Cavanaugh in the Rough Read online

  She had the uneasy feeling that maybe, despite her resolution, it wasn’t over, after all.

  Chapter 12

  “I think I’ve maybe finally found her,” Suzie announced some five hours later, fingering the tiny gold cross around her neck. The one she never took off, because it was the last thing her mother had given her before their world imploded.

  Her neck and shoulders were killing her. She’d been hunched over her computer, carefully reading all the missing person’s reports that had been filed with different police departments throughout the state. They were all on young women who had been reported missing around the general time period that their coroner had estimated this particular Jane Doe had been killed.

  It completely astonished Suzie that there were so many missing young women between the ages of seventeen and thirty who had never been found.

  “Good,” Chris said, getting up from his computer and circling around to her desk to take a look at her screen. “Because I’m definitely getting blurred vision, going through all those old files.” He shook his head, thinking of the reports he’d been reading. “Something’s seriously wrong when so many girls go missing.”

  Suzie leaned back in her chair to allow him to get a better view of the report she had currently pulled up on her screen.

  He read the description out loud. “‘Cara Wilson, twenty-one, aspiring model. Blond, five-nine, 120 pounds.’” Chris stepped back. Although he didn’t mind the close proximity to Suzie, he had a feeling she might have something to say about it. “So far, that could describe Bethany Miller,” he commented.

  Suzie didn’t disagree. There was something eerily similar between the dead girls. She had a sick feeling that maybe this was the tip of the iceberg.

  First things first, she reminded herself. She needed to identify Jane Doe.

  “The report was filed by her mother. According to this, Cara’s roommate said Cara took off for a party she was certain was going to be her ‘ticket to the career she felt she was destined for.’ The roommate, Jill Barnes, said that Cara told her she could come along, too, but Jill came down with food poisoning the afternoon before the party and couldn’t go.” Suzie had read and reread the report. She knew it by heart at this point. “Cara never came back.”

  Chris skimmed to the bottom of the report. “According to the investigating officer, the roommate had no idea where the party was being held, only that Cara said it was really ingenious.” He looked at Suzie, not wanting to jump to conclusions. “Could mean anything.”

  Suzie had no such reservations. “Could also mean a ‘floating party’ like the one in the abandoned department store.” She shifted her chair so that she was looking at Chris directly. “We could get some personal item from Cara’s mother to compare to the unidentified dead girl’s DNA.”

  He didn’t want Suzie getting too excited yet. “Cara’s mother might have moved.”

  Not if the woman was waiting for her daughter to come home, Suzie thought. “Well, we won’t find out sitting here, will we?” she said, already on her feet and halfway to the door. “You don’t have to come if you’ve got something else to do,” she called over her shoulder.

  As if he was going to sit here, twiddling his thumbs. “The hell I don’t,” Chris said, taking off after her.

  *

  Cara Wilson’s mother, Amy, was a small, pale-faced woman who looked as if she might have once been very pretty, before all hope had been stripped from her. In her early fifties, for the last nine years Amy Wilson had only been going through the motions of living.

  “Yes?” she asked, when she opened the door of her modest, one-story house and gazed at them.

  “Mrs. Wilson, I’m CSI Susannah Quinn and this is Detective Christian O’Bannon,” Suzie told her, holding up her credentials and badge. Chris was doing the same. “We’re with the Aurora Police Department. May we come in to talk with you?”

  The woman continued holding the door ajar, looking at the duo uncertainly, as if she heard the words but didn’t understand.

  “Aurora?” she asked. “That’s more than forty miles from here.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we know,” Chris replied politely. Although they looked nothing alike, the woman somehow reminded him of his mother, the way she might have looked if something like this had happened to her. “But this might be about your daughter, Cara.”

  Rather than hope, dread instantly filled the woman’s hazel eyes. “You found her?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

  “To be quite honest, we’re not sure, ma’am,” Chris answered.

  For a second, the woman looked as if she would sink to the floor right where she was standing. But then, one hand clutching the side of the door, she took a deep breath and said, “Please come in.”

  Opening the door all the way, Amy Wilson let them in. After she closed it, she led the way to her small, cheerless living room. Framed photographs of her daughter were displayed on every available surface within the room.

  Although it was still daytime, no light seemed to be entering the living room. It was almost as if it wasn’t allowed. Amy Wilson paused to turn on a lamp, but it was obvious that if she had been sitting in the room before they had come in, she had been sitting in darkness.

  Perching on the edge of the sofa, she gestured for them to sit down on the love seat facing her, on the other side of the small, picture-cluttered coffee table. “How can I help?”

  Suzie answered before Chris had a chance. “We need some personal item of Cara’s so that we can match her DNA to—someone else’s.”

  “To a victim’s,” Amy supplied grimly, her hands folded so tightly in her lap, her knuckles had gone white.

  “Yes,” Suzie told her.

  “And then you’ll know if it’s her?” Amy asked almost hesitantly. “If it’s my Cara?”

  “And then we’ll know,” Suzie confirmed. She moved to the sofa to take the woman’s hands in hers. She squeezed them tightly. “I know that this is hard, Mrs. Wilson.”

