Internal Affair (6 page)

Fortunately, that list had turned out to be a great deal shorter.

Unfortunately, although some of her girlfriends knew she was involved with someone, no one had a name for the mystery man. For all her perky, former cheerleader appearance, Joanne Styles chose to be rather closemouthed when it came to her love affair.

All he and McKenna could gather was that the mystery man had been relatively new in the young woman’s life. So new she was afraid to talk about him because of the fear she might jinx it.

At least, that was what she’d told her friends. His money was still on the congressman. In that case, Styles might have been afraid to name him because Wiley had threatened to end the affair if anyone found out about the two of them. After all, he was the family values poster boy.

There was something about the man’s wide smile that just rubbed him the wrong way.

He was letting his personal prejudice color his thinking, Patrick upbraided himself. But maybe it wasn’t prejudice. Maybe it was a gut feeling. Like the gut feeling that he’d be a whole lot better off without McKenna as his partner.

As his thoughts shifted to her, he turned the light on. It just seemed wrong to have thoughts about her in the dark. McKenna was still working with Styles’s computer, but so far, all the e-mail she’d managed to pull up was unenlightening. If Styles had communicated with her lover/possible killer, it wasn’t from her own laptop. The mail there represented communications from and to former college friends and her family, all of whom lived back East somewhere.

He and McKenna had met with the member of the family who had flown out to claim the body. He had to admit that McKenna was better at talking to the distraught older sister than he was. It wasn’t the dead that made him uncomfortable; it was the living.

The body had been released earlier today. There was no more information coming from the coroner’s office. They’d learned as much as they could there. Besides the victim’s own DNA, there was no one with whom to match the fetus’s DNA. They had possible motive, but so far, no suspect they could remotely pin down. Everyone, according to her friends and co-workers, liked Joanne.

Except for one person, he thought grimly, making his way out of his tie and into the kitchen. The father of Styles’s baby. The man who had terminated them both.

Tossing the tie onto the back of a chair, Patrick opened his refrigerator. There was nothing except beer in it, but that was all right. Beer was all he wanted. Beer and some peace and quiet.

Going back into the living room, he sat down in front of the television set and left it off. He was vaguely aware of the sounds of cars beyond his window, tires passing through puddles as they made their way somewhere. Concentrating, he could block out the sound.

He couldn’t block out the phone.

When he heard it ring, he stiffened. Taking another long gulp from the bottle, he debated letting the phone ring. Most of his work-related calls came through his cell phone. The telephone might mean telemarketers. Lately they had no shame, calling from early until late and invading the weekends. He told himself he needed to get caller ID.

But the telephone was also reserved for family or if there was some kind of an emergency. He stared at it, willing it to stop.

When the ringing went to the count of four, he yanked up the receiver. If it was a telemarketer, he promised himself one hell of a venting session. He could use someone to chew out after holding in his temper this entire week. His new partner had certainly tested him.

“Hello!”

“Patrick, you’re barking.” His sister’s soft voice filled his ear, the very sound of it soothing him. “Anything wrong?”

He sighed and then relaxed as he sank back into the cushions of the sofa. “Just a homicide case that refuses to cooperate.”

“I haven’t heard from you all week.” Patience didn’t add that she worried when she didn’t hear from him. Patrick wasn’t the type to weather guilt trips and she wasn’t the type to bestow them. “How are you?”

“Busy. Tired.”

They worked him too hard, she thought, and he never let anyone help him. She loved her brother dearly, but he made her crazy. She wished he was a little more like her cousins.

“Right, the homicide case. You work much too hard, Patrick. When are they going to give you a partner?”

At the mention of the word
partner,
he frowned. This was his haven and he didn’t want to think about her when he was at home. “They did.”

“Oh?”

He heard curiosity filling her voice. Good old Patience, as nosy as ever.

“Yeah, maybe that’s why I need help,” he muttered more into his beer than into the receiver.

They both knew what he was like. A hard man to please. That, unfortunately, he got from their father. Patience knew better than to say that to him. But she could say something.

“Give this one a chance, Patrick. Eduardo worked out after you stopped riding him.”

