Cavanaugh Cold Case. Marie Ferrarella

wasn’t. He was a great deal more than that, Kristin thought grudgingly. Malloy Cavanaugh was all broad shoulders, a quirky, sexy smile and whimsical green eyes that she found vastly disturbing when they were turned on her.

      Her unbidden observation came out of nowhere, and she tried to banish it back to the same location, but without much success.

      This whole case was making her tired.

      “These women weren’t smuggled in from outside the country.”

      The facts, Kris, deal with the facts. The scientific ones. It’s the only way you’re going to get him to go away.

      “How do you know that?” Malloy asked, rounding the exam table in order to see what she was talking about.

      Kristin drew in a breath. Cavanaugh was standing way too close to her, but telling him to back off might start him thinking the wrong thing—or the right thing, as was the case. She decided it was best to keep silent on that score. The sooner she got him to leave, the better.

      “Their teeth,” she pointed out. “The ones who have had dental work done show that whoever worked on them did a decent job. The others just have good teeth. That isn’t usually the case for those whose backgrounds include poverty and malnutrition.”

      He had an adequate enough imagination, but it was hard for him to envision the remains that were arranged on the exam tables once being living, breathing women.

      “So it’s your opinion that this little band of not-so-merry women was homegrown?”

      Kristin bit back a comment about his choice of descriptive words. Instead, she forced herself to make a dispassionate comment. “Appears that way.”

      Okay, so far he had that the women were most likely from somewhere in the immediate area—or at least this country rather than somewhere out of the country, and that all of them, except for one, were women. It was something, he granted, but still not very much to go on.

      “Can you give me a rough estimate of when they were killed?” he asked.

      She really wished he’d take a few steps back and stop crowding her. But since he apparently wasn’t moving, as casually as she could manage, she did.

      “Well, it wasn’t all at the same time,” she told him. “My preliminary judgment would be that this happened between twenty and twenty-five years ago.”

      “So this wasn’t a mass grave,” he speculated.

      His wording made her think. “More like a grave of opportunity,” she said. “The guy would keep coming back to bury his latest victim because apparently no one had discovered his previous transgressions.”

      The medical examiner’s conclusion interested him. He had no problem adjusting his own thinking to factor in good points. Ego had never been a problem with him. “What makes you so sure it’s the same guy?”

      “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But judging from appearances—by that I mean the way he dismembered them—it looks that way,” she theorized. As if she suddenly realized what she was saying, Kristin stopped working and raised her eyes to his. “Are you through picking my brain, Detective?”

      “I haven’t even gotten started,” he told her honestly, flashing a grin that held a great deal of promise, as well as sizzle.

      Kristin found she had to struggle to ignore the unwanted effects he was having on her. How did she get rid of this man?

      “That wasn’t really a question,” she told him. “Let me be more clear. You’re through picking my brain.”

      “What’s the matter, Doc?” he asked her good-naturedly. “Haven’t you ever heard of teamwork?”

      Her eyes narrowed to two blue lasers. “I have, Detective. Are you familiar with the concept of carrying someone?”

      He cocked his head, as if that would somehow help him get into her thoughts, and asked her innocently, “Is that an offer?”

      “That is an observation,” she informed him tersely. She was telling him that she was aware he was looking to her to do all the heavy thinking here and he was just absorbing her answers without contributing. “Obviously too subtle for you.”

      His smile only grew more engaging. “I’m really not the subtle type.”

      “Yes, I noticed,” she bit off. She didn’t know how to make it clearer than this. “Now, this might get you to first base or whatever base you’re aiming for with someone else, but I like to feel that I’m earning the money I’m being paid, so unless there’s something else you either want to ask me or share with me, please, leave,” she underscored.

      Instead of going the way she would have expected any normal male to do, he stayed exactly where he was, as if she’d just given him a choice. “Well, the idea of sharing doesn’t sound bad to me,” he began.

      She’d set herself up for that one, Kristin silently reprimanded herself. “Please, leave,” she repeated, and this time she made sure that there was nothing in her tone to leave any wiggle room for him to misinterpret her words.

      Malloy inclined his head, as if he’d finally gotten what she was telling him. “Until the next time,” he told her as he began to take his leave.

      “Heaven forbid,” Kristin muttered under her breath just loud enough to be heard.

      Opening the door, Malloy wound up all but walking into the two CSI agents who had been in charge of digging up the area where all the body parts had ultimately been found.

      Ryan O’Shea and Jake Reynolds were pushing a gurney with what looked to be a black body bag between them.

      “Where do you want this, Doc?” O’Shea asked.

      Kristin didn’t need to ask what they’d brought in. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her the answer to that one.

      “More?” she groaned, temporarily forgetting about the annoying detective who had invaded her turf and was still in it.

      O’Shea nodded. “It’s the gift that apparently just keeps on giving.”

      “How much more giving?” she asked warily as she eyed the body bag.

      “We found two more heads,” Reynolds told her, aligning the gurney with one of the exam tables and unzipping the bag.

      Kristin closed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to center herself before she spoke. Opening her eyes again, she looked at the body bag. It didn’t look full, but it didn’t appear to be empty, either.

      “Just the heads?” she asked.

      O’Shea had the good grace to look a little apologetic. “And a handful of miscellaneous bones that might or might not belong to the heads.”

      “In other words, just like the rest of it.”

      “Exactly like the rest of it,” O’Shea told her, then added quickly in a far more positive voice, “The good news is that I think that’s it.”

      “The bad news is that there are twelve of them.” Malloy offered up that observation. Three sets of eyes turned toward him as he continued, “Twelve people without their entire bodies, without names and without a clue why they were unlucky enough to join this exclusive boneyard.”

      He studied the piles that were already out. Because of his upbringing, to him, bodies meant families. “And twelve families waiting for some word about one of their own who is never coming home again.”

      Kristin glanced in his direction, wondering if the detective had just said all that for her benefit, or if Malloy Cavanaugh actually did have a sensitive side to him.

      The next moment she decided that she was probably giving the man way too much credit. Someone who looked and acted the way that Malloy Cavanaugh did didn’t have to have a more sensitive side to him. From what she had heard