Читать книгу Becoming a Cavanaugh - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 8

“I brought you some coffee.”

She was back, Kyle thought. So much for peace and quiet.

He glanced up from the report he was finishing. He hated the paperwork that went along with the job, and it was hard enough tackling it when he was in a good frame of mind. This was going to take him all day.

His new partner, Mary Sunshine, stood there, holding in each hand a container of what passed for coffee at the precinct.

“I don’t remember asking you to,” he said, making no attempt to take either container from her.

“You didn’t,” she answered, keeping a smile on her face. “I just thought you might like to have a cup. Newest studies say that three cups of coffee a day help keep your memory sharp.”

Part of him knew he was being unreasonable and ornery, but he just didn’t feel friendly at the moment. And for her own good, Rosetti had better understand his moodiness early on.

“And just why would you think that you have to appoint yourself the guardian of my memory?” he asked.

Jaren placed the container she’d brought back for him on his desk, then sat down at hers. She studied him for a moment.

“You know, I’d say that you got up on the wrong side of the bed today, but I’ve got a feeling that today, there wouldn’t have been a right side.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee, then asked, “Or is that just a given?”

Kyle didn’t bother giving her an answer. Instead, he just looked back at the paperwork on his desk.

She sighed, but refused to give up. “Look, I’m trying to make nice here.”

He raised his eyes, meeting hers for a fleeting second. “Don’t.”

There was no such thing as don’t in her language. Jaren tried again, relying on logic, something she felt probably appealed to him. “Until one of us transfers or dies or they rearrange the room, we’re going to be stuck facing each other like this five days a week. Don’t you think it would make things a little easier on both of us if you stopped acting as if I’m the devil incarnate?”

“Nope.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I think you should know I don’t give up easy.”

She wished he didn’t look so damn sexy as he raised his eyes again and said, “You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.”

She had no idea if she was being warned, put on notice or dismissed. But she wasn’t about to put up with any of that.

Before she could think of something to say in return, she saw the lieutenant walking toward them. Barone held a slip of paper with writing on it in his hand.

“Dispatch called to say a hysterical receptionist just got in to the office to find the doctor she worked for—a Richard Barrett—dead.” The lieutenant held out the slip of paper that contained pertinent information, including the address. “You two are up.”

Mentally, Kyle winced. He wasn’t ready to work a case with Little Miss Perky, but there was apparently nothing he could do about it. Resigned, Kyle pushed himself away from his desk. But by the time he got to his feet, Jaren had taken the slip of paper from Barone.

“We’re on it,” she assured Barone as she slid her arms through the sleeves of her jacket.

Frowning, Kyle confiscated the slip of paper from her and glanced at the address. He spared the lieutenant a look as he shoved the paper into his pocket. “Pricey part of town.”

“Rich people get killed, too,” Barone replied. “The details are a little freaky, so get back to me on this as soon as possible.”

“What do you mean by freaky?” Jaren asked before Kyle could voice the same question.

The woman had a mouth set in fast-forward, he thought darkly.

“You’ll see,” was all Barone promised.

“Freaky doesn’t begin to cover this one,” Kyle commented under his breath as he looked down at the slain doctor. Parts of the expensive Persian rug he lay on was discolored. Blood oozed from the man’s chest.

Dr. Richard Barrett was a respected, well-known neurosurgeon whose skill was only equaled by his ego. Said to be almost a miracle worker, his services were sought from all over the country. Consequently, he had an incredibly long waiting list.

According to what Barrett’s receptionist told them in whispered confidence, as if the dead surgeon could still somehow hear her, he’d had the bedside manner of Attila the Hun.

“Care to be more specific about that?” Kyle prodded the nervous young woman.

“He always made you feel as if you were beneath him,” Carole Jenkins told them. She averted her eyes from the slain figure on the floor. The sight of him had made her turn a very unbecoming shade of green. “To be honest, I think Dr. Barrett even felt he was above God.”

