Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh's Missing Person

Kenzie looked at him, wondering if he was really on the level or if he was just pulling her leg, trying to get on the right side of her for his own reasons.

The look on his face didn’t really give her a clue.

She had to ask him. “You’re serious?”

Hunter nodded. Since they were apparently going to be working together, he shared a little of his basic philosophy with her.

“Gotta hang on to the light, or you wind up sinking into the darkness and before you know it, you wind up giving up.”

That sounded deep, she thought. Too deep for Brannigan, she maintained. Kenzie was afraid to leave her defenses down, even for a moment.

“That’s one way to look at it,” Kenzie told him flippantly.

“Okay, so what’s your way?” Brannigan asked her as they watched the shepherd begin to dig into the earth for yet one more time.

Kenzie looked at the detective. Sunlight was weaving through his hair. She did her best to ignore that, looking for his flaws.

“My way?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he answered. Jupiter was growing more agitated. “How do you look at what you do?”

She recited the mantra she liked to live by. “Catching the bad guys and making the world safer for everyone else.”

Brannigan grinned at her and she was certain he was going to say something flippant or make fun of her. But instead, he surprised her by saying, “See, we’re not that different after all, you and I.”

She did not want to be likened to this man by anyone, least of all him.

“Oh, we’re worlds apart, Brannigan. Worlds apart,” she emphasized.

Hunter pointed over toward Jupiter, who apparently had unearthed still another would-be grave.

“I’d say that it looks like our worlds just got a little closer, Kenzie,” he told her.

She clenched her teeth. “I told you not to call me that. Only my friends and family call me that.”

“So how do I get to be part of your friends’ club?” he asked.

“Simple,” she told him. “You die and come back as someone else. Anyone else,” she underscored.

He laughed, obviously getting a kick out of her—that was not what she had intended.

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Hunter promised just before he made his way over to Jupiter’s newest discovery.

Chief Sean Cavanaugh, head of the crime scene investigation day crew, surveyed the very large area that had been cordoned off. Sporadic piles of dirt and mud pocked the entire terrain at this end of the park. Three investigators were moving around, documenting everything that could even remotely pass for evidence.

“The park officials are not going to be happy about this,” Sean commented.

Vacation season had just begun and there were tourists to think of, not to mention regular residents who normally enjoyed utilizing the park’s many attributes and were now prevented from doing so.

It looked as if there were miles of yellow tape designating the entire area off-limits. It was the police department’s attempt to keep the public from accidentally trampling over any possible clues that hadn’t surfaced yet.

Hunter nodded in agreement. This was his first professional interaction with the chief. “I’m not overly thrilled with this either, but I’m willing to bet it’s most likely for a completely different reason,” the cold case detective said.

Kenzie was standing close by and she looked at Brannigan in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be thrilled to death with this turn of events, Brannigan,” she retorted.

“Thrilled?” Hunter echoed, puzzled. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not a ghoul—or bloodthirsty.”

Hunter stopped himself before he could say anything further. He wasn’t about to get into a possible shouting match with Kenzie in front of the chief. Instead, he turned toward Rayburn.

The medical examiner had arrived shortly after the chief and his team had. Rayburn was looking at the various piles of bones—torsos and arms and legs for the most part—and he was shaking his head.

“How many different people do you think Jupiter dug up today, Doc?” Hunter asked the man.

Dr. Rayburn frowned. “Hard to say before I get all these—these pieces to the morgue and see if I can match the right limbs to the right torsos,” the medical examiner answered honestly. “Are you sure that the dog didn’t accidentally stumble across some old, forgotten burial ground?” he asked. It was hard to miss the hopeful note in his voice.

“Way ahead of you, Doc,” Kenzie told the medical examiner. “I already called Valri,” she said, mentioning the name of the Aurora police department’s most gifted computer tech, “and had her dig up the town’s records for this area dating back almost a hundred and fifty years. There is no record of there being any cemetery or burial grounds in the vicinity.”

Rayburn nodded. “I should have known.” He glanced toward the chief, who was now busy instructing one of his investigators. “You people are nothing if not thorough. As for how many former citizens we have here,” the medical examiner said, returning to Hunter’s question, “I’ll know more after I’ve had some time to examine all these different dismembered torsos and limbs.” He looked thoughtful at the various pallets filled with headless bodies and unattached arms and legs that were being prepared to be taken into the two waiting vans. “This is going to be one for the books.”

“Hopefully a solved one for the books,” Brannigan murmured. It was almost numbing to look at all these body parts and realize that they represented lost lives and victims.

Kenzie looked at Hunter, mildly surprised to hear him express his thoughts. “Why, Detective Brannigan, is that doubt I hear in your voice?”

“There’s always doubt,” Hunter told her, refusing to rise to her bait. But then he allowed himself a smile. “Detective work is only as good as your weakest detective,” he said, his gaze deliberately lingering over her for an extra beat.

Kenzie squared her shoulders. “Nobody asked you to be here, Brannigan,” she informed him. Her implication was that he was free to go at any time. In fact, she would have preferred it that way.

“I always finish anything I start, Detective,” Hunter told her.

Sean moved away from the investigator he was talking to and looked from Kenzie to Hunter. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

“No, no problem, Chief,” Hunter replied cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to working on this case. I cut my teeth on jigsaw puzzles when I was a kid,” he told Sean.

A tall man, like the rest of his clan, Sean nodded and smiled at the detective. “Then you should be in seventh heaven here.” Sean paused, his gaze sweeping over Kenzie, Hunter and O’Reilly. “There’s not much more for any of you to do out here. Why don’t you go back to the precinct and I’ll let you know what we find once we finish processing the area.”

Sean’s smile deepened as he looked over toward Jupiter. Now that the dog had made his discoveries, the German shepherd seemed satisfied to just lie at his handler’s feet, watching as Sean’s team did their work. “Looks like Jupiter doesn’t even have a clue as to the kind of far-reaching dust storm he just managed to kick up.”

Kenzie couldn’t resist glancing over in Hunter’s direction.

“There’s a lot of that going around,” she commented. And then she asked her uncle, “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay?”

“I’m sure,” Sean answered. Seeing the skeptical look on her face, he added, “You know what they say about there being too many cooks, Kenzie.” He could see that she was still undecided about leaving the scene. “My advice to the two of you is for you to save your strength for as long as you can. Something tells me that you’re both going to be knocking on a lot of doors, asking a lot of questions before long.”