The Strong Silent Type Page 6

  He knew how his children felt about his ongoing search for their mother. They thought he was knocking his head against a stone wall. He’d noticed the look of pity in their eyes every time they saw him opening up the folders and spreading them out on his desk.

  “Give it up, Dad,” even Rayne, his youngest, had begged him. Rayne, who had taken her mother’s disappearance the hardest and who, after all these years, had finally come around and accepted the fact that her mother was gone, the way the rest of them had.

  Except that he knew his wife wasn’t gone. He’d seen her, talked to her. And now he needed proof.

  “Something like that,” he allowed, making his decision.

  Had he said the words to Callie, he knew that she’d be all over him, examining his tone, his inflection, the look on his face as he said what he said. His oldest daughter was part mind reader. But Teri was his fire-cracker. Hardly one thought fully formed in her mind before she was on to another.

  He figured he was safe.

  Andrew looked at his daughter more closely as they walked slowly to the squad room. She still looked too pale. But she was twenty-seven and he couldn’t very well lock her in her room. “So, how’s your day going?”

  “Not too well.” She struggled to bank down her growing frustration. They were close, so close. “We can’t get anything out of the ‘suspects’ we caught yesterday. They’ve lawyered up. But the M.O. is an exact duplicate of the other four home invasions that’ve gone down in the past month. The burglars got in using a key. The people are all upscale, but other than that, they have nothing in common except that they were targeted by these creeps.”

  “Keep at it, Teri. You’ll find the answer. You always do.” Afraid she might redirect the conversation back to him, Andrew drew his arm away from hers and glanced at his watch. “Well, don’t let me keep you from your work. And try to get home at a decent hour tonight.”

  It was her turn to wink at him. “That all depends on what you mean by decent.” Moving away, she began to disappear around the corner.

  Teri was his night owl, given to partying almost as hard as she was to devoting herself to police work. “Sometime before dawn,” he called after her.

  Her voice came floating back. “You got it.”

  Shaking his head, Andrew hurried off to the stairwell. It was the safest route right now. He didn’t want to take a chance on running into another one of his children. All five worked here, not to mention his four nephews. Even Janelle, Brian’s girl, was wont to pop up here, working with the detectives in her capacity as assistant district attorney.

  And although his late brother, Mike’s daughter Patience had opted for a different path by becoming a veterinarian, her services were frequently used in providing medical care for the force’s K-9 squad. That meant he could run into her, too. He didn’t feel like having to field questions from her, either, although of the lot of them, Patience was the most unassuming and laid-back.

  The stairwell was definitely the way to go until he was ready to share whatever findings Claude Wilkins came up with at the lab. Wilkins owed him more than a few favors, not the least of which was his present position as head of the crime lab. He’d promised to get the results to him as quickly as possible.

  Until then, he’d keep his own counsel. There was no use in stirring everyone up if there was no match.

  But in his heart, he knew there would be.

  His footsteps echoed as he went down the metal steps.

  “Hey, Cavanaugh, I saw your dad here earlier.” Mulrooney sat down at his desk, momentarily tearing his attention away from the slightly squished package of Ding Dongs that he’d ransomed out of the vending machine. It was his third such venture today. He claimed that chocolate made him think more clearly.

  Teri didn’t look up from the notes she was studying. So far, the flow chart she’d put together of all the victims had yielded nothing even vaguely enlightening. “Yeah, me, too,” she muttered.

  “What’s your dad doing hanging around the crime lab?”

  Mulrooney’s innocent question, uttered as he sank his teeth into the plastic wrapper and yanked, speared through her thoughts. Her head jerked up in his direction as he got her full attention.

  “The crime lab?”

  “Yeah.” The older detective shook his bounty out of its plastic confines onto a sheet of white paper on his desk. “Saw him giving something to Wilkins. A spoon and a book of some kind.” Using a plastic knife he kept in his desk, he meticulously divided the dessert into halves. “He doing consulting work for the department or something these days? I mean, the man was damn good when he worked here.” There was a fond note in his voice. “Everything ran like a well-oiled machine and crimes were down while number of cases solved were up.” Picking up the first half of the treat, he prepared to pop the whole thing into his mouth. “Maybe you can have him wander in and solve this case for us. You know, lay hands on the files and come up with an answer.” The suggestion was followed by a chuckle.

  Teri chewed on her lip, thinking. Her father hadn’t mentioned anything about stopping at the crime lab when she’d run into him. Now that she thought about it, he looked unwilling to talk about being here at all. And why would he be giving Wilkins a spoon and a book? Something was definitely up.

  More than anything else, she hated not knowing what was going on.

  She reached for the telephone on her desk, intending to call home and get to the bottom of this. But before she could dial, Hawk was standing next to her, putting several sheets on her desk.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Found another home invasion, sloppier than the others. Timeline puts it first.” Suddenly aware that there didn’t seem to be enough space between them, Hawk took a step back. “Maybe there was a learning curve for our guys.”

  Teri scanned the papers he’d printed up. “What do you mean?”

