Serial Affair, page 3
“It’s not a matter of age,” Campbell clarified. “It’s a state of mind passed on from my parents. From a lot of parents who came out here to live, back in the day.” He could see that she wasn’t following him, so he explained further. “Aurora was initially a small town that just kept taking baby steps and growing. It never really stopped growing, but be that as it may, it still retained that small town feel to it.”
Campbell considered his words. “I guess that’s what makes it so unique and keeps the people here hanging around,” he told her.
The elevator car arrived at their floor and opened its doors. Campbell waited for this visiting detective to get on before following her in. When he finally got on, he pressed for the basement.
“You sound like a former tour guide,” Liberty commented.
“No,” Campbell told her. “I’m just a citizen who loves his hometown.” He let his answer sink in before he added, “That’s why I decided to join the police department.”
She filled in the blanks. “Because you like being in a position of authority?”
“No,” he told her. “Because I like preserving the peace and making sure that the people who live here are safe.”
That sounded far too noble, she thought. And then she looked at him. The detective was perfectly serious. “You mean that, don’t you?” she asked Campbell as the elevator came to a stop.
While he was used to questioning things as a detective, the way he viewed things as a person was an entirely different matter.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t,” Campbell said simply. He gestured to the open elevator doors. “I believe this is our stop.”
Stepping out of the elevator, Liberty looked down the long hallway. She was surprised to find that it was brightly lit. Her own precinct believed in saving on electricity.
Campbell saw the look on her face and offered a guess. “Were you expecting to find a darkened dungeon?”
“Calhoun doesn’t have an official morgue. We have to use the county morgue that’s located in Madison.”
“Going on a field trip to view the body of the deceased can’t be a fun excursion,” Campbell commented as he led the way to the offices used by the medical examiner.
Liberty couldn’t help thinking back. Not to when she’d had to view the nurse who had been the killer’s latest victim, but to when she’d had to go to identify her foster mother’s body.
For just one harrowing moment, she felt a cold chill down her spine, alternating with a flash of overwhelming heat. The sensation effectively paralyzed Liberty until she was finally able to draw air back into her lungs.
She realized that they had stopped walking and that the too-handsome-for-his-own-good detective was watching her. There was concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Liberty answered him all too quickly.
“You don’t look fine,” he said. “You want to sit down or have something to drink? Water? The computer lab’s right over this way.” He pointed toward another door. “I’m sure they won’t mind if you stop to—”
“I said I’m fine,” she told him more sharply. She shrugged. “I just get a little claustrophobic when I’m underground.”
He nodded as if he believed her, making her feel worse. “Why don’t you go back upstairs and wait in the squad room?” Cam suggested. “I can get the report and bring it to you when it’s ready.”
“That’s all right,” she told him dismissively. “It passed.”
He looked at her more closely. It was obvious that he didn’t believe her. “You sure?”
“I said it passed,” Liberty said curtly.
He stood there looking at a woman who was trying his patience. “Has anyone ever told you that you make it difficult to be nice to you?” Campbell asked.
Liberty tossed her head. “It’s been mentioned,” she answered. The moment she did, she regretted snapping at the detective. “I’m sorry. But I am over it,” she added when she saw that he was waiting for something further.
“It?” he questioned, trying to get to the bottom of what was really bothering her rather than just accept some made-up excuse. He was a Cavanaugh and Cavanaughs liked to get to the bottom of things. Not out of some morbid curiosity, but because it made them see things more clearly.
At least, that was the excuse he used, he thought, and it did have validity.
A thought occurred to him. “Were you the one who found the body?” he asked her.
Liberty avoided his eyes. It wasn’t something that she wanted to get into, especially not with a stranger. “Not exactly.”
“Then what ‘exactly’?” Campbell asked.
She shrugged. “Viewing the body just reminded me of something,” she said evasively.
“Can I ask what?” Campbell inquired in a lowered voice.
“You can ask,” Liberty responded.
Campbell studied her. He had faced enough stubborn family members to be very familiar with the look that was currently on her face. “But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
A partial smile broke through. “You catch on fast, Cavanaugh.”
“I have to,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of competition in my family.” He knew he wasn’t going to get anything out of her on the subject, at least not today. “Well,” he told her, “I’m here if you decide you need a sympathetic shoulder to lean on.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said crisply, doing her best to bury his offer the moment it was tendered.
“You do that,” he told her.
There was more going on here than just a simple detective trying to cut her teeth on her first murder case, he thought. This case meant something to the woman and he intended to find out just what it was.
But he could also see that he wasn’t about to get anything out of her by pressuring her or bombarding her with questions at this point. This would take finesse—and patience.
If the woman wound up hanging around that long.
As he came to the door that opened into the medical examiner’s offices, he paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Something wrong?” Liberty asked him when he made no move to go in.
