Malloy thought. Ordinarily, he probably would have backed away. This was, after all, a case, and he wasn’t the type to waste too much time trying to break through a woman’s barriers. For one thing, life was too short. For another, he was being paid to be a detective, not a lover. And there were a great many willing women out there to choose from.
But, on the other hand, there was a certain appeal to the concept of “feisty,” especially when it was coupled with someone who looked the way this woman did.
Exactly who was she?
What was her official position in the department, and how did he get her to open up to him?
“You’re new,” he said, hoping to initiate a conversation.
Kristin spared him just the minutest of glances before she went back to her work. “Actually, I’m not,” she told him.
“I haven’t seen you around,” he told her. “And I always notice beautiful women.”
“Well, I guess you missed one this time,” she responded, carefully separating two bones that looked as if they had been fused together by grit and time.
Rather than annoying him, the flippant way she’d answered what was clearly a line—he hadn’t been trying to be subtle—seemed to oddly attract him to an even greater extent.
Crouching down beside the woman, he said, “Let’s start over.”
The look she gave him would have withered a lesser man.
“Maybe later. I’m working now.” Her expression turned impatient. “And you’re in my light again.”
“Right.”
To accommodate her, Malloy rose to his feet, taking care to allow the sunlight to stream over and bathe the bones laid out before her.
This one, he told himself, was going to be a tough nut to crack.
And he couldn’t wait to get started.
But for now, as tantalizing as the woman kneeling over the boneyard was, Malloy knew he had to place his private plans on the back burner.
A really distant back burner.
For now, he had a crime to begin to unravel and, from the looks of it, a number of dead people to identify.
Growing up, Malloy had always loved puzzles, both the mental kind and the kind that came inside boxes that were labeled with intentionally daunting numbers like “1000 pieces.”
The older he got, the higher the number of pieces stuffed into the box became. But back then, no matter how many parts the puzzle came in, with enough tenacity on his part, they always wound up fitting into one another to form a unified whole.
He had come to learn years ago that life didn’t always imitate art. If he were being honest with himself, “hardly ever” was more the case. But each of these bones now spread out on the cloth went into forming a whole person. All he needed to do was find out who that whole person was, so that he or she could be laid to rest.
All he needed to do.
The words echoed in his head, mocking him. There was no “all” about this job, unless the word referred strictly to the number of bones that were even now piling up next to the medical examiner.
As he watched, the pile just kept growing.
It was like trying to look away from a train wreck. Horrific though it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Not because he didn’t want to, but because identifying the deceased was his job.
So he watched as the CSI team members continued to find more and more body parts, carefully laying each part on the long, unfurled rectangular cloth beside the somber medical examiner. From all appearances—at least to his limited range of expertise in this particular field—time had been the butcher rather than some overzealous serial killer trying to bolster his sagging self-esteem by hacking apart people.
Rather than walk away and get back to the owner as he’d intended, Malloy retraced his steps to the medical examiner.
“Any chance that those overly observant construction workers ogling you over there might have stumbled across some old Native American burial ground while plowing up the ground with their bulldozer?” he asked her.
Kristin looked up to see if the cocky detective was joking. But the expression on his face, while exceedingly friendly, was apparently serious.
She turned back to her work. “If that were the case, Detective, it was a pretty exclusive burial ground. So exclusive that I highly doubt it existed.”
“Again, please,” Malloy requested. “In English this time.”
Impatient, Kristin rocked back on her heels. In order to be able to look at him, she shaded her eyes. “The bodies that have been dug up so far all belonged to women. While there were some tribes that were predominantly matriarchal in nature, I’ve never heard of any of them segregating their dead.” And then she shrugged as she added a coda. “Anyway, these bodies aren’t really that old.”
Malloy’s eyes swept over the various piles of bones. They looked dried and, in some cases, splintered. “Could have fooled me,” he murmured.
“I’m sure a good many things could fool you, Detective, but I don’t have time to discuss that,” she said, getting back to work. “I’d like to finish up here before the turn of the next century.”
Rather than take offense, Malloy merely shook his head. “That was cold, Doc,” he told her.
Kristin felt herself bristling. She didn’t like the note of familiarity in his voice. “That was accurate, Detective Cavanaugh.”
He didn’t back off, the way she’s hoped. Instead, he said, “Call me Malloy. All beautiful women do.”
At a loss as to how to respond or how to put this man in his place, Kristin retreated. Sighing deeply, she went back to ignoring him. She turned her attention to tagging body parts.
“Are you sure they didn’t unearth some kind of a cemetery when they broke ground over here?” Malloy pressed. There seemed to be just too many body parts for anything but a cemetery.
Kristin raised her eyes to look up at him just for a moment. She didn’t bother hiding her disdain. “You have trouble understanding the word ‘no,’ Detective? Or is it that you’re just not accustomed to hearing it?”
He didn’t answer her.
He didn’t have to.
The grin that found its way to his lips did it for him.
Kristin bit off a few choice words that rose to her own lips. This wasn’t the time to get distracted or get embroiled in a verbal exchange that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Especially when what she had before her could very well be the defining moment of her entire career. She didn’t have time to get sidetracked by a sweet-talking, sinfully good-looking, dark-haired detective
