Читать книгу Cavanaugh's Secret Delivery - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

Chapter 3

“You’re serious?” Dugan asked the attendants. This just wasn’t adding up. “She just had a baby,” he said. “Aren’t you people supposed to keep them here for at least three days?”

“This isn’t a prison, officer,” Dale told him, obviously taking offense at the implication that they or the hospital had failed in some way. “Patients are free to go home at any time.”

“What about the doctor?” Dugan asked. “Wouldn’t he or she have ordered against something like that? And by the way, it’s detective, not officer,” he said, pointedly correcting the man.

“Well, detective,” Dale said with an exaggerated bow of his head, “the doctor can make a recommendation, but if the patient chooses to disregard that recommendation, the patient is free to just sign herself out and leave whenever she wants to. Unless, of course, if she’s being restrained,” he added, glancing toward the woman beside him to make sure he was right. Rita nodded. “But that’s a whole different story.”

“Bottom line, detective,” Rita told him in a far more polite voice than Dale was using, “the woman you’re looking for isn’t here any longer.”

Dugan blew out a breath, then shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he said, addressing his words to the woman. He’d already used up the twenty minutes he’d allotted himself. He needed to be getting to the precinct. “That’s all a man can do.” Dugan offered her a smile. “Thanks for your help.”

And with that, he turned away and walked out of the hospital lobby.

He had no doubt that the woman wasn’t there anymore. There was no reason for either of the people, even the irritating idiot, to have lied to him. What bothered Dugan was why the woman from the other night wasn’t there any longer.

And why she had given him—or the hospital—a phony name.

Not your problem, Dugan, he told himself as he made his way back toward his car. You gave it your best shot, which is more than a lot of other guys would have done. And apparently, for whatever reason, the woman had no desire to stick around longer than she has to.

Still, he had to admit as he crossed the lot, the detective in him was really curious about why someone like Scarlet—or whatever her real name was—would just leave the hospital so quickly after having given birth. The experience had to have exhausted her. Wasn’t a stay at the hospital supposed to help her get back on her feet?

Maybe, Dugan thought as he finally reached his vehicle and got into it, it was just a simple matter of not having any insurance coverage. She couldn’t pay her bill, so she gave them a phony name and decided to pull a disappearing act before anyone in the administration office had a chance to check her out.

But if that was the case, then why hadn’t she tried to talk the hospital into letting her pay her bill off over time? People did that sort of thing. Sometimes the hospital would just write off a patient’s charges.

“You’ve got a legitimate case to work on,” he told himself out loud. “You don’t have any time to try to figure this out.”

Pushing the thought out of his mind, he started up his car. Puzzles were for people who had time on their hands to try to solve them. He, on the other hand, had a dead CI whose murder he was trying to solve. Someone obviously felt that Mitch Gomez had known too much and that was the mystery that took precedence over everything else, not some missing mama who had checked out of the hospital too early.

A missing mama with a gun, he reminded himself as he drove to the precinct.

When he’d first attempted to come to her aid, he recalled that the woman had tried to reach for a gun. Had she not been tied up in knots because of those contractions, he had no doubt that she probably would have shot him.

What—or who—was the woman afraid of? Dugan wondered.

“Later, damn it,” he ordered himself sternly. “Think about this later. Not now.”

The rest of the way to the precinct, he did the best he could to push all the other thoughts aside. He was a detective first, a man with a mystery woman to pursue second.

A far second he reminded himself.

The answer didn’t satisfy him, but for now, it was going to have to do.

* * *

They were getting nowhere.

Eight weeks later they were no closer to finding out who had put that bullet into Mitch Gomez’s head than they had been when the body was first found.

He and Jason had canvassed the area, talking to more people in the last two months than he probably had in the last six months, and still nothing. People talked, but in the long run, they said nothing.

Oh, he had a few suspicions about who might have been responsible—Michael Oren, a higher-up who represented the Juarez cartel in California—but suspicions had never won a case.

Not only that, but now he was currently down a partner, as well. Jason had broken his tibia and it looked as if he was going to be sidelined for the next few weeks if not longer.

“Tripping over your eighteen-month-old daughter, who does that?” Dugan demanded when he went to see Jason at his home to see how his partner was coming along.

“Apparently I do,” the detective answered almost morosely. Fighting with his crutches, he managed to make it over to an easy chair. The whole adventure had left him exhausted. Three days and he still hadn’t gotten the hang of maneuvering the crutches.

“I mean, she’s not that tiny a baby. How could you have missed seeing her?” Dugan asked, shaking his head.

“Believe me, when you’re not looking for an eighteen-month-old baby, they’re easy enough to miss—and trip over,” Jason grumbled.