“No way in hell this one’s going to work out. She’s a damn pain in the butt.”

Patience’s interest immediately increased one hundredfold. He could hear it in her voice.

“She?”

Too late Patrick realized his mistake.

Chapter 6

“Y
our new partner’s a woman?”

Patrick could almost hear the wheels turning in his sister’s head. “Temporarily.”

“Temporarily?” He couldn’t tell if it was confusion or amusement in her voice. “You mean it’s a guy dressed as a woman? He’s undercover?”

Served him right for opening his big mouth. Trouble was, around his family, he wasn’t as vigilant as he was with everyone else. “No, I mean that she’s my partner temporarily.”

“Until you send her running for the hills and screaming,” Patience said.

Patrick took another sip from the amber glass bottle before answering. “She doesn’t have to scream.”

If he thought he’d closed the subject, he should have known better. Patience had only begun exploring. “What’s she like? Is she pretty?”

He frowned as an image of Maggi came unbidden into his head. “That has nothing to do with it,” he fairly growled.

“Then she
is
pretty.” Now she was grinning. He knew she was grinning. Damn, give Patience an inch and she constructed a regular road out of it. “On a scale of one to ten, what is she?”

An eleven.

The thought came out of nowhere and he shrugged it off as if it were some kind of killer bee buzzing around his head, looking for a tender spot to leave its stinger and die. So what if he noticed that McKenna was a step away from drop-dead gorgeous? He was a detective. He was supposed to notice things. Like the way McKenna’s eyebrows drew together every time he called her by her first two names.

Or the way her mouth curved when she thought she was one jump ahead of him on something.

He took a longer drink from his bottle, as if that could wash away the image.

“A huge pain in the butt,” he answered Patience. “Not unlike a certain sister can be some of the time. Like now.”

“I like her already. What’s her name?”

That she professed to like McKenna sight unseen didn’t surprise him. Patience liked everyone. In his estimation, she was way too friendly. He worried about her. A lot.

“Don’t get too attached,” he warned. “She’s not going to be around long enough for you to need to learn her name.”

“Something you said?”

If only. McKenna appeared to have the hide of a rhino. A definite contrast to her soft skin. He frowned. The beer was making him lax, leading his thoughts around in circles.

“Patience, you know I work better alone.”

“No,” she contradicted firmly, “you don’t. You only think you do.” A note of concern entered her voice. “You’ve got to stop thinking of yourself as a loner, Patrick.”

“I
am
a loner.”

They’d gone around about this before. It seemed to him that Patience refused to accept the fact that outside the family, he had no desire to meet anyone halfway.

“You’re only a loner until the right woman comes along.”

The conversation had taken a sharp turn. “Hey, hold it a second, how did this jump from being about work to my private life?”

Patience sighed softly. “Patrick, you don’t have a life.”

“That’s what makes it private.” He finished off his beer and thought about making dinner into a two-course meal by getting a second bottle. “Look, Patience, I’m dog tired and I feel like I’ve been chasing my own tail for a week—”

“Wouldn’t have to do that if there was someone else to chase.”

She was like an iron butterfly, soft but strong and determined. He wasn’t in the mood for this tonight. “Enough.”

“Okay then. Uncle Andrew says to say hi.”

“Hi,” he mumbled back, knowing there was more to come. With Andrew, there always was, but then, that was his way, and though words hadn’t been said to the effect, he loved his uncle, both his uncles, far more than he ever had his own father.

“He also wants to know if you plan on showing up at his table ever again.”

Well, that didn’t take long, Patrick thought. He eyed the distance between the sofa and the kitchen, wondering if the trip was really worth it. For two cents, he could just sack out here on the sofa and forget about the second beer—he was that tired.

“I’ll be there when I’ll be there.”

“That’s what I told him.”

He smiled to himself. “Good girl.” He paused. Maybe he was just tired, but he thought there’d been something in her voice, something he couldn’t place, ever since she’d called. “Everything okay with you?”

“Same as always,” she told him cheerfully. “Up to my hips in dogs and cats and the occasional reptile.”

