Cavanaugh Stakeout

In his experience, that was the sort of thing people said when the exact opposite was true. But for now, he let it ride.

“Go on,” Finn said, doing his best to put a lid on his skepticism, at least for the moment. Anything to hurry this along, although he was losing his patience at what felt like the speed of light.

“According to her mother,” Nik continued, “Marilyn has been acting strangely lately. My friend—Kim—thinks that her daughter has run off with this guy who she feels is a bad influence on her.”

“You already said that,” he reminded her flatly. “This ‘bad influence,’ does he have a name?”

She didn’t care for his condescending manner, but for now she went along with it. “Everyone has a name, Detective,” Nik responded with a smile.

“Then let me rephrase that,” Finn said evenly. “Does this bad influence have a name that you’re familiar with?”

“Not yet, but I’m trying to locate her friends, who don’t seem to be around, either,” she said.

How convenient, he thought sarcastically. “All right, do you have a description of this so-called bad influence?”

“No,” she told him. She hated being unable to answer his questions. As he indicated he was going to leave the squad room, she quickly said, “But I’m working on it.” Even as she said the words, she knew how lame that sounded.

Finn nodded shortly, dismissing her. “Come back when you have something substantial.”

The truth was he could probably get the description himself if this “bad influence” was in Seamus’s car with her as she drove away. Valri was already reviewing all the traffic-cam videos in the immediate area of the mugging, trying to spot Seamus’s car in all the recorded footage. Added to that, he had several members of his team collecting any and all surveillance videos caught on the cameras that were recording activity in the industrial center at what he approximated was the time of the mugging. However, giving the woman an assignment seemed the best way to get her to leave, he thought.

However, as he began to walk away, she placed herself directly in his path and announced, “Your turn!”

“My turn what?” Finn asked. There was an edge in his voice.

“Well, I told you what I know and you agreed to pool our resources, so now it’s your turn to tell me what you know,” she explained in a cheerful voice, which he found exceedingly irritating.

“You agreed,” he pointed out, his voice as dark as hers was light. He saw a fire enter her eyes that, under different circumstances, he might have even found intriguing.

But these weren’t different circumstances. This was about finding who had done this to his grandfather’s brother, and until he accomplished that, nothing else was going to take center stage for him.

“But,” he said evenly, “in the spirit of ‘sharing,’ I’ll tell you that Seamus Cavanaugh was mugged and left to die in the North Tustin Industrial parking lot while the person who did this to him drove away in Seamus’s vehicle.”

When he said that, the words tasted incredibly bitter in his mouth. The idea of someone doing something like that to an old man, let alone a member of his family, galled him beyond words.

“I already know that,” Nik pointed out. Finn wasn’t about to share anything, she realized.

“Well, then I guess you’re all caught up,” Finn told her. He looked toward the doorway and began walking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

To his annoyed surprise, she fell into step with him. When he glared at her, she responded, “Where are we going?”

“I’m going down to the crime lab,” he growled. “I don’t know where you’re going.”

“That’s simple,” Nik answered, still keeping her voice light. “I’m going with you.”

Okay, time to put an end to this. He stopped dead in his tracks. Looking down at her, he told her sternly, “Oh, no, you’re not.”

The man was very uptight and extremely territorial, she thought. Nik decided to rephrase her words to sound less objectionable to him. “I thought I’d throw my lot in with you—temporarily, of course.”

This woman was harder to get rid of than a strip of paper covered in superglue, he thought. “There is no ‘of course,’ Ms. Kowalski,” he informed her.

“Ko-val-ski,” Nik corrected, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to get him to use her first name. At least not yet.

Finn threw up his hands. “Whatever.” And then he fixed her with a penetrating look. “Let me make this perfectly clear for you. We are not ‘working’ together,” he told her. “I’m a professional and you’re not.”

Undaunted, she pointed out, “We’re both investigators.”

“Only in the broadest definition of the word,” he responded, this time gritting his teeth together. She was taking up precious time with this game of hers, he thought.

“Here,” she said, taking out her business card and holding it out to him. When he didn’t take it, she deliberately took his hand and pressed the card into it. “Believe it or not, I am very good at what I do and you might want to change your mind down the line,” she told him.

As Nik walked away, Finn looked down at the card in his hand. “I really doubt it,” he murmured.

“So, do you have anything for me?” Finn asked Valri as he entered the computer lab.

The petite woman glanced up at him from the monitor she had been reviewing now for hours.

“What I have is a huge headache right between my eyes,” Valri told him, massaging the bridge of her nose in an effort to chase away her headache. It didn’t work. “I think I’m going to be seeing Granddad’s car in my sleep for the next six months. However…” She shrugged as she indicated the monitor.

“So, nothing yet?” Finn asked, frustrated.

Valri’s mouth curved ever so slightly. “That’s what I like about you. You catch on fast.” She sighed, turning back to the monitor. “I’ll give you a call if I do find anything.”

“Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one step back,” he murmured. Locating all these surveillance tapes had been the two steps forward. But not finding anything on them felt like a giant step back.

“No time to talk about your dance lessons, Finn. I have a car to find,” Valri told him as she resumed her search.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “I’ll check with Ramirez and Collins, the two detectives I have canvassing the area. Maybe they came up with something useful.”

“There’s always hope,” Valri said, already blocking out his presence.

Other than the dog walker who had placed the 911 call that had brought out the paramedics, Finn and the other detectives and patrol officers working on the case weren’t able to find anyone who could add anything to the slim amount of information they already had.

The worst part of working a case, Finn decided, was that helpless feeling that took over when he ran into a wall.

Back at his desk, Finn closed his eyes and tried to think. There had to be something he was overlooking, a way he could get this case moving, he thought in frustration.

He sighed. After spending a day spinning his wheels and going nowhere, he decided that he needed to go somewhere for a few hours to unwind so he could think. For him, as for so many other law-enforcement agents, that meant either attending one of Uncle Andrew’s parties, or going to Malone’s, the local saloon that was so popular with the police department.

Since Andrew was currently involved keeping vigil over his father at the hospital—Seamus was still lapsing in and out of consciousness—that left Malone’s.

It was misting when he drove up to the popular saloon, a rare occurrence in its own right. It hardly ever rained outside of the rainy season. Finn couldn’t help wondering if this misting was some sort of an omen.

As a rule, Finn wasn’t superstitious, but there was a part of him that he admitted was open to things that he didn’t fully understand.

Walking into Malone’s, he looked around. For once the place wasn’t packed to the gills the way it usually was. Instead of taking a booth, Finn decided to make himself comfortable at the counter. He slid onto the barstool that was closest to him.

Because Malone’s was currently only half-full at this point, the patrons there provided just the right level of noise to allow him to completely submerge his thoughts. Finn promised himself that for the next half hour or so, he was not going to think about anything at all.