Cavanaugh Stakeout Page 16

  Chapter 16

  Finn quickly stepped in, trying to redirect the senator’s attention away from the scene, as well as from Nik. The older man gave the impression that he was liable to explode at any second. He didn’t want Nik to be in his line of fire.

  “Senator, when you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to ask you some questions about your daughter,” Finn said, carefully easing the man away, with Nik and the bodyguard following.

  Fire suddenly spiked in the man’s hazel eyes. “What kind of questions?” the senator demanded hotly.

  It was obvious that he was growing defensive and he was not about to stand for anything that he considered the slightest bit defamatory being said about his slain daughter.

  Trying not to provoke the senator, Finn kept his tone polite. “Just a few general questions to give us some kind of perspective as to the type of people your daughter might have hung out with—”

  That only seemed to anger the senator even more. He looked as if he was going to take a swing at Finn at any second. “Are you saying that my daughter brought this on herself?” he shouted.

  “No one is saying that, Senator,” Nik assured him, attempting to calm down the man. “We’re just trying to retrace her steps.”

  “Senator,” the man’s bodyguard said, “why don’t you let me take you home, sir? You can talk to him in the morning—right, Detective?” Alexander Waverly, the senator’s aide, asked, looking at Finn.

  Finn stepped back, clearing an exit path for the two men. He wasn’t insensitive to what the senator was going through. If anything, he felt sympathetic.

  “Sure thing,” he answered. “Take him home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Home?” the senator shouted, stunned. “What do I have to go home to? There’s nothing there anymore,” he cried, his voice breaking.

  Having been a silent witness, Sean stepped forward. “Do you need any help getting him home?” he asked the bodyguard.

  “I can handle this, thanks,” Waverly told Sean. Placing a hand on his employer’s shoulder, the bodyguard steered the broken man toward his vehicle.

  “That poor man,” Nik murmured, watching as Waverly guided the senator into his car.

  “Which one?” Finn asked, watching with her. “The senator or the bodyguard?”

  “Both,” she replied without hesitation. “For different reasons.”

  Finn turned away and looked at Sean. The medical examiner had just placed the senator’s daughter into a body bag and was zipping it up. The sound seemed to reverberate through the evening air.

  “Anything different about this one that I should know about, Sean?” Finn asked.

  Sean shook his head. “Other than the fact that she’s younger than the others, nothing jumps out at me at the moment. I think it’s just a coincidence that she’s the senator’s daughter.”

  The answer wasn’t what Finn was looking for. “There’s got to be some kind of a connection between these women that we’re missing,” Finn said. He looked at Nik, and Harley and Ramirez, two members of his task force who had arrived on the scene. “We need to do a deep dive into these women’s social-media pages. Maybe we’re missing something that’s out in plain sight.”

  “That would make things a lot easier, wouldn’t it?” Harley said. “Well, all we can do is hope.”

  But Finn’s attention was back to the leader of the CSI team. “Let me know the moment the ME pins down an approximate time of death.”

  Sean nodded, giving Finn an encouraging smile. “You got it.”

  “Okay, Kowalski. Let’s see if we can round up some surveillance videos from the last six days,” Finn told her.

  “I can hardly wait,” Nik responded.

  * * *

  “You know, I am really starting to hate Thomas Edison,” Nik said to Finn several hours later.

  The moment she and Finn had gotten back to the station with copies of surveillance videos from the area where this latest murder had occurred, she and one of the other people on the task force settled in to review each one slowly.

  Finn had come, as promised, to spell her.

  “The inventor?” he asked, perplexed as he looked in her direction. “Why? What have you got against him?”

  “Because if he hadn’t invented film, we wouldn’t be sitting here, going cross-eyed like this,” she retorted in a less-than-genial tone.

  “He didn’t invent it. Someone else did. Edison invented the first film camera so to speak,” Jerry Collins, sitting at the table next to Nik, said wearily.

  “Why would you even know that? Never mind,” Finn said, waving away the other man’s words. He looked at Nik. “Want me to take over for you?” he offered.

  She surprised him by rising from the desk. “Sure, why not?” Then, not wanting to seem as if she was shirking the responsibility he’d given her, she added, “Just until I stretch my legs—and get my eyes refocused and back in my head.”

  Finn sat down in her place and began to review the videos, picking up where she had left off.

  Rotating her shoulders, Nik did her best to attempt to ease the ache she felt taking hold there. But even as she tried to distance herself from the videos, she couldn’t help glancing in Finn’s direction. More specifically, looking at the screen as he fast-forwarded through the videos.

  And then she froze. “Wait!”

  Finn gave her a quizzical look. “The idea is to try to get through this footage fast,” he reminded her. “And I thought you were taking a break.”

  She hardly heard him. “Stop!” she cried. When he did, she leaned forward to get a better look at the people caught in mid-movement. Nik blinked, focusing on the frozen frame. She was right! “That’s Marilyn,” she cried. Stunned, she looked from the monitor to Finn and then back again. “It’s her!” she declared more loudly this time. “I’m sure of it.” And then she looked at Finn, mystified. “What’s she doing there?”

