by Rod Kackley
Mary Eileen was alone. She had no idea where she was, but Mary Eileen had a feeling she was in the middle of a ghetto.
There was no need to pay the Uber driver. The full payment, including a tip, was on her credit card. So he sped off with hardly a word.
That left Mary Eileen surrounded by giant Victorian mansions on a street somewhere in Detroit, Michigan, with the sun setting, night approaching, and she knew only too well, real danger lurking in the shadows.
Mary Eileen waited for the street lights to turn on. They didn’t. She could not be in a darker environment than if she was alone in the Suicide Forest. Oh, but Mary Eileen could tell she wasn't entirely alone. The sound of police, fire and ambulance sirens echoed through the evening.
She knew she had to reinvent herself, come up with a new identity and life, but first, Mary Eileen knew she had to get herself off this street. Looking around, she realized there wasn’t a single light on in any of the houses. That seemed so odd, but then Mary Eileen remembered what her customers from this side of Michigan had said about Detroit.
“Nobody lives there anymore.”
However, Mary Eileen knew that was wrong if only because of the police, fire and ambulance sirens that punctuated her fear.
Once she got used to their shrillness, the sounds of emergency vehicles seemed comforting. At least there are police in the area, Mary Eileen thought. As long as they don’t know who I am, I can go to them for help if I need it.
But she also knew that once she contacted a cop, the first thing any officer of the law would do would be to check her background, and get her story, by asking for her DOB, her date of birth, and running it on the computer.
If the lunkheads at St. Izzy P. D. found their way to the state police computer, Mary Eileen Sullivan knew she might as well put a gun to her head and pull the trigger. She’d seen state police cars coming into St. Isidore as she was driving out. The local police, Mary Eileen could handle. Hell, she’d killed two men, disposed of their bodies, and the cops never asked her more than the most rudimentary questions as part of a missing person investigation. But she knew the state police were on another plateau of law enforcement. Those guys are good, Mary Eileen thought. She had to stay off their radar screen.
Once she got settled, Mary Eileen knew she could walk into any coffee shop in Detroit and make enough money under the table to survive. All she needed was a roof over her head. A hot shower would be nice, too. Her phone’s battery was just about dead. An electrical outlet would also be nice.
There seemed to be no better plan than to start knocking on doors and trying door knobs. If these houses were empty, there was no reason Mary Eileen couldn’t at least spent the night inside away from the bad guys and away from the police.
Tomorrow, she would find a coffee shop. At least Mary Eileen could find a job. She’d offer to work under the table, all cash, no benefits. She’d have taken on that kind of an employee in St. Isidore; hell, she did. Christina was a total illegal alien. No papers, no nothing. Mary Eileen could be the same kind of person, completely illegal, a non-existent person with absolutely no record of ever being alive.
But first, she needed to get off the street.
Mary Eileen was no cat burglar. She had never broken into a home in her life, but that is just what she knew she had to do on this miserable broken-down street in Detroit.
Not knowing what else to do she just knocked at the front door of the first home. No one answered, “Obviously, not at home,” she thought to herself.
Mary Eileen crept along the side of the house. It had once been a beautiful home. It wasn’t anymore, but once, it must have been a sight to behold.
I’ll bet they all were really something back about a century ago, Mary Eileen thought.
Four, no five stories tall, she noted. Mary Eileen couldn’t be sure of course, but if this house were in Great Britain, it would've gone up somewhere been the mid-nineteenth century and the first year of the twentieth century.
“When that grand old lady, Queen Victoria, was on the throne,” Mary Eileen said aloud. She had to keep talking. It quieted her fears. She’d survived and even thrived in New York’s Times Square and Manhattan. It was also true she grew up in Belfast, but she fled as soon as she could. And Belfast, as bad as it was, had not been anything like what she saw around her in Detroit.