His eyes battled to stay open, but he wasn’t completely convinced. She sounded a tad too cheerful. “But you’re okay.”

“Couldn’t be better.”

Like a small stiletto, guilt slid through him, making tiny slits. “I could drop by tonight.”

“What, and have your death on my conscience? No thank you. You sound like you’re half-asleep already. Everything’s fine, Patrick. Get your rest. I’ll talk to you soon.”

He let out a long sigh. He was damn tired, but that didn’t negate his responsibility. His sister had been the recipient of some very unwanted attention by a man whose African Gray Parrot she’d successfully treated. When this admirer sent a dozen long-stemmed roses to her, she thought he was just grateful that she’d cured the bird, but other gifts followed even after she’d politely but firmly refused them. Was the man bothering her again?

“As long as you’re sure everything’s okay.”

“Patrick, it was a harmless incident. I made too much of it. Fifteen years ago, Steven Jessen would have been called a persistent admirer, nothing more. These days people immediately assume someone with more than a mild interest in another person is a stalker. Forget it,” she insisted. “I have.”

He wasn’t sure if she was just saying that to put him at ease. “Then he hasn’t—”

“Nope, he hasn’t,” she countered quickly, “and I’m sure he won’t. Any interest he had in me evaporated when he realized that I came with my own personal section of the Aurora police department.” The last time he’d paid a visit to her pet clinic, she’d prominently displayed the group family photograph she had of her brother, cousins and uncles, all in police dress uniforms. That was more than a month ago and Steve hadn’t been back since. “But, if you’re feeling chatty, we can get back to the subject of your new partner. What did you say her name was again?”

“I didn’t. Good night, Patience.”

Patience laughed. “Good night, Patrick.”

Just before he hung up, he heard dogs barking in the background and absently wondered if his sister was still in the clinic or had gone upstairs to her suite of rooms. Her own two German shepherds made enough noise to sound like a huge pack of dogs.

As far back as he could remember, Patience had always gravitated toward animals, turning them into pets and lavishing her affection on them. Different strokes for different folks, he supposed. As far as he was concerned, a pet rock represented too much work.

Patrick woke up with a start, so much sweat dampening his upper torso it was as if he’d spent the past three hours of troubled sleep on the top rack of a broiler instead of his own bed.

His nightmare was back. With a difference. Now it wasn’t Ramirez who he saw being shot down in front of him. It was the woman.

McKenna.

Maggi.

Halfway through the dream, the crack house he and his partner were entering dissolved into the front of a bank. The same bank where she had risked her life to disarm the robber. Except that this time she didn’t wrench the gun out of the man’s hand. This time it discharged with the bullet hitting her in the forehead the way it had Ramirez.

His heart pounding, Patrick shot the robber dead as he raced to her side. But it was already too late. Maggi died in his arms, her green eyes staring up at him lifelessly. Staring into his soul.

Ripping things out.

He realized he was still breathing hard.

Patrick scrubbed his hands over his face, forcing himself to get a grip.

This just wasn’t going to work. He’d tried, given it more time than he’d thought he would, but it just wasn’t going to work.

Having a new partner was bad enough. Having a woman as his new partner was far worse. He’d grown up feeling too protective of his mother and sister to switch gears at this point in his life. And feeling protective about McKenna was just going to interfere with the way he responded to situations. He’d be too intent on watching her back to pay the right amount of attention to everything else. All it took was a moment’s hesitation and all hell would break loose. He already knew that because of Ramirez. Because he’d been one step behind his partner instead of right there beside him.

It just wasn’t going to work.

Four hours later, he was still saying the same thing, except out loud now and to the only man with the authority to make things right.

Patrick cornered his captain as soon as the man walked into the squad room. “It’s not going to work.”

Captain Reynolds waved him into his office and closed the door behind him before sitting down at his desk and leisurely opening up his container of imported coffee. He studied Patrick over the rim of the paper cup.

Reynolds forced a smile to his lips. “I’m assuming you’re talking about your new partner.”

“It’s not to going to work,” Patrick insisted again, his jaw clenched. He didn’t want to live with another death on his conscience and she struck him as someone who could easily wind up dead.

