Cavanaugh on Duty(18)

“Not everyone,” Esteban pointed out bluntly.

That brought on even more tears of anguish.

Appalled by his insensitivity, Kari glared at Esteban. His expression remained stoic. She knew it was his way of creating a barrier between himself and the rest of the world, but he was merely making a bad situation worse. And since they clearly weren’t getting anywhere with the victim’s granddaughter, Kari decided they needed to back off and let her grieve in peace.

“If you think of anything else—or just need to talk—you can reach me at this number anytime,” Kari said, indicating the bottom number on the card that she’d just placed on the bed beside Anne Daniels.

The woman pressed her lips together, obviously too choked up to talk. Picking up the card, she nodded silently, looking as if her whole world had shattered.

“You keep handing those cards out like that, you’re going to wind up holding shrink sessions in the back of your car,” Esteban commented as they walked through the hospital lobby, headed for the exit and the parking lots beyond the eight-story building.

Kari didn’t see it that way. “People need to feel that they’re not alone.”

Was she really that naive? he wondered. Or just some cockeyed optimist who didn’t know which end was up? Either way, she needed to be set straight.

“People are alone,” he told her firmly.

“Maybe so,” she conceded, because she didn’t want to get sucked into a philosophical argument neither side intended to lose. Instead, she emphasized, “But they don’t have to feel that way.”

Esteban laughed shortly. “So you’re going to kiss their hurts, put Band-Aids on them and make them all better?”

He was baiting her, she thought, which was why she managed to remain unfazed. “If it helps, I can be there to listen.”

“And if you’re so busy ‘listening,’ when are you going to do your job? Or don’t you intend to ever sleep?” he asked.

“I’ve learned how to catnap,” she countered, keeping her own expression unreadable.

Kari paused for a moment as they got into the car. She knew she was going to be treading on dangerous ground, but she was never going to find any answers by keeping quiet.

“What you said before,” she began. “About people being alone...is that how you really feel?”

He didn’t appreciate her probing him. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” he bit off.

“Do you feel alone?” she pressed.

How many different ways did she want him to say it? He was beginning to think that saying anything at all had been a huge mistake.

“Back off, Hyphen,” he warned, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t need a shrink.”

Not every psychiatrist turned out to be helpful, and she knew without being told that her partner was not the sort who would ever seek help to begin with. “No, but maybe you need a friend.”

“What I need,” he emphasized, “is a partner—if I have to have one—who doesn’t talk so much.”

She smiled. Slowly but surely, she was beginning to understand him—at least a little. It allowed her to say, “Well, there I’m afraid that you’re out of luck.”

Esteban slanted a long look in her direction, then faced forward, gazing out the windshield without really seeing anything.

“Don’t count on it,” he told her.

She took a deep breath, summoned her courage and forced herself to ask, “What happened between high school and here?”

“Life,” was all he said. He made the single word sound ominous and volatile. He also didn’t trust himself to say more.

Turning the key, she started up the car and backed out of the space. “What—?”

“Drop it, Hyphen,” he ordered. His voice left no room for any give-and-take. That part of the game was over.

She’d pushed him as far as he’d go today, Kari realized. There was always tomorrow, but in order to get to tomorrow, she had to remain his partner today.

She backed off.

“You in the mood for Mexican or Chinese?” Kari asked cheerfully, thinking of the two best take-out places between the hospital and the police station.

He’d never been ruled by his taste buds and he shrugged now in answer to her question. “Doesn’t matter,” he told her.

“You don’t have a preference?” Kari asked, clearly surprised.

When he was hungry, he ate what was in front of him. “Not worth the time picking one over the other,” he said, then added, “You pick.”

“Okay,” she answered after a beat. “I will.”

* * *

Esteban stared at the chopsticks his partner held out to him. Served him right for abdicating control. “What makes you think I want to spear my food like some backward hunter?”

“Pretty limited hunting grounds,” she pointed out. “Besides, I thought maybe you knew how to use them.” Everyone she knew was fairly proficient with chopsticks, so she’d just assumed he was, too.

She should have known better, she upbraided herself.

“I suppose you do.” The way he said it was almost an accusation—if not an indictment.

She refused to let him make her feel guilty because she knew how to do something he didn’t. “It’s really not that hard once you pick it up.”

“Well, I didn’t pick it up—and I don’t intend to,” he added stubbornly. If he had a pet peeve—and he absolutely hated that term—it was people who tried to change him to suit their needs.

As Kari nodded, she opened up a side drawer and took out a wrapped, white plastic utensil. “How do you feel about a plastic fork?”

“I don’t have feelings about utensils,” he informed her crisply, nonetheless taking the white plastic fork she offered.

Kari shook her head. It was hard to reconcile this rough-spoken man with the laughing, jovial senior she remembered. “Boy, if Marnie Wilson could only see you now.”

Esteban looked up from his lunch, a scowl furrowing his brow. “Who’s Marnie Wilson?”

She hadn’t really expected him to remember the name. “She was one of the adoring females who had a mad crush on you in high school. She was sure that you walked on water on a regular basis.”

He gave her a disgruntled look. “I told you, I’m not this guy you’re talking about.”

Yes, he was. She would have been willing to bet her soul on that.

But because she didn’t feel like getting embroiled in yet another argument with him today, she merely nodded. “Whatever you say, Fernandez.”

“Finally,” he declared. “First agreeable thing I’ve heard you say all day.”

“Then you haven’t been listening,” she countered with a grin that was far too wide.

It was time to get back to work. Nibbling on the spring roll in her hand, she walked over to the bulletin board she had so painstakingly put together after they came back to the precinct.

“What is it that these two victims have in common that got under the killer’s skin?” she asked, the question directed more to herself than to her devilishly handsome partner.

“Okay.” It was obvious he’d been giving the matter a lot of thought, as well. “They’re both retired. By other people’s accounts, they both do volunteer work of some sort, although it sounds like she apparently did more than he did.” Esteban looked over at Kari, winding up his summary. “And they’re both dead.”

Kari sighed. “Besides that.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, thinking, completely oblivious to the fact that she looked damn sensual doing it.

But Esteban wasn’t oblivious to it, despite the fact that he wanted to be.

She ran down the list of possibilities. “Maybe they both go to the same church, the same club, the same supermarket.”

The last place sounded almost too ludicrous for consideration. “And what? A clerk decided to kill them for squeezing the produce too hard?” Esteban cracked.

Kari spared him a glare as she returned to her desk, frustrated. Picking up the carton of fried rice, she dove in. She was eating without tasting her food or being fully aware that she actually was eating.

It was all part of her thinking process.

“No, but there has to be some common denominator that we’re not seeing. Slashing someone’s throat is a very particular way of killing them. Seems almost intimate. It has to mean something.”

Esteban found himself agreeing. “Whoever it is has assumed the role of judge, jury and executioner,” he speculated. When she raised a puzzled eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation, he obliged. “That’s why the killer drew the scales of justice on the first victim and left that charm in the second victim’s hand.”

“Why a charm?” she wanted to know. “He’d have to buy it and risk someone remembering him doing it.”