  Their desks were butted up against one another, head to head. He sat down behind his, allowing her to absorb what he was saying. Finding himself getting more and more in tune to her, he noticed she looked a little distracted. “The crime lab boys found prints on the scene that didn’t belong to any of the family members or friends.”

  Adrenaline surged through her. “Did the prints match anyone in the system?”

  His expression never changed. But then, Teri had a feeling he could have discovered gold on his property and never bat an eyelash. “No, but neither ‘suspect’ has any priors.”

  At least this was possible progress. “Okay—” she pushed back from her desk and stood “—then let’s go and see if we can get ourselves a match.”

  There was no match.

  The prints that were on file from the Del Torro case didn’t match the prints of either of the two men who had been captured invading the Wong apartment the day before.

  “Only means that there’s probably more people involved than the ones we’ve got cooling their heels in lockup,” Teri theorized with a deep sigh. “But then we already figured this operation has to be bigger than Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

  Still, it irritated her to move forward only to slide back again like this. She wanted that burst, the lead that finally brought all the pieces together.

  She paused, holding the results that had just been spit out of the machine. Another question nagged at her. Maybe she could at least get the answer and put it to rest. “Claude, what did my father give you earlier today?”

  Already at the door, Hawk turned slowly around to listen to the head technician’s reply. When she glanced in her partner’s direction, he was watching her, not Wilkins. She shut him out.

  Wilkins, a bewhiskered man in his fifties, measured his words out as slowly as he did the evidence he examined. “He wanted a favor.”

  “What kind of a favor?”

  To her frustration, Wilkins shook his head as he turned back to his work. “Look, Teri, I’m not comfortable talking about it. If you want to know, why don’t you ask him yourself?”
>
  “I will.” Banking down her annoyance, she turned on her heel and walked out.

  Hawk matched his stride to hers. For a small woman, she could cover a lot of ground when she put her mind to it.

  “We’re working on a case, Cavanaugh.”

  So now he was her conscience as well as her partner? “I know,” she snapped, pushing the down button on the elevator pad. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”

  Her tone didn’t put him off. His own was infuriatingly mild as he continued. “Don’t you think that should be your first priority?”

  The elevator arrived and she stomped in, punching the button for the floor she wanted before she trusted herself to answer. “My family’s my first priority. My job’s a close second.”

  He stood beside her, the six-foot-two voice of reason she didn’t want to hear right now. “Seems to me if your father wanted you to know, he would have told you when you ran into him.”

  So he’d overheard Mulrooney earlier. She resented him taking this high-handed attitude about her life. “What are you, an authority on father-daughter relationships all of a sudden?”

  His shoulders rose and fell in a seemingly disinterested shrug. “Just making an observation.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  Arriving on their floor, she got out ahead of him. But two steps toward the squad room, she got a renewed hold over her emotions. Since yesterday, they seemed to be all over the place. Maybe getting shot had affected her more than she realized. She definitely had to get a grip.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to get so testy. It’s just that—”

  “You have to know everything.”

  Mentally, she counted to ten. She couldn’t follow an apology with an explosion. “Not everything, just what’s going on with my family. With my father,” she underscored. Because without him, there would have been no family. Andrew Cavanaugh was the glue that held all of them together.

  “Have you ever heard of privacy?”

  “I have.” Was he bent on getting her angry, or didn’t he realize how annoying his questions, his quiet tone were? “I’ve got no intentions of posting my findings on the Internet.” She stopped walking, choosing instead to have it out with him in an alcove of the hallway. “Look, in my house, we care about the other person, and if there’s something going on, we all pitch in to work it out. My father deliberately held back when I asked him what he was doing here.”

  Hawk could always see things from the point of view of the loner. And right now, it appeared that for all his gregariousness, Andrew Cavanaugh had assumed the role of the loner.

  “Maybe he had his reasons.” He looked at her pointedly. “And whatever they are, they don’t include you.”

  Her temper flared again. “Caring always includes me. That’s just how it is.”

  “He’s a big boy.” Because standing here in this small, recessed space in the hall with her was affecting him in a manner he didn’t welcome, Hawk backed out, signaling an end to the dialogue. Convincing Cavanaugh of something when she didn’t want to hear it was like trying to pour water into a stone. “When he’s ready for you to know, he’ll tell you. Meanwhile, don’t let it eat you up. You want to do some investigating, save it for the job.”

  Teri watched his back as he walked away from her. She frowned. Hawk was right. She didn’t want to give it to him, but he was. If her father was being secretive, it was for a reason. Most likely, he probably thought he was shielding them from something.

  For now she’d let the matter go. But not for long.

  Wilkins called later to say that none of the DNA evidence that had been collected from the any of the other four invasions matched the DNA of the two men they had in custody.

  “Damn.”

  It took effort not to slam down the phone. This latest dead end sapped away the last bit of her already-dwindling energy. Dragging a hand through her hair, Teri made up her mind. She knew she wasn’t going to be any good to the case unless she got away from it for a while.

  Hitting the right combination of keys, she shut off her computer. Her shift had been over for more than an hour. It was time to go home.