  A sad smile played on the woman’s lips as she blinked back tears.

  “Do you, now? Have you spent the last nine years praying, holding your breath, waiting for your daughter to come home?”

  “No, ma’am,” Suzie replied quietly and with contrition.

  The next moment, the woman collected herself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound bitter. You’re only trying to help and I appreciate that.” She looked from one of them to the other. Disengaging her hands from Suzie’s, she rose to her feet again. “I have a hairbrush. Will that help?”

  “A hairbrush will be perfect,” Suzie told her.

  “I’ll be right back,” Amy promised, leaving the room.

  She was back in moments, handing Suzie an expensive looking hairbrush, the kind that might be part of a three-piece set.

  “Her father gave her that,” Mrs. Wilson said after a moment’s hesitation. “We divorced three years after Cara went missing. He blamed me for being too permissive. I don’t know, maybe he was right...” she murmured, her eyes filling with tears again.

  She wiped them away angrily.

  “It’s not your fault, Mrs. Wilson,” Chris told her gently. “Girls that age are going to do whatever they want to do, whatever they think is right. I’ve got three sisters, I know,” he explained in an understanding voice. He indicated the hairbrush in Suzie’s hand. “We’ll bring this back as soon as we can.”

  “And you’ll tell me?” Amy asked, walking them to the front door. “If the girl you found is Cara, you will tell me?”

  “We’ll tell you,” he promised.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, as she closed the door.

  *

  Twilight had descended as he and Suzie were talking with Cara’s mother. “Are you all right?” Chris finally asked, when Suzie made no effort to say anything as they drove back to Aurora in the dark.

  Seeing Mrs. Wilson only reminded her of all the mothers whose daughters her father had killed. It had taken her a few minutes to
get her anger back under control.

  “I’m not the one waiting to find out if her daughter is lying in some unmarked grave,” she told him, still struggling with her anger.

  “Cremated,” he corrected quietly.

  What he said wasn’t registering. “What?”

  “Bodies that aren’t claimed or identified after thirty days are cremated,” he reminded her.

  For some reason, that had just slipped her mind. “So Mrs. Wilson really won’t have closure,” she whispered in a stilted voice.

  “She still will, of a sort,” Chris qualified. “If the hairs on the brush turn out to match the DNA they had on file.”

  Suzie supposed he had a point, in a manner of speaking, but it still wasn’t the kind of peace the woman would have wanted.

  “You were very understanding back there,” Suzie said, after a few more minutes had passed. “With Mrs. Wilson,” she added, in case he missed what she was trying to say.

  He only wished he could have done more for the woman, comforted her somehow.

  “It’s not easy, hearing that someone you love is never coming home again. There is no good way to break the news.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Suzie agreed. “Still, you were very kind.”

  He laughed softly. “You say that as if you’re surprised.”

  She was going to deny it, or say something flippant in response, then reconsidered. He’d impressed her with the way he’d been with Mrs. Wilson, and she felt as if she should somehow acknowledge the fact. At the very least, she owed him the truth.

  “Maybe I am, a little,” she allowed.

  She was being nice. Chris changed the subject, thinking that he should quit while he was ahead.

  “We’ll log that brush into Evidence for the night and then see about getting testing okayed in the morning.”

  “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” she told him.

  “In this case, given who your boss is, it might be smarter to do it the other way around,” Chris suggested. Suzie began to protest, but he cut her off, saying, “Uncle Sean isn’t a stickler and he doesn’t envision himself being a dictator over a small realm. As a matter of fact, he’s pretty damn easygoing. But he might take it personally if he finds that you’ve gone rogue—and there’s no way you can verify if that dead girl is Cara Wilson without either getting his permission to run the test, or going rogue and doing it. The latter course might cost you more than you realize. Not to mention that using it as evidence for some reason down the line would be totally out of the question if you decide to go that route.”

  Suzie sighed. He was right. She couldn’t really argue with anything he’d said.

  “You have a point.”

  One hand on the wheel, he pretended to clutch at his chest with his other one. When she looked at him, not knowing if she should be concerned, he said, “Thankfully, I have a strong heart. Otherwise, you’d be rushing me to the hospital right about now.”

  The more time she spent with this man, the less she understood him, Suzie thought. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I almost had a heart attack.”

  She struggled to keep from saying a few choice things. Instead, she stated, “All right, I’ll bite. Why did you almost have a heart attack?”

  Sparing her a quick look, he allowed his mouth to curve. “Because you just gave me an out-and-out compliment.”

  “Well, that’ll certainly teach me a lesson,” Suzie said drily. “Trust me, it won’t happen again.”

  He merely laughed in response, as if he knew something she didn’t.

  *

  Suzie hardly got any sleep all night.

  Thinking about the DNA test she wanted to run, anticipating its outcome, she could hardly wait to get started. Consequently, she was dressed and ready hours before she knew she could actually go in.

  But when she finally did arrive at the lab, she knew that Chris had been right. She had to go through the proper steps to do the test, or she couldn’t legally do it at all.

