Cavanaugh Standoff Page 7

  “Pass what on, Lieutenant?” one of the detectives standing closest to him asked. “Something going down?”

  “Chief of Police Hudson died of a heart attack the night before last.”

  The lieutenant paused as echoes of sympathy and surprise were heard around the room. The chief hadn’t been as well liked as Andrew Cavanaugh had been, but he had been well respected.

  After a couple of minutes Carver continued with his announcement. “There’s going to be an official funeral for Chief Hudson on Monday at ten in the morning. Everyone who’s not on patrol at that time is expected to attend,” he told the detectives in his department. “Dress blues everybody.” He paused again, as if trying to deal with his emotions.

  “The chief was a good man and we’ll all miss him.” Carver said the words almost mechanically, unable to deal with the loss any other way. And then he clapped his hands together, signaling an end to the announcement. “Okay, everyone back to work.”

  The detectives began to return to their desks, some slowed by shock, others digesting what this meant to the force as a whole.

  “Do they have a replacement yet?” Detective David Reynolds, one of the stragglers asked.

  The lieutenant’s expression was unreadable. “You volunteering, Reynolds?”

  The older man shook his head. “No, no. I was just curious.”

  “Apply that to your work,” Carver advised. “And when they have a replacement for the chief, there’ll be another announcement.

  “Now, like I said, get back to work, everyone. Clear your cases. That’s the best way to honor the chief. Speaking of which,” he began, switching direction as he turned toward Ronan, “your team getting any closer to finding that serial killer, O’Bannon?”

  Ronan glanced at Sierra. “We’re pursuing a few leads,” he answered vaguely.

  “Well, pursue faster,” Carver ordered. “I’d like to have this off the books by the time they swear in the new chief of police.”

  “Doing our best, Lieutenant,” Martinez said, backing Ronan up even though none of them really thought the case would be solved that quickly. The reason behind the killings—if there actually was a unifying reason—was not clear yet.

  “See that you do,” Carver said almost curtly, returning to his office.

  Ronan waited until he saw the door to the lieutenant’s office close, then headed back to his desk.

  “So, are we any closer to finding our killer?” Ronan asked the other three detectives once they had gathered around the bulletin board.

  Since neither Choi nor Martinez took the opportunity to say anything in response, Sierra spoke up. “I thought maybe I’d go back and talk to the other three victims’ next of kin. I’ll show them the photo we captured off the surveillance camera of that woman Walker was with. Who knows,” she theorized, warming to her subject, “maybe she’s working with the killer. You know, setting the victims up one at a time so that her partner can kill them.”

  “That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think?” Choi asked uncertainly.

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions, but it’s the only thing I can think of,” she said honestly. “And talking to the next of kin might bring something else to light that we missed the first time around.”

  “You didn’t miss anything,” Martinez reminded her, “because you weren’t there to question them.”

  “And she won’t be,” Ronan said firmly, talking more to Choi and Martinez than to her.

  She looked at him in disbelief. “Are you telling me not to go?”

  “You catch on quickly.” Ronan turned to the detective closest to him. “Martinez, you and Choi go and show this photo to the first four victims’ next of kin. And any of the neighbors living in the vicinity. See if anyone recognizes her.”

  She was getting tired of being treated like a pariah. Every time she thought she had finally become part of the team, Ronan took her down a peg.

  “And what am I supposed to do?” she demanded hotly. “Sit here and knit sweaters for all of you?”

  “Crocheting is faster,” Ronan told her dismissively.

  He was not going to get rid of her that easily. Catching him by the shoulder, she tugged and made him turn around to look at her. “Showing the photo around was my idea.”

  “And I thank you for it,” he told her crisply. “Now Martinez and Choi will take it from here.”

  Sierra refused to back off. “Why?” she challenged. “Because they’re men and I’m just a fragile little female?”

  “Nobody is ever going to think of you as being fragile, not with that tongue of yours,” Ronan informed her.

  Her eyes narrowed as she pulled him around to face her again. “I have a gun and I’m trained in two forms of martial arts. No matter what you think, I can protect myself. And if you’re that worried about me, then send Choi or Martinez with me, but don’t just bench me like I’m a helpless rookie who keeps messing up.”

  “She’s got a point, Fearless Leader,” Choi said. “If she hadn’t thought of it, we wouldn’t have that photo of the girl from the Shamrock.”

  “Did I ask you for input?” Ronan said in a voice that would have made a true rookie’s blood run cold.

  But Choi and Martinez had both been with him for a while now and they rolled with the punches.

  “No, I thought maybe it was just an oversight,” Choi returned. “You know how caught up in things you get.”

  Ronan blew out a breath. For a minute it looked as if he was going to become really angry. But then he said in an even voice, “Okay, Carlyle, you want to knock on doors that don’t want to open for you? Fine, go ahead. But I’m coming with you.” He looked over his shoulder. “You two, work up a list of all the vets in that area. See if any of their prescription medications are missing.”

  Momentarily turning in Sierra’s direction, he uttered a guttural command. “Let’s go.” And then he strode out of the office.

