Cavanaugh Cold Case. Marie Ferrarella

be shoveling deep piles of snow. Go work your case before it gets any colder,” she advised, waving him on his way.

      He had been right earlier, Malloy thought as he walked away. This definitely did not have the makings of one of his better days.

      Hopefully, he thought as he got into his car again five minutes later, this day wasn’t going to get any worse.

      * * *

      It didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better, either. The man he had driven over to see, Roy Harrison’s lawyer, was not in his office.

      “When will he be back?” Malloy asked the inert-looking young woman at the front desk of William James, Esq.’s office.

      The young woman, who Malloy assumed was either the lawyer’s administrative assistant or his younger sister attempting to work off a debt, mechanically mouthed an answer to his question. “Monday.” Then added, “Two weeks from now.”

      “Two weeks?” Malloy echoed. Was the man representing an out-of-state client? “Just where is he?”

      The woman’s expression couldn’t have looked more bored if she’d rehearsed it for hours in her mirror. “He’s on vacation.”

      Damn, had the whole world suddenly gone vacation crazy? Was he the only one who had missed that memo?

      “Can you give me the number to his hotel or wherever it is that he’s staying? I have some questions for him regarding one of his clients.”

      The young woman made no move to retrieve anything. “I’m sorry, that won’t be possible,” she said in a singsong voice. “Mr. James can’t be reached by phone. He said he needed this time to unwind.”

      Maybe it was his suspicious mind, but that sounded entirely too convenient. Refraining from making a comment, Malloy handed the woman his card.

      “If he calls in, give him my number. Tell him to call me, day or night. It’s about Roy Harrison. I need to clear up a few things. Tell him dead bodies are involved.”

      He’d thrown in the last line to get the woman’s attention, since she appeared to be half asleep, on her way to oblivion.

      He succeeded. Her eyes opened so wide, it looked as if she might have trouble closing them again.

      “Really?” she asked breathlessly.

      “Really,” he confirmed with just the right touch of disinterest.

      “You said ‘bodies.’ Plural.” Her eyes were glued to his face. “How many?”

      “Many,” was the only word Malloy offered. “Make sure you tell him to call me the minute he makes contact with you,” he emphasized.

      Her hand covered the card he’d given her almost possessively.

      When she answered him, her voice had dropped down a level, sounding almost conspiratorial. “The second I hear from him,” she promised. “Absolutely.”

      He wasn’t going to hold his breath, Malloy thought, leaving the two-story building where the lawyer’s office was housed. But then, maybe he’d succeeded in getting a little movement going in that area, making James’s secretary see how important the situation was.

      Without anything tangible to go on, Malloy decided to pay the ME’s office a visit to see if the sexy medical examiner had gotten any further with her examination of the mound of body parts.

      Hopefully she could offer him something more to go on than she had in their last encounter.

      It felt like he was spinning his wheels. While he had always been a fan of road trips, they involved real wheels and an actual physical destination. Spinning his wheels figuratively while trying to get somewhere on a case had the exact opposite effect of a real road trip. It only succeeded in making him feel exceedingly frustrated.

      Malloy took a chance that the good doctor had returned to the morgue and had gotten started on making heads or tails out of the collection of bones she and the CSI team had gathered together. This was his first stop when he drove back from the lawyer’s office.

      Getting off the elevator in the basement, he followed the signs leading to the morgue. Malloy was faintly aware that there was music being piped into the building’s corridor. It wasn’t classical music, the way he might have expected—something soothing to quiet any unsteady nerves or a queasy stomach—after all, this was where the morgue was located—but something twangy.

      Since he listened to music only occasionally and then to just whatever was currently on the pop stations, it took Malloy a moment to place just what genre he was listening to.

      Country.

      And whose idea was that? he wondered. Was that supposed to be some subtle commentary on the great circle of life? Down-to-earth folks returning to the earth, or some such circular reasoning?

      Well, it didn’t really matter one way or another. He didn’t care for the music, but he wasn’t here to indulge his aesthetic sensibilities. He was here for some sort of answer, or at the very least, a hint of a direction to go in. Right now, he had nothing, and he found that incredibly frustrating.

      The door to the morgue was closed. For a moment, he debated leaving it that way and coming back later. He didn’t want to disrupt anything that might be going on behind those closed doors.

      But then, maybe it was business as usual and the medical examiner was just working with a giant, life-size jigsaw puzzle. In that event, he could even be of some help.

      Anatomy wasn’t his thing, but jigsaw puzzles were.

      With that in mind, he knocked once, then turned the doorknob. When he found it to be unlocked, Malloy entered the room.

      There was only one living occupant in the room. A bright overhead light illuminated the main exam table. There were other tables, with other overhead lights, but they were turned off. In general, other than the one bright light, the oversize, somewhat chilly room was somberly in the dark.

      * * *

      Engrossed in trying to recreate just one body out of all the various parts that had been dug up and were now available to her, Kristin hadn’t heard the knock on the door.

      She wasn’t even aware that anyone had entered the room until Malloy was less than a foot away from her. At that point, he cleared his throat to get her attention and very nearly caused her to knock over what had taken her over an hour to assemble—a less than half completed body out of all the bits and pieces that had been carefully laid out on all the other unlit tables.

      Stifling a shriek, Kristin spun around and glared accusingly at the man who had very nearly caused her heart to pop out of her chest.

      The cocky detective.

      She might have known.

      “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded angrily.

      She didn’t like losing her poise that way, especially not in front of an audience—and most especially if that audience was comprised of a man she found to be unimaginably irritating for oh-so-many reasons.

      “I’m interested,” Malloy told her simply, looking at the progress she’d made with the body parts. He was definitely impressed. This woman had serious jigsaw puzzle skills.

      “I’m not,” she retorted coldly, her eyes narrowing as she continued to glare at him, hoping he would get the blatant hint and just go away. “I thought I made that clear this morning.”

      When he raised his eyes to hers, Kristin instantly realized she’d made a gross mistake in her assumption. He wasn’t here seeking her out for her company. He was here looking for her expertise.

      The first words out of his mouth confirmed it.

      “I was referring to your professional opinion.”

      Embarrassed—and hating it—Kristin could feel heat traveling up both