Yet, Mary Eileen felt somewhat at home. She was standing outside a house in a Victorian neighborhood. Patterned bricks, terraces, decorated roof line, and slates; the houses on this street had it all. But those blocks that probably came from one of the brickyards in St. Isidore back in the late 1800s and set in what was known back then as a Flemish Brick Bond — bricks with an end pointing out at the street that alternated with bricks that showed their long side — had long since started falling out. The mortar had turned to sand. The lush gardens that had grown so splendidly on the front and rear of the homes had gone to weeds years ago, and what was left of the mosaic stained glass windows had been smashed by stone-throwing vandals.
While Mary Eileen saw the damage, she felt homesick for Ireland.
“I’ll bet they even have a fireplace in every room,” Mary Eileen whispered to herself.
Wait! A light had just popped on in a home across the street. Mary Eileen scurried across the road, not bothering to look for traffic. Getting hit by a car, she thought, would be a small problem. At least then she could find a place to bed down in a hospital emergency room.
However, she did run half-bent-over like a soldier running through incoming gunfire. Once on the other side of the street, Mary Eileen caught her breath, straightened her clothes and walked erect, fully confident, intending to knock on the front door, announce herself and plead for help, until another gunshot rang out.
Mary Eileen immediately dove to the ground. Her face was in a muddy patch, at least she hoped it was nothing more toxic than mud. She was flat on her belly but managed to raise her hands in what she hoped was a sign of surrender.
Mary Eileen risked raising her head to look at the house.
All that produced was another gunshot. Whoever was shooting missed Mary Eileen again, but the bullet hit the sidewalk behind her and ricocheted off into the night.
Mary Eileen rolled three times through the mud and weeds that made up the front yard of the home. She got up on her hands and knees, looked at the house again and this time saw the barrel of a rifle poking out of a second-story window.
There was only one option. No Plan B or Plan C. There was only Plan A: Run. And that is just what Mary Eileen did. She ran like never before until she heard the music.
Twenty Three
Sean instinctively ducked when he heard the gunshot. Had to be a rifle, he thought, being an expert on guns. He was a state police marksman and had done a couple of years as a sniper in hostage negotiations, so if there was one thing Sean knew, it was the sound of a rifle.
But this weapon, whose sound echoed down the street of beat-up gingerbread houses wasn’t a modern gun. He was betting it might be one of the rifles that were used to win the West, maybe 200 years ago; a Winchester. That meant the person who fired it wasn’t a professional hit man, not even a professional criminal. Probably just an old bum who was living in one of these rat traps, Sean decided.
Normally this guy wouldn’t be worth worrying about, but even an idiot could fire a rifle.
Sean also knew that whoever it was firing that rifle, he or she, undoubtedly kept an eye on everything that moved on this street. He was someone Sean wanted to speak with as soon as possible.
The Uber driver, who had driven Mary Eileen first up to the Upper Peninsula and then down the length of Michigan to Detroit, had been very forthcoming. Once Sean ran a background check and found out the guy was a convicted sex offender — nobody dangerous, just dumb enough to have exposed himself as a teenager to some little girls — and had not reported his latest change of address; it wasn’t hard to persuade him to exchange information for freedom.
So un
less the Uber driver lied, and he might have, Mary Eileen had been on this street a little more than a week ago. She might still be here. Sean had to find out, and the easiest way to do that would be a little face-to-face time with whoever had that rifle.
“Jeez,” said Sean as he hit the ground to avoid a ricocheting bullet. He had stood up to draw fire never expecting the rifleman to be such a good shot. Fortunately for Sean, the shooter had not been good enough, and he was able to spot the muzzle flash.
Sean did an Army crawl on his elbows and knees to get to the side of the house. There was no way he could use the front door. Even the back door would be too dicey. The guy was firing out of a second-story window facing the street. Sean needed to get behind him, but the door would be too obvious. If this guy turned out to be some urban survivalist, he might have wired a booby trap to the back door. Could be a small homemade bomb — it was easy enough to figure out how to make one of those with a quick search of the internet — or it might be a good, old-fashioned, trip-shotgun with a wire running from the trigger to the door. Whoever opened the back door would either get himself blown up or catch a load of lead in the face.
