Cavanaugh on Duty

chapter 5



“What the hell kept you?” were the first words out of the storage-utility manager’s lips when Kari identified herself and her silent partner some fifteen minutes later.

There was a look of contempt on his pockmarked face as he eyed the IDs that were held up for him. “I was just about to use the bolt cutters on the lock and open the unit myself.”

Rather than risk further undermining their authority by making excuses to the already hostile man, Kari deftly changed the subject, “Then you don’t have keys to the unit?”

The manager—Alfred Jennings, according to the sun-bleached stencil on the door of his closetlike office—looked annoyed that the female detective should even ask that question.

“Can’t you read?” he demanded, every syllable dripping with sarcasm. “Didn’t you see the words Self-Storage outside? That means the renter provides his or her own lock with its own key. Gives them privacy,” he added with a condescending snort.

“It also costs you less if they provide their own lock,” Esteban pointed out somberly. The manager began to scowl but confronted by the dark look on Esteban’s face, he quickly backed off.

“Take us to the unit,” she instructed. “And bring along your bolt cutters, please.”

“Sure thing,” Jennings bit off. Circumventing the two detectives, he got out in front of them and led the way to the storage unit in question, which was located at the rear of the facility.

Kari made a quick assessment of her surroundings as she and Esteban followed the manager.

At first glance, the facility looked like a mock-up movie set that had been abandoned before the designers could decide what it was supposed to look like. A haphazard collection of attached, short, single-story gray structures occupied the small lot.

At this hour of the morning, there were no other people about, taking inventory of their possessions or searching for that one elusive thing they were certain had to be in the storage unit because it hadn’t shown up anywhere else. As Kari and her partner walked behind Jennings, a sickening, somewhat putrid smell started to become evident. Once noted, it seemed to swiftly increase in intensity.

There was no breeze this morning and, unimpeded, the smell seemed to fill up every square inch of available air, hovering over them like an ominous, thick cloud.

Fighting back a gagging reflex, Kari automatically covered her nose and mouth with her hand.

He’d stopped before the offending unit. “You see? You see what I mean?” Jennings demanded, his tone of voice bordering on hysteria. “It wasn’t like this yesterday.”

Kari sincerely doubted that, unless whatever it was that was causing this smell had been deposited in the unit sometime during the night. “Were you here yesterday?” she asked Jennings.

“No,” he snapped, “but the guy who was here didn’t say anything about this stink to me.”

“He probably never left the office,” Esteban theorized, his deep, monotone voice rumbling across the surface of the would-be dispute.

Surprised that Esteban had actually offered an opinion, Kari bit back the desire to cry out, “He speaks.” She didn’t have to be a genius to know that Fernandez would be less than thrilled to be teased in front of a third party, but she did flash him a look of feigned shock at the two cents he’d inserted into the verbal exchange.

The storage-utility manager said nothing in response. Instead, he muttered something under his breath that was surely less than flattering.

“This is it,” Jennings said needlessly, gesturing toward the padlocked door of unit number 2041 as he choked out the words.

Kari nodded at the lock. “Go ahead, cut off the lock,” she ordered, uttering the words on a single breath. She was struggling to inhale as little as possible. Jennings raised the bolt cutters he’d brought with him. Opening the jaws, his biceps shook as he applied the cutters to the lock.

The pressure he exerted was not enough. The lock remained intact. A second attempt was as futile as the first.

Disgusted, Kari was about to take the tool from Jennings and attempt to cut the lock herself when she found her way blocked. To her surprise, Esteban commandeered the tool with the authority of someone who was accustomed to having no opposition—and not tolerating any if he did.

Taking the bolt cutters in his big, manly hands, he opened the tool as far as it would go, securely fitted the cutting edge around the lock and, with one quick, reverberating snap of his forearms, cut the lock clean off.

Useless, the heavy metal object fell to the floor with a solid thud.

Stepping back from the defunct lock, Esteban handed the bolt cutters back to Jennings with one hand while raising up the dull red corrugated door with the other.

The putrid smell of something rotting had been strong before. Without the door in the way to mute it somewhat, it assaulted them with a one-two punch that was almost unbearable.

Kari could feel her eyes begin to sting and threaten to water. The sooner they got this over with, the better, she silently told herself.

But before she could make a move to try to hone in on the origin of the smell, Esteban strode into the small, cluttered rectangular unit ahead of her.

He used the daylight that was streaming in behind him as illumination to help him carefully look around.

Rather than say anything or make a guess at the source of the awful odor, Kari watched as Esteban made his way to the back, moving through the piles of cartons and boxes that stood between him and the far wall.

