Baby Jane Doe

Though he doubted running into each other in the break room was a coincidence, Eli took his time before stepping aside for the patriarch of the Fourth Precinct to fill a Kansas City Chiefs mug with the thick, steaming brew. “Routine follow-up on the shooting by your man, Banning.”

No sense wasting pleasantries. There was no love lost between Internal Affairs and the Taylors since Eli and his former partner, Joe Niederhaus, had investigated the captain’s cousin, CSI Mac Taylor, four years ago. Especially since his old buddy Joe had done such a bang-up job of framing Mac and nearly getting Mac and his future wife killed. Turned out Joe was the one taking bribes, stealing evidence and blackmailing fellow cops.

Eli had been a much younger detective then, naively blinded by loyalty to his veteran partner and unable to see the truth until it was too late. There was nothing naive left inside Eli anymore. And though he’d been the one to put the cuffs on Joe and had even, reluctantly, testified against him in court, several members of KCPD judged Eli guilty by association. He already triggered guarded suspicion whenever he entered a roomful of cops. He was Internal Affairs—the cop who policed other cops and held them accountable to the highest standards of their sworn duty. But there were some, like Captain Mitch Taylor, who seemed to take their distrust a little more personally.

Polite and professional as the captain might be, he wasn’t here to make Eli feel welcome. “Will anything go into Banning’s permanent file?”

“Everything points to a clean shoot.” Eli chucked an empty creamer into the trash, stalling for privacy while two younger plainclothes officers waltzed in and grabbed a snack and a seat at the table on the far side of the break room. After a friendly scuffle over ownership of the remote control, they turned on the television and debated the merits of each show as they scrolled through the channels. “But any detective who’s been involved in more than one previous incident deserves a thorough double check.”

Captain Taylor watched and waited as well before adding, “I hear you’re nothing but thorough.”

“I do my job. I do it well.” Except for the glaring error of not seeing his partner’s corruption, Eli’s reputation made it a fact, not a boast.

Taylor sipped his coffee, but there was no nonchalance in the steely set of his shoulders. “Just make sure you do it right. Banning’s one of my best investigators. I don’t want him stuck behind a desk indefinitely.”

“Barring any glitch in the paperwork, you can have him on the streets by lunchtime.”

The teasing scuffle on the far side of the room grew louder.

“Your mama’s on TV again, Cartwright.” The taller of the two young officers, a lanky smart-mouth with a shaved head, razzed his partner. “You know, if she wasn’t old enough to be our mother, and I wasn’t so damn handsome—”

“She is my mother,” the shorter one articulated. “And you’re not that good-lookin’. So put your eyeballs back…”

It wasn’t their friendly, ribald banter that caught Eli’s ear so much as recognition of the name. Cartwright.

As in Shauna Cartwright, owner of the tempting backside pressed to his groin in the heat of gunfire, and the clean, subtle scent that had fueled some forbidden dreams last night. As in Commissioner Cartwright, the memory of whose laser-sharp tongue and official rank had rudely awakened him from his fitful sleep and sent him into the bathroom for a mind-clearing shower before dawn.

The commish had a kid? A man she’d raised? The family resemblance was there in the blond hair and the green eyes. But mother and son? No way. This stocky guy was twenty-five if he was a day. And she was… Hell.

Shauna Cartwright had to be a decade older than Eli. But the illicit beat of his pulse didn’t slow with the knowledge.

Instead, it irritated him to discover he was attracted to a woman who was off limits for too many reasons to keep track of.

“You’re not dating my sister, either,” the young Cartwright warned to his fellow officer. “I’ve seen how you operate.”

“A sweet guy like me?” Baldy feigned offense and saluted the television with his last bite of bagel. “I’m just sayin’ she’s—”

“Gentlemen.” Taylor subdued them with a single word.

Eli’s gaze slid to the TV, where a stock photograph of the commissioner graced the corner of the screen while the commentator related highlights of yesterday’s robbery and double homicide at the Cattlemen’s Bank’s downtown office. Masking his interest behind a swallow of coffee, he listened for any mention of the other police officer who’d been on the scene and had taken down the alleged gunman with a shot to the knee.

But the focus was all about Commissioner Cartwright and how KCPD’s top bureaucrat hadn’t been behind a desk so long that she’d forgotten how to protect and serve the citizens of Kansas City when danger struck.

“Ah, c’mon, sir,” the bald one was protesting. “We’re on our fifteen.”

“The morning briefing’s in ten.”

“Then we’re on a ten-minute break?” Baldy tried to appease his boss.

