The Coffee Shoppe Killer

by Rod Kackley

  Thirty Two

  Mary Eileen made herself as attractive as possible, considering she had to share mirror space with at least a dozen other women and the shower area with even more naked females. But it didn’t matter. Her spirit was positively soaring. She would leave at 5 a.m. with a squad of state police troopers for her protection, for Rest Haven, a psychiatric hospital. There, Mary Eileen was going to have the first of three sessions ,agreed to by the court, with Dr. Julianne French.

  Mary Eileen was confident Sean would be a part of the state police detachment. He’d promised to stand by her hadn’t he? But she was more than a little concerned about Dr. French and the idea that memories hidden would be brought to light.

  “This is where we will build our case,” Morris had explained in his second meeting with Mary Eileen. “Dr. French is an expert in using hypnotism to release repressed memories.”

  “And that’s a good thing?” Mary Eileen asked.

  “Of course it is, Ms. Sullivan. It is how we are going to show that while you are not insane now, or ‘crazy’ as you put it; you are certainly not responsible for the murders of those men you buried in your cellar.”

  “I understand. But what if, just for the sake of argument, other memories come up that might include, oh I don’t know, some things that I would rather stay, forgotten?”

  Morris explained they would deal with that if and when it happened, meaning that he would still be there for her. Why wouldn’t he? Knowing that Mary Eileen was cash-flush with seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars and counting for legal expenses, any attorney would be an idiot to dump her by the side of the road.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, just one thing more.”

  Morris waited. Mary Eileen made sure her thoughts were together before she opened her mouth again.

  “One question. If St. Isidore cares so much about me why do I need the state police?”

  Morris smiled and nodded. He knew the truth.

  “You do have enemies,” he said. “There are those who would see you dead. Michigan doesn’t have capital punishment. There are some people who are more than willing to be your executioner.”

  “But this is also part of the show,” he continued. “We want to make sure the world is watching.”

  Mary Eileen knew if she got off, if she was not found guilty, the world would be her oyster.

  To her, that made it even more important that she look her best. And Mary Eileen was looking as good as she walked through the county jail to meet the guards for her ride to Rest Haven, and she hoped, Sean.

  “Where are the state police?”

  “They’ll meet us outside.”

  Mary Eileen moved so quickly the guards had to do a quick skip step to keep up. No longer wearing shower shoes — she’d been given real shoes for her meeting at Rest Haven, along with a gray dress to replace the orange jumpsuit — Mary Eileen felt like her old self.

  Her stomach was flipping with excitement, or could it be the baby was moving? It didn’t matter to Mary Eileen. Nothing mattered except seeing Sean at the end of the hallway.

  The guards tightened their grip on Mary Eileen’s arms as they reached a door at the end of the hall. Above it glowed the most beautiful sign Mary Eileen had seen in months: “Exit.”

  Three black, SUVs waited in the driveway; four state troopers outside each of the vehicles at the front and back of the caravan; two more state cops stood outside the SUV in the middle.

  None of them was Sean.

  Mary Eileen’s enthusiasm that had buoyed her for the past week vanished. Mary Eileen deflated faster than a balloon mistakenly popped by a playful child. It was a good thing the guards had a strong grip. Otherwise, Mary Eileen might have fallen to the pavement.

  As her knees faltered, Mary Eileen’s head came up; she looked over the hood of the SUV she was to ride in — and saw them.

  People were standing elbow-to-elbow and three-deep on the sidewalk across the street. She had not heard them before, but now Mary Eileen couldn’t miss the sound. The crowd was cheering! Mostly women and girls from what she could see, but there were some men and boys mixed in; the crowd was chanting her name:

  "Free Mary Eileen! Mary Eileen! Free Mary Eileen!"

  When the crowd spotted her, a roar of approval replaced the rhythmic chants.

  Mary Eileen stood tall. The guards had to push her toward the rear door of the SUV; a state police trooper put his hand on her head to both protect her from the door frame and use his strength to persuade her to get inside.

