A Cavanaugh Christmas (5 page)

“How long have you been in missing persons?” Tom asked the transplanted New Mexican detective once they had pulled out of the parking lot and were on their way to the car-rental agency.

“I’m not,” she answered stiffly, correcting his initial assumption. When he looked at her curiously, she explained, “We don’t have divisions in the department the way you do out here. The police department back home is too small for that. Everyone on the force handles whatever comes our way—or at least we try to,” she added almost under her breath.

Cutbacks had hit not just the big cities, but hers, as well. They were making do with a reduced police department, which was why no one had replaced her when she’d been taken off the case. That left only Juarez to carry on what there was of the investigation. Never mind that the man couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag and he was trying to work the case from his desk rather than from the road.

“Can this thing go any faster?” she asked Tom impatiently. She had her doubts about the accuracy of the speedometer. It was registering sixty-five but it felt to her as if they were crawling.

“It can,” he allowed. “But that would be really going over the speed limit.” He spared her a glance. “Wouldn’t want me breaking any laws now, would you?”

She was accustomed to the men on the force back home bending the rules whenever they needed to, sometimes just because they wanted to. She was surprised that this detective didn’t. Especially since he was related to the chief of detectives and had a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Where I come from,” she told him, “we do what we have to do.”

“We pretty much do that here,” Tom agreed. “We just don’t abuse it.”

“Meaning you think I would?” she challenged, taking offense.

“Just stating a fact, Detective. Don’t look now,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I think that chip of yours just hitched a ride in the back of my car.”

She bit her lower lip to keep from retorting. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the road. It occurred to her that she’d mentioned the car rental agency’s location only once during her initial conversation with the man and his partner. More than likely, he hadn’t been paying close attention.

In her experience, men took it as an affront to their manhood to be put in a position where they had to ask for directions, but she had no intentions of having him drive around aimlessly.

So she asked him bluntly, “You do know where you’re going, right?”

Tom smiled at her question. He was blessed with a memory that retained everything—from the important to the ridiculous—but for now he saw no need to tell her that. Given what he’d glimpsed of her disposition, she’d most likely think he was bragging.

“I always know where I’m going,” he told her easily.

“How very lucky for you,” she murmured under her breath.

It was a struggle, but Tom managed to keep his smile to himself.

Drive! Car Rental was an independent agency that depended on word-of-mouth, repeat business and extremely low rental fees to gain new clientele and to meet the monthly mortgage payments.

The agency certainly didn’t rely on any sort of inviting charm—or even basic cleanliness, Kait thought as they pulled up into the long, narrow parking lot that was behind the small, rundown building. The rental agency was located at the end of a long block that had once housed a thriving strip mall and now had only, except for the rental agency, a collection of empty, single-story buildings to whisper of past glory days and successful businesses that had moved on, or ones that had gone under.

Tom automatically locked his car before they went in.

“Hello,” the lanky clerk behind the counter said cheerfully. Slightly unkempt, with a stubborn, greasy stain in the middle of his lime-colored, wrinkled golf shirt, he sported a two-day growth he obviously thought made him look rugged, but in reality just added to the impression that hygiene was low on the list of his priorities.

He quickly stuck the magazine he’d been perusing beneath the counter so that it was out of sight. “Looking for some wheels to get around our fair city?” he asked brightly.

“Looking to see if you remember renting this vehicle to someone.” Kait placed the information she’d secured in front of the man, turning the piece of paper around so that he could read it.

The sunny disposition immediately vanished. “Why?” the clerk asked, his eyes moving like loose black marbles from one face to the other. “You cops?”

“Right on the first guess,” Tom mockingly marveled as he looked at the woman beside him. “You’re a bright young man.” Knowing what was coming next—a request for proof—Tom took out his wallet and held up his ID for the man’s inspection. “Now, why don’t you be a good citizen—Clark—” he said, reading the nameplate on the counter, “and go on that computer and see what kind of information you can come up with for us?”