Sean didn’t see himself coming out of either scenario alive, so he decided to use a window.
He crawled to the side of the house and found an old garden shed set up against the side of the home. The old, Victorian houses in the neighborhood had each been surrounded with gardens back in the days when Detroit was prospering. Having a shed closest to one of the areas where the homeowners, or their staff, were working on the gardens made perfect sense.
Sean found a couple of old tires in the backyard, rolled them over to the shed, put one on top of the other and climbed onto the shed’s roof. He wasn’t worried about the rifleman. Sean was confident that the shooter had missed him crawling through the high grass and weeds that surrounded the Victorian mansion. There was no reason for him to take his eyes of the street. The gunman had to be figuring that if his target had escaped getting shot and somehow did make it to the backyard, he’d be taken out by whatever bobby trap he’d designed from a survivalist’s website.
Looking overhead, Sean saw a long, orange cord running from one of the power poles three houses away to a window about six feet over the shed.
“Nice, he found a source of energy,” Sean said to himself. “This guy knows what he’s doing.”
So he did have a survivalist in the house. Sean ratcheted up his approach. Once inside, he would not be dealing with a wimp. Chances are this guy would put him down without thinking twice. There’s no way he’d be able to ID Sean as a cop. Wearing an old t-shirt and jeans, with a revolver in his ankle holster and a Glock wedged in his jeans in the back, Sean was armed and ready. But he certainly didn’t look like law enforcement. He had his ID, but Sean was sure this guy would never give him a chance to pull out his badge. Even if Sean hung it around his neck, the guy would shoot first and check the silver shield second.
Sean couldn’t blame him. He’d do the same thing. But that didn’t mean Sean wanted to die.
Once on top of the shed, Sean knew he had to move fast. As sturdy as it might have been in its day, there had to be some wood rot. A paint brush hadn’t touched it in forever. Sean was confident it wouldn’t hold him for long. But now that he was on top of it, Sean could see into one of the rooms. Almost feeling the old shed swaying under his weight, Sean used the blade of the hunting knife he had in a sheath on his belt to pry open the wood window.
It took some effort. Sean was glad he’d kept up with the shoulder and back weight machines in the state police gym. He needed every bit of strength he had to slide the window up.
That was another sign this guy, this survivalist or whatever he was, was no dummy. The window hadn’t been painted shut. Mr. Have Rifle Will Travel might want to get out of the house sometime as much as Sean wanted to get in that night. A painted-tight window was something he would not have wanted to force open.
Sean was glad of that. But it also increased his alert factor by a couple of digits. He was moving in on a professional, or at least somebody who excelled in this business of staying alive. He’d have to be to survive the urban combat in Detroit; Sean thought to himself as he landed lightly inside what had been a bedroom.
He heard a shell being racked into shotgun behind him as he reached back for his Glock. The double-barrels of the rifle pressed against his back. Right between the shoulder blades. If the guy, or girl, with the gun, squeezed the triggers it would rip Sean in two. His arms would go to the right and left, his head was fly up in the air, and his chest would splatter across the room against the paint that was peeling off the wall about ten feet away.
The guy with the gun, Sean was assuming he was a male if only because men were much more likely than women to be able to wield a shotgun — and Sean had no time to worry about being politically correct. But the gunman had made a critical mistake. Sean was still on the balls of his feet. The gunman had not pushed him down to his knees. That meant Sean was completely balanced. His weight was perfectly centered. The sensation of the over-and-under barrels of that gun against Sean’s back was just what he wanted.
Sean’s left foot was to the front, his right to the rear. Just as the rifle pressed against his back, Sean shifted his weight to his back foot and pivoted to his right. He swung his right arm to knock the gun away from his back and his left to grab the barrel before the startled gunman could fire.