“Just making sure you’re up to this,” Campbell told her. “First times are hard.”
“This isn’t my first time,” Liberty informed him.
He smiled at her, sending shockwaves all through her system. “Just making sure.”
She resented his inference. She didn’t like being a lightning rod for someone’s concern. It made her feel fragile, and those days were permanently behind her.
Or they were supposed to be.
“Don’t you have a sister or a cousin to take care of instead of me?” she asked, trying to redirect the detective’s attention to someone or at least something other than her.
“Not at the moment,” Campbell answered.
Turning the doorknob, he opened the door then gestured inside. “All right, let’s go,” he said.
To Liberty, it sounded almost like a battle cry.
Chapter 3
Dr. Kristin Alberghetti Cavanaugh had just untied her face mask, lowering it. It still hung at half mast around her neck, its blue color matching the scrubs she wore whenever she performed an autopsy. She had met Malloy, the man she was destined to marry, while performing wholesale autopsies on bodies uncovered beneath an out-of-the-way cacti nursery.
Kristin maintained that if all those unexpected bodies hadn’t caught her off guard, then nothing ever would.
But Kristin had to admit that she was shaken up this time. She had just discovered, after having conducted the autopsy, that the body she’d just worked on was one of the many, according to the woman she had just met, that had been left by a prolific serial killer. That had rattled her to the core.
Kristin nodded at her husband’s cousin, but her attention was drawn to the young woman he had brought into the morgue with him.
“Hi. I hear that our latest murder victim brought you in all the way from Arizona,” Kristin said, smiling at Liberty.
“Calhoun, Arizona,” Campbell specified, knowing that Kristin liked details whenever possible.
Hearing the name, Kristin shook her head. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with that name,” the medical examiner apologized.
“Don’t worry about it. Not many people are,” Liberty told her. Her eyes were drawn to the body on the table. “Is that the victim?” she asked. Without thinking, she had automatically lowered her voice out of respect for the deceased.
“It is,” Campbell confirmed. And then, to lighten the mood, the detective quipped, “They frown on the lab assistants taking naps on the tables when it’s slow.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Cam,” Kristin told the woman from Arizona. “Yes, to confirm what Campbell just said, that is the latest victim.” She watched as the blonde who had come in with Campbell slowly approached the table, circled it, looking at the body from all angles and studying the woman. There was a very strange expression on the detective’s face. “Did you know her?” Kristin asked.
“No, not her,” Liberty answered, only half paying attention to what the medical examiner had just asked her.
“But you knew one of the killer’s victims, didn’t you?” Campbell guessed, going with his gut reaction.
The detective’s words sank in belatedly and Liberty’s eyes darted to his face when she realized what he was saying. She inadvertently stiffened just a little.
“Why would you say that?” she asked defensively.
“Call it ‘copley intuition.’” Campbell told her in all seriousness.
“‘Copley’?” Kristin repeated with a laugh. “Well, that’s a new one on me,” she confessed.
“Calling it intuition sounds a lot better than a ‘gut’ feeling,” Campbell told the two women.
“Maybe,” Kristin agreed. “But ‘copley’?” The medical examiner shook her head, showing how she felt about the strange term. “I really don’t know about that. Is that even a word?”
The corners of Campbell’s mouth curved. “I’ll work on it,” he promised glibly. “So,” he said, addressing the ME more seriously, “is this victim similar to the others?”
“According to the reports I reviewed earlier, right down to the grade of piano wire the killer used,” Kristin answered. It was obvious by the way the medical examiner spoke that she had divorced herself from the actual deed being investigated. Otherwise, she would have had difficulty remaining removed as she performed these autopsies.
Liberty studied the deceased more closely. “Was death immediate?”
The detective from Arizona might have seemed removed, Campbell thought, but something in how she asked about the deceased told him that this was personal to the investigator.
“If you’re asking me if she suffered,” Kristin said, “I don’t think she did. There are no defensive wounds on the victim, indicating that the killer caught her by surprise. And then the piano wire did the rest.”
“That’s a relief,” Liberty murmured then added, “That she didn’t suffer. It means that the killer wasn’t doing this in order to watch the victim suffer and plead with him for her life.”
“Campbell mentioned that you said the victims were similar,” Kristin told Liberty, interested in gathering as much information about the case as possible for her notes.
Liberty nodded. “All the victims so far have been nurses,” she told the doctor. “And they were between the ages of twenty-five and fifty.”
“No other similarities?” Kristin asked. “Hair color, eye color, weight?” She ticked off each item, watching Liberty’s face as she mentioned it.
Liberty thought, doing a quick mental review of the victims she had compiled. She shook her head. “Nothing else except for the piano wire—and they were all Caucasian.”
Kristin glanced at Campbell then asked the visiting detective, “Why do you think the killer would use piano wire?”