“Would if I could,” Clark answered petulantly. “But the computer’s down. Been down for the last two days,” he complained. “I think it’s dead. That’s why I’m reading a magazine,” he moaned, as if reading something that used actual pages was a prehistoric endeavor that he found distasteful and beneath him.

“Mind if I take a look at it?” Tom asked.

Not waiting for a reply, Tom came around to the back of the counter and faced the dormant computer. It looked like a holdover from the last decade, a relic by most standards. The desktop was coupled with a clumsy old-fashioned preflat-screen monitor.

Business obviously had to be pretty bad lately, he judged.

“When was the last time you had this upgraded?” he asked the clerk, feeling around the casing for an on button.

Faded, tuftlike eyebrows came together in a squiggly, confused line. “Huh?” Clark asked.

Well, that answered that,
Tom thought. “Never mind.”

It was very clear that the clerk knew nothing about the machine he’d most likely used to access porn more than anything else.

Tom turned the machine off and then on again, attempting to reboot the computer by going into the operating system’s safe mode. As he worked, he secretly marveled at what a small world it really was. He was utilizing things he’d learned at an after-hours class that had been given at the precinct. The class had been led by one of his newfound cousins’ wives—Brenda Cavanaugh. He’d taken the class before he’d ever been made aware of his connection to the family.

While he tried to get the computer up and running again, for the time being Tom left questioning the hapless clerk to Kaitlyn. He had a gut feeling that she was good at interrogations.

Kait began with the most basic of questions. “Do you have any surveillance cameras on the premises?”

“Got one out back.” Clark jerked his thumb toward the rear, indicating the parking lot that was just beyond the back wall. “Boss put it in after two of the cars in the lot got stolen.” Leaning in closer to her, the clerk lowered his voice and confided, “This ain’t the safest neighborhood, you know.” He said it as if he thought she wouldn’t have guessed as much from the neighborhood’s seedy appearance. And then he looked at her pointedly, as if she had it within her power to change things if she wanted to. “We could stand to have a few more cops around here.”

“Couldn’t we all?” Kait acknowledged, then nodded at the camera that was mounted by the door. Its lens was pointed directly at the counter. Why hadn’t the clerk mentioned this one? “Where’s the feed from that camera?”

The request confused Clark. He blinked. “The what again?”

“The feed,” she repeated. “The old tapes or DVDs recorded by that camera. Where do you keep them?”

“We don’t,” the clerk answered very simply.

“Why not?” she demanded, then came up with a possible answer. “You reuse them?”

If they were recorded over, the situation could still be salvaged. The computer tech at the police station might be able to undo the layers, separate them so that the recordings beneath could be viewed. At least it was something to hope for, better than nothing.

Clark shook his head, strands of his hair, which was on the long side, moving about his thin face independently.

“No, I mean that’s just a dummy. The camera’s just for show,” he said, seeming so proud when he elaborated. “People think twice before jumping you if they think it’s all gonna be caught on video.”

So much for catching their perpetrator in the act of renting the vehicle. That meant the case was now riding on the surveillance recordings from the camera trained on the parking lot in the back.

Struggling to harness her impatience, Kait glanced over toward Tom and the computer he was working on. The expression on his face didn’t give her much hope.

“How’s that coming?” she asked, raising her voice in order to catch his attention.

His fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. With a resigned sigh, Tom frowned. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to be much help.”

So near and yet so far. Damn it, anyway.
“It’s dead?” she asked him, not bothering to hide her frustration at this point.

“Oh, no,” he contradicted. “I got it to run and even pulled up the transaction involving our friend and the white van.”

That was exactly what she was hoping for. Yet Cavelli didn’t look like a man who’d just witnessed a breakthrough. She braced herself to receive the disappointing news.

“Then what’s the problem?” she asked.