  “Beats me,” he admitted. “Maybe we’ve found our connection,” he said.

  “But what does it mean?” she persisted, trying to make sense out of the whole scenario.

  “That I don’t know. Yet,” he replied. In his opinion, this all needed clarification. “We definitely need to mount all these victims on a board, see if we can find any more connections between them,” he told Nik. Maybe if it was all spread out in front of him, it might start making some kind of sense. “I’m going to see if we can get some space set aside for the task force, maybe a room in the back.”

  * * *

  Constructing the bulletin board with the various victims and what they had discovered about them took the better part of that day as well as part of the following one.

  When it was done, Nik stood back, looking over what they had managed to piece together. There were still so many pieces that seemed to be missing.

  Nik turned to Finn. “I’m going to go back to Marilyn’s mother, see if she knows whether or not Marilyn actually knew Senator Heaton’s daughter.”

  He nodded. That sounded like a good idea to him. “I’ll come with you,” he announced. And then he waved a hand at the board with its columns of dead women. “I’m not that good when it comes to social media,” he confessed.

  “You don’t have a social-media page?” Nik asked him as they left the squad room together.

  “No,” he answered. “If someone wants to know something about me, I’d rather they asked me about it face-to-face.”

  “So you can shut them down in person?” she asked, trying to suppress the smile that rose to her lips.

  He surprised her by laughing. “You’re getting to know me,” he said.

  Yes, I think I am, Nik thought.

  * * *

  When Kim Palmer opened the door after Nik had knocked, there was instant fear in the woman’s eyes. “Did you...?” she began breathlessly.

  “No, w
e didn’t find her,” Nik answered, anticipating the woman’s question. “There’s been another murder, but it wasn’t Marilyn,” she said quickly.

  “Then I don’t understand,” Kim said. “Why are you here?” There was still apprehension in the woman’s brown eyes.

  Finn stepped in to answer Kim Palmer’s question. “While we were looking through the surveillance videos corresponding to the latest crime scene, we saw Marilyn in the background.”

  Kim gasped and clutched at his arm. “Marilyn? You’re sure it was her?” Before he could say anything, she cried, “Then she’s alive?”

  Finn didn’t answer the woman because he didn’t want to get her hopes up in case this was no longer true. The video was from several days ago. Instead, he asked Kim about what they were trying to ascertain.

  “Mrs. Palmer, does your daughter know Senator Clark Heaton’s daughter, Gretchen?”

  Kim appeared puzzled, as if she was having trouble absorbing the full meaning of the question. And then she finally shook her head.

  “No, Marilyn never mentioned anything about a...Gretchen did you say?” she asked, struggling to make sense out of all this.

  Nik nodded. “That’s right. Her name was Gretchen Heaton.”

  “Was,” Kim repeated. “Then she’s...?”

  “Yes,” Nik answered as gently as she could. “The senator’s daughter is another victim.”

  Kim swallowed. It took her a second to find her voice. “No, I never heard Marilyn say that name.” She flushed, embarrassed. “I told you, Marilyn stopped telling me things a few months ago. She transformed into this extremely secretive creature these last few weeks.” She blew out a breath, remembering an incident that showcased just how distant her daughter had become. “When I accidentally found out that she was going to see this doctor rather a lot and asked her about it, she suddenly started yelling at me, screaming that I needed to mind my own business.” Kim raised her head, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Like she wasn’t my business,” the woman sobbed.

  “What kind of a doctor was she seeing?” Finn asked her.

  Kim shrugged self-consciously. “You know, one who concerned himself with female problems.”

  “A male?” Nik asked. Kim nodded her head. “Do you happen to remember his name?” Nik asked her. This might just be nothing, but then again...

  “Garrett, Gallagher, something like that.” Kim shrugged, unable to pinpoint the doctor’s name at the moment because her mind was so weighed down. “Why? Is that important?”

  “I don’t know yet. I was just wondering why this set off your ‘mom’ radar,” Nik told her.

  Kim thought for a moment, trying to remember. “To be honest, I thought maybe he was trying to bilk her. You know, there are unscrupulous doctors around, taking advantage of naive patients—and Marilyn isn’t exactly worldly,” Kim confessed.

  Though it cost the woman to admit this, she told Nik, “She’s a very young twenty. That’s why I asked you to look for her,” she explained. “I even called the doctor’s office,” Kim suddenly remembered, “to see if Marilyn had had a recent appointment to see him, but the receptionist said she couldn’t disclose that kind of information. Something about doctor-patient confidentiality,” Kim scoffed. “But I’m her mother,” she protested, looking from Nik to the detective with her. “I should be able to know these things, shouldn’t I?”

  Nik felt it best not to encourage the woman along this path. Instead, she said, “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

  “You said you found out about these visits accidentally. What did you mean by that?” Finn asked. “Was a bill sent to the house?”

