Cause and Effect Read online

  Cause and Effect

  Casus Fortuitus #3

  Brooke Edwards

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, names, characters, places and incidents is coincidental.

  All trademarks and recognizable brands belong to their respective owners.

  Copyright © 2018 Brooke Edwards.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except brief quotations in reviews or articles.

  Published by Brooke Edwards.

  Author contact:

  http://www.brookeedwardsauthor.com

  http://brookeedwards.blog

  https://www.facebook.com/brookeedwardsauthor

  [email protected]

  Editing: Pinny’s Proofreading

  Cover Design: Soxsational Cover Art

  Formatting: The Graphics and Formatting Shed

  Other books by Brooke Edwards are available at her Amazon page.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Casus Fortuitus #4

  Chapter 1

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job,” Daniel repeats to himself as his phone buzzes over and over and over again. He stares at the ceiling, eyes gummy and blurred with sleep. The light refracts through the dingy shade he’s never gotten around to changing, and he recognizes the familiar, lingering traces of the headache that’s stuck around for days. He doesn’t blink until his phone drops abruptly into silence.

  It starts up again just as he rolls over toward the edge of the bed. The lingering ache has turned into a painful pounding, already picking up behind his eyes, and he sighs, reaching out to grab it and bring it to his ear. “Callahan.” He barely manages to hold the yawn back.

  “About time.” James’s voice is about as grating as the vibrating of the phone. Sometimes, like now, Daniel regrets having such a close relationship with his boss. “You powdering your entire face?”

  “Something like that.” He pushes himself to his feet, stumbling toward the bathroom. His head spins at the sudden change in position and his shoulder glances off the doorframe. The sharp, sudden pain steals his breath and he hisses. “Fu—what do you even want?”

  “Both sides of the bed the wrong choice today, Danny? Someone yanked a body from the East River half an hour ago and I’m catching a cab from Derek’s now,” James says. “Meet me at the Brooklyn side, just past the bridge.”

  Daniel breathes through the pain and manages to make it into the bathroom. “Make sure you finish doing your shirt up this time. See you there.” Daniel hangs up before James can respond, rubbing at his eyes and dropping the phone on the counter. He turns the cold tap on full blast and sticks his face as far under the faucet as he can. When he shakes the excess water off, he stares into the mirror. His eyes are bloodshot and dull even through the drops of water distorting his reflection.

  He sacrifices the time he’d need to shave to make a pit stop for coffee on the way, knowing that he’ll regret it when his five-o’clock shadow ends up patchy and uneven. That’s a problem for future Daniel.

  “Are you hung over?” is the first thing James says when he looks up just as Daniel ducks under the cordoning tape.

  “I wish,” Daniel grunts, shouldering his way past the scene techs and coming to stand next to James. The body on the bank is still dressed and barely bloated, at least by the usual standard of bodies pulled from the river. It can’t have been in the water very long. Daniel’s eyes skip over it from head to toe and he can’t see any particularly obvious cause of death. “What’re we looking at?”

  “Double-tap in the back,” James says. Daniel doesn’t even need to look at him to know his eyes are narrowed in thought. “No wallet or ID but he’s got a few distinctive tattoos that make me sure he has a record, so we’ll run a search.”

  Daniel sees the edge of a local gang emblem peeking out from below the edge of the body’s sleeve. “Gang murders, excellent.” He sighs. “This should set off a nice string of retaliations. We’re clearly in for a wonderful summer.”

  “Where have you been hiding that optimism?” James asks dryly. “Come on. We’ll stop for coffee and bear claws on the way back in.”

  “Only if you’re buying.” Daniel is all too aware that he’d fallen into bed a solid nine hours before his phone had woken him up, and that even after his first coffee, he’s still so tired he’s almost nauseous. He never gets sick, except for when he does.

  James squeezes the back of his neck and then leaves his hand there as he steers Daniel back toward the car. The warm, grounding touch feels almost indecently good, and Daniel bites back a disappointed noise when James takes his hand away as they have to duck under the tape again.

  “I’ll drive,” James says when they get closer, and Daniel tosses the keys to him without an argument. He watches Daniel through the entire process of getting in, closing the doors, and starting the car. “You okay? I wasn’t joking when I said you looked hung over.”

  “Tired,” Daniel admits after a few seconds. He leans back in the seat, adjusting it with a creak. “I was out like a light last night and still feel like I could sleep for a week. This headache just won’t quit.”

  James makes a sound of concern. “Maybe you’re coming down with something,” he says. He cuts a sideways glance at Daniel. “Let me find some wriggle room in the roster, get you a couple of days off in a row. I’ll order you a bunch of chicken noodle soup, you can sleep for eighteen hours and recalibrate a bit. Sound good?”

  “A real compassionate gesture would be you offering to make me the soup.” Daniel’s jaw cracks around a yawn. “But I suppose I’ll settle for a couple of days off and a good pizza.”

