Cavanaugh Vanguard. Marie Ferrarella

with on the home front.

      Jimmy had been hostile during the three minutes he’d had to talk to him, and when he’d swung by Happy Pines his father hadn’t recognized him. That was happening more and more often these days. Jackson just wasn’t in the frame of mind to make nice to whoever was on the phone, so he let it continue to vibrate and drove faster.

      He was almost there anyway.

      * * *

      “You know, if I read about this kind of thing online or in the paper, I would have said that someone made it up,” homicide detective Brianna Cavanaugh O’Bannon said, shaking her head as she took in the chaotic scene around her.

      “Oh, but you can’t make this kind of stuff up,” Sean Cavanaugh commented.

      The head of the Crime Scene Investigative day team frowned as, like his niece, he slowly regarded the partially demolished hotel.

      “No, I guess not,” Brianna agreed.

      This was, she thought, a case of fact being stranger than fiction. With slow, deliberate movements, she picked her way through the debris, both newly created and old. She was careful not to disturb anything. At this point, it was still difficult sorting out what was part of the crime scene and what was just run-of-the-mill, everyday rubble.

      Looking back over her shoulder, Brianna saw the chief of detectives entering the room. It was obvious to her that the tall, distinguished-looking man was temporarily transported back through time as he recalled, “You know, I can remember Aurora High holding their senior prom here the year I graduated.”

      “What are you doing here?” Sean asked, no doubt surprised to see his younger brother. “The chief of detectives doesn’t usually come out to a crime scene.”

      “He does if the scene is in the Old Aurora Hotel,” Brian Cavanaugh replied. Setting his memories aside, he became practical. “How many bodies?” he asked.

      “Six—and counting,” Brianna answered.

      Brian Cavanaugh didn’t frown often, but he did now. “Damn,” he murmured.

      “That would be the word I’d use,” Sean agreed. “I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to need more medical examiners on the job by the time we finish.”

      “Who do we have on it right now?” Brian asked.

      Sean nodded toward his left. The ME and her assistant were closing up a body bag and placing the occupant on a gurney.

      “Malloy’s wife, Kristin,” Sean answered.

      Brian’s smile was grim. “This is turning out to be a regular family affair,” he commented, glancing toward the young woman. “Put the word out,” he told his brother. “We need every available ME reporting to the morgue. I need these bodies identified yesterday,” Brian instructed.

      Sean had his cell phone in his hand. “Already on it,” he responded.

      “Keep me apprised,” Brian said, leaving. It was unclear if he was addressing Sean or Brianna.

      Brianna slowly scanned the area again, even though she had been here for more than half an hour. She and Francisco Del Campo, another homicide detective, had been the first to answer the frantic call that had come in from a patrol officer.

      The latter had been the first responder on the scene. Fresh out of the academy, Officer Hal Jacobs had contaminated the crime scene by throwing up after viewing the first decomposing body. When Brianna arrived, she had hustled Jacobs out and had someone get the pale officer a glass of water as more bodies were being discovered.

      A noise coming from behind her had Brianna whirling around, one hand on her weapon, ready for anything.

      Coming forward, Jackson raised his hands. “If you don’t want me here, all you have to do is say so,” he told Brianna.

      Brianna dropped her hand to her side. Although they were in different divisions, she and Jackson had previously worked together on a couple of cases. As far as partners went, he was intelligent and driven. He just wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but according to the job description, that wasn’t a prerequisite.

      “Nice of you to join the party, Detective Muldare,” she said.

      Rather than explain why he’d arrived late, Jackson merely said, “I got held up in traffic. What are we looking at?”

      “The stuff nightmares are made of,” she told him. “You ever been here before?”

      “You mean to the hotel?” he asked. When she nodded, he told her, “I didn’t grow up in Aurora. And I’m guessing the place would have been a little out of my price range if I had grown up here.”

      Brianna looked around, trying to envision the hotel the way it used to be in what she’d heard referred to as its “glory days.” It made her sad to see the way time had ravaged it.

      “It was a hell of a showplace in its time. I saw pictures in a magazine once,” she explained. “Aurora was celebrating its fortieth anniversary of being incorporated as a city and the magazine article was a then-and-now kind of retrospective. I really doubt that anyone would have ever suspected that this highly regarded showplace was where someone was hiding bodies.”

      “Hiding bodies?” Jackson echoed.

      Brianna nodded, repeating what she’d heard from the nauseated first responder. “They were in the walls,” she told him. “The wrecking ball uncovered them.”

      The macabre revelation had Jackson staring at her in disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

      Brianna turned toward the major crimes detective. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of his reaction. The tall, dark-haired man seemed woefully uninformed about the nature of the crime scene he had entered. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

      “Cohen just said to get my butt out here,” Jackson answered. “Look, I’m with major crimes,” he pointed out even though he knew that she knew that. “And while this is all pretty gruesome, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here.” He looked at Brianna. “Way I see it, since you’re with homicide, this case is right up your alley.”

      “You’ve been with the police department for how long now?” she asked him, her voice almost mild and deceptively conversational.

      He didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but he answered her. “Going on six years now.”

      “Six years,” she repeated, as if she was rolling the information over in her head. “Don’t take much of an interest in the city’s history, do you?”

      Jackson looked at the woman. Like so many other members of the police department he had run into, she was part of the Cavanaugh family, a legend throughout the precinct. Cavanaughs, he’d found, set the bar high, each and every one of them.

      “Not particularly,” he answered. “Why?”

      “Well, if you did know a little of the city’s history,” she told him, “you’d know that initially this was all farmland that belonged to one family. The Aurora family.”

      “All right,” he allowed, still waiting to hear where she was going with all this.

      Out of the corner of her eye, Brianna saw the ME, Kristin Alberghetti-Cavanaugh, wheeling another one of the newly unearthed victims out of the hotel. She stepped to one side, never missing a beat of the story she was telling Jackson.

      “George Aurora was the original patriarch of the family. He started taking the money the family made selling their crops and investing it. The investments were solid, so he decided to use some of the profits to build a small town, which he named after himself.

      “Everything in and around Aurora belonged to the Aurora family. Including the Aurora Hotel,” she pointed out, adding, “which, it turns out, Winston Aurora, George’s oldest grandson, recently sold to the city so that Aurora could continue