Cavanaugh Cold Case Read online

  He’d interviewed and hired her himself after Jacobs, the department’s last medical examiner, felt compelled to accept a better position in the private industry. Outside of proposing to his second wife, he felt it was one of the best decisions he’d ever made.

  “Just asking the doc here some general questions pertaining to this boneyard that’s being unearthed even as we speak.” He flashed a wide grin in her direction. “She’s giving me the benefit of her rather droll point of view.”

  Sean looked from his nephew to the young woman he felt was capable of great things. He knew all about Malloy’s reputation. He’d raised several sons like that himself and knew firsthand that it took a while for the kinks to work themselves out. Malloy was a good cop and ultimately an even better human being. The name of the game was patience.

  Sean, in turn, smiled at the young woman between his nephew and him. “I’m sure that Dr. Alberghetti will let us all know when she’s had time to formulate a scientific opinion regarding this unfortunate treasure trove of death that the construction crew stumbled across.”

  Easygoing almost to a fault, Brian Cavanaugh’s somewhat slightly older brother had just finished his sentence as a teeth-jarring, crowing sound pierced the air again.

  The closest thing to a dirty look passed over Sean’s face as he glanced over his shoulder. “Doesn’t that blasted bird ever just stop making noise and go to sleep? That’s the third time he’s crowed since we got here. Isn’t he supposed to be tuned in to some inner clock or something?”

  “I don’t know about an inner clock, but it’s too bad that he can’t talk,” Malloy commented, his eyes sweeping over the immediate area, then taking in the weather-battered trailer in the distance, as well. He had to be getting back to the unfriendly owner. “Maybe then he could give us some insight on what happened here.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to,” Kristin said flatly, not bothering to look up. “Roosters live about ten years. Fifteen at most. These bodies all appear to be older than that.”

  Taken aback, Malloy looked at her quizzically. “You actually know how long roosters live?” He raised his eyes to meet his uncle’s. “Wow, she’s just a regular font of miscellaneous information, isn’t she?”

  Sean smiled in response. “She reads a lot in her downtime,” he told his nephew. “Although there isn’t going to be very much downtime in her immediate future, I’m afraid.”

  “She also has excellent hearing,” Kristin interjected without pausing what she was doing.

  “My apologies, Kristin,” Sean told her, willingly taking the blame. “That was rude.”

  This time Kristin did stop what she was doing. When she spoke, her words were addressed only to the older man, who she considered to be her mentor despite the fact that he had no medical degree.

  “You could never be rude, sir. He, however,” she went on, casting one dismissive glance in Malloy’s direction, “is an entirely different story.”

  “Ouch.” Malloy pretended to wince. “Moving right along—”

  “Please, do,” Kristin murmured just audibly enough to be overheard.

  Roy Harrison picked that moment to approach the trio, a dark, impatient scowl all but embedded on his long, thin face. “Hey, when is she going to be finished?” he demanded, irritably waving his hand at Kristin.

  Kristin was about to speak up and put the sour-looking man in his place when she heard someone else doing it for her.

  “When she’s done,” Malloy informed the disgruntled new owner of the nursery in no uncertain terms, his tone far removed from his usual friendly cadence.

  Kristin looked at the detective in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to come to her defense. Part of her waited for Malloy to add, “Just kidding,” but he didn’t.

  “Is she going to keep on digging straight down to the other side of the world until she turns up all the bones from here to there?” Harrison retorted.

  “Nope, just the ones that are buried along the perimeter of your property,” Sean told him pleasantly. His words didn’t match the chief’s expression.

  Apparently, Malloy thought, sarcasm was wasted on the nursery’s new owner, because he took the head of the CSI unit seriously.

  “My bulldozer can go a lot faster,” Harrison told them.

  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that the man’s only interest in the matter was speed, and that he couldn’t care less about any sort of resolution as far as solving the crime went. The abrupt cessation of work was costing him a considerable amount of money for each minute that went by, and not only was money the bottom line, apparently as far as Harrison was concerned it was the only line.

  “Your bulldozer can also crush a lot of those bones beyond recognition,” Malloy told him before Kristin could speak up.

  In his estimation, Harrison was clearly a Neanderthal type, and anything that the medical examiner had to say, Malloy knew, wouldn’t carry any weight. There was no point in having her hit her head against a brick wall.

  “It’s not like they’re exactly a pretty sight right now,” the frustrated nursery owner snapped.

  “Mr. Harrison, the less time you spend standing here, talking and tying us up, the faster this’ll go and the faster you’ll be able to get back to building up your nursery,” Malloy pointed out. “Now, if you really want to talk, that’s great,” he continued cheerfully. “I have plenty of questions I’d like to ask you.”

  At this point, the scowl on Harrison’s face was going clear down to the bone. Second-guessing the detective’s question, he snapped, “No, I didn’t kill anybody.”

  The smile that flashed across Malloy’s lips was entirely superficial and empty. “That’s very reassuring to know, Mr. Harrison, but that wasn’t going to be my question.”