  “Trust me, buying the soup for you is more compassionate than making it,” James says. There’s a note of very real regret there and, even tired as he is, Daniel sits up to cock an eyebrow curiously.

  “Did your cooking actually kill someone?”

  Daniel can’t move far enough to get out of the way of the punch James aims at his shoulder, but it barely makes impact anyway. He half laughs as it glances off into the seat cushion, slumping back against the headrest with a sigh. James focuses back on the road, grumbling under his breath. Daniel ignores the worried glances every time traffic comes to a standstill, resting his eyes, and pinching his own thigh occasionally to keep himself awake instead.

  The elevator doors open on their floor just as Daniel concedes the battle against a yawn that makes his jaw crack again. “You can nap under my desk,” Kay offers instead of a greeting as Daniel stumbles a little coming out of the elevator, the caffeine hit from the second coffee nowhere to be seen. There isn’t even a bite to her voice like there usually would be with an offer like that.

  He narrows his eyes at her, and she just stares back, strangely earnest. Daniel glances sideways at James, who is walking very quickly toward his office. Unnaturally quickly, especially so early in the morning. “Stop momming me,” he says, stubbornness swelling up inside—much like the maybe-fever he’s been ignoring for the last hour—as he quickens his step to catch up with James.

  “If you weren’t such a child I wouldn’t be able to!” she shouts after him. He feels an immense relief when James’s office door shuts behind him.

  James is determinedly not meeting his eyes when he looks at him. Daniel s
ighs. “What?” he says flatly. “Did you tattle on me in the car? You’re a cop. Jesus, you can’t text and drive.”

  “No!” James insists. His left eye twitches.

  “I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve gotten even worse at lying.” Daniel slumps into the seat across the desk from James. He rubs at his temples. “If I can’t go home, can we please get started on this case, before the gangs take justice into their own hands?”

  “You can go home,” James says, a deep furrow between his eyebrows. “You really don’t look well. We’ll manage today, and I can call Murph and get him to swap Bailey over to our shift for tomorrow. Let me know how you’re going tomorrow night and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  Daniel briefly considers digging his heels in and insisting on staying. Once the flare of intense dislike for the younger officer passes, though, it leaves behind little but that same headache and persistent exhaustion. “Okay,” he says instead of fighting. “I can be the bigger person here. Are you gonna order me that soup?”

  “Depends how generous I’m feeling later.” James makes a shooing motion toward the door, and Daniel pushes himself up on the arms of the chair. He reaches out to snag the paper bag with his bear claw in it. James frowns harder. “Now get, before I take it back.”

  “I’m gone,” Daniel says, careful to avoid the doorframe on his way out. It’s still a near thing.

  By the time Daniel gets back to his apartment, there are a bunch of unanswered text messages from Derek on his phone and he doesn’t even feel like eating the bear claw.

  Don’t eat anything James gives you [9:06]

  Seriously [9:07]

  If he was even tangentially involved in the making of it just DON’T [9:09]

  Do you want me to make you a doctor’s appointment? [9:17]

  I will call your mother [9:34]

  I HAVE called your mother [9:49]

  The last two are just strings of disappointed and broken-heart emojis. Even through the pounding in Daniel’s head, there’s a surge of fondness. He manages to tap out a response between struggling out of his uniform and staring at the lock on his safe like it will decide to unlock on its own and spare him the effort.

  My tax $s better not be paying you to nag me [10:01]

  It isn’t until he’s finally admitted defeat and unlocked the safe himself, shoving his entire belt and assorted contents in there before shutting the blackout curtains, that he hears the trill of a message.

  The message is a shaky video, zoomed in on one side of Derek’s face and cutting in halfway through an obvious rant. “—ulti-tasking, Daniel!” and then cutting right back out as the video ends. Daniel can’t help but laugh as he flicks the light off, and he replays the video again as he picks his way back across the room to his bed in the dark.

  You’re hopeless [10:07]

  He falls asleep before Derek responds, or his mother calls.

  James is a highly suspicious person by nature. He’s pretty sure that’s part of what has made him such a successful police officer in one of the biggest cities in the United States. So, when Kay enters his office that afternoon with a pleasant smile on her face and a glint in her eyes, he is very suspicious.

  “What do you want?” he says, voice flat.

  “What, I can’t drop by to visit my boss in his office a few yards from my desk?” She leans over to plant her hands on his desk and look right at him.

  He raises his own eyebrows. “Not without a good reason or food,” he says and leans back in his chair. It gets her cleavage out of his direct line of sight, at least, and he coughs to try to draw attention to it while making sure to focus on her face.

  “Well, this good reason is about six foot five, rakishly handsome, and most importantly, not part of your regular shift,” she says. “Or senior enough to be spying on you to make sure you don’t do anything else harebrained. Why is Cohen Bailey standing at my desk looking like an annoyingly attractive lost puppy, James?”

