Cavanaugh's Surrender (20 page)

* * *

The polite greeting and tight smile Drake Simmons offered when Logan and Destiny were brought into his office quickly faded when the nature of their visit became clear.

Stunned, he could only repeat what he’d just been told. “You’re accusing me of killing Paula? Are you out of your minds?” Simmons thundered in a voice that made his underlings quake. “She was a wonderful woman. I would have
never
hurt Paula.”

“This went beyond hurt,” Destiny bit off, tired of the virtual hide-and-seek game they were playing. “You had an affair with my sister, and when you got tired of her, the way you got tired of all the other women before her, you found that she wasn’t going to go quietly. That made her a liability to you and that perfect little world you lived in, so you killed her.”

Obviously, Simmons had had enough. “Get out, both of you,” he ordered. Then, glaring at Destiny, he added, “You are insane.”

“And you are under arrest,” she fired back. She glanced in Logan’s direction, fully expecting him to back her up. “Put the cuffs on him, Cavanaugh.”

Her eyes on Simmons, she was positive she had the right man. His prints were found in Paula’s apartment, and she was fairly confident if they showed his photograph to the pharmacist where the sleeping pills had been obtained, the man would ID Simmons as the person who paid for that medication.

“You have the right to remain silent,” she recited. “If you give up that right, what you say can and will be held—”

“All right, all right,” Simmons cried, pulling away before Logan could secure the handcuffs on his wrists. “I had an affair with your sister,” he admitted angrily, “but that’s not a crime.”

“Killing her is,” Destiny snapped.

“I didn’t kill her!” Simmons shouted desperately.

Her face was expressionless as she looked at the CEO. “Convince me.” It was an order.

Simmons no longer projected cool confidence. Instead, he looked like a man who’d been cornered—and was terrified.

“Tell me what time she was killed.” There was a frantic edge to his voice. “And I’ll tell you where I was.”

When Logan gave the CEO an approximate time of death, Simmons hesitated for a few seconds, trying to recall his whereabouts that day.

“Wait a minute,” he cried. “Let me just call in my assistant—”

“So he can lie for you?” Logan asked knowingly. He wouldn’t have been the first high-powered man who’d convinced an underling to take the fall for him.

“No, so he can bring me my schedule. He makes all of my appointments. Howard knows my schedule better than I do.”

“And this schedule,” Destiny wanted to know, “does it go back five years?”

Simmons paled beneath his very expensive tan. “Why?”

“Because it seems that all the dead women have your private cell phone number programmed into their
cell phones.”

Pressing the button that connected him to his assistant, Simmons requested that Howard bring the schedule in quickly.

“Make sure you bring in my schedule for the last five years,” he emphasized nervously just before releasing the button on the intercom and turning toward Logan and Destiny.

“I know how this looks,” he said in a voice that was no longer arrogant but subdued and possibly just a little fearful. “But I didn’t kill any of those women. I’m not a monster.”

“We’ll see” was all Destiny trusted herself to say for now.

Chapter 15

S
till handcuffed, Drake Simmons was brought in, then booked and fingerprinted, all while angrily protesting his innocence and demanding to see his lawyer.

“When last seen, your assistant, Howard, was trying to locate your lawyer for you,” Logan told the man evenly. “Meanwhile, rather than sending you off to a holding cell in our jail, we’ve arranged for you to wait in one of our interrogation rooms.”

Logan knew it would be just a short matter of time before the CEO’s lawyer would post bail for the man. Though he couldn’t legally question him, there was always a chance that Simmons, in his anger, would let something unintentionally slip, so it was better to have the man close by than in lockup.

Logan looked at the policeman who’d escorted Simmons down to booking and back. “Put Mr. Simmons in interrogation room three and see that he stays there,” he instructed.

Just as Simmons was taken away, Sean Cavanaugh walked into the squad room.

“Dad,” Logan said, surprised to see his father. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen the man out of the lab at the precinct. “What are you doing above the first floor?”

“I came to see if my chief assistant needed some moral support.” He looked over toward the desk where Destiny was sitting. “Word has it that you made an arrest on the case.”