  Though she had tried hard to pace herself, she’d wound up getting to the lab ahead of Sean. However, true to his nature, the manager of the lab’s day shift wasn’t that far behind her.

  She was waiting for him in his office.

  “Should I be concerned?” he asked, putting his container of coffee on his desk. Sitting down, he removed the lid, but didn’t take a sip.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m used to your being in the lab ahead of me. I’ve come to expect it, actually. The last couple of weeks, with you being up in Homicide, it felt almost strange walking in and not seeing you here. But finding you in my office is another story.” Sean felt there had to be a reason the young woman was waiting for him. “You’re either here to tell me about a breakthrough, or that you’re leaving.”

  “Leaving?” she echoed. Why would he think she was leaving? She was happier here, working with these people, than she’d been for a long time. She was just beginning to feel as if she actually belonged somewhere. “Why would you think that I was leaving?”

  “I thought it might have something to do with Chris,” he said honestly. “He’s a really good detective and a great nephew, but he’s also probably not what you’re used to. For some, Chris is an acquired taste. I thought maybe you and he had come to some kind of an impasse and you’d decided to leave the department rather than having to put up with him anymore.”

  Stunned, Suzie could only shake her head. “No, none of the above.”

  “All right,” Sean said, pausing to take a long sip of his coffee. He got comfortable in his chair. “So why are you here, brightening up my office?”

  She knew he was being kind. She hadn’t brightened up any place she’d been in the last three years. “I came to ask for your permission.”

  She had definitely piqued his interest. Polite, sharp, an above-average hard worker, Suzie Quinn still wasn’t the type who came right out and asked for permission—for anything.

  “To do what?” he asked.

  Damn O’Bannon; he’d made her nervous about this. “I want to run a DNA test.”

  Sean waited, expecting her to say more. He didn’t understand. Suzie didn’t need permission for that. It went without saying that she could run the test. It was what was done here.

  No, this had to be about something different, he decided.

  “Help me out here,” Sean requested. “What makes this DNA test so unusual that you feel you have to ask for special permission?”

  Suzie was tempted to quit while she was ahead. But that would be dishonest and she wouldn’t lie to him, even by omission. Her boss needed to know the details.

  “The DNA belongs to a girl who’s been dead for nine years.”

  He did a quick mental review of the cases he knew were currently opened. “I wasn’t aware that we had a cold case involving a dead girl.”

  “It’s not one of ours. The body was found in Oak Valley.”

  She paused, holding her breath and waiting for her boss to tell her that their budget was already stretched to the limit doing tests on the bodies within Aurora’s jurisdiction. But he didn’t.

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  When she spoke again, she found herself talking rapidly, trying to get everything in before he decided to cut her off.

  “Since we have the technology available now, I thought that maybe we could ID her and bring her mother some peace.”

  Sean appeared mildly surprised. “Then you know her mother?”

  “Well, I met her yesterday.”

  He liked the fact that Suzie didn’t lie or twist the facts to suit her purposes. “And you have something with this girl’s DNA?”

  “Yes. Her mother gave us a hairbrush. It’s bagged in Evidence at the moment.”

  Nodding, Sean was quiet for a moment, as if he was thinking something over. And then he said, “Tell you what, I’ll let you run the test if you do something for me.”

  He was the father
that she wished she’d actually had. Truthful, forthright, honest. Generous to a fault and always willing to help anyone who came to him. Suzie was willing to do anything for the man and wasn’t ashamed of saying so.

  “Of course, sir, anything.”

  “My brother’s having this get-together this Saturday...” Sean began.

  Her eyes widened. She knew exactly where this was going. What she didn’t understand was why. “Why is it so important to you people that I attend?” she demanded.

  “Well, you know, the more the merrier—”

  “From what I’ve heard, sir, if there were any more there, the place would have to be zoned as a small city.”

  He laughed. “That’s just a testimony to how many people enjoy attending my brother’s little get-togethers. So, what do you say? Will you come?”

  Chris had put him up to this, she was sure of it. But she was also certain that Sean was serious. At bottom, she told herself, this was a trade of favors. She had to think of it as such.

  “All right, sir, I’ll come—as long as I can run the test.”

  Sean nodded. “You can run the test, Suzie.”

  Doing her best not to look uncomfortable, she nodded back. “Thank you, sir. And yes, I’ll come to the chief of police’s party.”

  Sean’s smile was wide and all encompassing. A little like his nephew’s.

  “Former chief of police,” he corrected. “And you won’t regret agreeing to come, Suzie.”

  That was his opinion and he had a right to it, but as for her, she was already regretting saying yes. Because now she had to go. A person had to be as good as their word, or else what was the point?

  Chapter 13

  “You chew on that lip any harder and there’s going to be a gaping hole in it.”

  Suzie hadn’t expected anyone to come up to her while she was working in the lab. The other CSIs who comprised her usual team were out, investigating the scene of a home invasion. Sean had left for a meeting, so she had naturally assumed that she was alone in the lab.

  Obviously, she wasn’t.