Cavanaugh on Duty(8)

Technically speaking, that actually hadn’t been exactly the case. There was some information, but whatever had been originally written down on the page had subsequently been redacted. Every line of type had been run through with a black permanent marker that promised not to disappear or fade over time.

So she had gone with her gut. Men like the one she’d met with last night—the man she still thought could be the Steve Fernandez she’d gone to high school with—didn’t care for any frills. That included fancy rhetoric and coffee that bore a longer, fancier name than some people she knew.

The coffee was black...just like the mood that was slowly coming over her.

When she’d departed his house last night, she’d been fairly confident that she’d gotten Fernandez to come around, to connect with her on the most basic level. Having her body tingle for more than an hour after she’d left him had been a small price to pay.

But now she was beginning to think that maybe she’d been wrong about his coming around, and it bothered her more than she cared to admit. To her way of thinking, she’d dropped the ball.

She didn’t like letting the Chief of D’s down, not because he was her uncle—or because she felt she had something to prove so she’d move up the food chain within the department. She didn’t like letting the Chief down, because he’d asked her to do something and she wanted him to know that she always delivered on her commitments.

This was the first thing he’d actually asked her to do, and she’d failed.

Granted, it was still early. The workday had barely started, but all that translated to was more time in which to feel like a colossal failure.

She’d arrived at the precinct almost an hour earlier than she was supposed to, anticipating Fernandez’s arrival. For her, the minutes had already stretched themselves out as thin as thread, each inching by as she waited for Fernandez to walk into the office.

It promised to be a very long day from where she was sitting.

“New guy not here yet?”

Startled, it took Kari a second to collect herself before she turned around to look at the man who had somehow managed to come up behind her without making a single sound.

The question had come from Lieutenant Tim Morrow, a rumpled, unimpressive-looking former vice detective with yellowish-white hair and a waist that was slowly becoming wider than the breadth of his shoulders. Morrow had worked his way diligently through the ranks.

At the moment, the lieutenant was looking at the empty chair opposite her own, but his expectant manner, as well as his question, was directed toward her.

She wondered if Morrow knew about her visit to the Chief of Detectives yesterday.

Of course he did, she upbraided herself the next moment. If Fernandez was supposedly going to be working for the department, Morrow would have been notified of everything pertaining to the former undercover detective.

Had she and Fernandez already had some sort of working relationship, she would have been quick to attempt to cover for him, giving Morrow some sort of plausible excuse as to why the other man wasn’t anywhere within eyeshot. Loyalty was something that was inbred in her, thanks to her father.

But since she didn’t know if Fernandez was even going to bother showing up at all, she felt no allegiance...no urgent need to cover for him.

“’Fraid not,” she replied to the Lieutenant’s question.

Although it was obvious that Fernandez wasn’t there, it was clearly not the answer that Morrow wanted to hear. He frowned, turning toward her. “You two are up,” he told her.

For the first time, she saw the paper the lieutenant was holding in his hand.

Since this was the department that dealt with homicides and questionable deaths, she assumed that a call had come in and that the lieutenant had written down the address and a few scattered details on the notepaper he was holding.

“I can go alone,” Kari volunteered, already on her feet. “Won’t be the first time,” she added needlessly to the man who had been in charge of training her when she’d first walked in through the precinct doors.

The story went that when Morrow had first arrived from the academy, Andrew Cavanaugh, who had gone on to become the chief of police before eventually retiring early to focus on raising his kids and searching for his missing wife, had trained the then-rookie cop.

What goes around comes around, she thought.

Pulling on her jacket, Kari put out her hand for the address.

“I’d rather there were two of you,” Morrow said even as he surrendered the sheet of paper. “But since you’re initially just checking out a bad smell—”

“A bad smell?” Kari repeated, puzzled. Since when had the police department started concerning itself with garbage detail?

“Yeah. Manager at a storage facility said one of the renters came to him complaining that there was a, quote, ‘really bad smell’ coming from the unit located right next to his.” His far from narrow shoulders rose and fell in a resigned shrug. “Could just be some food someone was stupid enough to stash away. Or an animal that had the bad luck to crawl into the unit when the door was open and became trapped inside, eventually expiring. Or—”

She noted that the lieutenant only awarded the dignity of death to people. Everything else “expired,” like a container of milk going sour, or a warranty on a product.

“Or a body someone had stashed in the unit while they tried to figure out how to make it disappear without calling attention to themselves,” she concluded for her boss.

Morrow nodded, his unruly, longer-than-regulation hair falling into his squinty, deep-set brown eyes. “Exactly.”

“Mind if I hope it’s fruit until I find out otherwise?” she asked.

The weather was turning unseasonably warmer. That meant that a body hidden in a storage unit was bound to decompose more quickly than usual. This was not an assignment she was looking forward to.

“It’s a free country,” the lieutenant replied magnanimously.

Kari glanced at the address before tucking it into her pocket. The storage facility wasn’t located far from the precinct, she noted.

Securing her weapon, she was just about to leave the office when she saw the look of surprise that fleetingly passed over the lieutenant’s craggy face. Since the man was facing the outer door that led to the hallway, she turned around to see what had caught his attention.

No wonder he looked surprised, she caught herself thinking. Esteban Fernandez created quite an imposing impression at first sight.

And even second and third, she mused.

To be honest, at first glance he didn’t even look like the man she’d spoken with last night. That man had been scruffy and raw. This one fell under the category of “tall, dark and handsome.” But there was still a dangerous edge to him despite his clean-shaven face. An enticing, dangerous edge.

But then, last night he was still embracing his other persona, the undercover cop he’d been—a role he’d played for the past three years, if the rumors were correct. And, at this point, that was all she really had to go on. Rumors. Law enforcement detectives involved in the undercover world did not exactly have readily accessible data that the regular force could easily refer to. Whatever they did was not supposed to ever see the light of day or be acknowledged—good or bad.

She made a mental note to take another crack at the Cavanaugh pipeline. So many of the Cavanaughs were involved with the various departments at the precinct, it only stood to reason that someone had to know something viable, something she could use when dealing with the man she assumed was going to be her new partner.

However long that association lasted, she did not want to be in the dark or at a disadvantage when it came to dealing with this man. At the very least, she wanted to know exactly who she was trusting to have her back.

“Fernandez?” Morrow inquired, obviously as stunned by his transformation as she briefly had been.

Esteban glanced over toward the lieutenant just as he reached his desk—since the desk was so blatantly empty, except for the computer and the coffee container, he’d made a logical deduction that it was going to be his.

For as long as he decided to remain here, he silently added as a footnote to placate himself.

“Yeah?” he asked the lieutenant.

Morrow looked far from pleased with this latest addition to his department. “It’s customary to report to your commanding officer when you first join a department,” he said, his gravelly voice rife with displeasure.

“Sorry, sir, I just now walked in,” Esteban pointed out needlessly. Right before he’d visited Miguel in prison, he’d made his decision to continue his association with the police department until he could figure out how to get back into undercover work. He’d gotten caught in morning rush-hour traffic on the drive back from the penitentiary, which accounted for his less than timely appearance.

His eyes met Kari’s and he gave her what amounted to the smallest, most imperceptible of nods, acknowledging her presence.