Cavanaugh In Plain Sight (Cavanaugh Justice Book 42) Page 5

  “Krys will do fine,” she told the young man with a smile.

  “Krys,” he repeated a little awkwardly.

  Okay, that was enough chitchat, Morgan thought. Taking out his wallet, he flashed his ID as well as his police badge.

  The smile on the desk clerk’s face vanished and his eyes grew huge.

  “We’d like to see your surveillance tapes,” Morgan told him just as Krys gave the stunned clerk her credit card.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked again, this time more hoarsely as his face turned ashen.

  “Ms. Kowalski was almost hit by a black van just now in your parking lot. I was hoping to be able to get the van’s license plate.”

  “Certainly, certainly.” And then the clerk paused. “Did this happen close to the hotel entrance?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. Why?”

  “Because the cameras located closest to the entrance are working,” the clerk said, then continued, somewhat embarrassed, “but the ones that monitor the parking lots that are farther away have been down since last Saturday.” His voice sped up as he continued talking. “Security promised that they’d be up and running before the weekend, but if the incident you’re asking about happened in one of those lots, I’m afraid that I’m not going to be much help.”

  “Show me what you have anyway.”

  “Of course,” Jeremy said almost eagerly. “I’ll have copies made for you.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll take the originals,” Morgan told him. “You’ll get them back when I’m finished with them.”

  Jeremy looked hesitant. “I’ll have to ask corporate,” the clerk stuttered.

  Listening to him, Morgan’s expression never changed. He just continued eying the clerk until the latter backed off.

  “I’m—I’m sure it’ll be all right, seeing as how you’re one of Aurora’s finest,” he said, his mouth moving spasmodically in a very uncomfortable, stiff smile. The young clerk’s dark brown eyes shifted back and forth nervously.

  “I appreciate that,” Morgan told him, his voice sounding very serious. There wasn’t a hint of a smile anywhere.

  “We both do,” Krys said, belatedly realizing that she had inadvertently made it sound as if she and Morgan were a duo that went beyond just a police detective and a near victim of a hit-and-run.

  * * *

  Armed with the surveillance tapes, which at first glance did not appear to have captured the black van at all, Morgan proceeded to take Krys home. He was surprised when she gave him her address and it turned out to be a house.

  “You live in a house?” he asked.

  “Yes, why does that surprise you?” she asked.

  “I just pictured someone who’s always on the go as living in an apartment or at the very most, a condo,” he answered, turning in to her development.

  “I like the idea of a house,” she answered. “It gives me a sense of permanency. Besides, Nik lived here. That makes it seem more like home,” she admitted.

  The woman, Morgan thought, was less of an independent rebel than she liked to portray.

  Chapter 5

  As he approached Krys’s front door, Morgan looked at the cacti planted amid clusters of colorful little rocks. “You know, cacti seem rather suited to you,” he commented.

  “Why?” she asked, unlocking her front door. “Because we’re both prickly?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines that cacti are independent and don’t need much care and attention to survive, but prickly works, too,” he added, just the slightest touch of humor evident in his voice.

  While it was true that Krys certainly liked her independence, there were times when she found herself wishing for attention—the right sort of attention—from someone who mattered.

  One of the last things that Ian had said to her before he had died was, “Don’t be like me, Krys. Don’t shut yourself off from people and just live for the job. Once in a while, you need to be vulnerable, or else you’re going to wind up alone—like me. I was always sure that there would be more time to have a family, a home, the whole nine yards—right after I finished the next big story. Except that I wound up running out of time.”

  “Krys?”

  She blinked, realizing that this wasn’t the first time Morgan had said her name, trying to get her attention. She had managed to temporarily drift off. Coming to, she turned the knob and pushed open the front door.

  Morgan walked in behind her. “Where did you go just then?”

  “Nowhere.” She could tell by the look on the detective’s face that she had answered him too quickly. She didn’t want to go into any explanations, especially not about something so personal as thinking about Ian’s warning. “I was just trying to remember something, that’s all,” she said.

  “About who might be trying to kill you?” Morgan asked as he closed the door behind him and flipped the lock. He tried it and it held, but he still made a mental note that she could stand to have a better lock put in in the morning.

  “No, about something my friend told me just before he died,” she answered.

  “Oh.”

  Since she didn’t seem as if she wanted to share whatever that was, he left it alone for now. The only thing he was really interested in was whatever detail might wind up leading him to the person or persons who were obviously out to get her and, at the very least, do her bodily harm if not kill her outright. At this point, he sincerely doubted that after two misses, whoever wanted to hurt her was just going to pick up their marbles and go home.

  Morgan took a long look around her dwelling. They were standing in a spacious, open living room that led to a kitchen on one side and probably bedrooms on the other. The whole interior had the sort of orientation that allowed sunlight to reach every available corner of the house, brightening it. From what he could see, the décor appeared to be modern and modest with just enough furnishings to be functional, but not cluttered.

