“They did,” Danny answered, keeping his tone matter-of-fact sounding. Then, because he felt it was warranted, he added, “The ME will undoubtedly be able to tell us if it’s the same serial killer.”

  “I bet it is.” The clerk almost sounded cheerful as he made the pronouncement. “Some puzzle, eh, Detective?” Wayfare spared a glance in Cassandra’s direction. His smile faded almost completely, and then the clerk resumed his route. “Well, good luck, Detective Doyle. I’ve got mail to deliver. Call me if you need anything. I’m working a full day today. Just like you,” he added happily.

  Squeaky wheels marked his departure.

  Cassandra said nothing until Wayfare had left the area on his way elsewhere. The clerk sent shivers down her spine and it was not the welcomed kind, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “You know, if I were you,” she told Danny, “I’d make sure that my sidearm was always on my person.”

  Danny looked at her. “You mean because of Curtis Wayfare?” he asked her. “Oh, the guy’s harmless enough.”

  “If you say so,” Cassandra responded. It was obvious that she didn’t agree with the detective. “But there’s something about the way he looks at you that would definitely give me pause if I were you.”

  Danny waved a hand at her statement. “Curtis is just grateful. When he first came here about two years ago, he was like a lost puppy. I felt sorry for the guy, so I just spent a little time with him, pointed him in the right direction. He’s been thankful ever since.” Danny raised his shoulders in an absentminded shrug. “That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh. And here I thought that you New Yorkers were supposed to have been born suspicious.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “We just have a bad reputation. Who knows how it started. You won’t find nicer people than in this city, especially in a crisis—of which we’ve had many.”

  Cassandra nodded her head and smiled. He was so cute, the way he defended his city. She understood the impulse since she loved her home fiercely. Aurora had sheltered her, had revived her after painful assignments and had shown her the meaning of love and family. She could never leave the Cavanaugh kingdom, even though this handsome detective had her thinking traitorous thoughts.

  She watched him browsing through folders and notes. And then he looked up suddenly, directing his gaze at her. “I think I just found something.”

  “What?” she asked, trying to direct her vision toward what he was looking at.

  “This must have gotten mixed in with the wrong papers,” he commented, holding up a page. “It’s information on your cousin.”

  Wayfare was immediately forgotten, and renewed interest about the case they were dealing with entered her eyes. “What kind of information?” She guided her chair in closer to Danny’s in order to get a better look at what he had found.

  “It says here that just before he disappeared, Nathan intended to apply to the police force. That he was no longer interested in leading an aimless life but had decided to make something of himself—like the rest of his family. He was planning on taking a police aptitude test and had high hopes he was going to do well.”

  “And?” she prodded, hoping there was more to it.

  “And nothing,” Danny told her. “There’s nothing more in the folder or on the misplaced page I found stuffed inside. There’s nothing more about your cousin at all,” he said. He turned the page, examining it more closely and thumbing through other pages but didn’t find anything else.

  She looked at the page. There was no more information to be gleaned from it, “We don’t know how he did,” she said sadly.

  “We don’t even know if he did,” Danny said. “There’s no official mention of his taking a test to get into the police academy or anything like that.”

  “Is there any way we can find out if he did take the exam to get into the police academy?” she asked.

  “The papers regarding that might have been warehoused,” Danny suggested.

  “Warehoused?” Cassandra echoed, immediately interested. “Warehoused where?”

  “It’s an old building located downtown,” he told her. “If I remember correctly, it’s by the river,” he told her.

  “Can we get into the building and access those old files, or would we need to have someone’s permission to get us in?” Cassandra wanted to know. She followed that by making the detective understand why she was pushing this the way she was. “I know that my Uncle Brian wants to bury this heretofore missing family member in the family plot.

  “It would just make him feel better,” Cassandra explained. “I get the impression that he feels guilty about what happened to Nathan. That if he hadn’t lost touch with him, then maybe he would still be alive.”

  Danny shook his head. “There’s no point in the man beating himself up for that,” Danny told her. “From what you said, your cousin’s mother wanted to cut off all ties to the family.”

  “She did,” Cassandra said, and confirmed with a sigh. “But Brian Cavanaugh is the chief of detectives. He takes everything upon himself. The only thing I can do to make things somewhat easier on his conscience is to at least solve the riddle of what happened to Nathan after Uncle Brian lost track of him.”

  Moved, Danny nodded. “Okay, let me see what I can do,” he told her, heading for his captain’s office.

  “Want me to come with you?” Cassandra offered. She was already half out of her chair and rising to her feet.

  But Danny shook his head, putting his hand up to stop her. “No, you stay here. When it comes to the captain, I really do better when I approach him on my own.”

  Cassandra smiled as she inclined her head toward the detective. “I bow to your wisdom,” she told him.

  He paused for a moment, waiting for the inevitable punch line that he felt was going to be coming.