  There was only one way to get to Rest Haven from the jail. It was a short ride. No more than two miles, but the three-vehicle convoy had to thread its way through downtown St. Isidore. The SUVs would have to drive past the Coffee Shoppe.

  No one on the sidewalk could see into the SUV thanks to its darkened windows. But Mary Eileen could see that there was never an open space on the sidewalks without people cheering her and waving signs in support of her legal effort. Tears in her eyes fell down her cheeks when her SUV caravan came to a stop because of the crowd that had surged onto DeVos Avenue. People slapped the sides of the SUV, not in a threatening way, but more in a supportive manner. They wanted to let Mary Eileen know they were on her side.

  She wished Sean could have seen this.

  Two St. Isidore police cars were at the entrance of Rest Haven’s parking lot waiting for Mary Eileen. The crowd stayed back to let the SUVs into Rest Haven before walking behind the vehicles and surrounding them as they stopped in front of the hospital's main building.

  People were chanting, shouting and applauding as she left the SUV and started walking up the concrete steps of Rest Haven. Mary Eileen made a beautiful impression with a gray skirt with a burgundy top and her auburn hair freshly washed and brushed, tumbling onto her shoulders. With one foot on a step higher than the other and state police troopers on either side of her, Mary Eileen turned to the crowd and smiled.

  The resulting roar of approval hit Mary Eileen like one of the straight-line wind storms for which St. Isidore was so famous. The winds seemed like just a breeze for a moment but quickly increased in intensity to reach an almost tornado-like impact before dying to a whisper.

  However, this storm of approval and support didn’t have a chance to die out. Just as it reached what seemed to be its crescendo, Mary Eileen raised one hand and waved to the crowd. People began to stomp their feet, clap their hands in rhythm and chant her name.

  Something inside her told Mary Eileen to start walking before the applause died out. She nearly left the state troopers behind as she turned and strode toward the double-glass doors of Rest Haven. She opened one door, looked back at the crowd, waved again, and blew them a kiss.

  As the chanting of her name grew even louder, Mary Eileen walked into Rest Haven’s lobby. A tall, confident woman with black hair, streaked with silver drawn up into a bun behind her head was waiting. She pushed her glasses up on her nose just a bit and smiled down from at least a foot over Mary Eileen’s upturned face.

  She extended her hand, smiled, and said with a light laugh, “Good morning. You must be Ms. Sullivan. I’m Dr. Julianne French. Are we ready to get started?”

  Thirty Three

  Patricia Fry watched the Rest Haven demonstration broadcast live on WSIR-TV as she was getting dressed. If her coffee cup had been closer, she would have pitched it at the screen.

  “Why are you here?” Jasmine Jameson, WSIR's street reporter, asked a woman in her fifties dressed like she thought she was still in her twenties.

  “I’ve been where Mary Eileen is,” the woman replied.

  “Under arrest?”

  “Oh, God no!” the woman laughed and raised her ‘Free Mary Eileen’ sign higher as a TV helicopter roared overhead. “I’ve never been in jail, but I was in relationships that made me feel like I was in prison. Relationships with guys who just wanted a mother, not a real lover.”

  “Amen, sister,” said a woman standing alongside the fifty-someth
ing. “These guys, these bastards, need to be taught a lesson.”

  “Mary Eileen is our hero!” screamed four or five teenage girls, jumping up and down to get on camera.

  “We’re going out to the banks of the Red Run River,” Jasmine said while being jostled by people trying to get their fifteen-seconds of fame on WSIR. “Jason Harley is on the river bank, right in the middle of another demonstration showing support for Mary Eileen Sullivan.”

  “Thanks, Jasmine,” Jason said as his face appeared on Patricia’s TV screen further unsettling the coffee sloshing in her stomach.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” she muttered. Patricia was no longer sitting in her breakfast nook enjoying a bagel with cream cheese. Now she was pacing. And she was getting close to that coffee cup that could become a missile at any moment.

  “I am surrounded by a crowd of teenagers who have rallied on the banks of the Red Run River rather than going to class today...”

