Cavanaugh's Surrender

Trying not to get ahead of herself, she turned toward Sean. “We have to process her cell phone for any fingerprints on the keypad that aren’t hers. The guy probably wore gloves, but maybe he got careless….”

Destiny’s voice trailed off as she made eye contact with her supervisor. He wasn’t saying anything, just letting her talk, but she could see by the expression on his face that he was already way ahead of her. He always seemed to be two steps ahead of everyone.

“You already thought of that,” she said, nodding her head.

“We’re on the same page,” Sean told her kindly. “Same page that Logan’s on,” he said, nodding toward his son.

Feeling anxious and yet dull-witted at the same time, an area she had never inhabited before, Destiny turned toward the detective, curious why he wasn’t saying anything.

The answer to that was simple. Because he wasn’t standing there anymore.

“Cavanaugh?” she called, raising her voice.

“In here,” Logan answered, his voice floating back to her from the back of the apartment.

Apparently a thought had occurred to him and he’d gone back into the bedroom to look at something, or for something.

Actually, the man had gone back to the bathroom, Destiny realized as she followed the sound of the detective’s deep voice.

As she entered the bedroom, she had to shift to one side. The medical examiner’s team had slipped Paula’s body into that one-size-fits-all black body bag and was now wheeling her sister back out. Once outside the building, they’d put her into the coroner’s van they’d driven over here.

Paula didn’t like the color black, Destiny recalled with a pang. It was the only color missing from her meticulously arranged wardrobe.

“Black is the color of death, Destiny. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”

It is now, pumpkin. It is now, Destiny thought, feeling her heart twist inside of her.

Walking into the bathroom, painfully aware that her sister was no longer here—no longer anywhere—she found Logan standing before the medicine cabinet. The door was open and the detective was peering at the shelves. He was obviously taking inventory of what was inside. She didn’t exactly care for the thoughtful frown she saw on his face.

Now what?

Bracing herself, thinking that she would have to defend her sister again, Destiny forced herself to ask, “What?”

Logan read the generic name imprinted on the container’s label again. This put a crimp in the woman’s theory. He held the container up so that she could see it, as well.

“This was just filled,” he told her.

She had no idea what “this” was but had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy once she heard the answer.

Even so, though she knew Logan had to do it, she resented this man’s prying into her sister’s life. And, by proxy, into her life. Resented the lack of understanding and compassion in his voice.

Granted, as a good detective, he was supposed to be impartial, but keeping this kind of a distance between himself and the victim didn’t help him understand the kind of person her sister had been. Didn’t make him fiercely want to solve this tragic crime because the world was that much the lesser for the loss of her.

Taking yet another breath, Destiny was satisfied that her voice wouldn’t crack. Only then did she finally answer him. “Yes, so?”

Still holding the bottle up, he shook it. Hard. There was no sound to correspond with the movement, no pills being disturbed and forced to rattle around the small container.

“So it’s empty,” he pointed out needlessly. “According to the date it was filled, there should be approximately twenty-five pills in here. There aren’t.” He looked at her. “What do you want to bet that toxicology is going to find that those pills are in your sister’s system? Her wrists didn’t need to be slashed,” he told her. “Your sister swallowed enough of these things to have killed a small horse.”

“Or was forced to swallow,” Destiny interjected. She wasn’t going to let him just forget about what his father had pointed out. Evidence that pointed to her sister being murdered.

“There’s no sign of a struggle, remember? Maybe, before the full effects of the pills kicked in, your sister actually did try to slash her wrists but she was so loopy from the pills that she did an awkward, botched job of it.”

Taking the vial from him, Destiny turned the container around so she could read the label. When she did, the name of the drug was vaguely familiar. Her sister was taking prescription sleeping pills, one of the newer ones on the market.

“Ever since we were little, my sister has had trouble sleeping. When these came on the market—” she nodded at the empty container “—and she tried them, she was overjoyed. She’d finally found something that worked. But she never took more than the prescribed dosage,” Destiny maintained firmly. “It wasn’t because she was a saint,” she added angrily, reading the skepticism in Logan’s eyes. “She just didn’t want to feel drugged in the morning. The idea of falling asleep behind the wheel while driving to work terrified her,” she emphasized.

Logan took back the container, intending on giving it to his father to send to toxicology.

“Still, over time, people develop a tolerance for medications. Maybe she found that one pill wasn’t enough for her anymore and she took two—and then more. Or maybe she just wanted to sleep forever because her boyfriend dumped her.”

He was back to that again. What was he, Johnny One-note? she thought angrily. How many ways did she have to say this before it finally sank into the thick skull of his?

“No,” Destiny insisted with feeling. “Paula wouldn’t have done that. Someone killed my sister,” she said, enunciating each word separately. “I don’t know who it was, but I do know that Paula didn’t do it herself—accidentally or otherwise,” Destiny added in case he was going to suggest that next.

“All right,” Logan relented.

His father’s lead assistant wasn’t about to come around to his side or even remotely entertain the idea that her sister had committed suicide. And since his father seemed to believe that someone else had delivered the slash marks to the young woman’s wrists, for the time being he’d go along with the popular theory.

Besides, he really didn’t enjoy upsetting her, considering that she was still dealing with the shock of finding her sister dead.

“We’ll approach it that way for now.” Leaving the bathroom, still holding the prescription container with his handkerchief wrapped around it, Logan handed it to his father.

“The pills are probably all in her stomach,” he told him not as his father, but as the head of the crime scene lab.

“You’re most likely right,” Sean agreed. “Whoever killed her probably slipped the pills into her drink. That way there’d be no resistance to what he was going to do next.” He lowered his voice so that only Logan could hear. “Poor thing never stood a chance.”

Logan nodded vaguely. He wasn’t doing anyone any good just standing here, he decided, and announced, “I’m going to canvass the floor, see if anyone heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.”

“But you don’t think so,” Destiny surmised.

“I didn’t say that,” Logan maintained. He didn’t like being second-guessed. For the most part, he liked to think that on the job he was unreadable. He prided himself on that.

Besides, he was always open to possibilities. This job consisted of equal parts skill and luck.

“Hey, you never know. Stranger things have happened. And not everyone works nine to five,” he added cavalierly. “So maybe someone did hear something.” Logan paused just next to his father as he began to head out the front door. “Maybe I’ll see you this Sunday.” It was as close as he allowed himself to get to making a commitment that involved his new family.

“Maybe,” Sean echoed with a faint nod.

“Sunday?” Destiny repeated, her smattering of curiosity getting the better of her when it came to this handsome, arrogant would-be crime fighter. “What’s this Sunday?”

Since he knew that this woman worked closely with his father—it had to be closely for his father to display this kind of regard for her, treating her as if she was another one of his daughters—he was surprised that she didn’t know.

“The former chief of police, my new uncle,” he added, amused by the whole concept of getting such a huge number of brand-new blood relatives at his age. “He likes to throw family get-togethers. Word has it that any of us can drop by his table to get a full breakfast any day of the week, but apparently he goes all out on Sundays.

“My father is settling into this new life and doing his best to show up every Sunday to prove how serious he is about being assimilated by the Cavanaughs—and making up for lost time.”

Destiny nodded. Though Sean Cavanaugh wasn’t an overly talkative man, he had shared some of this with her already. She had to admit that she rather liked the fact that he confided to her about this new venue of his private life.