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  It was a playful, throwaway line uttered by a woman who was still a little sleepy to a man she’d known off and on—mostly off—for a number of years. There wasn’t supposed to be anything about what she’d said that was the least bit intriguing or compelling or even have a ring of truth to it.

  And yet, there was something, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that seemed to have a life of its own and that life was operating independently of either one of them.

  A life, he had a feeling, that was going to wind up making some sort of demands on both of them. Not now, not today or even tomorrow.

  But sometime.

  And soon.

  He could feel it and from the way she was looking at him, he had a hunch that she could feel it, too.

  “That’s a really good cup of coffee,” she said, nodding at the coffee she’d just finished, employing a second long pull. Setting the mug down on her coffee table, she said, “Okay, I’m ready.”

  He was still looking at her, as if her words weren’t really reaching him. Or maybe he was getting some kind of hidden meaning from them that she wasn’t trying to convey, she thought a bit uncomfortably. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was sending out signals.

  “Let’s go,” she urged.

  Feeling a little foolish, Declan nodded and led the way out of her house.

  She paused to lock the front door, then hurried to catch up. “Where did they find this victim?” she asked.

  Again, as with the first patrolman and even the second, it was within the victim’s comfort range. “In his car. He was sitting behind the steering wheel, probably getting ready to drive away,” he told her. “The way I see it, the shooter approached him in such a way that the detective didn’t feel threatened or that he was in any danger. Had to be someone he knew or who he didn’t feel posed a threat.”

  “He got that wrong,” she murmured under her breath.

  “Nobody thought anything of his being there until someone realized that the detective had been sitting in his car for a while without moving a muscle. That’s when Sergeant O’Malley went to investigate.”

  “He was the first on the scene?” she asked.

  “No, the first on the scene, the way I see it, was the killer, then O’Malley.”

  She nodded, doing her best to unravel this puzzle as she approached Declan’s vehicle. “What do these three guys have in common?”

  He answered the first thing that came to mind. “They’re cops.”

  She inclined her head. They already knew that. She was after something more. “Besides the obvious.”

  He set his mouth grimly. “That’s the jackpot question. We get the answer to that, we get our killer,” he told her.

  If only, she couldn’t help thinking. “Maybe we should start going through the records, see who washed out of the academy or had their application turned down in, oh, say the last five years.”

  He had a more inclusive idea. “Maybe we should expand that, push it back to the last ten years. Fitzpatrick was an eighteen-year vet of the force,” Declan reminded her.

  “But Holt had only been on the actual police force for the last five,” Charley pointed out. Whatever happened that started this killing spree rolling—if it did involve these three men—had to have happened at the lowest common number, not the highest.

  “You sure about Holt?” Declan asked, trying to keep his facts straight. “I thought he’d been on the force longer.”

  “I’m sure,” she answered with finality. “Holt did apply to the academy earlier, but then he had to withdraw his application to take care of—someone.” She’d hesitated because she’d almost said that he withdrew to take care of her. She’d been involved in a motorcycle accident. Her car had just stopped on a street corner when a chopper had come out of nowhere and plowed into her. She wound up in the hospital for weeks. And Matt had been there for her whenever he wasn’t working. Matt was the reason she’d pulled through.

  There was a catch in her voice for just a split second that drew his attention. Again he thought that there was more to this than she was telling him. He could feel it in his gut.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Charley lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, someone who was important to him, though. He felt it wouldn’t be fair of him to put conditions on his attending the academy, saying he needed to begin by asking for time off, so despite how much he wanted to be a cop, he put his application on hold. He was like that,” she said. “Dedicated to whatever cause he was involved with at the time. He didn’t believe in shortchanging anyone.”

  She sounded as if she knew the first victim a hell of a lot better than she was letting on, Declan observed. Had she and Holt been involved? Was that why she’d been so insistent about being part of the team that was doing the investigation? He knew she’d deny it if he asked, but he still had to know.

  Declan decided that he was going to look into it the second he had more than half a second’s time to devote to it.

  “Okay, let’s get going before we start falling behind. I want to catch this bastard before he kills someone else,” he told her as he started up his car.

  “No more than me,” she said, buckling up, envisioning catching the killer in her own crosshairs.

  Nothing would give her more pleasure.

  Chapter 10

  The street where Detective Barry Warren met his untimely end was roped off for one block in both directions. It wasn’t a main thoroughfare, but still a well-traveled through street and as such, the roadblock was a source of major inconvenience for those people who were on their way to work. The street led directly to the San Diego Freeway. Those who needed access had to go several blocks out of their way to make up for the road closure.

  Several police officers were dispatched to redirect traffic while the CSI unit painstakingly documented the entire scene. The medical examiner’s team arrived to render a preliminary judgment as to time of death while Declan and Charley provided two more sets of eyes to look over the crime scene.

