” he declared a little louder than he had intended.

The next moment, White Hawk peered into the bedroom. “What’s up? Did you just discover buoyancy?”

After putting down the mattress, he pulled out what he had found. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know, that Greek guy, Archimedes,” White Hawk said. “He yelled ‘Eureka’ when he realized that water caused his legs to be buoyant.”

Luke snorted. “You are one strange guy.”

“No,” White Hawk corrected, coming farther into the bedroom. “Unlike you, I read.”

Luke regarded the laptop he had uncovered. “If you ask me, White Hawk, you need to get out more. You definitely need a life.”

“I’ll tell Linda you said so,” White Hawk said, referring to his wife.

Drawn by the commotion, Frankie walked into her cousin’s bedroom, joining the other two detectives. A shiver went down her back. She did her best not to show it.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” she asked sarcastically. And then she saw the laptop O’Bannon was holding. Her heart froze for a moment. “You found something.”

Luke laughed dryly as he turned toward White Hawk. “Nothing gets past her.”

Could that possibly contain the identity of the person who had killed Kris? How had she missed that? She’d been in this room, looking for a clue. But, she recalled, Sean Cavanaugh had been with her, working the scene at the time.

“What is that?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“On second thought, maybe some things do get past her,” Luke couldn’t resist commenting.

Annoyed, Frankie asked, “Is that the victim’s laptop?”

Luke had noticed that she paled slightly when she first looked at the computer. What was up with that? Was this woman somehow involved in this latest homicide? He found that hard to believe, but there was no denying that her complexion resembled the hue of a melted marshmallow.

“I haven’t gotten on it yet, but considering where I found it, I’d say that’s a pretty good guess.” Luke turned his piercing green eyes to meet hers. “Is that a problem?”

She was careful not to blow out a breath or appear to be anything but blasé. “No, no problem,” Frankie lied. “Why should there be?”

To the best of her knowledge, Kris didn’t have any photographs of the two of them on her laptop. If her cousin did, then she’d find a way to explain it away, Frankie told herself.

Luke continued eying her. “I don’t know,” he answered. “You tell me. You’re the one who looks pale enough to have seven little men following you wherever you go.”

Frankie stared at him, confused.

“O’Bannon’s talking about Snow White,” the other detective explained. “That’s his clever way of telling you that you look ghostly pale.”

Her eyes momentarily shifted toward O’Bannon, then back to White Hawk. “Not all that good at communicating, is he?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I got my point across, didn’t I?” Luke asked cavalierly. And then the smile on his lips disappeared. “Seriously, is there anything on here you don’t want me to see?”

She lifted her shoulders and let them drop in an exaggerated shrug of indifference.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what she might have had on her laptop,” Frankie told him, “so off the top of my head, I’d have to say that the answer to your question is no.”

“Good,” Luke pronounced—not that anything she could have said would have stopped him from putting the laptop into evidence. “Then I’ll hand this over to Valri and have her take a look at it after we get back from the second crime scene.”

The second crime scene. She’d forgotten about that. “You want me to come along to that?” Frankie asked as they walked out of the apartment.

Luke paused as he locked up the apartment again, then proceeded to replace the yellow crime scene tape across the door.

“Well, unless you want to walk back to the station on your own, yes, you’re invited to come along,” he told her as they walked back to his vehicle. He’d left it parked at the curb. “Why wouldn’t we want you to come with us?” he asked, curious to hear what her answer would be.

She had no solid answer for that. She’d assumed that he had brought her along only to work Kris’s crime scene, not anyone else’s.

“I thought you just took me along because I brought the crime to your attention,” she told him.

“I’ve decided to keep you on because of your keen insight,” Luke told her as he hit the key fob to open the car’s locks.

Frankie didn’t trust herself to answer the comment civilly. Instead, she looked at White Hawk. “Do you want to ride shotgun this time?”

The other detective laughed.

“You’ll find that O’Bannon is an acquired taste.”

She tried to find a graceful way out of the situation. “No, it’s just that I figured that I needed to ride up front before because I was giving O’Bannon directions. But now that he knows where he’s going, I thought maybe you’d want to trade seats.”

“That’s okay,” White Hawk demurred, opening the rear door and climbing into the backseat. “I’ve ridden shotgun with this guy for three years. You can keep him for today.”

“Shotgun for three years?” Frankie repeated, opening the passenger door and getting into the passenger seat. “Doesn’t he let you drive?”

White Hawk thought for a moment. “The one time he was wounded, he did. Although, as I recall, I had to bully him into that. He can be a real ornery son of a gun when he wants to be.”

Key in the ignition, Luke cleared his throat. “In case it escaped both of your keen detectives’ eyes, I’m right here,” he pointed out.

“I bet his disposition gets even worse when he’s been shot,” Frankie guessed, turning in her seat to look at White Hawk.

The other detective rolled his dark eyes. “You have no idea.”

“Still here,” Luke reminded them tersely. He started up the engine. “And if both of you don’t plan on walking to the next crime scene, I’d suggest tabling this little discussion right now.”

White Hawk smiled. “Sorry, O’Bannon, I keep forgetting how touchy you can get before your fourteenth cup of coffee.”

“Don’t give away all my secrets,” he told his partner with a straight face.

“No chance of that happening,” White Hawk said cheerfully. “That would take me longer than either one of us have left on this earth.”

Leaning back in her seat, Frankie continued listening to the two men bantering and exchanging quips. Very slowly, she found herself beginning to relax just a little.