Jaren glanced down at the man’s face, frozen in horror. That kind of an attitude would have won the neurosurgeon no friends.

“So, you’re saying that Dr. Barrett had a lot of enemies?” Jaren asked.

The receptionist backpedaled a little, as if she didn’t want to speak ill of the dead. “He had a lot of grateful patients,” she assured them hastily, and then relented, “but yes, he did have a lot of people who didn’t like him. I don’t know if you’d call them enemies, but he had a tendency to rub everyone the wrong way. But I never thought…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the body on the floor and then shivered.

Kyle squatted down beside the body, his attention focused on the large wooden stake protruding from the man’s chest.

“Death by wooden stake. Don’t think I’ve ever come across that before,” he said more to himself than to his partner. “This does seem to be a little extreme.”

“I’ll—I’ll be in the next room if you need me,” Carole stammered, already backing away from them—and the corpse. “I—I just can’t—”

Giving her a comforting smile, Jaren took the woman’s arm and escorted her out of the doctor’s study.

“You just sit down at your desk and we’ll get back to you if we have any more questions,” she said kindly. Turning around, she appraised the slain surgeon. The stake had been driven into the middle of his chest. Deeply. “Think it’s a statement?”

Kyle glanced at her over his shoulder. “That someone hated him?”

She was going for something a bit more colorful. “That someone thought of him as a vampire.”

Kyle stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Come again?”

“Are you baiting me?” she asked. A frown was the only answer she received. Humoring the man, she went into detail. “Everyone knows that the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through his heart.”

It didn’t make any sense to him. They weren’t living in the Middle Ages, they were living in an enlightened society. “So, someone was calling Barrett a vampire?”

“Blood sucker, most likely. Maybe they were protesting his fee. Or a surgery that went wrong,” she suddenly guessed. In her opinion, those could have all been viable reasons for murder, given the right person.

Kyle wasn’t ready to grant that she’d had an interesting theory just yet. “Don’t you think that’s a little off the wall?” he scoffed.

“To you and me, yes,” she agreed. “But maybe not to the killer.” And it was the killer’s mind they were attempting to assess.

Jaren had pulled on a pair of rubber gloves the minute they’d gotten off the elevator on the third floor. As Kyle examined the doctor more closely, she went through the surgeon’s things on his desk and shelves, looking for a lead.

When she came to a black-bound, hardcover book, she paused. There it was, in plain sight on the shelf behind his desk.

“Well, how about that.”

The bemused note in her voice caught his attention. Though he wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard her, something about the woman was hard to ignore.

“What?”

Jaren turned from the shelves, holding a thick volume in her hands. “The good doctor’s reading material might have given our killer the idea.”

Damn but he missed his old partner’s monotone, straightforward voice. When Castle talked, it wasn’t in circles. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Jaren held up the book she’d found.

“The Vampire Diaries” Kyle read and then scoffed. “Who reads trash like that?”

His reaction to the book didn’t surprise her. “Apparently, enough people to put this on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks.”

Few things caught him off guard, but she’d scored a point. “You’re kidding me.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to kid you,” she added when he eyed her curiously. “But to answer your question, no, I’m not kidding. The Vampire Diaries has been on the list for close to five weeks now.” She flipped some of the pages. “Not a bad story, as far as things like that go.”

Kyle stared at her as if she’d just announced that she was an extra terrestrial, sent down to conquer Earth. “You read it?”

If he was trying to embarrass her, he was going to have to do a lot better than that, Jaren thought wickedly. “Yes, I did. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I like leaving myself open to new experiences—like getting along with a partner who acts as if he’s constantly got a bur under his saddle.”

Kyle didn’t appear to hear her, or, if he did, he was ignoring her comment and focusing on what she’d said before that. He circled the dead man, taking the body in at all angles.

“Vampires, huh?”

Jaren shrugged. “Some women find fantasizing about vampires romantic.”

He laughed shortly, letting her know what he thought of that. “Some women marry prisoners who have no chance of getting out.”

