boards perched above aging file cabinets. Photographs of the Sunday Killer’s victims ran across the boards. Each bright, young face had a column of facts directly beneath it.
Nick felt the energy in the room mingled with a sense of futility.
There were three people in front of him, two men and a woman. One less than the number of desks. Nick wondered who the fourth desk belonged to.
And had a feeling he knew.
“That’s Special Agent Bill Chan,” Kelly said as he nodded toward the young Asian in a designer suit. In response, Bill smiled broadly at him. Not standing on ceremony, he crossed the room and extended his hand in welcome.
“Over there’s Special Agent Sam Daniels,” Kelly continued.
Prematurely middle-aged, Sam looked as comfortable as Bill was dapper. His clothes gave the appearance of being chosen for ease rather than for style. They might have even been slept in.
The man nodded in his direction, choosing to look him over from a distance. Sam’s body language was deceptively lax. Nick had a feeling that was how the man operated and that not much got by the older veteran. Sam’s thick mustache effectively covered his lips, hiding his expression.
Nick moved over toward him and shook his hand.
“And this,” Kelly said, nodding at the remaining person in the room, “is Special Agent Charlotte Dow.”
The woman moved toward him like fog encroaching the moors, telegraphing an inherent sexuality with every step. Her eyes washed over him. Nick felt something stir in his gut. He would have had to be dead not to have felt it.
“I’d say it was nice to meet you,” she said in a voice that made him think of whiskey being poured into a glass, neat, “but the assistant director hasn’t given us your name yet.”
Her eyes were an intense Florida ocean blue. “I can give my own name,” he said.
She cocked her head. “And that is?”
“Nick Brannigan.”
Kelly stepped into the arena. “Your new partner, Charley.”
It took everything Charley had not to let her mouth drop open.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT MOMENT, Charley regained the use of her brain. “New partner?” she echoed, staring at the assistant director. “What do you mean, new partner?”
A.D. Kelly kept a tolerant expression on his face. “Temple’s gone, Dow,” he reminded her evenly. “He’s not coming back. Get used to it. Only I don’t have to be partnered with anyone. You do. Brannigan’s your new partner. Get used to that, too.”
That settled, Kelly turned to the four main people who headed up the task force formed expressly to apprehend the Sunday Killer. The nickname had come about in-house, because the killer seemed only to strike on the seventh day of the week.
“Our boy’s newest victim was Stacy Pembroke. Like the others, she’s young, single. This one was a food server at La Boheme.”
“That new trendy place on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach?” Bill asked. “Dinner for two over there’s at least a hundred dollars, without drinks.”
“Out of my league,” Sam commented.
“One and the same,” Kelly confirmed. “Her boss found the body after she didn’t come in to work last night.”
Charley was still chewing on the bombshell that Kelly had thrown her. She’d been secretly nurturing the hope that Ben Temple would change his mind and return to work, despite what he’d told her. To know that he wasn’t going to be part of her everyday life was going to take some getting used to.
But her current state of unrest didn’t prevent her from listening to what the assistant director had to say.
She raised her hand now, stopping him before he continued. “Wait a minute, the owner of the restaurant came to her place when she didn’t show up for work?”
“That’s what the report said,” Kelly confirmed.
Charley shook her head. “That doesn’t sound very kosher to me.” She looked at Kelly, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “You wouldn’t come looking for one of us if we didn’t show up.”
“Not unless Pembroke and her boss had some kind of personal relationship going,” Nick interjected.
Standing beside Charley, Bill leaned toward her and whispered, “And the new guy scores a point.”
Not with me, Charley thought. It would take more than a no-brainer guess before she gave the new man any points.
“That’s what the detectives on the scene thought,” Kelly told them.
“Detectives?” Charley echoed. “What have they got to do with it?”
“The latest victim lived in Tustin. The police who were called in thought it was just another homicide. One of the detectives noticed that the M.O. was the same as the other serial cases we’ve been working on so he called us. The investigation didn’t go any further. Nobody questioned the owner.”
“What’s the owner’s name?” Charley asked.
Kelly checked the report he’d been handed. “Robert Pullman.”
Charley made a notation in her worn notepad, taking care not to rip off the tattered cover. “Is the crime scene still intact?”
Kelly shrugged his wide shoulders in suppressed frustration. “It’s been walked over by the patrolmen who responded to the call and then the detectives they called in. I’m told that Pullman lost it when he saw the body. He threw up.”
“Terrific. Hope they didn’t preserve that,” Sam muttered.
“The body’s in the morgue,” Kelly volunteered. “Here’s the address to the apartment.” He handed it to Charley.
Charley glanced at the location. Tustin was a nice little city. Murders weren’t par for the course. I hope you slipped up, you bastard. I hope, this one time, you slipped up.
Ignoring the man that Kelly had brought in to be her new partner, Charley turned toward Sam and Bill. She held out the report that Kelly had given her. “You guys want to take the body or the crime scene?”
Except for Nick, everyone in the room knew how Charley felt about viewing dead bodies. Given a choice, she would just as soon work the case without seeing the victim. It wasn’t that she had a queasy stomach, but viewing the Sunday Killer’s victims vividly reminded her of the moment she’d walked into the apartment to find her sister lying on the sofa. Strangled.
But despite the fact that she had managed to get herself placed in charge of the task force before the details of her sister’s murder caused the case to be connected to the Sunday Killer, Charley went the extra mile when it came to fair. She didn’t believe in playing favorites, even if that “favorite” was her.