“Better make it nine and a half so you can get front-row seats.”

The two young officers echoed a dutiful, “Yes, sir.”

“Front and center,” Baldy added for good measure.

“Just be there.” Taylor shook his head as though Cartwright and Baldy were the problem children of the Fourth Precinct. But there was no smile, indulgent or otherwise, when the captain took his leave of Eli. “Masterson.”

“Captain.”

“Whoa, man, there she is.”

Eli pulled his gaze from Taylor’s departure and tuned in to the television, too, to catch highlights from yesterday’s news conference outside the Cattlemen’s Bank.

A dramatic shot of two ambulances with their swirling red lights, and the bank’s shattered front window formed a backdrop as Shauna Cartwright faced off against the press of reporters and photographers. The spotlight from several stations’ television cameras bathed her even features in a cold, harsh glare. Her short hair formed a careless fringe about her cheeks and forehead, but there was an energy shining from her intelligent eyes and upturned chin that seemed to command the crowd—even more than the guarded stance of the man at her side. With the distinct, receding points of his dark brown hair, and the impeccable suit that masked the gun he wore at his waist, Deputy Commissioner Michael Garner was instantly recognizable.

Garner’s dark, narrowed eyes scanned the crowd as he inched closer to Shauna’s shoulder. The man was expecting danger. An answering tension squeezed like a tight fist at the back of Eli’s neck. Even through the television screen, Garner indicated that he sensed some kind of threat in the audience behind the camera. Maybe the man was protecting the office—not the woman. Maybe he was guarding KCPD itself from any questions that probed too far into events from the robbery/homicide.

Meanwhile, Shauna seemed unaware, or perhaps impervious to any potential danger as she fielded a barrage of questions.

She pointed to a dark-haired woman with a tape recorder. “Ms. Page.”

The reporter wasted no time. “Having finally put a man on trial for the Baby Jane Doe abduction and murder, and now personally thwarting a bank robbery, do you feel you’re settling into your new role as the head of KCPD?”

“You had to bring up Baby Jane.” Officer Cartwright shot his wadded napkin at the TV screen, nailing the reporter’s image. “Mom’s had the job for almost a year now, toots. She had to take command before we finally got the damn case solved.”

“Down, Tiger,” Baldy raised a hand to calm his partner.

Young Cartwright crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. From the most seasoned veterans to newbies like these two, the Baby Jane Doe murder case was a sore point that had plagued KCPD for over two years. A mutilated baby girl left in the city dump—unclaimed, unidentifiable. No parent had come looking for her; no clue had led to a real suspect. For months, the city had lived in fear for its children. Kansas City had mourned for the little girl whom no one seemed to miss, while they railed against the idea that such violence had come to their town. Through a charity drive headed by KCPD, citizens had raised money to give the girl a proper burial. But they still couldn’t give her a name.

Closure was a long time coming for a weary police force with its reputation on the line. Eli knew firsthand there was often that one case which haunted a detective throughout his career. Baby Jane Doe’s senseless murder was a case that had united the entire department, in frustration and sorrow.

But things had changed a few months ago. When Shauna Cartwright had been appointed to finish the term of the ailing commissioner, one of her first acts was to appoint a task force dedicated to the Baby Jane Doe investigation. Kansas City finally breathed a little easier. The task force arrested Donnell Gibbs, a known pedophile, who’d confessed to the killing. The D.A.’s office was set to prosecute Gibbs for murder. Preliminary hearings in Gibbs’s trial made news reports almost every night.

The story made good press, Eli supposed. But until Gibbs was in prison and the girl’s story was laid to rest, there wouldn’t be any real closure for Kansas City or KCPD.

Now there was one cool lady, Eli mused, mesmerized by the TV screen.

Without batting an eye, Shauna looked into the camera and diverted attention away from that hot-button topic by talking about the bank’s two wounded security guards. “All of KCPD is keeping them in our prayers.”

“Do you have the officers’ names?” shouted another reporter.

“Not at this time. We’re waiting, of course, until their families can be notified. The men are in good hands at St. Luke’s Hospital, and I know their families will want to join them there.”

“What about the two men who were killed? And the man you took into custody?”

The first detectable glitch in her control came when she rolled her shoulders as if she’d suddenly discovered a stiff muscle, no doubt a result of Eli’s flying tackle. But she still made no mention of him.

Michael Garner had noticed the change, too, as he dragged his gaze from the audience down to the woman at his side. He whispered something to her, out of ear-shot from the camera. Shauna shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her palms along the sleeves of her white blouse as though nothing more ominous than a chill had shivered through her.