“Takes all kinds,” she agreed. “Besides,” Jaren quipped, “the woman who marries a lifer always knows where he is at night.” He looked at her. “And before you ask, yes, I’m kidding.”

“You guys mind taking this to the next room?” asked a tall, gangly man wearing what looked like paper scrubs over his regular clothing. He was one of three crime-scene investigators who had been sent to go over the doctor’s office, preserving it just as it had been when the receptionist found Barrett.

“No problem. We need to ask Carole for a list of the doctor’s most recent patients,” Jaren told the investigator agreeably. She leaned over and extended her hand. “I’m Jaren Rosetti, by the way.”

“Hank Elder,” the investigator responded, shaking her hand.

“Carole?” Kyle asked as they exited the doctor’s study.

“The receptionist,” she told him.

He stopped short of the woman’s desk. “I don’t recall her giving us her name.”

“That’s because she didn’t,” Jaren told him. “She’s wearing a name tag.”

He’d been too interested in the weapon used to kill the surgeon to notice all that much about the woman who had called the murder in.

“I tend not to look at a woman’s chest area,” he said. “Avoids problems.”

“It’s okay, that’s what you’ve got me for.”

Kyle suppressed another sigh. “Knew there was a reason.”

Carole obliged them with an extensive list of the names of the neurosurgeon’s patients in the last six months.

“When did this man sleep?” Jaren wondered out loud as she scanned the names.

“I don’t think he did,” Carole confided. “According to what I heard, the doctor was burning the candle at both ends.”

Kyle took the list from Jaren and folded it, putting it into his pocket. “Was he married?”

The receptionist pushed her glasses up on her nose before she shook her head. “Divorced. Twice.”

Kyle nodded as if he’d expected to hear something like that. “We’ll need his ex-wives’ addresses, as well,” he told the receptionist.

Carole caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was obviously thinking.

“I’d have to get in touch with one of his colleagues at the hospital to get those for you. Dr. Barrett doesn’t have that kind of information accessible on his computer.” Her expression was apologetic. “He is—was—extremely private that way.”

Jaren looked toward the study. The three crime-scene investigators had left the door open. They were combing the area but all she could see was the body on the rug.

“Could be a crime of passion,” she speculated. She turned back to Carole. “You wouldn’t know if Barrett had any current girlfriends, would you?”

Carole’s short brown hair swung from side to side as she shook her head. “Like I said, Dr. Barrett was very private.”

“That’s okay, we’ll ask around. And if you can think of anything else—” Jaren reached into her pocket to give the young woman her card, then stopped. She flashed an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I don’t have any cards printed up with my cell number on them yet.” She turned toward her partner. “O’Brien?”

“Yeah, I got one.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a card and handed it to the receptionist. Despite the gruesome scene in the other room, Carole smiled up at him. For a moment, she seemed to forget about the circumstances that had brought them together.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Guess I’m due for a hearing test,” Kyle commented as they walked out of the office several minutes later.

“Excuse me?” Jaren asked.

“Well, I’m obviously not hearing as well as I should be.” Reaching the elevator bank, he pressed the down button. “Because if I were, I would have heard Barone say that you were primary on this.”

The elevator arrived. She stepped inside and turned toward the front. They were the only two people in the car. “Sorry. I tend to be a little enthusiastic.”

He laughed as the doors closed again. “Is that what you call it?”

She knew she was going to hate herself for this. “What would you call it?”

“Being a pain in the butt.”

The best way to deal with things was through humor. She reverted to it now. “Potato, po-ta-to,” she replied with a quick shrug of her shoulders. She saw him taking the list that Carole had given them out of his pocket. She nodded at it. “So, how do you want to do this?”

What he wanted to say was alone, but he knew that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. She apparently had the sticking power of super glue. Still, he decided to give it one try. “We could divide the list between us.”

“I’m still new here,” she reminded him. “I would have thought that, since you’re primary on this,” she deliberately emphasized, “you’d want to question these people together—to make sure I don’t mess up.”

He wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. “Rosetti, I don’t want to do anything together,” he told her, “but it looks like I have no choice.”

The elevator came to a stop and they got out on the ground floor. She followed him out of the building. “Tell me, is it just me who sets you off, or is it having a partner in general?”

“Yes.”

The single word hung in the air. Jaren took a breath. This had the makings of one hell of a long day. “Okay,” she declared, as if she knew where she stood.

And she did. Barefoot in hell. But she’d survived worse and she was going to survive this. She made herself a solemn vow that she would.

Their next stop was the hospital where Richard Barrett performed his mini miracles—skillfully reattaching nerve endings against defying odds. Everyone they spoke to on the floor attested to the fact that the surgeon had no equal. On a scale of one to ten, he was a twelve.

But when it came to being human, that number dropped to a two.

The woman in the administration office was able to provide them with the names and addresses of both the former Mrs. Barretts.

Armed with both the list of patients and the addresses of his ex-wives, Kyle made the decision to interview the latter first. Sixty percent of the time, whenever a homicide victim was married or estranged, the search for the killer had to go no further than that person’s spouse or former lover.

As it turned out, spouse number one was immediately dismissed. According to the doorman at the apartment building where she lived, Wanda Barrett had become Wanda Davenport a little over a week ago and was currently in Spain on her honeymoon with her brand-new husband. The doorman said he’d never seen the woman look so happy. For the time being, they believed him.

Spouse number two wasn’t out of the country, she was in her apartment. Once Kyle identified himself and his partner and told the woman the reason they were there, Alison Barrett, a slightly overweight brunette with scarlet nails and a mouth that formed a wide frown, became livid.

‘That bastard!” she shrieked. With a swing of her hand, she knocked over a statue of Cupid that had been perched on a pedestal. It hit the marble floor, shattering. In her fury, she appeared not to notice. “He finally found a way to get around paying me alimony.”

Jaren glanced at Kyle to see his reaction to this display of unbridled temper. “With all due respect, Mrs. Barrett,” she said, “I don’t think that death by wooden stake would have been his first choice to avoid making payments to you.”

“You didn’t know Richard,” she fumed, pacing. “Life with him was hell and I thought that now, at long last, I’d be compensated for it.” Her eyes flashed with unsuppressed fury. “But he found a way to wiggle out of it.”

“Your grief is touching,” Kyle commented.

Her eyes blazed. “You want grief, Detective? Grief was being married to him and being treated as if I was some sub-intelligent species. He thought he was God and should have been worshipped accordingly.”

“If you felt that way about him, why did you marry him in the first place?” Jaren wanted to know.

Alison sighed, frustrated. “Because Richard could be very charming when he wanted. The problem was, once we were married, he didn’t want to be. He was out all day, out all night. Like some damn werewolf.”

Jaren’s eyes met Kyle’s. The exchange was not missed by the victim’s ex-wife. She quickly backpedaled.

“Not that I thought he was one,” she assured them. “Or a vampire,” she added for good measure. “What he was—and everyone who knew him knew this—was a self-centered bastard.”

That made the opinion unanimous, Kyle thought. He had a feeling that they were going to have their hands full with suspects.

“Just for the record, Mrs. Barrett, where were you this afternoon?”

“Where I am every afternoon,” she replied haughtily. “Shopping. It’s one of my few pleasures.”

“Anyone see you shopping?”

She blew out an angry breath, as if this was a huge inconvenience. “I went with friends. I have receipts,” she volunteered. “I didn’t want to see him dead, Detective. I wanted to have him pay through the nose.”

“Thank you for your time,” Kyle told the woman once she produced the time-stamped sales receipts to back her up. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

As they left the opulent apartment, they could hear Alison Barrett heaping curses on her ex-husband’s dead head.

“Woman makes a good case for the single life,” Kyle commented more to himself than to Jaren as they closed the door behind them.

So do you, Jaren thought, but she decided to keep her observation to herself.