His mother-in-law, who was babysitting the little girl, looked as if she was less than thrilled to also act as a part-time nurse for Jason. The look on his face showed that he felt the same way.

Jason lowered his voice so that only Dugan heard him. “Look, I’m sorry that this leaves you high and dry right now. I should be able to get around with crutches pretty soon.”

Dugan had seen Jason attempting to maneuver into the room. He didn’t hold out much hope.

“Right,” Dugan replied sarcastically. “Just do me a favor. Stay home and get well. Fast,” he underscored.

Jason glanced over toward his mother-in-law. “As fast as I can, trust me,” he responded.

“I’ll check back with you in a few days,” Dugan promised.

And with that, he left.

Dugan had some thinking to do, and right now, he was better doing it alone. Granted, he and Jason had been a team for the last year and a half, but now that Jason was home for what looked to be some time, for now he was on his own in this investigation. He was not about to tackle the investigation and break in a new partner.

Granted, he could walk and chew gum at the same time, but at the moment, all his energy was concentrated on unraveling the massive drug connections that were involved here.

Factions of the Juarez Cartel had brought their territory fight against the Sinaloa Cartel up here. He didn’t have time for anything else. Besides, he’d worked alone before and he was more than willing to do it again. It was definitely preferable to putting up with a new partner. Besides, if he needed backup, there were always Patterson and Ryan to call in.

His mind was made up. Until things changed, he was going to be working alone.

* * *

“Cavanaugh, get in here,” Lieutenant Jerry Daniels called out the moment Dugan walked back into the Vice squad room.

He didn’t like the sound of that, Dugan thought. But he couldn’t very well pretend not to have heard the lieutenant and walk out again, not when he was certain that the man had seen him come in.

With a sigh, he braced himself and then walked into the lieutenant’s office.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” he asked.

The words dribbled out of his mouth. He was aware of her the moment he walked in and was doing his best not to stare.

Even though she had her back to him, the tall, stately blonde sitting in the other chair would have been hard to miss. He could only hope that the woman didn’t have anything to do with his assignment. Maybe she was involved in some kind of a goodwill gesture on the lieutenant’s part, or—

She turned around to look at him. Recognition was immediate.

“It’s you.”

Dugan hadn’t even realized that he’d said the words out loud until the lieutenant looked at him, obviously curious.

“You two know each other?” the lieutenant asked uncertainly.

There was no sign of recognition on the woman’s face whatsoever. Either she was one hell of a poker player or she was the victim of a sudden case of amnesia, because it was her, the woman in the alley. He would have known her anywhere. She was the woman he’d helped to give birth...

If he stood here and insisted that he had been there eight weeks ago, hovering over her in that back alley, coaching her as she pushed out her baby daughter, and she didn’t say anything to back him up, he was going to come across like a complete idiot who was on his way to a nervous breakdown.

So, for now, he was going to deny that he knew her—or how.

“No, my mistake, sir,” Dugan said formally. “I thought I recognized your guest here, but I obviously don’t.”

Daniels nodded, accepting the explanation. “All right, then. If you’re through interrupting me, we can get on with this. Since your partner is temporarily out on medical leave and the two of you weren’t getting anywhere in your investigation anyway,” he said crisply, his words cutting like a knife, “I thought that maybe another angle in this investigation might prove useful.”

He was getting that feeling again, Dugan thought. That feeling where the back of his neck began to prickle, getting itchy. It happened every time that he felt something was going wrong.

He told himself he was overreacting.

“And what angle might that be, sir?” he asked in the calmest, most virtuous voice he could summon, even though he could feel his stomach beginning to tie itself up in knots.

The look that Daniels shot him told Dugan that his superior thought his tone was a little too innocent. But because there was someone else in the room and he wanted to come off at his best, Daniels was forced to keep his temper.

So, instead, Daniels just continued with his introduction. “That would be where Ms. O’Keefe would come in.”

“Ms. O’Keefe,” Dugan repeated. Was that finally her real name or was this just another alias? At this point, he couldn’t be sure. “That would be you?” he asked the woman sitting in the other chair.

The woman smiled at him. The smile was polite, distant and showed absolutely no sign of any sort of recognition in any manner, shape or form.

Leaning forward, she extended her hand to him and introduced herself.

“Toni O’Keefe, investigative journalist,” she told him in case he thought she was part of the police department.

Dugan never took his eyes off hers. “Detective Dugan Cavanaugh.”

“Pleased to meet you, Detective Cavanaugh,” Toni said, still smiling that impenetrable smile.

Daniels looked from his detective to the extremely attractive woman in his office. It was obvious that he seemed to be trying to understand if there was something going on here other than just an exchange of introductions.

