Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Encounter

She could see that she had gotten O’Bannon’s attention. His whole countenance grew more alert.

“And by ‘stumbled across,’ you mean...?” He waited for her to fill in the blank.

Frankie knew she needed to keep this as close to the truth as possible. It was a trick she had learned a long time ago. The closer to the truth something was, the easier it was to keep track of the things she said about it.

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have felt the need to play games like this. However, if it became known that she was Kristin’s cousin, then it went without saying that she wouldn’t be allowed to work on the case.

And she intended to work the case, no matter what. Even if it wound up costing her her job. With luck, it wouldn’t come to that.

Frankie framed her answer carefully. O’Bannon’s reputation as a ladies’ man wasn’t the only reputation he had. The man was sharp. “The victim’s roommate called me when she found the body.”

“And why would she do that?” he asked, his voice low, probing.

Frankie took a small, unobtrusive breath. “Because I was the first one she thought of when she came home to find the victim on the floor, unresponsive. I met her in an adult education course,” she threw in, hoping that would answer any stray questions O’Bannon might have about her association with the roommate.

It didn’t.

“What kind of a course?” he asked, appearing to be mildly interested.

“A boring one,” Frankie answered crisply. “Can we please get on with this?” she pressed.

“All right,” he obliged. “What makes you think this dead woman you ‘stumbled across,’” he said, using her own words, “is one of my serial killer’s victims? Was she stabbed? Or shot at close range?” Luke fired the questions at her in staccato fashion.

Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Your serial killer’s victims are all women in their twenties, not men. And your serial killer doesn’t stab or shoot his victims,” she concluded.

Luke leaned back in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m impressed. You’ve done your homework on me.”

“Correction,” she retorted. “I’ve done my homework on your case. And since I think the woman I found is another one of your killer’s victims, I thought we could work together to find this piece of filth before he kills anyone else.”

“So you are with the police department.” Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure about that.

“Major Crimes,” she informed him.

“And why would Major Crimes be interested in having one of their own work with me on this case?” he asked.

“Turns out that Debra Evans, one of the victims, is the niece of one of the state’s senators,” she replied.

“You really have done your homework on this case,” he said, duly impressed. “Well, I have no objections to you throwing your lot in with mine, but just to play by the rules, we’re going to have to clear it with Lt. Handel when he gets back.”

From what she’d learned, O’Bannon wasn’t one who really cared about playing by the rules unless it suited him. But she wasn’t about to say that and risk getting on the man’s bad side. She really needed to work this case. She owed it to Kristin.

“I assumed as much,” Frankie replied.

He flashed another broad grin at her. “That’s what I like. Someone who’s on their toes. I take it that you have the victim’s name.”

“Kristin Andrews,” she replied. “She is—was—” Frankie corrected herself, doing her best not to let O’Bannon see that having to refer to her cousin in the past tense really bothered her “—twenty-five and she was a nurse working at Aurora General.”

“You are thorough,” Luke said. He was beginning to see past her good looks and was taking stock of her as a detective. “Any theory about her cause of death?” he asked, curious to see if there were similarities to his killer’s victims and the one that this knockout on two shapely legs was bringing him.

“There was a syringe in her arm,” Frankie replied, every word burning on her tongue.

“So you think it was a drug overdose,” Luke concluded.

“No, I think it was made to look like a drug overdose,” Frankie replied tersely, correcting him.

“And you know this how?” he asked.

He was leaning back in his chair again, studying the brunette with the piled-up, impossibly sexy hair that seemed to be falling every which way and yet somehow remained in place. Whenever possible, Luke was always open to accommodating pretty women, but not at the expense of his job. That always came first, as did the victims he had sworn an oath to do right by.

“Her roommate told me that Kristin, the victim, had had a painkiller problem dating years back to a knee injury she’d sustained in high school, playing soccer.” Frankie answered him slowly, careful not to allow her emotions to get the better of her. She needed to lay this out for him carefully so that she didn’t trip herself up and allow her actual involvement in the case to slip out. “Her roommate also assured me that Kristin had kicked that habit years ago and hadn’t taken any drugs since then. Kris had been clean for years,” Frankie emphasized.

The detective she was talking to nodded slowly and appeared to be listening. Frankie couldn’t escape the feeling that he was examining every single word that was coming out of her mouth—as well as studying her as if she were a slide mounted under a microscope.

“When did all this happen?” he finally asked, after a prolonged pause that admittedly made her uneasy.

He didn’t believe her, Frankie thought. Determined, she pushed on. “The roommate came back from a three-day weekend and found the victim, unresponsive, on the living room floor this morning. After trying to revive her for several minutes, the roommate began to panic, at which time she called me.”

Frankie noted the skeptical expression on O’Bannon’s face. “If you’re friends with this woman,” he asked, “why do you keep calling her the roommate?”

Frankie never missed a beat. “I’m just trying to keep the details simple for you. And, for the record, we’re not friends.” She corrected the detective. “We’re acquaintances. I already told you that.”

Luke pretended to glance down at his notes. “So you did.” He raised his eyes to meet her magnetic blue ones. “Where’s the body now?”

The body.

It was hard for her to think of Kristin that way. She had always been so full of life, so ready to always laugh. Kris had a very infectious laugh that left no one untouched.

“Detective?” Luke prodded when he thought the woman had drifted off.

Frankie roused herself and flushed for the momentary lapse on her part. “Sorry. I called the ME. He told me he’d be doing her autopsy right away, which, with any luck, means today.”

“You know the ME?” Luke asked her, curious.

“Some of them,” she answered, wondering if he was trying to trip her up. The department had three medical examiners, one of whom they tended to share with several of the other, smaller cities in the county.

“Well, you’ve covered all the bases,” Luke told her. “Tell you what, pending the lieutenant’s approval of all this, we’ll call your find victim number seven.”

Frankie frowned. “She has a name,” she told O’Bannon stiffly.

“They all have names,” he replied mildly. “What they no longer have are lives. Those were stolen from them and it’s up to us to make that up to them by catching the bastard who’s responsible for cutting those lives short.”

She couldn’t make up her mind whether he was being a crusader or a wiseguy. Either way, she nodded and quietly told him, “Sounds good to me.”