  James frowns. “I asked Murph to swap him to our shift for a couple of days to cover Daniel,” he says. The fact that Kay is even suggesting that there are more eyes watching him than usual is unsettling. Not unexpected, considering the thin story they’d concocted to cover everyone’s asses in the aftermath of everything that had happened, but unsettling all the same. Daniel knows the truth, he’s sure of that, but they’d never talked about it and no one else had even questioned that Coy had just gotten the drop on him. “I didn’t think he’d swap him until tomorrow, but we can’t be short-handed if the gangs are going to start kicking off with each other. There’s a spare desk over by Rollins he can take.”

  Kay makes a strangled, frustrated noise. She jabs a finger at his face, which he ducks away from instinctively, even if it barely comes within a foot of his nose, before turning on her heel and storming out.

  He’s still staring blankly at the door when his phone starts to ring, and he answers it without looking at the screen, trying to figure out where that interaction had gone so wrong.

  “Dad?” Sam’s voice filters through after a few seconds.

  “Just in case I randomly disappear, it was probably Kay,” James says, shaking his head to clear it. “What’s up, kiddo?”

  “What did you do to piss her off now?” Sam’s amusement is palpable.

  “Daniel’s not well so I told him to go home for a couple of days, and had Bailey transferred over from Murph’s team,” James says. “We pulled a body with gang tattoos from the East River this morning, it’s gonna be a big one—”

  The sound Sam makes is all frustration. “You’re an oblivious—oblivious!” he blurts out. “That guy has the biggest—”

  “Oh, shit, I get it,” James says suddenly. He can almost feel it as something clicks in his head. “It looks like I’m trying to replace Daniel, doesn’t it? Another kid with all that promise, and I keep requesting him on cases. I’m an idiot, I didn’t even think that’s how it was coming across!”

  “I give up.” James can hear clattering, like Sam is rummaging through a cupboard. “I literally actually give up, Dad. I was calling to invite you and Derek to dinner but I’m just going to invite Derek now. He deserves it for putting up with you, and you can just stay at work and rethink this conversation. Keep rethinking until you have the epiphany that’s waiting to smack you in the face.”

  James is left gaping at his phone after Sam hangs up on him. He can hear Kay pick up a call a few seconds later, and when her voice immediately drops in volume, he’s unnervingly sure that it’s Sam on the other end of the call.

  Instead of dwelling on the fact that everyone in his life seems to end up conspiring together against him, James gets up and heads out into the bullpen. “With me,” he says, and gestures from the desks toward the hall of conference rooms. “We’ve got a murder to solve.”

  The clock by Daniel’s bed keeps blurring in and out of focus as he blinks at it. He’s pretty sure the red-lit time starts with a four, but he’s not going to stake any money on it. The pain is a dull manageable ache behind his eyes right up until he moves. Motion startles it right back into a relentless, all-consuming throb and he slumps back against the pillow with a punched-out hiss. He closes his eyes and breathes slowly until it dulls down to something manageable.

  When he opens them again, he can see the flashing of the notification light on his phone and reaches out until his palm settles over the screen. It cuts the light out, but he knows as soon as he unlocks it to get to the messages, the shock is going to blind him.

  He squints, the pressure from the movement still hurting less than what he knows facing the full brightness of the screen is going to. He slowly brings it to hover over his face, still squinting, and shifts his thumb to activate the screen. A candid of his mother flashes up before he can put the unlock code in, the vibrating enough of a shock that he almost drops it.

  “Hi, Mom,” he says as he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back to the pillow.

  Derek frowns at t
he papers spread out over the desk, shifting the phone to between his ear and shoulder as James answers the call. Briony is still giggling at her desk, just within his earshot. He knows that the ink on his face is gone, but her laughter is reinforcing the paranoia. “Are you actually coming to dinner or was Sam serious when he said you were in time-out until you have whatever huge epiphany you need to have?” he asks, marking his spot with a fingertip.

  James makes a disgruntled sound. “Lydia will let me in,” he says but doesn’t sound convinced. “Did you talk to Daniel?”

  “He replied a couple of times around ten.” Derek stretches over the desk for a highlighter with his free hand. The phone slips a little and he lifts his shoulder higher to make sure it stays there. “Then again at four thirty, to make sure I told you to buy him that soup. Well, the message technically said soup with an l on the end, but I got the idea. He’s probably just run-down and caught something from one of the gross places you send him so you don’t have to go there.”

  “I’m glad he’s still alive,” James says. “Looked like it was going to be a bit touch and go this morning.”

  “It’s been a rough few months and he hasn’t really stopped.” Derek manages to snag the highlighter. “You know what he’s like. Do you want me to meet you at Sam and Lydia’s or are you up this side of town anyway?”

  “I’m still at the station,” James says. “We could leave from here if that’s easier?”

  The green highlighter smudges the not-quite-dry black print and Derek bites the inside of his cheek in frustration. “Sure,” he sighs. “I’m not winning any battles here anyway. I’ll pack up and head out. Are we bringing anything?”