  “Oh that’s a surprise,” Patricia said to her TV screen.

  The camera panned back to show a rather small crowd of high school kids, none of whom gave any confidence to Baby Boomers who were wondering who would be running the USA in another ten or twenty years.

  But it must have made the owner of Retro Plus in downtown St. Isidore, where one could always find a torn Led Zeppelin t-shirt, ecstatic.

  As soon as the WSIR producer in the remote broadcasting truck realized the camera had panned back too far and viewers at home could see there were only five or six kids, nothing even close to a “crowd of teenagers,” she ordered a closeup of Jason and his first interview.

  “She is the ‘Murder Babe,’” the teenager screamed into Jason’s microphone.

  “Fuck right,” shouted the only two kids behind him who were paying attention.

  “I’m sorry, what? The Murder Babe?”

  “Yeah, she is so fucking hot! Love ya, Mary Eileen Sullivan!”

  Clinging to whatever shreds of decency were left, the chief producer at the WSIR studio switched back to a shot of the crowd outside Rest Haven. There, the camera, unfortunately, discovered several signs reading, ‘Mary Eileen — the Murder Babe,’ and ‘We Love the Murder Babe,’ had appeared, along with several women who had ripped off their shirts when they spotted the red “on air’ light glowing on the camera.

  The producer quickly went from that camera, leaving Jasmine, gulping like a fish out of water, in mid-sentence, and switched to a view of the steps of Rest Haven just as Mary Eileen turned from the double-glass doors, waved and then blew a kiss to the crowd.

  The VU meter that was registering the crowd noise being broadcast by WSIR pegged in the red; its needle buried to the right, as a volcano of emotional support erupted from the hundreds of people standing in front of Rest Haven and across the street.

  “Michael Morris, that fucker,” Patricia muttered to herself as she stabbed the ‘off’ button on her remote control. “He must have staged this rally, this ‘spontaneous show of support,’” Patricia said as she did air quotes with her fingers.

  To punctuate her mood, she tossed the coffee cup into the metal kitchen sink, enjoyed the clang of ceramic on metal, and looked around her small, one-bedroom apartment. It was the best she could afford in downtown St. Isidore. “But if I fuck this up, I’ll be stuck in some little country courthouse living over a grocery store,” she muttered again.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Patricia made up her mind that not only would this case cement her position in the St. Isidore County Prosecutor’s Office, but it would also be one giant step in this woman’s quest to make it to the State Capitol Building and maybe even Washington.

  But first, she had to lock up Mary Eileen Sullivan on two charges of murder. Life without parole — the people, would accept nothing less, Patricia decided.

  Now she just needed to find twelve men and women who would agree.

  “When it’s a challenge to seat an impartial jury in a murder case it is usually because most people have their minds made up — the accused is guilty and needs to hang, or whatever,” Fry said later in the day to her staff.

  “But this case is going to be different. Thanks to social media and a well-constructed campaign by her defense attorney, Michael Morris; there is strong support for Mary Eileen Sullivan to be declared not guilty because of insanity, or God forbid; innocent.”

  “We are not going to let that happen.”

  Patricia had already written assignments for each member of her twelve-person team on three whiteboards in the conference room. At first, she’d been expected —and had been planning to run this case alone, maybe with a second at the prosecution table, but no one besides a two-person team. However, the strength of the Mary Sullivan for Sainthood social media campaign had led her to ask for help and persuaded her boss to grant the request.

  The dozen people on the team would now fan out into St. Isidore, digging into the histories of the men whose body parts had been found hidden in the cellar under the Coffee Shoppe. Patricia would spend her time — just as Dr. Julianne French was doing — finding out everything she could about Mary Eileen Sullivan.

  “And, I will tell you something else, we are going to get our fucking county psychiatrist on the case."

  Thirty Four

  To say Mary Eileen had drawn up her castle's bridge so she could stop everyone from crossing her psychological moat would be an understatement. There was just no way she wanted this Dr. French to be picking around inside her brain, unlocking her emotions, discovering her deepest, darkest secrets.