  The next second, Sierra hurried after him. She had to quicken her pace to keep up.

  Chapter Seven

  As Ronan drove to the serial killer’s first victim’s last-known address, Sierra couldn’t look away from what she saw through the windshield.

  It was almost like being in a different world.

  The streets of Aurora were wide, clean, with an air of brightness about them. As they drove through Tesla, there was a pervading feeling of hopelessness emanating from the crowded, neglected streets. There were people aimlessly hanging around on street corners and half the stores behind them had been abandoned.

  How did this kind of thing happen? And why did it go on? Sierra wondered. Didn’t the people who lived in these neighborhoods care about their community? About their kids?

  “Not exactly like Aurora, is it?” Ronan asked, breaking into her chain of thoughts.

  “No,” she answered quietly. “Hard to believe that there’s only about twenty-five miles separating the two cities.”

  His laugh was dry, mirthless. “Oh, there’s a lot more than that separating them,” Ronan said. “Attitudes are different, expectations are different. Kids here aren’t sheltered. Parents are busy either holding down two, three jobs—or strung out. Either way, they’re not there to look after their kids.”

  “Maybe they should be,” she said, feeling sorry for what she could only imagine many went through, the odds against them before they even began. “How much farther is it?” she asked.

  “Want me to turn around and go back?” he offered. The people on some of the corners were watching them as they drove by. It wasn’t too difficult to visualize trouble breaking out.

  “No, I’m just trying to figure out when this’ll be over,” she told him. “Are we going to the first victim’s neighborhood?”

  “We’re beginning at the beginning,” he told her.
When they parked the vehicle in front of a tenement building, she eyed the car dubiously.

  “Something wrong?” Ronan asked.

  The last group of teens they had passed had made her feel uneasy. They looked as if they felt they had nothing to lose. “I feel like we should be chaining your car to a fire hydrant.”

  “If anyone wanted to jack the car, they’d find a way to take the hydrant with them, too,” he commented, far more familiar with the sort of determination that lived on these streets than she was. “Victim number one lived on the fourth floor of this tenement building.” He nodded toward a five-story building that had been built in the early sixties.

  Sierra turned and scrutinized the building, trying to imagine the people who lived there. “Alone?”

  “File said he had two roommates.”

  “Male?” Sierra asked as they walked toward the tenement.

  Forcing himself to shorten his stride so that she could keep up with him, Ronan shook his head. “One of each.”

  She was drawing a blank as far as the first file went. “Was the other his girlfriend?”

  He pulled open the door for her. The smell of sweat, despair and stale alcohol assaulted them. Sierra noted that Ronan didn’t react to the stench.

  “Nothing that committed, from what I gathered,” he answered.

  The elevator was out of order. They took the stairs. When they arrived on the fourth floor, Ronan found the first victim’s—Raul Pena—apartment.

  “Stand behind me,” he instructed as he raised his hand to knock.

  She stood her ground beside him. “Why?”

  Why did everything turn into an argument with her? Ronan wondered impatiently. “Because in places like this, they sometimes shoot first before they answer the door.”

  “If they do, you’re just as likely to catch a bullet as I am.” She looked at him, annoyed at the heavy-handed way he was trying to protect her. “I didn’t just get here from Fantasyland, O’Bannon. I’ve actually been in tough neighborhoods before.”

  “Good for you,” he snapped, pushing her behind him just before he knocked.

  “Don’t want any!” a voice gruffly shouted through the door.

  “Police!” Ronan announced. “Open the door. We just want to talk.”

  “Yeah,” the male voice on the other side of the door jeered. “And I just want a million dollars.”

  “It’s about Raul,” Ronan said.

  They heard two locks being flipped before the door was finally eased open a crack. A young male, approximately nineteen or so, looked at them with clear suspicion and distrust on his face.

  “He’s dead, man,” the teen said angrily. “Can’t you leave him in peace?”

  Sierra spoke up before Ronan could answer. “We’re trying to find his killer.”

  A flicker of interest flashed through the teenager’s eyes, growing more so as those eyes washed over her. And then his jaded, distrustful expression returned.

  “Yeah, right. Like I believe that. Nobody cares about who killed Raul. They’re just glad there’s one less of us.” He raised his chin, which sported only a sparse covering of hair that passed as the beginning of a beard. “But we’ve got you outnumbered,” he boasted.

  “Not if your gang keeps being eliminated,” Ronan told him flatly. Taking out the photograph lifted from the surveillance video, he held it up in front of the angry teen. “You recognize this woman?”

  He barely looked at the photo. “No,” he said defiantly. “That your girlfriend?”

  “You never saw her with Raul?” Sierra pressed, annoyed by the teen’s lack of respect.

  “I said no,” the teen snapped. Since the photo was still in front of him, he looked at it, longer this time. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes. “Why? Who is she?”

  “Someone saw her with the killer’s last victim before he was found dead in an alley,” Ronan said, putting the photo away.