  “What do you think?” Declan asked her after they had been there for close to twenty minutes.

  When they had arrived, the detective’s body was still exactly where the killer had left it, sitting still on the driver’s side of his vehicle. Only after the crime-scene investigators had taken their photographs and he and Charley had carefully looked the man over was Warren carefully extracted from his car.

  Charley stood back while the M.E.’s assistant took the body away. “He knew his attacker,” she theorized. “Or at least, he wasn’t afraid of his attacker,” she amended.

  Declan looked at her. Those were his thoughts as well, but he wanted to know what brought her to that conclusion. “What makes you say that?”

  “The window on the driver’s side was rolled down. Whoever killed Detective Warren approached him while he was pulled over to the side of the road. The person indicated that they wanted to talk to him and Warren obliged by rolling down his window. The detective was shot at point-blank range and he didn’t even see it coming at all. He wasn’t on his guard, which means he either knew or trusted whoever it was who’d approached him.”

  Declan nodded. She’d summarized his feelings to a T.

  “The killer had a hard time using his staple gun this time,” Declan observed. “This isn’t exactly the best angle to staple a note,” he told her. “The other notes took two staples apiece. Look at the paper.” He carefully held it up for perusal even though he was wearing gloves. “There are at least three other holes in it. The killer tried to staple this on him, but failed the first couple of times.”

  “Not very original, is it?” Charley commented. The words proclaimed, “You guys can’t catch a cold.”

  “We’re not dealing with Shakespeare,” Declan agreed. “But to
my knowledge, Shakespeare never killed anyone except on the page.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “You know Shakespeare?” He just didn’t seem the type.

  “Not personally,” he quipped. “But I know of him. Why? Just how dumb do you think I am?” he asked, amused.

  “Not ‘dumb,’” she clarified. “Let’s just say ignorant of the finer things in life.”

  He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “Let’s just say we get back to the case,” he suggested. “We can try canvassing the area.”

  “Because it’s worked so well for us with the other victims,” she said sarcastically, resigned to give it yet another try.

  * * *

  As before, their canvas turned up the same results as the past two attempts had: no one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.

  Again.

  Two hours later, they knew no more than they had when they’d gotten started. Declan sighed, exasperated. “I’m beginning to think our killer’s a ghost. Or one hell of a magician,” he complained.

  Charley had another take on the killer. “Or so common and ordinary, nobody takes note of him.”

  Declan looked at his partner, intrigued. “What do you mean?”

  “People pass one another in a mall or a store all the time without even being aware of them unless the other party looked or was doing something out of the ordinary. Exceptionally good-looking or very homely people get noticed. Average people don’t. These murders could have been committed by someone you look right through, someone who doesn’t stand out or register—”

  “Until it’s too late,” Declan concluded.

  “Yeah,” she said grimly. “For the most part, people aren’t observant. That teacher who found our second victim in the schoolyard didn’t even notice that there was no blood around his body and she said that she was a cop’s widow. You would have thought that if anyone could be more observant, it’d be someone who’d been married to a policeman.”

  Frustrated, Charley was dying to get back into the database she was working in. She had a feeling that the person they were looking for was there, right in plain sight. She just had a great many files to go through before she got to the one that hid their killer.

  “If we’re through here, let’s get back to the office,” she urged him. “I want to finish going through that list of wannabe washouts. I keep thinking we’ll find our guy there—or at least I’m hoping we will,” she admitted honestly.

  Declan’s cell phone rang at that moment, interrupting anything he might have said to her in response. Taking the phone out, he looked at the caller ID on the screen. “Looks like the chief of Ds has the same idea.”

  “What, going through the list of names?” she asked, not sure what Declan was referring to.

  “No, getting us to come back into the station,” he guessed, taking the call. “Yes, Chief?” he said brightly as he answered his call.

  Curious, Charley waited for more, but her partner said nothing, only nodded his head a couple of times in response. “Yes, sir, we’ll be right in.”

  “Anything?” she asked hopefully as he ended the call and tucked his phone away. Maybe while they were out sifting through clues, someone had come in and confessed, making their job infinitely easier—although somehow, she doubted it.

  “Most likely,” Declan replied. “But he said he’d tell us once we got back.”

  She didn’t like not knowing things and there were already enough mysteries without having any more guessing games thrown at them.

  “What do you think this is about?” she asked Declan.

  “Well, it’s not a surprise birthday party,” he deadpanned, “’cause mine’s in June and yours is—”

  “Not now,” she retorted. What was he doing, reading up on her? Or was this an attempt on his part to get her to blurt out her birthday?

  “Nice dodge,” he laughed, confirming that it was the latter. “Okay, let’s get back and hope this guy has run out of bullets,” he said, scanning the scene one last time.