  The word utilitarian sprang to mind.

  “You’ve got a nice place here,” he told her.

  It didn’t escape his notice that Krys had left the suitcase standing by the door where he had initially put it down. That way she could grab it at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t help thinking that she definitely regarded it as a “to-go bag.”

  “Thank you. I like it,” Krys replied, not really sure if he was just being polite, or if he actually liked her house.

  His eyes took inventory of every visible square inch. It seemed like a lot of space for just one person. “You live here alone?”

  As a detective, she figured he had to ask that so he could get a handle on her living quarters, but somehow, the question felt almost too personal.

  “Yes,” she answered, looking up at Morgan. “It’s just me now that Nik’s married. Why?”

  He shrugged carelessly. “Just trying to get the lay of the land,” he told her. He made his way into the kitchen. When he didn’t see a doorway leading to another part of the house, he turned in the opposite direction. “How many bedrooms?”

  “Three,” she answered automatically, then amended her answer. “More like two and a tiny alcove, actually. There’s one bathroom and one half bath,” she told him before he could ask. “Anything else?” she asked with a false note of cheerfulness.

  “Only that with that attitude, I wouldn’t suggest you ever think about getting into real estate to earn a living,” he told her, continuing to look around. There was a sliding glass door off the small area adjacent to the kitchen. He supposed that, with a little bit of imaginative description, that might have passed as a family room. “Your back door doesn’t look very secure,” he said, frowning at the offending door.

  Krys crossed over to it, standing on one side of the sliding door. “It has a lock on it.”

  He spared a disapproving glance in the door’s direction. “
A lock that a nine-year-old could pick, not to mention that it’s a glass door, which means that it could easily be broken.”

  She didn’t appreciate what he was doing. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  Morgan frowned at the conclusion she had jumped to. “What I’m trying to do is make you aware of your surroundings.”

  “Oh, make no mistake about it. I am definitely aware of them,” she assured him. She didn’t need him pointing out the obvious. She needed him to find out who had taken a shot at her and then tried to hit her with their van.

  He made a decision. “I can have a police car patrolling the area every half hour,” Morgan told her, taking out his cell phone so that he could put a request in to the station.

  “Every half hour,” she repeated, nodding. “That’ll give my killer a twenty-nine-minute window he could use to shoot me.”

  About to say something, Morgan paused and studied her face. “Are you afraid?”

  “No.” She laughed, brushing off his question. She had sounded too serious just then, she thought, upbraiding herself. The last thing she wanted was to sound like a frightened, old-fashioned damsel in distress. “Just pulling your leg.”

  Krys crossed back into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I can fix us something to eat.”

  Morgan frowned impatiently. “Krys, this isn’t a social call.”

  “I’m aware of that. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have something to eat. I’ve got some chicken soup I could warm up, or I could just get something delivered if you’d rather have that.” Temporarily closing the refrigerator door, she turned around to look at Morgan. “What are you in the mood for?”

  “Answers,” he told her.

  They were obviously not on the same wavelength right now, she thought. “What kind of answers?”

  Either she was really in denial, or she had completely forgotten that he told her he wanted her to give him a list of names of the people she thought might be possible suspects in her own personal version of a murder mystery.

  Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Morgan refreshed her memory. “That list of names I asked you for,” he reminded her.

  Krys nodded, resigned that he wouldn’t eat anything until she supplied him with at least some of the people she talked to or got information about. Somewhere in that list might be a person worried enough about their future that they’d eventually decided they had it in for her.

  “All right, let’s get that out of the way,” she agreed. She gestured around the general area. “Where do you want to sit?”

  He’d always found that sitting at a desk or table made it easier for him to jot things down than sitting on a sofa. Morgan indicated her kitchen table. “How about over there?”

  “Just let me get something first,” she told him. She began to go toward the back of the house. He followed her, but she looked at him over her shoulder. “That’s okay. I don’t need an escort,” she said. “I know my way around here.”

  Her flippant quip made him frown. “This isn’t a joke, you know.”

  “I know,” she replied tersely. “Would you be happier if I assumed a fetal position and sucked my thumb?”

  “No.” It was hard not to snap. “The sooner you give me what I’m asking for, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair,” he said, addressing the spot where she’d been.

  “You know,” she called out to him, “you might think about working on your technique a little.”

  “And you might think about taking this a little more seriously than you are, Kowalski,” he told her just as she re-entered the kitchen, carrying her laptop with her.

  She supposed the man needed to have this spelled out for him. “Trust me, if I take this any more seriously—if I stop moving around like this—” she spread out her hand “—I might break down altogether. I just buried a man I regarded as another father, my only relative might be in danger because of me, and some crazy person is out there, gunning for me for some reason unknown to me. So yes, I know this is serious, but I am doing everything I can not to let the weight of this whole thing crush me because then I won’t be any help at all. If you don’t approve of my way of handling this, I’m sorry, but I’m doing the very best I can under the circumstances.”