Getting to her feet, Destiny quickly made her way over to her boss.

“We did,” she confirmed. There was no pride in her voice, no indication that the battle was finally over.

Sean had always been able to read people. It was one of the reasons he’d gone into the line of work that he had.

“I sense a ‘but’ in the air. How airtight is your case?” he asked, looking from his son to Destiny. “What kind of evidence do you have?”

“Circumstantial,” Destiny was forced to admit, but she quickly assured the older man, “But there’s a ton of it. Simmons’s fingerprints are at her apartment, and there are dozens of cell phone calls between them in the week before she died, not to mention too many to count over a period of eight weeks.”

Sean shook his head very slowly. “That just proves that they knew each other, not that he killed her,” he pointed out quietly.

She didn’t want to hear any negative arguments. “He did it, Sean. He’s responsible for Paula’s murder. I can
feel
it,” Destiny insisted.

Sean was nothing if not sympathetic. Although he placed a great deal of emphasis on black-and-white evidence, he also believed that at times, investigators had to go with their gut feeling.

“Then go for it,” he urged. “And you—” he turned toward Logan “—help her.” It was a direct order, not from a father to his son but from the head of the crime lab to a detective.

“That’s what I’ve been doing, Dad,” Logan replied. He wasn’t defensive in his answer. There was no need to be. His father knew him well enough to know he didn’t lie.

Sean nodded, as if he knew that but had just wanted to hear it said out loud—predominantly for Destiny’s benefit.

* * *

Simmons’s lawyer as well as his assistant arrived less than half an hour later. The delay had been unavoidable because it had taken Simmons’s assistant, Howard, that long to find the sections from the CEO’s schedule that had mysteriously gone missing.

The printout copies were now safely in Logan’s hands, and the pages showed that Simmons had been clear across town, at another hotel room with his latest love interest at the time of Paula’s death.

The man was disgusting, Destiny thought as she looked over the pages that provided Simmons with an alibi. He’d no sooner cut her sister loose than he’d hopped into bed with someone else.

Howard took the opportunity to preen before the police department duo. It was obvious that he was enjoying rubbing their noses in his boss’s innocence.

“So Mr. Simmons couldn’t have been in that woman’s apartment, drugging her and slashing her wrists before putting her into the bathtub,” Howard crowed as he haughtily looked down his nose at Destiny and Logan. “You’re just going to have to pin this on somebody else.”

It had almost gone sailing over her head.

Said so quickly by the little man, his words had almost not registered.

But then they did.

And when they did, they wound up hitting her like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Stunned, Destiny exchanged glances with Logan to see if he’d picked up on it, as well. Judging by his delayed reaction, the all-important phrase had taken the long way around getting to her partner, as well.

“Would you mind repeating what you just said?” Logan requested politely.

“You people deaf as well as blind?” Howard demanded nastily. “I
said
Mr. Simmons can’t be blamed if that two-bit floozy pumped herself full of drugs and then slashed her wrists. He has important work to do. He’s not her guardian angel, you know.”

“Nobody would accuse him of being that, that’s for sure,” Destiny couldn’t help saying with more than a little contempt in her voice. “But then, someone might just turn the tables and accuse
you
of killing Paula,” she said, suddenly getting into the man’s face.

“Me?” Paling, his eyes growing wider and wider, Howard croaked out a protest. “You’re crazy, you know that? Absolutely freakin’ crazy!”

“Oh, I don’t know. That little detail about the drugs found in Paula’s system, that was left out of the media story. As a matter of fact, from what I’d read in the other files, that salient point was left out of the articles about
all
the dead women. How is it that you were aware of that information, Mr. Palmer?” Destiny asked pointedly.

A little uneasy, Howard shrugged his sloping shoulders. “I dunno. I must have read it somewhere.”

“You’re not paying attention, Howard,” Destiny told him. She could barely contain her excitement. They might have lost Simmons as a suspect, but Howard was shaping up rather nicely to fill that vacant slot. “That little fact was kept from any and all media. It’s our ace in the hole, the let’s-see-who-knows-more-than-they’re-telling card. No one knew about the drugs in the women’s systems except for the investigating detectives and the medical examiner—and the man who killed her.” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned in over the table. “Which right now would seem to be you.”