Reaching the back, he started to push aside the obstacles he encountered, working his way down to the bottom of an exceptionally large pile comprised of half a dozen different things that were indiscriminately tossed on top of one another. At the end of his search, Esteban found himself looking at what appeared to be a rolled-up Persian rug.

Appearing unfazed by the pungent odor, he looked over his shoulder at Kari.

“There’s your smell,” he concluded with finality, not even bothering to first investigate whether or not the rug actually contained anything.

He didn’t have to.

He knew that smell, had come in contact with it more than once. Members of the cartel didn’t consider an argument actually won until the opposing side was tucked away in a fashion closely resembling this one. The rugs they used weren’t Persian, but the concept and execution were the same.

Not to be left out, Kari took it from there. She squatted down beside one end and, drawing in a deep breath that she fully intended to hold on to as long as humanly possible, she started to push aside as many layers of the rug as she feasibly could.

The unit was far too crowded for her to attempt to unfurl the rug—even if she could, which, at this point, she really couldn’t. There were protocols to follow.

The rug was fairly stiff and it offered a lot of resistance, but she refused to be defeated and kept at it.

Standing back, Esteban watched her for a few moments, amused by her efforts as well as somewhat impressed by them. He let her continue for a little while, then put his hand over hers, a silent indication for her to stop.

“What are you doing?” she asked in confusion.

“Keeping you from wearing yourself out.” With the ease of someone who was accustomed to strong resistance, he completed the job that would have taken her three times as long to finish—if at all. He pushed aside enough of the rug to expose what was housed inside. They were both looking down at an older, gray-haired man, who from all indications, had to have been dead for at least several days. Possibly even a week.

Eager to see just how ghoulish this sight actually was, the storage-facility manager pushed his way forward to get a better look at who—or what—was wrapped up in the rug.

When he saw who it was, his eagerness instantly faded. “Oh, hell,” he moaned. “I know him.”

Kari looked at Jennings, her interest piqued. “Who is he?” she wanted to know.

He frowned, but this time the frown was because of the situation, not because of her or her partner. “Don’t remember his name offhand, but that’s the guy who rents the unit.”

It was Kari’s turn to frown. “Congratulations, Fernandez.”

“For what?” he wanted to know.

“On the job less than two hours and you’ve already caught your first homicide,” she told him.

Esteban said nothing in acknowledgment of the dubious so-called “honor.” Instead, she saw him begin to clear away the piles of boxes and other various possessions that were surrounding the rug.

Kari shifted so that she managed to block his access to the closest pile of clutter. “Hold it,” she cried. “What are you doing?”

He would have thought that was self-evident, but maybe she wasn’t as savvy as he’d thought. “Pushing things aside so that we can unfurl this damn rug and take a closer look at the victim.”

But as he turned to get back to what he was doing, Kari caught his arm by the sleeve and tried to hold him back. Even though she’d managed to catch him off guard, holding his arm still took more effort than she’d anticipated.

“You can’t do that,” she told him.

The look he gave her clearly said he thought she’d lost her mind. “Why not?”

Rather than answer him, Kari glanced at Jennings. The storage-facility manager looked as if he had become one giant set of ears.

“You can go now,” she said, dismissing the man. “We’ll call you if we need anything else.”

“I got no place else to be,” Jennings said, remaining firmly planted where he was and intently staring at the rolled-up rug.

“Yes,” she informed him firmly, “you do.”

The man’s squinty eyes narrowed even more. “Where?” he challenged.

“Anywhere but here.” Kari’s tone left no room for argument. Having no choice, Jennings was forced to withdraw, and she heard him grumbling to himself as he stomped away.

Kari waited until the man was completely out of the storage unit before she turned back to look at Esteban. He was still waiting for his answer.

“We have to wait for the CSI unit to get here and process this crime scene before we can actually touch anything in it.”

Following protocol, she knew that she shouldn’t have even pulled back the rug the way she had, but if she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been able to actually label this a crime scene, so she supposed she could be forgiven in that instance.

After three years of living solely by his wits and going with gut instincts, Esteban was accustomed to following his own rules. By-the-book procedure was something he vaguely remembered coming across at the academy, but he hadn’t ever followed that in the field. It didn’t really make much sense, especially not when it came to dealing with life-or-death situations.

“You mean we just have to sit here and cool our heels?” he asked impatiently.

She nodded her head. “That’s just how it’s done.” She didn’t like it any more than he did, but she liked having cases thrown out of court even less, especially when she busted her tail to put the cases together in the first place.

