The Woman Who Wasn't There. Marie Ferrarella

      “You think he was good-looking?”

      They’d all pulled into the county’s probation department’s parking lot at the same time and walked into the building together. Jorge had waited until they stepped out of the elevator before asking Delene his question.

      Preoccupied thinking about Clyde and the phone call she was going to have to make to the D.A., Delene didn’t immediately follow Jorge’s line of thinking. “Who?”

      Jorge frowned. “That pretty boy at the motel.”

      Delene looked up at him innocently before entering the general office. “Clyde?”

      “No, not Clyde,” Adrian put in impatiently, backing up Jorge. “That detective. Cavanaugh.”

      “Cavanaugh?” Delene rolled the name over on her tongue. The man hadn’t shown them any credentials. “Was that his name?”

      “Yeah, heard he was the chief of detectives’ son. One of them anyway,” Adrian corrected, frowning. He pushed the door open for Delene. “Cavanaughs move around that precinct as if they owned it.”

      Jorge snorted. “With eleven of them in the department, they might as well own it.”

      “Eleven?” she asked in surprise. The disdainful note in Jorge’s voice was not lost on her. And it did make her wonder. There were twenty-one in Jorge’s family. He was the last person she would have thought to be critical of large families.

      “No, not eleven,” Adrian corrected. “Nine.” There were nine Cavanaugh detectives on the force, three of them female. “Not counting the chief of detectives.”

      Jorge paused, then asked, “What about the old man?”

      Delene glanced from one man to the other. “What old man?”

      “The chief of police,” Jorge told her. “Andrew Cavanaugh.”

      “He’s not there anymore,” Adrian reminded him. “Retired some years back. He doesn’t count.”

      They entered the large bull pen that comprised their office. Cubicles divided up the area as far as the eye could see.

      “Try telling that to one of his relatives,” Jorge interjected.

      The conversation went on, doing very well without any input from her. But something Jorge had just said made her think. And wonder wistfully, if just for the moment, what it had to be like to be part of a large family, instead of alone and on the run.

      It wasn’t something she figured she’d ever find out firsthand.

      Burying her thoughts, she went to her cubicle to make that call she was dreading. The one to the D.A.

      Chapter 3

      Clyde Petrie’s body had long been officially pronounced dead, tagged and removed. All that was left to mark the passage of his life was a chalk outline on the rug, a dried pool of blood that had gone outside the lines and several piles of greasy fast-food wrappers.

      The room was quiet, even if the surrounding area was not. Muffled voices came from the next unit. Whether they were coming from people or a television set, Troy wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He blocked out the sound.

      Wearing pale plastic gloves, Troy switched on the light. Rather than illuminate, it added to the overall sense of darkness and gloom within the room.

      He was grateful he’d had the good fortune to be born into the life that he presently enjoyed.

      Squatting down beside the pile closest to the door, Troy began poking through the crumbled papers, crushed paper cups and greasy bags. He was searching for that certain “something” they might have overlooked when they’d first gone through this room hours ago. The “something” that just possibly might be able to lead them to the penny-ante dealer’s killer when all the obvious trails led nowhere.

      All it took was one thing. That serial killer in New York back in the seventies had been caught because of unpaid parking tickets, Troy mused, working his way to the floor. Anything was possible.

      Besides, he did some of his best work when it was quiet. When he could think. He and Kara had conducted a canvas of the area and now she and her clown car were back at the squad room, following up on information given by the woman who lived across the parking lot. After an intense two hours, Sam, the crime scene investigator, had retreated to his lab with his odd collection of fibers, cigarette butts and whatever to examine, tag and match.

      Troy glanced at the watch his father had given him when he’d graduated from the academy. Right about now the M.E. was taking the victim apart. Literally.

      Troy rose, absently dusting off one gloved hand against another as he scanned the room. More than sifting through the dead dealer’s possessions, he was trying to fit into the man’s emaciated skin. To think the way Clyde might have thought in the last few hours of his life. And maybe, just maybe, he was also trying to prove to the world at large that he wasn’t just chief of detectives Brian Cavanaugh’s youngest, indulged son.

      He was proud of who he was, who he belonged to. The Cavanaugh name stood for something in Aurora, but there was no denying that it also carried a significant weight with it. You couldn’t really slack off if you were a Cavanaugh. At least, not for very long. People expected you to behave as if you were a little larger than life. Of course, some were waiting to see if you fell on your face.

      He had no intention of falling. He had brothers and cousins to compete against, he always had had.

      Troy walked over to the closet and opened the door. It creaked. More fast-food wrappers were inside, as if Clyde had actually made a halfhearted attempt at cleaning his living quarters before giving up.

      “Would have been easier to throw it all away, Clyde,” he said under his breath. He began to move around the wrappers, one by one.

      Granted, the competition between him and the other members of his family was a friendly one, but he still had to prove himself. He was the youngest of the Cavanaugh men. Only his sister and Rayne, Uncle Andrew’s daughter, were younger, and not by all that much. There was a stigma attached to being the youngest. Family didn’t really expect you to measure up.

      Though he never said it out loud, sometimes didn’t even admit it to himself, he wanted to make his father proud. Wanted the whole family to be proud of him. The only way that happened—to his satisfaction—was to be the best damn cop, the best damn detective he knew how.

      He knew that his family would love him, would stick by him no matter what he did. But he had seen that look of pride rise up in his father’s eyes when he’d told him that he was going into “the family business” and becoming a cop, the way the rest of them had. The way his father, Uncle Andrew and Uncle Mike had, following in their father’s footsteps. It was a look he wanted to see over and over again.

      The sudden, small noise behind him had Troy whirling around, his gun instantly drawn. Aimed.

      The next moment, blowing out a breath, he raised the gun’s barrel up toward the ceiling, putting the safety back on.

      Though her expression never gave her away, Delene could feel her racing heart slowly sliding down from her throat.

      “How many hours of practice did it take you to get that fast?” She lowered the hands that she’d automatically raised the second he’d pointed the gun at her. Leaving the doorway, she crossed into the room.

      Saying something unintelligible under his breath, Troy holstered his weapon, then readjusted his Windbreaker over it.

      “Enough,”