  “Oh.” Harrison looked somewhat taken aback. “Well, what was it, then?” the nursery owner asked, trying not to look flustered.

  To get out of the medical examiner’s way—and possibly on her good side—Malloy began to inch his way up the incline, leading the nursery owner back toward the uninviting trailer. “How did you come to be the owner of this property?”

  Following the detective, Harrison looked at him as if he were simpleminded. “The usual way. I bought the damn thing.”

  “From?” Malloy asked, attempting to coax more information out of him.

  Harrison’s expression grew even more condescending as he looked at the man asking him these questions. “The person selling it.”

  Malloy blew out a breath, trying not to let his temper get the better of him. This wasn’t anything new. He’d dealt with idiots before. “I need a name, Mr. Harrison. Who sold you the property?”

  Harrison stopped walking. “My lawyer handled it. He dealt with some long-time employee who worked here. The guy was acting on behalf of the owner.”

  The man was definitely a challenge to his patience, Malloy thought. “I still need a name, Mr. Harrison.”

  “I don’t have a name,” Harrison snapped irritably. “I already told you. My lawyer handled all that. He does all my transactions.”

  “All right, then I’ll need his name,” Malloy said, the calm timbre of his voice belying the way he really felt about this verbal square dance.

  Part of him would have felt a certain amount of satisfaction if he could have discovered that Harrison was behind these murders. He made a mental note to investigate the man’s background and his general whereabouts twenty years ago—although he would have been very young at the time.

  “Fine,” Harrison bit off. “I’ve got his card in that tin can of an office up there.” He waved his hand contemptuously toward the trailer.

  “Lead the way,” Malloy said amicably, fairly certain that Harrison wasn’t aware that he was being led up to that trailer already.

  Harrison frowned at the former owner’
s living accommodations. “First thing in the morning, I’m having that piece of junk hauled off and getting a real RV set up in its place until I can have a building erected.” He aimed a penetrating glare at the detective next to him. “Unless that’s against the law, too.”

  Malloy counted to ten in his head before he addressed the owner’s contemptuous statement. “None of it’s against the law, Mr. Harrison. There are just procedures that have to be followed.”

  “Procedures be damned,” Harrison snorted. “I’m losing money here.”

  “And I’m very sorry about that, Mr. Harrison,” Malloy responded, his voice almost singsong in tone, even as he deliberately assumed a contrite expression. “You could write a letter to the department, detailing the inconvenience that this investigation is causing you—not to mention the money it’s costing you,” he added, then approximated a sympathetic tone, saying, “Maybe they’ll reimburse you.”

  Again Harrison stopped walking, wonder written across his dour face. “They’d do that?”

  Malloy eased himself out of the corner with the skill of a savvy con artist, something he had picked up by observing the people he tracked down and arrested.

  “I don’t handle that end of it, but nothing’s impossible,” he told the nursery owner innocently.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the amused look on Sean’s face. The latter had come closer and overheard him. It took effort for Malloy to maintain a completely unaffected and neutral expression as he followed Harrison the rest of the way up the incline and into the trailer.

  The trailer’s interior had a musty smell, thanks to piles of papers that hadn’t been sorted and either filed away or disposed of in a long time. Harrison cursed roundly under his breath as he searched his desk.

  “Here!” Harrison declared dramatically, finally finding the business card he was looking for. He all but slapped it into the detective’s hand.

  “You might want to call ahead and tell him I’ll be stopping by,” Malloy advised. He slipped the business card into his wallet and tucked the wallet away. “Do you remember when you bought this property?”

  Suspicion crowded the distrustful brown eyes. “Almost five weeks ago. Why?”

  “That was going to be my next question,” Malloy told him, his voice deceptively friendly sounding. “Why?”

  Harrison’s dark eyebrows drew together in a perplexed look. “You mean why did I buy it?”

  “Yes.” It seemed a simple enough question on the surface, Malloy thought. “Was it a lifelong passion of yours to surround yourself with greenhouses full of exotic plants? Or were you looking for a business write-off when you bought this property? Or...?”

  He let his voice trail off. There was still the possibility that Harrison had somehow been involved in these murders that made up the cold case. Maybe the man knew about the bodies buried here and didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands. In his haste to make money, he’d forgotten that the bodies were on this side of the property rather than the developed side.

  Malloy watched the nursery owner and waited for him to respond.

  Harrison stared at him for a few moments, then shrugged. “I just wanted my own business, and I thought that being in charge of a nursery like this would be relatively stress free.” He punctuated the sentence with a dry, self-mocking laugh. “How’s that for a stupid move?”

  “Not necessarily a stupid move, Mr. Harrison. Things’ll be resolved one way or another,” Malloy assured him. “So, you didn’t know the owner before the property changed hands?” he asked innocently.

  “Didn’t know the owner after it changed hands, either,” Harrison retorted. “All I know is what my lawyer told me. The nursery used to belong to this collector who got too carried away collecting. He opened up a nursery and did a fair amount of business. He died some fifteen, eighteen years ago and left the place to his sister. She kept the place going, turning it into a real thriving business. When she got sick, she put one of the employees in charge. Eventually she asked him to sell it for her and then I got it. End of story.”