He snorted dismissively. The look on his face was not impassive at the moment, and it told her exactly what he thought of how “things were done.”

“Not in my world,” he responded.

“But we’re not in your world anymore,” she informed him, making the best of an irritating situation. “We’re in mine. And in case you think you can argue me out of following proper procedure, I think you should know that my dad’s the head of the CSI day unit.”

She couldn’t quite fathom the look he gave her, but it definitely didn’t even remotely fit under the heading of agreeable.

Or even resigned.

“Of course he is,” Esteban responded curtly. Looking down at the hold she still had on the cuff of his shirt, he said, “You can let go now.”

No, I can’t, not yet, she thought.

She continued clutching his sleeve. “And I can trust you to back away from the body and just wait for the unit to arrive?”

He didn’t like it, but he’d do it. He’d had enough friction for the time being.

Shrugging, he told her, “Pay’s the same whether I wait or not, so yeah, you can trust me to back away from the body and wait for the crime unit to come with their cameras to take their pretty pictures—even if the whole thing’s dumb.”

Kari let go of his shirtsleeve, dropping her hand to her side.

“It’s only dumb,” she corrected him, “when you see the case you’ve toiled tirelessly over being thrown out of court because one stupid misstep has crucial evidence being ruled inadmissible.” Her head was beginning to ache from the smell assaulting her. “Off the record, I agree with you, but that’s just the way things are.”

She’d managed to mildly spark his interest—besides, he had to do something while waiting, and asking questions was as good a way as any to pass the time.

“It happened to you?” he asked, then clarified when she gave him a quizzical look. “Having something thrown out as inadmissible?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah, it happened to me.” And no amount of appealing to just about everyone she could think of had changed that. Taking out her cell phone, she pressed one preprogrammed number on the keypad, then waited as the phone on the other end rang. She silently counted off the rings, getting up to three. When the fourth ring came, she knew she was being connected to voice mail and sighed with displeasure because she hated talking to machines. But just as the fourth ring was fading, clearing a path for the robotic voice that was about to ask her to “please leave a message at the tone,” Kari heard the cell being picked up on the other end.

And then a deep voice announced, “Crime lab, Cavanaugh.”

Her father had taken to his new/old name like a duck to water, she thought. All those years of feeling as if he wasn’t quite in sync with the rest of his family finally made sense now. They, the Cavellis, really hadn’t been the rest of his family.

At least, not in total.

He was a Cavanaugh no matter what his birth certificate had initially stated. She was just glad for his sake that the error had finally come to light, giving him the opportunity to claim his birthright if he wanted it.

“Hi, Dad,” she said without bothering to announce herself. “I’m in need of your stunningly focused expertise.”

There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation on the other end of the call. A hearty laugh was immediately followed by, “Ah, Kari, my most perceptive offspring. You have a crime scene for me.”

It wasn’t a guess but a statement of fact. With rare insight, Sean Cavanaugh knew each of his children inside out.

“All but gift-wrapped,” she told him. “My new partner and I found a dead body wrapped up in what looks like an old Persian rug. Rug and body are currently stashed in a storage facility on Edinger and East Yale Loop. I need you and your team of roving experts to process the crime scene for me so I can get on with the case.”

“Address?” he asked. She rattled it off for him, having already committed it to memory. “All right, Kari, the team and I will be there as soon as I finish up here,” he promised.

So, he’d already scored another crime scene. There was a time, according to the stories her father had told them, that the only crime in Aurora revolved around littering.

“Busy morning?” she murmured.

“Too busy,” he answered. But he wasn’t one to go on about his work, so he said, “Be there as soon as we can,” and then terminated the call.

“How long?” Esteban wanted to know the moment Kari returned her cell phone to her pocket and headed back to him.

Sugarcoating it got her no extra points and she knew it. So she went with the truth.

“Not sure,” she confessed.

Esteban was already growing impatient, and they were still within their first fifteen minutes at the crime scene.

“And we’re just supposed to stand here, staring off into space until they get here?” he groused.

“You can handle the staring part if you want,” she told him glibly. “I’m going to go and see what I can get out of that manager guy. He struck me as someone who liked sticking his nose into everyone’s business. Maybe we can get that to work for us,” she said as she walked out of the storage unit.

The second she did, her eyes stopped stinging. She wondered how big a job it was to disinfect an entire storage unit. Jennings was not going to be a happy camper, she couldn’t help thinking.

The all but silent footfall behind her meant that her partner had opted to leave the storage unit, as well. It came as no surprise.

Obviously, Mr. Macho’s had enough of this smell, too, she thought, amused.