  Kim nodded. “I was emptying out Marilyn’s wastebasket—it was garbage day,” the woman explained. “And this bill fell out. I wasn’t going to look at it, but...” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged again. “It wasn’t as if I was going through her things,” she cried. “It was in the trash for heaven sakes,” she said as if that was her defense and she intended to stand by it.

  “Would you still happen to have that billing statement?” Finn asked.

  “No, Marilyn tore it out of my hands when she saw I was looking at it and she ripped it up into little pieces. She accused me of snooping!” Kim released a shaky breath and closed her eyes. And then her eyes flew open. “It was Garrett. His name was Dr. James Garrett,” she announced triumphantly. Her eyes seemed to bounce back and forth, silently pleading with the two people in her living room for support. “Does that help your investigation?”

  “Honestly, probably not,” Finn told her, again not wanting to raise the woman’s hopes. “But we’ll check it out.”

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Nik asked Finn the moment they had left Kim’s house and were far enough away not to be overheard.

  “Well,” he said, rolling the last few minutes over in his head, “I’m beginning to see why Marilyn withdrew into herself. If you ask me, she probably felt she was being smothered.”

  “In Kim’s defense,” Nik said, “it’s probably not that easy being a single mother and Kim has been one for the last decade.”

  They reached his car. “I understand your loyalty—and I think it’s a very admirable quality,” he told her. “But in my house, my parents set a good example and trusted us to do the right thing. Innocent until proven guilty, that sort of thing.”

  Nik got into his car. “Not everyone is fortunate enough to grow up a Cavanaugh,” she told him as she fastened her seat belt.

  “It has nothing to do with being a Cavanaugh,” he protested. “It just has to do with trusting your kids.” Finn looked at her. This case had raised questions in his head, questions that had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the woman with him. “How about you?” he asked. “Your parents trust you?”

  “Parent,” Nik corrected. “It was just my dad, really,” she told him. “My mom decided early on that she really wanted something else out of life than being a mother, so one night she just handed my sister and me over to my dad and come morning, she was gone. She left a letter, he told us, but that was the last contact he ever had with my mother.”

  She sounded almost detached when she spoke. Had she distanced herself from the incident that much? “That must have been hard,” he said sympathetically.

  Nik shrugged as he finally started up his car. “Actually, it wasn’t. My dad and I always liked each other, so it was okay. He took over being both mother and father, like that was the way it had always been.” She smiled. “He loved us enough to fill both slots, so I never felt as if I had been abandoned. And I’ve got some great memories.”

  “Is your dad still around?” he asked suddenly. “I’d like to meet him.”

  Nik looked at him, pretending to be “shocked.”

  “Are you getting personal, Cavanaugh?” she asked, recalling what he’d been like at the start of their association. It hadn’t exactly been that long ago.

  He shrugged. “Working together like this, it’s hard not to,” he admitted.

  “Okay,” she said, thinking over his request. “Maybe when this is all over, I’ll introduce you to him.”

  “I’ll take that as a rain check,” he told her. “Right now, let’s go talk to this Dr. Garrett, see if he can shed some light on the situation.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she told him as he picked up speed.

  * * *

  There was a sign on Dr. James Garrett’s office door that read Closed for Renovations. There was also a date below that stated when the office was going to reopen again. There was also a phone number below that, referring patients to another doctor until the office officially reopened.

  “Looks like the good doctor is playing hooky,” Nik said, taking out her cell.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, curious.

  “I’m calling the number of the doctor listed he
re. It says he’s standing in for Dr. Garrett so maybe he can shed some light on this,” she said as she completed inputting the phone number.

  “Well, I—” Finn stopped talking because Nik was holding up her finger, indicating that she had gotten someone on the line.

  “Yes, I’m calling because I need to see the doctor,” she told the woman on the other end of the line. “My own doctor, Dr. Garrett, seems to be away for the next couple of weeks. I was wondering if you know if there’s been some mistake. Dr. Day is listed on the door as subbing for Dr. Garrett.”

  The woman on the other end of the call confirmed the bare essentials. “That’s right. Dr. Garrett’s office is being renovated and Dr. Day is taking on his patients. But I’m afraid that Dr. Day won’t be able to see you until next week. We’re booked solid.”

  “Do you know when Dr. Garrett will be back?” Nik asked.

  “I was told he’ll be back in two weeks, the way it says on the door,” the woman said coldly. “But apparently that’s not a date that’s written in stone.”

  “Really?” Nik asked. “Why’s that?”

  “I have no idea.” At this point, there were icicles dripping from the woman’s voice. “Now I’m going to need your name, your contact number and the name of your insurance carrier,” the woman told her.

  Which was when Nik hung up.

  Chapter 17

  Listening to Nik’s end of the conversation, Finn did his best to fill in the gaps.

  “Maybe Marilyn ran off with her doctor and now the two of them are away somewhere, living the high life.” He watched Nik’s face to see if he’d guessed right.

  “At this point, I’d believe anything,” she said, trying to harness her frustration. “But there’s still the matter of Marilyn’s partial fingerprint on your grandfather’s rearview mirror—and on the note that was found near what at the time was the first victim.” She looked at him, stymied. “Just how does that figure into all this?”