The coffee was obviously too hot. Reynolds placed it back on his desk. “It’s not that I don’t respect your judgment, Cavanaugh, but given your track record as far as taking on new partners goes, I’d say your opinion is a little less than reliable in this matter.”

His back against the wall, Patrick tried to strike up a deal. “Look, I’ve always told you I work better alone, but if that can’t be the case, at least give me another guy.”

“McKenna comes highly recommended. She’s got commendations up the wazoo from San Francisco—”

Commendations didn’t impress him. It was all a matter of politics. Patrick cut his superior short. “I don’t care if she’s got a letter from the mayor, I don’t want to work with her.”

“Why?”

Patrick hated explaining himself, but he knew it was the only chance he had to get McKenna reassigned somewhere else. “Having a female around takes the edge off.”

Reynolds grinned, as if amused. He blew on his coffee before taking a tentative sip. “This is a side of you I didn’t know about. I didn’t think you noticed women, Cavanaugh. I would have been a little worried if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t think you really notice anything except the job you’re working on.” Taking another sip, longer this time, Reynolds replaced the container on his stained blotter. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. You’re damn good at what you do—lucky for you,” he tagged on.

Patrick could read between the lines. “You’re not going to reassign her, are you?”

“Nope.”

Ordinarily he didn’t push. But then, ordinarily he didn’t ask for favors, either. He might as well go all the way. “Can I ask why?”

“Because I like having the best work for me and everyone else is happy in their little niches.”

“I’m not happy,” Patrick growled.

Reynolds shrugged. “You are never happy, that goes without saying.” Obviously needing to keep the peace and give Cavanaugh a false sense of hope, he added, “Okay, tell you what. Give it a few more weeks. If you’re still butting heads, I’ll see what I can do. I have to say I’m surprised, though.”

“Why?”

Draining half the container, Reynolds wiped his mouth with the napkin he’d brought in.

“Usually it’s your partner in here, begging to be reassigned. I guess she doesn’t find you as hard to work with as you find her. Either that, or she’s got a hell of a lot more stick-to-itiveness than most of her predecessors.”

She had a hell of a lot more something all right, Patrick thought, but he didn’t know exactly what the label for it was.

“Whatever.”

Annoyed, disgusted and more than vaguely unsettled, Patrick strode out of the office. He hated wasting time and he’d just wasted a precious amount of it trying to reason with a man who was far more interested in the kind of PR he could generate with the public than he was about the actual internal workings of his department.

His mood black, Patrick decided to go back to the morgue to review the original autopsy report on Joanne Styles to see if anything out of the ordinary struck him this time.

The morgue was deadly quiet. There were no autopsies in progress at the moment. The M.E. had handed Patrick his own copy of Joanne’s autopsy before leaving the room. Patrick made himself as comfortable as possible, sitting down to read at a desk that was equally likely to hold the coroner’s lunch as it was a victim’s final effects.

The silence enveloped him as he read words that he’d gone over time and again already. Concentrating to the exclusion of everything else, the noise almost made him jump.

Maggi marched in at the far end of the room, hitting the door with the flat of her hand and sending it flying open. The door banged against the wall, summoning his attention.

She looked as if she were breathing fire. Her eyes had narrowed, boring small, burning holes into him before she ever reached him.

All in all, he had to admit she looked rather magnificent, like one of those paintings he’d seen by that artist who reveled in strong, beautiful, scantily clad women warriors. All she needed was a spear and a mythical steed.

It had taken Maggi several minutes to find out where Patrick was in the building. Her temper had increased with every second that passed and was now a hair-breadth away from reaching critical mass.

Facing him squarely, she demanded, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

He was as calm as she was angry. “Pay stub says Patrick Cavanaugh.”

For two cents, she would have doubled her fists and beat on him even though the blows probably would have hurt her more than him.

“Don’t get smart with me, Cavanaugh. I just heard you asked the captain for another partner.”

Since the door was closed, she’d had to have heard that from Brooks, the only one in the squad who could read lips. Probably trying to cull favor with her, Patrick thought darkly.