“I know you’re not thrilled with this but, for better or worse, Carver made us partners for this case and partners use each other for sounding boards. That only works if they talk out loud because, despite what my brothers seem to think, I am not a mind reader.” She took a breath and waited. When Ronan still made no response, she told him a bit more forcefully, “So talk to me.”
Rather than comment on the case they were undertaking, Ronan contradicted what she’d said earlier. “We’re not partners.”
Caught off guard, she looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“You said Carver made us partners,” he said. “He didn’t. He put you on my team. There’s a difference,” he informed her.
Smiling, she said, “Now, was that so hard?”
Because she wasn’t responding to what he’d just told her, Ronan was momentarily confused. “What?”
Sierra spelled it out for him. “Talking. You talked in a full sentence. Several of them, actually. So my point is—was that so hard?”
He didn’t answer her question. Instead, Ronan announced, “We’re here,” as he brought his vehicle to a stop at the curb, parking it several lengths in front of a club named the Shamrock Inn.
The tavern had originally been considered to be in Tesla, the city neighboring Aurora. But somewhere along the line, someone had redrawn Aurora’s boundaries, placing the establishment partially over the city limits, leaving it in both jurisdictions.
A cartoon leprechaun was whimsically winking on the sign proclaiming the tavern’s name just above the door. What might have once been regarded mildly amusing in the dark of night now just looked sad in the light of day, Sierra thought, walking up to the squat building.
She expected Ronan to go in through the front door but he didn’t. Wordlessly, he circled the small tavern with its peeling paint and walked toward the alley behind the Shamrock Inn.
Suppressing a sigh, Sierra stepped up her pace again and quickly followed him.
Once in the alley, she saw that the Crime Scene Investigative Unit had reached the area ahead of them. Three investigators, including the head of the unit, Sean Cavanaugh, Ronan’s uncle, were spread out documenting the crime scene. The medical examiner was also there, his attention strictly focused on the victim lying facedown in the alley.
Sean looked up the moment he heard the detectives arrive in the alley. A tall, distinguished-looking man with a genial way about him, he waited until his nephew reached him before saying anything.
“Looks like your killer got another one,” he said grimly.
Ronan nodded as he assessed the lifeless victim. Like the others, the man had a single gunshot to the back of the head. Blood partially covered the tattoo at the nape of his neck. And, like the other victims, one of the man’s hands had been completely—and cleanly—hacked off.
Ronan looked at his uncle. “How long has he been dead?”
Sean pointed to the back of the tavern where a thin man of about forty or so was leaning against the wall, looking as if he was about to collapse at any moment. The first responding officer on the scene was next to him.
“That white-as-a-sheet-looking patron tripped over our victim at around two in the morning—right around closing time—so the victim’s been dead for at least that long. My guess is that he most likely departed this earth an hour before that.”
“The victim’s hand was cut off,” Sierra noted, struggling to separate herself from the horror of the scene. She saw that the appendage had been thrown haphazardly near the Dumpster and looked quizzically at CSI unit leader. “But the killer didn’t take it.” The act made no sense to her. Why cut off a hand and then just leave it? She would have thought the killer would have wanted it as a souvenir of his crime.
“He never does,” Sean told her. Looking at Ronan, he said, “You’ve got a new member,” and then smiled at Sierra. “Welcome to the party—such as it is,” he added. “A fresh pair of eyes might see something we don’t.”
“Yeah.” Ronan exhaled the word with a touch of impatience. He didn’t notice Sierra making her way to the police officer, nor did he notice her talking to him. He was focused on the victim. Moving in, he squatted down for a closer view of the man. The victim was dressed in what appeared to be designer jeans, undoubtedly boosted from some venue, Ronan guessed, and an ordinary T-shirt, now blood-stained. Like his neck, the back of the dead man’s arms had several tattoos, but nothing that struck Ronan as outstanding.
“Another gang member?” he asked his uncle.
“Looks that way,” Sean replied cautiously. “Working theory is still that this is a retaliation for the last killing.”
Martinez and Choi stood on either side of the body, bracketing the three people already there.
“But Fearless Leader’s gut says it isn’t, right, Fearless Leader?” Martinez asked, looking at Ronan. The latter returned a laser-like expression that effectively wiped the wide smile from Martinez’s face. “Sorry,” he murmured, backing off.
“How soon can you get an autopsy done on this one?” Ronan asked.
That was an easy question to answer. “As soon as we get the body back to the morgue. It’s not like there’re bodies piling up, waiting for the ME to work on them,” he added, looking at the medical examiner who was methodically working on the body, preparing it for transport. “Technically, if the killer had waited until Mr. Walker here had done his drinking in his own city, this wouldn’t even be our call, but because the Shamrock Inn is partially located just inside our city limits, that makes the homicide ours.”
“How do you know his name?” Ronan asked.
“Victim was nice enough to have his wallet on him,” Sean answered. “And apparently his killer wanted us to know who his latest victim was, so he left it untouched.”
“Just like the others,” Choi commented.
Joining the rest of the team, Sierra looked at the gregarious detective. “What do you mean?”
Sean supplied the answer. “None of the other victims lived in Aurora, either.”
“Come to Aurora and die,” Ronan murmured grimly under his breath as he continued looking at the dead man on the ground.
“I don’t think that’ll catch on as a slogan,” Sierra commented, overhearing what Ronan had just said to himself.
Ronan glanced up at her as if she had suddenly started babbling nonsense. “What won’t catch on?”
“You just said ‘Come to Aurora and die’ and—” Sierra waved her hand at him. She might as well save her breath. “Never mind.”
One look at Ronan’s impassive expression and she knew that she could talk herself blue in the face and he still wouldn’t really understand what she was saying, or why. More importantly, he wouldn’t crack a smile. The man was in serious need of a sense of humor, she thought. She firmly believed that, at times, a sense of humor was the only thing that could see a person through the harder times.
Working with O’Bannon was definitely going to be a challenge, she decided. But then, she wasn’t being paid to have a good time, Sierra stoically reminded herself. Her job was to keep the residents who lived in Aurora safe any way she could. And right now, working with O’Bannon and his team was the best way she could do that.
Squaring her shoulders, Sierra looked at the lead detective. “All right, what would you like me to do?” she asked since Ronan had gone back to intently studying the victim. When he raised his eyes to look at her, she instinctively knew what Ronan was about to say and voiced it before he could. “Besides