  Malloy glanced out of the window down to the site of activity at the far end of the property. From this vantage point, he could see his uncle, the two other members of the CSI team, not to mention the doctor with the killer legs, still working the multiple grave site, all under the entertained eyes of the four construction workers.

  The latter group gave no signs of moving, the former gave no indication that they were about to stop. All of which put a decided crimp into Harrison’s anticipated opening date.

  He turned around to look at the new owner. “I’m sorry, I missed the last sentence,” Malloy apologized. “What did you just say?”

  Harrison frowned at what he took to be the detective’s inattention. “I said, ‘End of story.’”

  “I’m afraid not yet,” Malloy corrected, looking at the man pointedly.

  Chapter 3

  The Cold Case Division of the Aurora PD was not a very big department. Nor was it a very popular department to work for. Tracking down sometimes decades-old information was definitely not to everyone’s taste. Patience was at a premium.

  When Malloy had been promoted to the rank of detective and put in his application to join that division, he’d viewed working cold cases as a challenge, a way to prove his mettle and his tenacity. Because of his last name, he knew he had to work harder. Cavanaughs were scrutinized closely and held up to a higher standard. This was his way of proving himself.

  But there was just so much of a challenge that a man could be expected to take, and working a cold case that had all the earmarks of involving more bodies than were regularly found on a major league baseball team was, in his opinion, over and above the call of duty.

  It wasn’t something that he really felt he could tackle alone.

  So when Malloy got back to the squad room and saw that his partner was not sitting at his desk, he grew somewhat anxious and testy.

  For the past week, Frank Weatherbee had been on vacation, but he was due back today. Malloy looked over toward his partner’s desk to see if there were any telltale signs of life—like Weatherbee’s ever-present bag of barbecue chips—on his desk. But there were no chips. Not a thing was out of place, which Malloy didn’t take as a good sign. When Weatherbee was in, everything on the detective’s desk was out of place.

  Malloy scanned the squad room. “Anyone seen Weatherbee?” he asked, raising his voice so it would carry throughout the room.

  The detective sitting closest to him, Wade Cooper, shook his head. “Haven’t seen Weatherbee since he went waltzing off on his vacation, the lucky SOB.”

  “Well, he should have come waltzing back this morning,” Malloy pointed out, annoyed.

  “Maybe he decided to take an extra day,” Cooper guessed, a vague, careless shrug punctuating his statement.

  “He knows better than that,” Malloy said, rejecting Cooper’s suggestion. “We’re shorthanded in the department to begin with—and he knows I’ll kill him.”

  Cooper shrugged again, his narrow shoulders hardly making a ripple beneath the wrinkled houndstooth jacket he wore. “Hey, I’m just guessing here. Why don’t you ask Julie?” he said, referring to the department’s administrative assistant. The woman’s desk was just outside of their captain’s cubbyhole of an office. “Maybe Weatherbee called her to say he’s running late because of traffic.”

  Malloy hoped that was all that it was, although it was getting on in the day and if his partner was going to be here, he would have already made it in.

  It wasn’t traffic.

  When Malloy asked Julie Myers about his partner, he found out that Weatherbee had called in. But the word “traffic” had never entered the conversation.

  However, something else entirely had. Something else that Julie went on at length to explain. As he list
ened, Malloy’s mouth dropped open. Talk about rotten timing.

  “He did what?” Malloy asked, staring at the woman who had been with the department longer than his uncle Brian had been the chief of detectives.

  Patiently, Julie repeated—verbatim—what she had just told the annoyed-looking detective. “Weatherbee said he broke his leg and can’t come in.”

  The hell he couldn’t, Malloy thought in disgust. He’d seen some of his cousins power through with gaping holes in their sides, not taking a break until the case they were working on was all wound up and closed.

  Didn’t people believe in work ethics anymore?

  “I need him,” Malloy argued. “Hasn’t Weatherbee ever heard of crutches?”

  Julie gave him a sympathetic look. “The detective said he was too banged up to use them.”

  That had Malloy momentarily reconsidering his reaction. “Was Weatherbee in a car accident?” he asked Julie.

  The older woman shook her head. “No, a bike accident. From what he told me, he and his wife collided while they were biking through the Los Angeles Forest.” There was a drop of sympathy in her voice as she told him, “Weatherbee’s mother is taking care of both of them.”

  “Biking?” Malloy echoed incredulously, still working with that piece of information. “What’s he doing on a bike? The guy’s as coordinated as an octopus crossing the Painted Desert.” He blew out a breath. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn annoying and inconvenient. “Of all the stupid, harebrained—”

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” Julie protested, raising her hands to ward off his words before they became too colorful. “I just took Weatherbee’s call. I didn’t rent him the bikes.”

  Malloy nodded, a somewhat contrite expression on his face. He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations—or Weatherbee’s stupidity—out on her. Julie had nothing to do with the situation. It wasn’t her fault that his partner was one sandwich short of a picnic.