  “There’s no match.”

  Not raising his eyes from his work, Hawk said, “I gathered.”

  “I’m calling it a night.” Hawk barely nodded to acknowledge hearing the information. Ready to dash out, Teri lingered for a moment. Everyone else had already checked out for the night. She’d hung around waiting for Wilkins. God knew why Hawk was hanging around. “I’m stopping at the Shannon, want to come along?”

  Hawk looked up from his notes. Cavanaugh had invited him to the local police hangout a number of times and he’d never taken her up on it, preferring his own company and the soothing dim atmosphere of the bar near his studio apartment.

  To call Joe’s a dingy dive was being charitable. As far as drink or food went, the Shannon undoubtedly had it all over Joe’s. Still, the people who frequented Joe’s valued their anonymity and respected the same of others. He didn’t have to talk if he didn’t want to. That had always been a selling feature for him.

  “Got my own place to go.”

  It was a dismissal. But tonight, she didn’t feel like being dismissed. Coming around to his desk, she leaned over until she was almost in his face. “I owe you a drink for yesterday.”

  Because she was far too close into his comfort zone for him to think clearly, he pushed his chair back. Giving himself some breathing space. “You took my bullet. I’d say it was even.”

  “Damn it, Hawk, just come out for a drink with me.” Determined, Teri planted herself on his desk, blocking any view he had of the file he’d been studying. “I promise I won’t bite.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, remembering the short, blood-heating interlude in the car yesterday afternoon. Remembering the taste of her lips against his. Remembering, too, other things that had gone on. No, he wouldn’t say she didn’t bite. Or at the very least, she had a really big kick to her.

  Very slowly, what could have passed for a smile in some circles rose to his lips, curving them just a hint. “Can I have that in writing?”

  She caught his drift immediately. “If you mean yesterday, I wasn’t biting. That was called a kiss and you really do need to get out more.”

  So she’d already said. He had no idea what made him ask the next question. “Why? For lessons?”

  “Nope, that is one thing you don’t need, Hawkins. Lessons.” Even as she spoke, a glimmer of the feeling she’d experienced yesterday came back to her. She knew enough to be able to separate it from the half-drowsy state created by the painkillers she’d taken. His kiss had curled her toes. “I’d even go so far as to say that you were a natural.”

  He tugged on the folder that was now partially planted beneath her butt. “Then I don’t need to get out more, do I?”

  He’d trapped her with her own words, but she wasn’t one to accept defeat easily. Rather than move as he tugged, she took hold of his sleeve and tugged herself.

  “Come with me to the Shannon or I’ll come into the squad room tomorrow morning and tell everyone that you carried me down five flights of stairs and held my hand while the surgeon stitched me up.”

  Obviously her perspective had gotten confused. “I didn’t hold your hand—you held on to mine. I just didn’t relish the idea of having it ripped out of the socket, remember?”

  After twenty-four hours, you’d think he would have come up with a better excuse than that, she thought. He’d stayed because he’d wanted to stay, pure and simple. If he hadn’t, no power on earth would have made him.

  Just like now. Teri scooted off the desk and crossed to the door. “Your whole reputation as a tough guy is on the line here,” she warned, her hand on the doorknob.

  “No one would believe you.” He was already going back to his work.

  Teri cocked her head, looking at him. Waiting. “You want to take that chance?”

  He wasn’t going to get
anywhere further tonight. His brain felt tired and he needed a respite. Looking up, he saw her still standing there. Hawk frowned. “Just one drink?”

  She raised her right hand as if she was about to take a solemn oath. “Just one drink. Unless, of course, you want more.”

  Maybe, a small voice whispered within him. Annoyed, he blocked it out. “I want less,” he informed her.

  “Then one it is.” The bar, run by two brothers who were both former policemen, was located several blocks away from the police precinct. “C’mon, we’ll take my car. I’ll drive.”

  Hawk rose to his feet. “We’ll take both cars and we’ll both drive.”

  He didn’t trust her further than he could throw her. Less, he amended. If he gave her an inch, she’d take a mile. And he might just let her. That would lead to places neither one of them could afford to go.

  It didn’t take a clairvoyant to know what he was thinking. She smiled at him. “Looking to make a quick getaway?”

  Slipping on his jacket, he gave her a dark look. “I don’t appreciate you constantly second-guessing what’s on my mind. Stop it.”

  “Yes, sir.” She’d won the round, she could afford to be generous. And then she added with a grin, “You never know when that might come in handy someday.”

  He didn’t see how that was possible.

  The wall of noise within the Shannon died down several decibels the moment he walked in behind Teri. His first inclination was just to back out, get back into his car and go to Joe’s. He hadn’t wanted to come anyway. It wasn’t as if he didn’t see enough of the others, especially Cavanaugh, during regular hours.

  But he’d never backed away from anything and this little venture fell under the heading of a challenge, no matter how small.

  So he kept on walking, his eyes fixed on the long, sleek bar that ran the length of the rear wall. How long could it take to drink one beer?