“Ms. O’Keefe, it turns out, is an expert on the history and dealings of the Juarez drug cartel,” Daniels told him.

“Is that a fact?” Dugan said, pretending that this piece of information was actually interesting to him. “I’m sure it must make for fascinating reading, but right now, I think figuring out what their next move is might be a little more to the point than reading about where they’ve been.”

He began to get up, but the look on the lieutenant’s face had him silently taking his seat again.

“Sorry about that,” the lieutenant apologized to Toni.

Her smile in return was brighter than sunshine. “No offense taken, lieutenant.”

It became clear to Dugan that the lieutenant was attempting to cull favor with the woman.

“Ms. O’Keefe’s father was Anthony O’Keefe,” Daniels told Dugan. The name meant nothing to Dugan, but the lieutenant went on as if it should. “There wasn’t a place in the world that journalist wouldn’t go to, a lead he wouldn’t chase down. He was fearless—”

Dugan was feeling restless and he had no idea just what his part—if any—was in this exchange. “I’m sure he was, lieutenant,” he finally said, gripping the armrests as he got up for a second time, “but I have got work to do—”

That was when the lieutenant hit him with a line he really wasn’t expecting. “And you’ll do it with Ms. O’Keefe.”

Dugan looked at Daniels, dumbfounded. While it was true that the lieutenant wasn’t at the top of his field, he wasn’t exactly an idiot, either. What was the man doing?

“Excuse me, sir?”

Everything in the rule book said that police work was done by members of the police department. Nowhere did it say that they were to defer to a newshound, or whatever it was that this person wanted to call herself—if she was even who she said she was. He was beginning to have his doubts.

There was one thing he did know. “She’s not a police officer, sir.” He looked at Daniels, waiting for the man to relent his position.

“She’s anything I say she is,” Daniels retorted, angry at what he felt was a challenge to his authority. “And right now, she has the clearance to be here and to help us in our investigation, so until such time as I decide it’s no longer beneficial to this department, she is going to be working with you. Have I made myself clear, Detective Cavanaugh?”

“Perfectly,” Dugan replied, doing his best to remain civil rather than to challenge the man.

It wouldn’t do him any good anyway. The lieutenant, for reasons he could only begin to guess at, had made up his mind about including Toni O’Keefe in the case. He’d never been all that close to Daniels, who had only been heading up Vice for the last nine months, so maybe there was something he didn’t know about the man—or this woman, for that matter.

For all he knew, maybe the lieutenant was the father of that baby she’d just had two months ago. Dugan was vaguely aware of the fact that the man was married, but that sort of thing might not have mattered to Daniels in this case.

At any rate, he was not about to waste time trying to figure out what was going on.

Instead, he was just going to get out of here and ditch this woman, whatever her game was, the first chance he got.

“All right,” Daniels was saying. “Are there any questions you might have for me?” He was looking directly at the journalist when he asked the question.

On an absolute basis, Dugan could see why the lieutenant might be acting the way he was. The woman, whoever she really was, was a stunner now that he actually looked at her. There was no other word for it. At approximately five foot seven, with long dark-blond hair and eyes the color of the sky at midday, she was gorgeous enough to catch anyone’s attention and make them forget everything, including the end of their sentence.

But they weren’t just “anyone,” they were members of the police department, and as such, they had a duty to perform, one that came before everything else. Or so he liked to believe.

Didn’t matter. All that mattered now was to get out of this room and get on with what he’d been about to do when the lieutenant had called him in. Granted, he wasn’t getting anywhere with his investigation, but he hadn’t given up yet. He certainly wasn’t going to get anywhere by following around a so-called newshound, no matter what Daniels wanted him to do.

“Just one,” Toni said, her voice sounding remarkably like Marilyn Monroe for someone who wanted to be taken seriously.

“And what’s that?” Daniels asked, turning almost into a schoolboy right before his eyes.

“What do I do about Detective—Cavanaugh, is it?” she asked, looking at Dugan with wide eyes.

Before he could answer her, she had turned her attention back to the lieutenant and continued, “If he suddenly decides to ditch me and take off?”

“He won’t do that,” Daniels answered. “Because there would be consequences to pay if he did that and he knows it.” The lieutenant looked at Dugan pointedly. “Right, Cavanaugh?”

“Right, sir.”

“Well, then, I guess we’ll get out of your hair and get started,” she said brightly.

“Remember,” Daniels said to her as he ushered her out of his office. “Any trouble at all, please don’t hesitate to get back to me.”

“Oh, I won’t,” she told him. Then, looking directly at Dugan, she smiled as she added, “As a matter of fact, Lieutenant Daniels, you can count on it.”