Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Encounter

“It’s not my first rodeo, O’Bannon. You needn’t patronize me,” she told him.

“Sorry,” he told her, raising his hands. “I wasn’t aware that I was doing that.”

“Yes, you were.” Her eyes met his. If she was going to be tossed out, she might as well speak her mind and be dismissed for a reason. “I work in Major Crimes, not the neighborhood sandbox,” she told him. “I don’t deserve to be talked down to like some kind of wet-behind-the ears novice.”

She heard White Hawk laugh, something she assumed would further anger O’Bannon.

“She’s got a point, O’Bannon,” he told his partner when Luke shot him a reproving glance for laughing at the woman’s retort.

Rather than contest the words, or give them both a piece of his mind the way that Frankie expected, O’Bannon merely shrugged.

“Sorry,” he said to her. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Just trying to be thorough on my end.” He paused for a moment, then asked her, “Do you know which is the victim’s room?”

“The second one right off the bathroom. Your uncle’s unit has already gone over the entire apartment,” she pointed out again. Not to mention that she had, as well. Exactly what did he hope to find?

“I know,” Luke replied. “But it never hurts to have another set of eyes going over the apartment—or, in this case, a fourth set,” he said, recalling that his uncle usually took at least two other members of the unit with him to go over any crime scene he was investigating. Luke turned his attention toward his partner. “Why don’t you look around and see if you notice anything out of place. Anything that might help us with the case,” he emphasized.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked O’Bannon when he didn’t give her any instructions.

“The same,” he answered. “Unless you’d rather sit in the car,” he added. Seeing the insulted look Frankie shot him, he dug into his pocket and took out a set of rubber gloves. He held them out to her. “Here.”

“I have my own, thanks,” she replied, taking a set of clear plastic gloves from the inside pocket of her jacket.

Luke smiled. “Brownie points for the new kid on the block,” he said with approval. “Okay, get busy, people. We’ve still got another crime scene waiting for us after we deal with this one.”

“Another crime scene?” Frankie questioned.

“When you came in this morning, we’d just caught another murder. Body’s with the medical examiner,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your victim’s apartment was on our way so I decided to stop here first.”

This was staggering. “How many victims did you say that this guy has killed?” she asked.

“Seven,” Luke answered. “And you’re jumping to conclusions that the killer is a man.”

She looked at O’Bannon, puzzled. “Then the serial killer’s not a man?”

“Most likely it is. But what I’m saying is that, in this modern age, nothing’s a given anymore,” Luke informed her. “There was a time when no one believed that a woman could be capable of doing something so heinous as killing one person, much less enough people to qualify being regarded as a serial killer.

“But the times, they are a-changing and there have been a number of documented female serial killers. It doesn’t happen very often—but it does happen. So, bottom line, rule out no one because of their gender,” he advised. “Keep an open mind at all times.”

“Sorry, just a figure of speech,” Frankie told the lead detective.

Luke nodded, accepting her explanation. “I’ll consider this as part of your learning curve,” he replied. He began to head toward the victim’s bedroom only to realize that Frankie was going in the same direction. “Why don’t you take a look around your friend’s bedroom? Sorry,” he caught himself before she could correct him. “I mean your acquaintance’s bedroom. I got the victim’s bedroom,” he said pointedly. Turning to the other member of the team, he said, “White Hawk, you’ve got everything else.”

White Hawk sighed. “I figured as much,” the tall detective acknowledged.

“Then let’s get to it,” Luke instructed, walking into the victim’s bedroom.

It was small, compact and orderly. The victim had been a great deal neater than he was, Luke noted, thinking of his own living quarters.

He reviewed everything methodically. If Kristin Andrews had done any entertaining in this bedroom the night she was killed, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of that fact at first glance.

But if she had been murdered by the serial killer he was currently hunting down, Luke had already learned that the man was methodical, not sloppy.

If it was a man, he added silently with a slight ironic smile.

En route here, Luke had had his uncle send him a list of things that the CSI unit had taken from the apartment to examine for possible clues as to why Kristen been chosen by the killer. Scrolling through that list now on his smartphone, he found no indication that a cell phone or a computer of any sort—laptop or tower—had been found on the premises and taken to the lab.

Luke stared at the list and frowned. That didn’t seem right. In this day and age, everyone had electronic gadgets. They were all but hermetically sealed to them. Why weren’t there any in Kristin’s room?

His first guess was that this meant whoever had killed Kristin had made off with her cell phone and whatever laptop, tablet or other electronic device she used to surf the net and entrust with her personal data.

Still, he went through her closet and her bureau drawers, just in case he was wrong. After all, the killer got his kicks terminating the lives of young women, not making off with their electronic gadgets.

The killer also didn’t sexually attack his victims, which only added to the mystery. Just why were these women killed?

Coming up empty in his search, Luke decided to check one last place—under the victim’s mattress. Lifting it as far up as he could, he reached in and felt around along the entire perimeter of the box spring.

The tips of his fingers came in contact with something hard and smooth.

“Eureka,” he declared a little louder than he had intended.

The next moment, White Hawk peered into the bedroom. “What’s up? Did you just discover buoyancy?”

After putting down the mattress, he pulled out what he had found. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know, that Greek guy, Archimedes,” White Hawk said. “He yelled ‘Eureka’ when he realized that water caused his legs to be buoyant.”

Luke snorted. “You are one strange guy.”

“No,” White Hawk corrected, coming farther into the bedroom. “Unlike you, I read.”

Luke regarded the laptop he had uncovered. “If you ask me, White Hawk, you need to get out more. You definitely need a life.”

“I’ll tell Linda you said so,” White Hawk said, referring to his wife.

Drawn by the commotion, Frankie walked into her cousin’s bedroom, joining the other two detectives. A shiver went down her back. She did her best not to show it.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” she asked sarcastically. And then she saw the laptop O’Bannon was holding. Her heart froze for a moment. “You found something.”

Luke laughed dryly as he turned toward White Hawk. “Nothing gets past her.”

Could that possibly contain the identity of the person who had killed Kris? How had she missed that? She’d been in this room, looking for a clue. But, she recalled, Sean Cavanaugh had been with her, working the scene at the time.

“What is that?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“On second thought, maybe some things do get past her,” Luke couldn’t resist commenting.