  Morgan felt for her. Maybe he had been too hard on her, he thought. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to set you off like that.”

  Krys inclined her head, letting him slide. “Fair enough. And for my part, I’m sorry that I just went off,” she apologized. She put her laptop on the table and turned it on. “I thought it might help if you took a glimpse at one of my articles, the series I did on Bluebeard.”

  “The pirate?” Morgan asked, thoroughly confused at this point.

  “No,” she explained patiently, “that was Blackbeard. Bluebeard was the nickname the news media gave the guy who was marrying those women for their money and then doing away with them, or, according to him, they ‘died on him,’ leaving him bereft, grieving—and, of course, exceedingly rich.”

  Morgan looked at the laptop screen she had pulled up and placed before him. He preferred getting his information firsthand rather than just reading about it, but since she seemed to feel that her writing was what had gotten her to this particular place, he decided to indulge Krys and review the series, at least in part. Anything to get her to give him the list of people she had come in contact with.

  Morgan skimmed over several paragraphs before he looked up at Krys again. He dealt with the criminal element—and would-be criminals—all the time, but what she had in her article still took his breath away. “And this was all verified?”

  “Absolutely,” she answered, adding, “Every single word of it. I pride myself on my research. I interviewed everyone who came in contact with this deadly Romeo. That included the friends and families of the victims as well as people who knew him as the ‘attentive spouse.’” Krys laughed dryly. “However temporary that characterization might have been.”

  “And according to you, this is all the same guy?” he asked.

  “According to the evidence,” she corrected him, “it’s the same guy. With each new woman, he changed his name, his backstory, his hairstyle and the way he dressed, but it was always the same man.”

  Krys pulled up an array of photographs that, at first glance, appeared to be of different men, but on closer examination all turned out to be one and the same man.

  “Look at the set of his mouth. It’s the same guy,” she told him. “I felt like I had just scraped the tip of the iceberg, that there were more victims I hadn’t uncovered yet. I was there when they arrested him,” she told Morgan. “There was something about his attitude that told me he was having the last laugh.”

  “And he escaped,” Morgan said, remembering what she had told hum.

  Krys nodded, clearly disappointed by the turn of events. “Just like Houdini,” she said. “For all I know, he’s vanished. That means he’s gone to another state, another country—or he could be hiding right around the corner, waited to take out his revenge against the person who caused his perfect game to crumble.” And it was the not knowing where and when—and if—he might pop up that was driving her crazy.

  “But from what you made it sound like, he’s not your only possible suspect, right?” Morgan asked, trying to get her to elaborate about the heart of the matter and prodding her along.

  “No, I’m afraid he’s not,” Krys admitted. “But the article involving Weatherly Pharmaceuticals and their ‘miracle’ drug hasn’t been published online yet.”

  “Has it been publicized?” he asked.

  “I’m sure word got around,” she answered. “I interviewed people, lots and lots of people,” she emphasized, and then she gave him an example of the types of people she had made a point to talk to. “People developing the drug, people who were used as test subjects and took this new ‘miracle’ drug. I wasn’t worki
ng in a vacuum and my intent wasn’t a secret. Considering the number of people involved, I’m sure someone had to have talked to someone somewhere along the line.”

  “So I take it that we’ve got the current suspect list narrowed down to the immediate world,” Morgan said dryly. “Give or take a few people.”

  “Pretty much.” Unlike Morgan, she wasn’t being sarcastic.

  “Well, this is going to take a lot longer than I anticipated,” Morgan murmured under his breath.

  “Which was why I suggested making us something to eat,” she pointed out cheerfully. “At least you’ll be fortified to continue going through the information.”

  Morgan shook his head. “I don’t know whether to think that you’re being exceptionally brave or incredibly blasé about this whole matter.”

  “Like I said, you can think of it as my coping mechanism. Now, once again, what can I make for you? To review, your choices are leftover homemade chicken soup or I could have something delivered. I’m on a first-name basis with several delivery services.”

  The first thing she had mentioned caught his attention. “Homemade?” he repeated. “Whose home?” he asked archly.

  “Mine,” she answered.

  Morgan looked at her, trying to judge whether or not she was just attempting to put one over on him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I kid about something like that?” she asked.

  He continued to scrutinize her, trying to get a better handle on the person she was. Was she genuine, or prone to giving herself airs no matter what that involved? “You actually made chicken soup?”

  “Yes,” she answered, drawing out the single word as she tried to decide where he was going with this.

  “From scratch?” he questioned.

  “Is there any other way to make homemade soup?” she asked him.

  “Yeah,” he answered flippantly. “You can use a can opener and empty the contents of the can into a pot. Then you heat that on a burner—or the microwave if you’re in a particular hurry.”