  The CSI unit was still there as were the medical examiner’s team, but the latter was about to leave. Still, they represented two more potential victims on the move. “’Cause he sure as hell isn’t running out of targets.”

  She knew what Declan was thinking. That any second, the shooter could open fire on them right here.

  “He doesn’t shoot into a crowd of cops,” Charley pointed out.

  “Yet,” Declan felt bound to counter. “Who knows what this nutcase is capable of? He could change his M.O. whenever it suits him.”

  Declan was right, she thought. Not even two full days had passed and they already had three bodies. How many more were going to be racked up before they caught this killer? If they caught this killer.

  * * *

  When they walked into Brian Cavanaugh’s office some thirty minutes later, it was evident that he was waiting for them.

  Declan couldn’t remember ever seeing the man look so grim.

  Rising slightly in his seat in deference to Charley, Brian gestured for them to sit down. He did the same.

  “I won’t ask you how it’s going because I know how it’s going,” he told them. “We’ve got too many bodies. One would have been too many,” he couldn’t help saying. The next moment, he was all business again. “I’m giving you a task force,” he said. “No disrespect to either one of you, but you clearly need help.”

  “No disrespect taken,” Declan assured him.

  “We’ll gladly accept all the help we can get,” Charley said, backing up Declan’s sentiments.

  Brian nodded. He’d already gotten in contact with the detectives he felt would be most useful at the moment. He knew he was lucky because there were so many fine detectives to choose from, but many were on cases already. Still, finding good people to work this was far from difficult.

  “Any new leads or suspects?” he asked.

  “Only in a general sense,” Declan told him. “We think it might be someone who applied to the academy but didn’t get in for one reason or another.”

  Brian nodded. “In other words, he’s looking for revenge.”

  “But it’s also got to be someone who doesn’t raise any flags,” Charley put in. “He gets right up close before he shoots them. Once, he’s lucky, twice, he’s tricky.”

  “Three times it’s a pattern,” Brian said. “It has to be someone who looks nonthreatening,” he agreed. And then he filled them in on the rest of his plan. “Everyone’s on standby. Vacations are temporarily canceled, overtime is authorized. You’re going to get three, maybe four more detectives to work this with you,” he told Declan. “I want this over with. I want my people not to have to constantly be looking over their shoulders.”

  “Yes, sir.” Declan took the words to be a mandate. Sensing the meeting was over, he rose to his feet. Charley followed suit. “I’ll let you know the second something breaks,” he promised the chief.

  Brian smiled confidently. “I know you will.”

  * * *

  When they got back to their floor, a bulletin board had been brought into the office. It had three photographs mounted at the top, equally spaced apart—for now.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Declan saw Charley freeze before the board. Specifically, she was standing and looking up at the first photograph. Her unguarded expression was one of incredible sorrow.

  Okay, this had gone on long enough. Declan wanted answers now.

  The next moment, he saw three new faces. These had to be the detectives the chief had promised. That man worked fast, he thought, awed. As their presence registered, the men came over and introduced themselves.

  “The chief of Ds thought you might like a little help with the grunt work,” the oldest of the three said. “I’m Max Callaghan, that ugly dude is Mickey Sanche
z and the tall guy behind him is Bobby Yu. We’re here as long as you need us,” Max told him.

  Declan turned toward Charley. “Look, why don’t you get these guys up to speed?” he requested. “Show them what you’ve been working on.”

  “Sure.” She was more than willing to do that. Maybe between all of them, they could get through the files by the end of today. “While I’m doing that, what will you be doing?” she asked. Was it her imagination, or was he edging his way toward the door again?

  “I’ve got something to take care of,” he said. When he saw the frown that greeted his words, he told her, “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving the building.”

  “Wasn’t worried,” she said, although she was a little. “Just curious.”

  He paused for a second, thinking that maybe he’d dumped a little too much on her all at once. “You can handle this, right?”

  He felt something going inside of him beyond the customary physical reaction and longing. For a second, he allowed himself to examine the sensation and was rather stunned to realize that he was feeling not just the usual lustful reaction normal for a male when confronted by a beautiful woman, but also a sense protectiveness as well. In unguarded moments, he saw pain in her eyes. Not just the reaction that they felt as cops who viewed the less-than-sunny side of life. This was personal pain and he found himself wanting to make it better for her.

  He was overdue for a vacation, he told himself. There was no other explanation for feeling this way—right?

  It could have gone one of two ways. Charley knew she could have taken his concern as an insult to her abilities, or she could just take it as a display of sensitivity on his part.

  For now, she decided to go with the latter. “I’ve been handling a lot more than you think,” she answered, deliberately sounding mysterious.

  That was just what he intended to find out about. He wanted to know more about her, know the secrets she was keeping from him, because his gut was telling him that was what she was doing. Secrets that revolved around the first murder victim.

  Nodding in response to her words, he hurried out of the office.