“Well, if the address on the guy’s license is correct, then the guy we’re after lives in the middle of the bay. I mean
really
in the bay. Your missing little girl was abducted by Aquaman.”

“That’s a lie,” Clark piped up. “Aquaman would never do that. I’ve got every one of his comics in my collection and he’s just too honorable,” the clerk insisted indignantly. “Besides, I don’t remember him coming in.”

“I guess Mensa won’t be asking him to join their club anytime soon,” Tom quipped. And then he realized that maybe he was talking over the other detective’s head. He’d been guilty of that before, as his partner was always quick to point out to him. “That’s a club where the IQ has to be—”

Kait cut him off. “I
know
what Mensa is,” she informed him coldly.

Tom laughed softly. The sound rippled along her skin. She attributed it to her lack of a decent night’s sleep ever since she’d left New Mexico.

“That puts you one up on LaGuardia,” Tom told her. “He’s always complaining that half the time he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”

She moved to the other side of the counter to see exactly what it was that the Aurora detective had pulled up on the screen. She found herself looking at a blurry photograph of a rather portly man who appeared as if he could run through a brick wall and shake the effects off.

“The photo,” she said to the clerk, calling his attention to the screen. “Is that the face of the man you remember renting this van?” Kait tapped the paper with the vehicle information on it for good measure.

Clark squinted at the screen. “I remember him from somewhere,” he admitted slowly. “Coulda been the guy who rented the van.”

At this point, she was going to have to go with that. “Good enough,” Kait declared. “We’ll print it.”

Tom was ready to oblige. There was only one problem. He looked around, but didn’t see what he needed.

“Great,” he said to Kait. “Now all we need is a printer.”

Clark instantly brightened up, like a puppy eager to do a trick and be rewarded for it with a treat. With a little bit of fanfare, the clerk reached under the counter, right next to his magazine.

“Got it right here,” he announced. Taking the printer in both hands, Clark relocated it to the far edge of the counter.

Kait looked at it, then at the clerk. Her expression was incredulous.

“You’re kidding, right?” The printer Clark had produced was an early-model dot matrix.

Crestfallen, he protested, “Hey, we don’t throw money away on luxuries. This works. Sometimes,” Clark added as an afterthought and in a much lower, almost inaudible voice.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, she told herself. “All right, print it up—and send a copy to this email address,” she added suddenly.

The instruction was to Tom rather than the clerk. She suspected that was the only way she would be able to get a colored version of the license photograph, via email that she would print herself. As for the black-and-white copy that the dot matrix struggled with, that might just give them something to use with the facial-recognition program. With luck, they might be able to match the man to something or someone that
wasn’t
located out in the middle of the ocean.

“You keep all the rental cars out back?” she asked.

Clark bobbed his head up and down again. “We sure do.”

She was taking nothing for granted. “And that camera you have mounted in the back lot, it works?”

The clerk was beaming as he gestured toward the small screen that was feeding them back the picture from the parking lot. “Look for yourself.”

Seeing something on the screen wouldn’t do her any good if the recordings hadn’t been kept. “Do you keep the recordings?” she asked again.

This time Clark appeared a little sheepish. “I’ve been meaning to erase them so we can use ’im again. Quality ain’t too good after ten or twelve times, but like I said—”

She suppressed a sigh. “You don’t have money for luxuries, yes, I know. I—we,” she corrected herself as she felt Tom glancing her way, “need the recording from the date the van was rented.”

“Okay,” Clark replied in such a vague way, Kait had the impression that she was losing him.

“Has it been brought back?” she asked, enunciating each word as if trying to communicate with someone who was more than a little mentally challenged.

“Not yet. But he paid for two weeks up front, so I don’t figure it’ll be back before then.”

So much for going over the van with all the technology the CSI had available. “Of course not.”

A movement on the screen caught her attention as she took the black-and-white photograph that Tom had finally finished printing for her. When she got a better view of the surveillance monitor and saw what was happening, she was startled.