  Danny was really surprised when it didn’t. He decided not to make any sort of a reference to that effect. He saw it as progress on her part.

  “I’ll be right back,” Danny said, leaving the squad room quickly.

  “I’ll be here,” she said to the detective with a resigned sigh. After a moment, she got back to looking over the folders that were spread out on the desk she was using.

  Chapter 18

  Cassandra would read a couple of words or so—none of which had any sticking power when it came to her brain—and then look up, waiting for the door at the far end of the squad room to open again.

  But it didn’t.

  Doyle was taking a lot of time to talk to his captain. Maybe the man didn’t want to be convinced.

  And then, finally, the door opened again. Cassandra gave up all pretense of reading the file before her. Getting up, she crossed over toward the detective.

  “So, what did the captain say?” she asked the second that she was within the detective’s earshot. “Will he release my cousin’s body and have it sent back to my uncle?”

  He hated to disappoint her, but he wasn’t about to lie. “Not yet, but soon,” Danny said quickly as he saw her expression fall. “The captain wants to give it a little more time. He feels that we might be on the brink of getting some answers.”

  For once, Cassandra found that she had to dig deep to find some optimism. She sighed. “I hope that he’s right and something comes of this.”

  “I’ve known the captain for a while now, and while he’s not the world’s friendliest man, he does have good instincts and is usually more right than not about things,” Danny said. “And no,” he added with a small laugh, “In case you’re wondering, I’m not wired.”

  She looked at him in surprise. Why would she even think that? This was not an overly trusting bunch of detectives, she decided.

  “That never even crossed my mind,” Cassandra told him. She sighed again, looking down at the file she had been going through. “I am getting cross-eyed from reading and rereading these files, trying to find the one salient point that I might have missed before. The one thing that might wind up pointing us to the killer.”

  Danny frowned, looking at the folder she was reading. “If it’s even there.”

  “It has to be,” Cassandra said, insistent. “The guy’s human, and all humans have a habit of slipping up somewhere along the line. Some more often than others, but they all do it,” she told him. “We just have to be patient and find just where this guy made a mistake.”

  She had an idea. Cassandra pulled out the two photos she had had blown up—the two that Valri had forwarded to her phone—and placed them side by side. They were as clear as possible but still fuzzy.

  “Maybe we can try to locate some of the remaining friends or relatives of the serial killer’s victims. One of them might remember seeing one of these guys lurking around our victims, trying to spend time with them,” she said hopefully.

  “It’s definitely worth a try,” Lee agreed. “We’re not getting anywhere this way,” he said needlessly.

  Danny pulled up the list he had put together on his computer. He didn’t need to count them. The names were imprinted on his mind. “All told, we’ve got fifteen victims.”

  “There might be more,” Lee said to his partner.

  Danny closed his eyes for a moment as he sighed, searching for patience. It was in precious short supply—even less than usual. “I realize that, but let’s focus on the ones we know about at the moment,” he said, instructing his partner.

  Lee nodded. “How many is that?”

  “Not nearly enough to answer our questions,” Danny told the man, less than happy about the results.

  Cassandra drew the sheet of paper closer to her. “All it takes is just one,” she said, staring at the names on the list as if doing that would somehow emboss them on her brain. “Question is, which one is it?” she murmured to herself, looking at the list of names and the photos that went with them.

  Nothing stood out or spoke to her. But then, that was to be expected.

  “Let’s see how many of these people are still living in the immediate area, or at least the state,” Cassandra said, thinking that was as good a place as any for her to start.

  * * *

  As it turned out, there were nine friends or relatives of the deceased men still living somewhere in the general vicinity. One had moved to Manhattan, while the other eight were somewhere within the other four boroughs.

  Cassandra began to grow hopeful again.

  Danny split the names up, handing them out to his team. The accompanying words were not exactly brimming with hope, Cassandra couldn’t help but notice.

  “I really don’t hold out that much hope of finding anyone who can wind up pointing us in the right direction,” he told his team.

  Second verse, same as the first, Cassandra couldn’t help thinking. “I keep telling you, Detective, you need to think positive.”

  Danny sighed, doing his best not to let what she was saying get on his nerves. There was such a thing as baseless optimism.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I’m positive that none of these people are going to point us in the right direction.” There was a slight edge to his voice.

  “You really have to work on improving your attitude, Detective,” she said.

  “This is my improved attitude,” he said to the woman.

  All Cassandra could do at the moment was shake her head. She needed some fresh air, no matter how cold it felt going into her lungs. “Well, I’m going to go and interview my two people to see if there’s anything they can tell me that’ll point me in the right direction.”

  It was a long shot, but at least it was something, she thought.

  A weary smile rose to his lips as Danny shook his head. “It never rains on your parade, does it, Cavanaugh?”

  “Oh, sure it does,” she said, contradicting him. “I just make sure to always keep an umbrella handy.”

  Danny caught himself laughing. “Let me see the two names that you have.”