  For the first time the teen smiled. “Oh, yeah. Read about that. John Walker,” he said, citing the victim’s name. The smile on his lips grew malevolent. “Good to know he’s gone. One less jackass making a mess of things in the world.”

  “You’re absolutely sure that you don’t recognize her?” Sierra asked, not ready to give up. “Maybe she was with Raul before he was killed?”

  “I said no, damn it. Don’t you hear good?” the teen asked nastily. “Now, if you got nothing else, I’m busy.” He underscored his statement by slamming the door in their faces.

  Sierra blew out a breath then looked at Ronan. “Well, that went well.”

  Ronan turned and walked toward the stairs. He seemed unfazed by what had just transpired. “Never really expected anything else.”

  “There’s always an outside chance,” Sierra told him as they slowly made their way down to the ground floor, warily watching each door opening onto the stairwell before they passed it.

  After the last confrontation, he couldn’t understand how she could logically think that way. The answer to that, he decided, was that the woman wasn’t logical. He shook his head at her naïveté.

  “Bet when you were a little girl, your mother read you all those stories that ended with ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ didn’t she?”

  He was surprised to see a somber expression pass over her face.

  “My mother died right after I was born,” she answered. “So, no, she didn’t read any ‘and they lived happily ever after’ stories to me.”

  “Sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t know.”

  Sierra shrugged. It wasn’t something she talked about. Being raised by her father and three older brothers had made her the rough-and-tumble person she had become.

  “That’s all right, you didn’t know,” she said, absolving him of any guilt. “So now what?” she asked as they continued down the stairs. “We go to victim number two’s family?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling this approach is just a dead end. There’s no reason to believe that the woman at the tavern was instrumental in the executions of the other victims—we have no proof she was even instrumental in Walker’s execution.”

  They’d reached the ground-floor lobby. Crossing to the entrance, Sierra pushed open the door. The moment she stepped outside, the sudden sound of gunshots filled the air.

  Reacting automatically, Ronan quickly pulled her over, pushing her against the wall as he shielded her with his body, simultaneous pulling out his weapon.

  Stunned, Sierra opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t some civilian who needed protecting but, for just a second, she couldn’t summon the words. Words that had all been pushed into the shadows by the sudden, exceedingly hot flash that had rippled through her body when it had made such hard contact with his. It felt as if she had been branded.

  The earthquake was not one-sided. It hit Ronan with breath-draining force as he turned, intending to look into her face. With steely resolve, he did his best to block his reaction. “Stay here,” he ordered harshly.

  The next moment Ronan was gone, playing hide-and-seek with storefronts as he headed in the direction of the gunfire, intent on curbing whoever was doing the shooting.

  Sierra spoke up when she finally found her tongue. “The hell I will.”

  Imitating the pattern Ronan had just executed, she moved stealthily and quickly, managing to catch up to him just as there was another burst of gunfire.

  Loud and disconcerting, none of the shooting was directed at them. The volley turned out to be an exchange between two factions of the local gangs, perpetrated by the executions by the serial killer they were still hunting.

  Incredibly, considering the number of shots exchanged, there were no casualties. All four shooters involved got away, commandeering two separate vehicles by throwing the drivers to the ground and th
en driving off.

  Sierra looked around. The panic the shoot-out had created had cleared the streets. They were deserted now.

  “What the hell was that about?” Sierra cried, still eyeing the street.

  “They call it Thursday,” Ronan answered and then he shot her an accusing look. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”

  “I don’t know, did you?” she asked innocently. “The gunfire was too loud and I couldn’t hear anything. I also thought you might need backup,” she told him. “You know, being on your six and all.”

  Ronan looked as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. It was clearly a solid struggle for him to keep his words to himself.

  He turned and marched back to the car. Miraculously, it was untouched. Triggering the locks, he got in on the driver’s side. When she followed suit on the passenger side, he told her curtly, “If you’re going to go on being on my team, we need to have some ground rules.”

  She was way ahead of him. “Rule one, you trust me. Rule two, you treat me like a detective not like an administrative assistant. Deal?” she asked.

  “Buckle up,” he ordered.

  She did as he told her. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, underscoring her declaration with a pleased, wide smile. “Look, all I want to do is help. We both want to find this serial killer and stop him. So let me help,” she concluded.

  “Okay, I’ll let you help,” he told her grudgingly. “If you don’t make me strangle you first.”

  “Sounds like a deal to me,” she told Ronan cheerfully.

  “Ready to go back to the precinct?” Asking her was a mere formality. He had already turned the car in that direction.

  “Sure,” she answered gamely. “After we go check out the other three victims’ neighborhoods.”

  He looked at her in disbelief. Hadn’t she been paying attention? If he hadn’t pulled her back, she would have come very close to being shot as collateral damage. How could that not affect her?

  “You’re serious,” he said incredulously.

  “As a heart attack,” she responded then flushed. “Oh,” she cried, realizing what she’d just said. “Poor choice of words,” she admitted, thinking of them in light of what had just happened to the chief of police. “But I am serious,” she insisted. “Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to some of the people in the neighborhood. Maybe we’ll find someone who did see something—”