“No,” he insisted, his voice going up an octave. “You’re making a mistake.”

“From where I’m standing, you’re the one who made the mistake, Howard,” she stated.

“You’re just trying to pin this on someone!” he accused, then pulled himself up to his full five-foot-five height. “And I’ve had enough of these accusations. I’m going home.”

But as he began to walk toward the door, Logan rose to his feet and all six foot three of him blocked the other man’s path.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Howard. It looks like you’re going to have to be the guest of the city for a while.” His eyes held the other man’s. “With any luck, for a very long while.”

Real panic seemed to set in as Simmons’s personal assistant wobbled on his feet.

“You can’t put me in lockup. There’s nothing but lowlifes there.” Breathing hard, he declared, “You’re bluffing. You’re just looking to pin these murders on someone,” he repeated indignantly.

“Actually, yes, we are,” Destiny agreed, then clarified, “The
right
someone, and you now seem to be even a better candidate than your boss. So tell me, how did this play out?” she asked, her voice growing harsh. “He has the good time and when he’s done, you get to clean up after him? Does he
pay
you enough for that kind of thing?” she demanded.

Howard Palmer did nothing but whimper.

Splaying her hands on the scarred surface, Destiny leaned over the table, her face inches away from Palmer’s. “You realize that this way, he gets to have an alibi and your fingers, so to speak, are all over the crime. He’s dumping this all on you, Howard. Without your testimony, he gets to walk and you get the execution chamber. You’re the fall guy, Howard.” Still inches away from him, Destiny whispered urgently, “Don’t let him do this to you.”

But Palmer shook his head so hard, some of the sweat from his forehead flew off and managed to make contact with her face.

“You’ve got this all wrong,” he cried. “All wrong. Mr. Simmons never asked me to do anything except offer his ex-girlfriends money, something to tide them over until their lives got back on track. He was never anything less than a gentleman.”

Was that what passed for a gentleman these days? Well, not in her book, not by a long shot.

“Right, he’s a regular prince,” she spat out. “So, what are you saying here, Howard?” Destiny asked the man sharply. “You read between the lines and did what you
thought
Simmons wanted you to do?”

The man blew out a shaky breath as he stared up at the ceiling. He seemed to be hoping that a black hole would open up and swallow him.

Finally he said in a small, still voice, “I did what had to be done.”

Logan could see that the second the words were uttered, they’d waved a red flag in front of Destiny. He indicated to her to let him continue asking the questions. They needed a confession, and they needed someone calm to go after it. Right now, that wasn’t her.

“And exactly what had to be done, Howard?” Logan pressed.

“The threat had to be eliminated,” Howard said, a desperate, pleading edge back in his voice.

“What threat?” Destiny asked. This wasn’t making any sense. Her sister had never been a threat to anyone.

“Why, to Mr. Simmons’s good name, of course,” the assistant insisted, as if that was elementary and as plain as day. “If one of those whores decided to sell her story to one of those tabloid rags, his career chances would be over.”

Destiny and Logan exchanged looks. Simmons had climbed up as high in his company as a man could go. “I’m afraid you lost us, Howard,” Logan told him, then asked, “What career chances?”

Fidgeting, Howard sighed impatiently, as if trying to suffer through dealing with imbeciles. “It hasn’t been made public yet, but Mr. Simmons has been planning for years on running for senator. If word got out about his insatiable sexual appetite—”

“Most likely he’d fit right in with the Washington crowd,” Logan concluded cynically.

But Howard disagreed. “Mr. Simmons needed a spotless record. He might not have realized that, but I did,” he said importantly. “He has a wife, a family. If his affairs came to light, he might not get elected.”

It was beginning to come together. Destiny felt outraged as well as sick to her stomach.

“So you’re telling us that you killed all those women just to protect Simmons’s good name?” Destiny asked incredulously.

“Someone had to,” Howard insisted with passion.