Free Cavanaugh on Duty by Marie Ferrarella Page B

thought. You could tell a great deal about a man by the way he stepped up and presented himself. He felt a little more at ease about his daughter being out in the field. This partner, he judged, would have her back.
    “My daughter giving you a hard time?” he asked Esteban amicably.
    “Not that I noticed, sir,” the detective replied with stoic resignation that was not wasted on Sean. He took a second look at the young man, and then looked at his daughter. This could prove to be interesting, Sean thought.
    Kari noted the subtle shift, but before she could say anything, one of her father’s two assistants called out to him.
    “Sean, come look at this,” Destiny Richardson requested. She and the other investigator had managed to carefully unfurl and remove the rug from around the victim’s body. The entire area where the rug had been in direct contact with the dead man was completely soaked with blood.
    Kari was right beside her father and looked down at the corpse sans his cocoon. “Looks like he was killed on that rug,” she theorized.
    “Or wrapped up immediately after he was killed,” Esteban interjected. Inherent concern masked by a veil of curiosity had him glancing in her direction to see how she was handling this up-close view of murder. That her pallor hadn’t changed nor had she bolted to purge her suddenly nauseated stomach, drew grudging admiration from him. “Looks like cause of death was having his throat slashed,” Esteban observed.
    “At least it was quick,” Kari said, then raised her eyes up to her father’s, looking for confirmation. “It was quick, right?”
    Sean nodded. “That would be my preliminary guess, at least for now. I’ll know more once we get him back to the lab.”
    “How long do you think he’s been dead?” Kari asked.
    Rather than answer, Sean looked at the investigator who had called him over to the unveiled body. Destiny, the young woman he had initially taken under his wing and personally trained because she had such an aptitude for the work, was soon going to become an official member of the family. She was engaged to Kari’s older brother, Logan.
    Right now, though, she had just removed the thermometer she’d inserted into the victim’s liver in order to ascertain body temperature, which in turn allowed them to establish approximate time of death.
    “According to his liver temperature, I’d say that he’s been dead close to a week,” Destiny estimated.
    “You heard the lady,” Sean said to his daughter.
    Before she could thank Destiny, Esteban was calling her attention to something else.
    “Hey, Hyphen,” he said, using the same nickname that he’d heard the lieutenant use.
    Kari looked in his direction, not entirely sure if she liked the man calling her that or not. She supposed it beat Fernandez referring to her as “hey, you,” so for now she let it go.
    “Yes?” she responded, waiting.
    “What do you make of this?” While the others were gathered around the victim’s head, looking at him upside down, Esteban was standing on the other end of the body, peering down at the victim’s chest.
    Kari circumvented the body, coming over to stand next to her partner. “Make of what?” she wanted to know.
    “This.” Esteban pointed to the front of the dead man’s pullover sport shirt.
    She squinted, trying to see exactly what it was that had caught her partner’s eye, other than the massive bloodstain that had soaked through the entire front of what looked to have been a light green shirt. The deceased had a large neck, and all three buttons at his neckline were open.
    She didn’t notice anything until she looked down a second time. Staring at the shirt, she began to make out what looked like a crude drawing that had been stenciled in with a black laundry marker.
    A message from the killer?
    “If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say that looks like the scales of justice.”
    She looked up at her partner, waiting to hear if he concurred with her