  “Why?” she asked. Did he think she wouldn’t be able to find the addresses? “I’m not going to get lost.” She had a decent sense of direction, and she had also scrutinized online maps of the area. “Unlike you, I have a very sophisticated GPS.”

  Okay, maybe that was a low blow, but it irritated her that he would think she needed a chaperone. This wasn’t nineteenth-century England—at least, she hoped it wasn’t.

  Some men she’d worked with felt she needed constant protecting. More than once, she’d had to explain that her training had been thorough and that she could take care of herself. Could Danny be another obstacle in her path to solving this case?

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” he told the woman from Southern California. “I just figured that we can combine our lists and go question these people together.”

  Her first thought was that he wanted to hide his feeling that she couldn’t hack it as a detective. He didn’t want to be liable if anything happened to her while chasing down this killer. She could feel her back going up. “You know that I can take care of myself.”

  “I know. I was just worried about the people you’re going to be questioning,” Danny told her with a wink. “Besides, I figure that two sets of eyes and ears are always better than just one.”

  She was not about to waste precious time arguing with the detective. If this was the way he wanted to play it, so be it. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they couldn’t afford to lose more time than they already had.

  A gut feeling had taken hold, driving that point home. The kind of gut feeling that her uncles and occasionally her cousins like to talk about having.

  The kind that she instinctively knew she couldn’t afford to ignore. She couldn’t explain the feeling; she only knew that if she ignored it, she might very well wind up regretting it.

  “Fine, we’ll join forces. You’ll probably strike fear into their hearts, and we’ll get our answers—if there are any answers to get,” she added, thinking about what he had said earlier.

  He looked at Cassandra in surprise. “You’re not arguing with me?”

  The smile that curved her lips was an amused one. “I get the feeling that in this case, arguing with you wouldn’t do me any good. Besides,” she said, not able to help herself, “if I was intent on opposing you, I wouldn’t tell you. I’d just do it and let the pieces fall where they may.”

  “Now you have me worried,” the detective said, only half kidding.

  An easygoing grin quirked her mouth as a smile entered her eyes. “Sorry, that wasn’t my intent.”

  The hell it wasn’t, Danny thought. Just when he felt he finally had a handle on the woman, she threw a curve at him. It was obvious that she liked keeping him on his toes. To be honest, he couldn’t really say that it bothered him.

  He had a genuine question for her. “You want to call these people first, or just surprise them?”

  Cassandra was startled that Danny gave her a choice in the matter rather than doing something that he had decided was set in stone.

  She gave him an honest answer. “I’ve always had better luck with surprises.”

  Danny, on the other hand, liked to have things as predictable as possible. But he supposed he could see the advantage on having surprise on his side. For now, he nodded his head.

  “All right,” he said agreeably, “then surprise it is.”

  Standing behind her as she sat at her desk, Danny indicated the list before her. “Pick one of the people on the list. We’ll go see if we can find that person at home or maybe even at work.”

  Looking at the list, she printed out information on the first four people that were on it, then circled them.

  Danny frowned a little as he took in the names of the places. “Isn’t that biting off a bit more than you can chew?” he asked.

  “We’re not showing up at all these places. We have no way of knowing if we’re going to find any of these people where they’re supposed to be. I know all the names on the list were initially researched, but things do have a way of changing, not to mention that people do just pick up and move. This, at least, allows us to gather some sort of information about one or two of the victims.” She turned in her chair. The detective was standing much too close and generating all sorts of feelings that had nothing to do with tracking people down. Her throat felt dry as she formed the words. “I’m just attempting to cover all our bases.”

  Danny nodded. “I get that and appreciate the way you’re thinking.” He moved back so that she could push her chair away from the desk and get to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  The detective paused for a moment to tell his partner just where he and Cassandra were going.

  “Detective.”

  Curtis Wayfare’s deep voice called out just before Danny managed to reach the squad room door.

  He recognized the voice. The detective stifled a sigh as he turned toward the man who had called to him.

  The mail clerk pushed his cart toward the man he clearly seemed to idolize. Wayfare was holding out a coffee container. “You forgot to take your coffee with you.”

  Danny was caught off guard. “Oh, right. I did.” The detective took the container from Wayfare. “Thanks.”

  The mail clerk was beaming at him, as if he had just done something really noteworthy as well as personal. “You know you have trouble functioning without coffee, Detective,” Wayfare told him knowingly, as if their so-called friendship went way back.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Danny said to the mail clerk, feeling somewhat awkward for the first time in the man’s presence. He looked at Cassandra. “Like I said, we’d better hit the road.”

  Wayfare paused and looked after the departing detective. “Good luck,” the mail clerk called out. His attention was exclusively directed toward the New York detective.

  Cassandra waited until the clerk was out of earshot. “Your fairy godmother must have oiled the wheels on his cart. I didn’t hear him roaming around the squad room this time.”