remove it so that it wouldn’t get damaged when the paramedics worked over her brother. Taking her handkerchief out, she picked up the edge of the paper she’d placed out of the way and held it up for Declan to read.
“Just the beginning,” Declan repeated, and raised his eyes to her face. “You think it’s a budding serial killer making an announcement?”
“Could be,” she allowed, then told him the last detail. “It was stapled to his chest.”
That didn’t sound right. Was she getting muddled because the discovery of the body had hit her hard? “You mean to his shirt.”
“No,” she said, taking out her cell phone and selecting the photos app. “To his chest.”
She flipped through the photographs to the one she’d made herself take of Matt, knowing it was an important detail that just might help them solve Matt’s murder.
Finding the one she was looking for, she held it up for Declan. “There. See?”
“Wow.” The word just slipped out of its own volition. He took the smart phone from her—or tried to. “I won’t damage it,” he promised her.
She was really going to have to get a better grip on herself or she wasn’t going to be of any use to Matt, she upbraided herself.
“Sorry,” Charley responded, releasing her hold on the phone.
“That’s okay,” Declan said. And then he took a closer look at the photograph that she had queued up for his perusal. “You’re right, the note was stapled to his chest. Who does that kind of thing?” he marveled, more to himself than to her.
That was an easy one to answer. It was all the other questions that were going to be difficult. “Someone who’s crazy.”
“Any more? Photos?” he asked rather than just arbitrarily flip through her array of photographs. In what he saw as her present, rather fragile state, he wanted to make sure he avoided doing anything that might upset her any further than she already was.
“Not of the crime scene,” she told him. There were other photographs of Matt, both with her and without her, but those she didn’t want this detective to see. If the matter came up, she wouldn’t deny her connection to Matt, but until then, she wasn’t about to advertise the fact that he was her brother, either.
Declan leaned over the officer’s body, taking in all he could without actually touching the man or rolling him over. The bullet seemed to have entered in the region of his heart. He had no way of knowing if there was an exit wound until after the crime-scene investigator released the body. He wondered if his father had been called in for this one. Seeing as how it was a police officer who had been shot—possibly executed—he rather thought it was likely that his father would be on the scene since he was head of the day lab unit.
“Think he means it?” Declan asked, straightening up again.
The detective had asked the question completely out of the blue. She stared at him, unclear what he was referring to. “Who?”
“The killer,” Declan told her patiently. “Do you think there’ll be more? That he really intends to kill other people?”
Charley shrugged, at a loss to form any real opinion. “That’s what his note says,” she replied, her voice eerily removed.
Declan nodded as he conducted a perimeter examination of the area where the body had been discovered. “Well, thanks for the input,” he told her. “I’ll keep you in the loop if I can.”
Charley didn’t budge as she gave him a glare that would have made Medusa shiver. “‘In the loop’?” she echoed incredulously. “I’m not going to be in any ‘loop,’ Cavelli or Cavanaugh or whatever name you want to go by,” she informed him. “I’m going to work this case.”
“What department are you with?” he asked her patiently.
She knew where he was going with this. “Narcotics. It doesn’t matter,” Charley insisted, immediately vetoing any objections he might have been inclined to raise. “I was the first on the scene and I’m...” she paused to search for just the right words to use in this argument she intended to win “...familiar with his...with the victim’s background. That is definitely going to prove handy.”
“This is a homicide,” Declan began.
There were a variety of reasons why she couldn’t work the case, objections he was rather certain his lieutenant would raise—unless Declan went to bat for her. He rolled the thought over in his head. He was officially minus a partner and this was not a one-man investigation—especially if it turned out that this killer had more bodies on his agenda.
Thinking it over, he decided that that would most likely prove to be the best argument to use when he spoke to his lieutenant.
“I know what it is,” Charley retorted, grinding out the words. “Look, I need to be included in this investigation—actively included,” she underscored before he found some cute little phrase to insultingly refer to her participation in this investigation.
She took a breath, knowing what she was about to do was going to make her vulnerable, but she had no option left to her. She owed it to Matt to find his killer—to avenge his death. “Look, I’ll be in your debt if you talk to your captain—”
“Lieutenant,” Declan corrected.
“Whatever.” Charley shrugged impatiently. Her eyes held his, waiting for a decision from him.
“In my debt,” Declan repeated thoughtfully. He did like the sound of that.
“In your debt,” she confirmed, her voice as devoid of emotion as she could make it. Later she’d figure out how to get around this deal with the devil she was making, but right now, she had to secure her position on the investigation.
“You want in that badly?” Declan asked, scrutinizing her closely. There were things she wasn’t telling him, but he was rather certain they would surface, by and by.
She raised her chin like a soldier about to charge into the unknown and, just possibly, not return again. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to my lieutenant, see if he can get you temporarily assigned to Major Crimes. You just might be in luck. My partner handed in his papers today and he’s leaving the department for the private sector.”
Charley nodded, but she hardly heard a word of what the other detective was saying to her. The phrase “you just might be in luck” was echoing over and over again in her head.
She was never going to be in luck again.
Her brother, her best friend, her entire family lay on the sofa, dead.
There was no such thing as luck anymore, she thought darkly.
She didn’t realize Cavanaugh was talking to her, didn’t even hear him, let alone have any of his words register until she felt someone touch her arm. Blinking she looked up, once again abandoning the haze she hadn’t even realized she’d slipped back into.
“Are you all right?” Declan was asking.
She