“My guess is that it probably has something to do with the original murder victim,” Campbell answered, keeping one eye on Liberty to see if she agreed or had something contradictory to add. “Maybe the first person he killed this way was his mother or some other female relative who happened to be a nurse who also either taught music on the side or forced the killer to practice the piano as a boy. You’d be surprised what idiosyncrasies—”
“You said that all the victims were nurses?” Kristin asked. She found herself being drawn into particulars of this case.
“So far, they have been,” Liberty verified.
“Maybe they also taught music. Say, on the side?” Campbell suggested, searching for a way to connect the two things.
“Good question,” Liberty responded. “I don’t know, but that will definitely be one of the questions I intend to ask.”
“Are you planning on tracking down the victims’ families and interviewing them?” Campbell asked. Considering that there were thirty victims, it sounded like a very ambitious undertaking to him. She was going to need help.
“If I can find them,” Liberty acknowledged. “If I can’t, then I’ll try to find anyone who knew the victim and talk to them to get some kind of insight.”
This was beginning to sound more like an obsession than just a case. “How long did you say you plan on taking off?” Campbell asked.
“Three weeks.” Liberty had a hunch that she knew what he had to be thinking. “But if I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I can try to get an extension,” she added.
“Out of sheer curiosity, how many people do you have working with you?” he asked. “I know you mentioned that you were the only detective in Calhoun, but do you have any assistance, or police officers helping you go through these cases?”
She hated being put on the spot or admitting that there wasn’t anyone to turn as she worked this investigation.
“It’s not about the number of people I have,” Liberty replied.
It wasn’t hard to read between the lines, Campbell thought. “So it’s just you,” he guessed.
Liberty raised her chin. “Sometimes it just takes one person,” she said defensively.
The detective smiled at her. “In a perfect world, maybe. But then, in a perfect world, these kinds of things don’t happen,” he concluded philosophically.
Was he goading her, or was he just having fun at her expense? Either way, she didn’t take kindly to it. “Is there a point to this?” she asked him.
“Well, the key point is that this investigation you’re proposing to spearhead would go a lot faster if you had help.”
She certainly couldn’t argue with that, even though she would have wanted to, especially since she felt as if this detective was deliberately pressing her buttons to get a reaction out of her.
“I’ll put an ad to that effect in the local paper when I get home,” Liberty told him.
“No need to do that,” Campbell said. He made it sound as if he had some sort of a solution to her situation.
“Oh? Well, I’m open to any suggestions,” she said glibly then added, “Decent suggestions.” The look in her eyes challenged him. “All right, so what’s your idea?”
He smiled, sensing that she wouldn’t like this, but then, if she was all alone in this, she really didn’t have much choice, did she?
“Well, I’ve got some time coming to me,” Campbell told her.
Liberty frowned, totally forgetting about the medical examiner in the room for the moment. “And what good does that do me?”
She also didn’t care for the amused smile that curved the detective’s lips—never mind just how appealing that smile made him look.
“Not much for adding two and two together, are you?” Campbell asked her.
Kristin cleared her throat, temporarily drawing their attention away from one another. “Not that it isn’t fascinating watching the two of you spar, but I do have work to get to. I can have a rough draft of this report in your hands within an hour or so. Until then, maybe you can take this outside?” she suggested brightly, looking from one to the other.
“Sorry, Kris,” Campbell apologized, giving her cheek a quick, affectionate kiss. “I’ll be on my best behavior when I come back to get the report,” he promised with a wink.
As he began to leave, he realized that the woman he had brought in with him still hadn’t made a move to follow him. She had remained standing next to the medical examiner.
“Um, Arizona?” he said, waiting to get her attention so that she would leave with him.
Instead, Liberty looked almost sheepishly at Kristin. Maybe she did need to apologize. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t usually allow myself to get carried away like this. It’s just that you were right,” she admitted. “This is a very special case for me. And not just because of this latest case—” she nodded at the body on the table “—or the one that I caught in Calhoun, even though murder in Calhoun is a very rare occurrence. We don’t exactly have murderers in town, much less serial killers.”
Kristin nodded. “I understand perfectly.”
This was where she walked away, Liberty silently reminded herself. She had smoothed out the feathers that she had ruffled—or at the very least, the feathers appeared to be smoothed out.
Despite that, Liberty continued to stand where she was. She needed these people’s cooperation and it appeared that the detective was willing to pitch in even after she had become so prickly. The very thing that had her being so closemouthed when she was around the chief and his people back in Calhoun now had her willing to open herself up to this detective and the medical examiner.
She really didn’t have a choice in the matter.
“Actually,” Liberty began, her eyes sweeping over the medical examiner and then over toward Campbell, “you don’t.”
Kristin appeared to be at a loss as to whether or not to press Liberty for any further details, but Campbell had no such misgivings. “All right, then why don’t you explain it to us?”
