“Different strokes for different folks, I guess.” Getting off the desk, she picked up the list Del Campo had written up for her. She briefly looked over the names. “Good work, Francisco.”
“Speaking of work, how’s it going with Major Crimes over there?” Del Campo nodded his head in Jackson’s general direction.
She looked over toward Jackson, although she really didn’t need to. “I’ve worked with him before.”
“You’re not answering my question,” Del Campo pointed out.
She supposed she wasn’t, but she wasn’t about to say anything critical about Muldare. That would throw a wrench into the works.
“He’s different,” Brianna allowed. “Listen, Francisco, can you find something out about Muldare’s background for me?”
His curiosity piqued, Del Campo moved closer toward her. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything,” she emphasized. “Family background, just things like that,” she answered, deliberately keeping her request vague. This business with his brother had made her curious.
Del Campo looked at her, puzzled. “What does this have to do with the case?”
“Nothing,” Brianna admitted. It had absolutely nothing to do with the case they were investigating, just the man she was investigating it with. “Just my curiosity kicking in.”
Del Campo laughed at her answer. “You mean just your Cavanaugh kicking in.” When he saw a trace of annoyance crease her brow, he said, “I know all about your family, Bri. You all have this idealistic notion that everybody’s supposed to be happy and connecting with everybody else. You know, it doesn’t always work that way, partner.”
She didn’t care for being analyzed, even by someone she liked. “Just get me the information whenever you can—in your spare time,” Brianna threw in to make it sound casual.
Del Campo almost laughed in her face. “Yeah, like I know what that is,” he said as Brianna walked away.
“Whenever,” she tossed over her shoulder.
When Brianna returned to her desk, Jackson was already there, waiting for her.
“Did you get a list of former hotel guests from Del Campo?”
She placed the list Del Campo had typed up for her on her desk so that Jackson could look at it.
“Right here,” she answered, pushing it closer to him. “Did you call your brother?”
Jackson never looked up. “He wasn’t a guest at the hotel.”
She blew out a breath. Why did everything always have to be so difficult with him? But then, she reminded herself, she’d been raised on difficult. She had three older brothers. “You know what I mean, Muldare.”
He murmured something under his breath, then said, “Unfortunately, yes, I do. But that’s a private matter and we’re here during business hours,” he reminded her. “Which means we need to be taking care of business. And I’ve got a feeling that everyone wants to see this case resolved and placed in a nice little box with a tight lid on it. The sooner, the better,” Jackson emphasized.
The problem was, Jackson wasn’t wrong, Brianna thought. It took very little imagination for her to envision the mayor getting involved in this. The Auroras were essentially the city’s founding fathers, and as such, the family was a very big deal in the city of Aurora.
They contributed to all the local charities as well as to the police and fire departments. Whatever needed doing, if there weren’t sufficient funds in the city’s coffers to get it done, the Aurora family could always be counted on to open their wallets in order to cover the expenses. No one wanted to offend them.
But what about the people who weren’t able to speak for themselves? What about the people whose bodies had been uncovered in the rubble that the wrecking ball had brought down? Granted, they—or what was left of them—were past being offended. But not past being avenged.
Brianna took a deep breath, struggling not to work herself up.
She didn’t realize that Jackson had been talking to her until she felt his hand on her shoulder. Coming around, she almost jumped as she turned to look at him.
“Earth to O’Bannon.” The way Jackson said the phrase to her, Brianna knew it wasn’t the first time he had tried to get her attention.
“What?” she asked, trying to appear in the moment—as if she hadn’t somehow misplaced the last couple of minutes while she’d been lost in thought.
“Are you back now?” he asked, something akin to amusement on his face.
“Sorry. Just tell me what you were saying,” she retorted shortly.
He inclined his head obligingly. “I said, do you want to start looking for the people on that list so we can question them, or do you want to go to the morgue to see if the ME has anything useful to tell us yet?”
The man definitely did not have a gift for words, she thought.
“We can swing by the morgue first,” she told Jackson. “But when we talk to the ME, do yourself a favor and leave out the word useful, okay?”
He wasn’t following her, something, he was beginning to recall, that happened on a fairly regular basis. The woman had a way of messing with his mind and distracting him, not just because of what she said, but the way she looked when she said it. He had to force himself to focus on the words and not the woman saying them. “What?”
“You make it sound as if you’re talking down to a person when you phrase it like that.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jackson said, exasperated.
“All right,” she said, finding it difficult to remain delicate. “I’ll put it another way. You need people lessons, Muldare.”
“I know how to do my job,” Jackson retorted, ticked off by her criticism.
“I didn’t say you didn’t know how to do your job,” she protested. “As a matter of fact, Muldare, you’re a great cop. But you have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way.”
This was getting to be tiresome, and he made no effort to hide his feelings from her.
“I’m not in it to rub people the right way,” he informed her. “I’m in it to keep people from getting killed by the bad guys—and