Sean snatched the gun away as quickly as stealing candy from a baby. As a matter of fact, it was much easier. His little brother had put up much more of a fight. So had his sister.
Sean completed the spin, whipped the shotgun around and brought it into firing position. Standing before Sean was a skinny, long-haired, t-shirt and jeans wearing, barefoot, bearded man with absolutely no upper body strength. Sean couldn’t help smirking as he raised his eyebrows and without saying a word ordered the man to drop to his knees.
Sean held on to the shotgun with his right hand and used his left to pull his badge on a chain out from beneath his shirt. The man’s eyes grew wide. But they shouldn’t have. The authority of law enforcement oozed from every pour in Sean’s body. He was the man. Who could doubt it? Certainly not the punk in front of him.
Sean didn’t say a word. He just pulled a folded-up picture of Mary Eileen out of his pocket, showed it to the man, and took his nodding head as a “yes.” Sean Patrick Flynn had found his woman.
Twenty Four
Detroit was a big city. Even with its post-Great Recession Exodus, The Big D was easily eight times the size of St. Isidore. But Amanda was confident they could find Mary Eileen with little trouble. Joy was not so sure.
“She’s gotta eat, right?”
“This again?”
“Right, this again,” Amanda said. “Mary Eileen has to eat. That means she had to make money.”
“Of course, and how does she make money?” Joy knew she was entirely rhetorical. They’d had this conversation at least once a day for the week they’d been in Detroit.
“She makes coffee. She works in a coffee shop. She finds a coffee shop that will pay her under the table, not a Starbucks or anything like that, and Mary Eileen makes enough money to live.”
“You might be giving her an awful lot of credit,” Joy said.
“All we have to do is find that kind of coffee shop,” said Amanda.
“And you might be giving us an awful lot of credit, too.”
Still, Joy had to admit they had two weeks to do their investigation, and only one week was gone. Esther Shapiro, who’d taken over day-to-day management of the Chronicle was like a born-again believer when it came to the power of Joy and Amanda to bring in stories.
Why wouldn't she be? The Chronicle’s dynamic duo had found the basement where a serial killer had been hiding his victims, all young women, before taking them out to hang in the Suicide Forest. True, they were not able to rescue the woman and couldn’t make a case against the killer, a high school teacher of all
people, but they had found the basement and had written a hell of a story.
And that was just the first of the missing person, cold-case style stories Joy and Amanda had tackled.
Esther had been nearly as confident as Amanda when she granted them two weeks and pretty much carte blanche when it came to the Chronicle’s credit card to work this case in Detroit.
“The upside potential is tremendous,” Esther said. “Think of the splash you two could make.”
Joy put one hand over her face and held Amanda’s hand with the other as they held on tight for another tidal wave of corporate business speak.
“Here we have a woman who’s probably killed at least two guys — an ex-husband and a boyfriend — cut up their bodies, encased them in cement and hidden them in her basement,” Esther gushed. “Good God, how could it be any better?”
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me,” Amanda said.
All aboard, Joy thought, now she’s using the name of Esther’s favorite radio show. Is Amanda’s nose turning brown, or is she just using lots of butter to grease the skids, Joy wondered.
“Right, there is only one way it could be better,” Esther said. “And that way would be for the St. Isidore Chronicle’s Spotlight staff, you and Joy, to find this serial killer and run her to ground.”
Well, no business cliches, Joy thought, but I think Esther’s been reading some serious crime books.
Whatever the source of her enthusiasm, she decided there was no better train to ride than this one that was obviously going to pull out of the station with or without the lovely Joy Ellis.
So like any reporter would do when offered a company credit card and car, she jumped on board.
And off they went, she and Amanda, to Detroit to find Mary Eileen Sullivan, a serial killer.
And now here they were, in Detroit, preparing to locate the coffee shop where their prey might or might not be working, and hopefully, they would “run her to ground,” Joy winced as she remembered Esther’s line, without getting themselves cut up and stuffed in a cement overcoat.