  Sean’s the only one who has the right to do that, she thought. And he can only do it because I allow it.

  Sean was the guy who had permission, but he blew it. Mary Eileen hadn’t seen or heard from him in months. So that bridge to her psyche was pretty much burned. And it hurt.

  Does this Dr. French think I am going to let her into my mind?

  Even the Rest Haven building put Mary Eileen on edge. The doors whispered open and closed. Everything smelled new. The furniture in Dr. French’s office looked like it was never used more than once, almost like she exchanged it for new after every patient. When Mary Eileen had followed Dr. French to her office, everyone else —and they were all wearing bright white doctor coats — was walking on eggshells up and down the hallways. It was almost like they were afraid of rattling the psychiatric patients. Rest Haven was a nuthouse. Mary Eileen had to remember that, and she was one of the nuts — cashews preferably, pronouncing it cash-EWS in her mind just like in her homeland across the Atlantic.

  That was another problem. Thinking of herself as crazy was something Mary Eileen had contemplated for years. But she had finally rejected it only because there was no time to be nuts. She had to earn a living.

  That’s probably something the esteemed Dr. French has never had to do, Mary Eileen thought. Diplomas on the wall showed Dr. French had done her undergraduate work at Yale, then went to Harvard Medical School. God, she must be so stuck up, Mary Eileen thought. Just like most of my customers.

  The view was spectacular, or as grand as it could be in St. Isidore. Dr. French’s floor-to-ceiling window that ran the length of the longest wall looked out over the Red Run River — the good part of the river. No ratty teenagers smoking dope on the banks here, no, Mary Eileen thought, only the right people were on the water in this part of town. Everyone was driving the latest Subaru or Volvo, topped with kayaks, filled with beautiful children, dogs, and wives.

  “I’ll bet they never had to step over a drunk to get into their office,” Mary Eileen muttered.

  “Pardon me,” Dr. French said, just loud enough to break Mary Eileen out of her daydream.

  It didn’t take a Harvard Medical School graduate, top of her class no less, to see there was a psychological problem that was crippling Mary Eileen. Her hands were so twisted that Dr. French winced. Mary Eileen was grinding her teeth that weren’t chewing her lower lip, as she looked out the window, and a vein was pulsing on her right temple
.

  “Shall we begin?”

  Mary Eileen whipped her head around so fast that a new doctor would have brought her hands up into a defensive fighting position. With her Taekwondo training, Dr. French was more than qualified to fight back if it got physical, but she wasn’t worried about Mary Eileen. But then again, maybe that was a mistake. After all, she was confronting a woman charged with killing two men.

  “Let’s sit over here.”

  At least I don’t have to do that cliche thing of laying down on a shrink’s couch, Mary Eileen thought. But when she sat in the overstuffed chair opposite Dr. French, her guard remained in place.

  “I imagine you have been wondering about ‘repressed memories,'” Dr. French said with a smile and air quotes.

  “Actually, no, I have not,” Mary Eileen might have said if she had felt like speaking. She would have added, “I have not been wondering about ‘repressed memories,’" making her air quotes as sarcastic as possible, “because I think this is all bullshit, and I believe you are so full of it that your blue eyes are turning brown.”

  Instead, of saying any of that, Mary Eileen crossed her arms in front of her. This conversation with Dr. French was no different from a discussion with a coffee bean salesman, no different at all.

  The smile never left Dr. French’s face. Just like a salesman.

  She leaned forward in the overstuffed chair opposite Mary Eileen and rested her elbows on her knees as the look on her face slowly evolved from one showing smiling acceptance to an attitude of concern. She paused before saying, “I am not sure yet if your problem is with repressed memories or if you fear what we might discover. Let me begin by talking about what repressed memories are, so that is no confusion going forward.”

  Mary Eileen sighed, looked at the ceiling, and crossed her arms tighter.

  Dr. French settled back into her chair. Patients who were most troubled by repressed memories often took the same attitude being displayed by Mary Eileen.