CHICAGO BLOOD
DETECTIVE SHANNON ROURKE BOOK 1
STEWART MATTHEWS
Copyright © 2016 by Primrose Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2016
Chicago Blood is a work of fiction. All aspects of the story, including (but not limited to) incidents, dialogue, settings and characters are creations of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, or any event, past, present or future, is coincidental.
Edited by Perry Constantine
Cover by Shayne Rutherford - www.darkmoongraphics.com
Interior Design by Colleen Sheehan - www.wdrbookdesign.com
CHAPTER 1
Everything was sideways.
All of Chicago twisted around Colm Keane when he wasn’t looking. When he blinked, the sky shifted. When he tied his shoes, the traffic lights bent. When he stared into the bottom of a glass, the skyscrapers braided together.
For almost all his life, Colm closed his eyes to it. Things weren’t as messed up as he thought they were—it was all in his head.
But over the last decade, the lie unraveled.
Now his eyes were open to the only two choices he ever had. He could stay, get tangled up in all his dad’s mess until he couldn’t breathe anymore.
Or he could go start over in Canada.
If Colm screwed up one life, what were the odds he’d screw up a second?
He’d already stolen his ticket out of Chicago. All it took was a pregnant girlfriend with too many ideas and a pile of money big enough to buy them both a new life in Canada.
The car was packed, a couple goodbyes were said, the money was hidden, and plans were set. They’d hit the border tomorrow afternoon.
But tonight, he had one more goodbye to make.
Colm listened to the fluorescent lights hum from the ceiling. AOK King Liquor’s die-cut steel shelves begged him to sip every bottle they had. The smell of mildew crept out from under the store’s cracked laminate tiles, like the whole operation wanted him to grab his booze and get the hell out.
He knew he betrayed himself by being here.
But you know what, man? Forget addictions, forget troubles, forget the past—he’d earned this. For one night, he’d get to live the lie again.
One night. That’s it. What was the harm in that?
Colm snatched the pint of Old Smuggler off the bottom shelf.
He knew it was cheap. It was necessary for the kind of celebration he knew he shouldn’t have. Maybe he should grab the Blue Label off the top shelf—or what was that stuff in the tin? The stuff his dad liked?
Naw, forget it. If Colm was going to break his own rules, he was going to do it his way. He had good memories of Old Smuggler.
The immigrant behind the counter started at Colm as he made his way up. The guy had bug eyes and a gaunt face. His white button-up yellowed around the collar. The shirt hung over his bony shoulders like a funeral shroud at a wake.
“I ain’t gonna steal nothing,” Colm said.
The cashier smiled at him. One of his front teeth reached out over his bottom lip.
“You speak English?” Colm put the pint of Old Smuggler on the counter.
“No English,” the cashier said. He had a thick accent. Something African.
Colm didn’t know about Africa. He saw that Hotel Rwanda movie once. It was crazy enough to put him off learning anything else about that place, not that he had the time.
“Eleven dollars, one cent,” the cashier said without ringing up the bottle.
“You gotta be kidding me, man. I can get a pint of Jameson on the north side for that much. Check how much it is.” Colm pointed at the barcode scanner. “I wanna see.”
“No, no, no. I want no trouble.”
“I ain’t starting trouble, bro. I’m your customer and I wanna see what the scanner says.” Colm pulled out his wallet. “I’ll pay for it. It’s just eleven bucks is a lot for a bottle of cheap whiskey.”
“No trouble.” The cashier waved his hands.
“Bro, I’m not trying to start nothing. I just want to see if eleven is right.”
The cashier gave him a dirty look. “Okay.”
What a pain in the ass. How hard was it to scan a bottle of whiskey? These guys come here and can’t even speak English. He wouldn’t miss that when he went to Canada.
The cashier slid the bottle over the scanner. The machine rung up a pint of Old Smuggler at $11.01.
“Man…” Colm shook his head. “You guys ain’t playing.”
“Eleven dollars, one cent,” the cashier said.
Colm opened up his wallet. He tried to pull out a twenty, but all the other bills he had stuffed in there came out with it. Money spilled all over the counter.
The cashier’s mouth fell open. He said something in Swahili or Arabic or whatever, but Colm didn’t understand him.
“Sorry bro.” Colm laughed. High quality problems.
He scooped up a handful of bills and stuffed them in the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled a twenty out of the mess on the counter and slid it toward the cashier.
“Don’t tell anyone about the money.”
The cashier’s bug eyes didn’t register that he’d heard Colm.
“Guess you couldn’t tell anybody if you wanted to.” Colm laughed. It wasn’t so bad the guy couldn’t speak English, after all.
Colm scooped up the rest of the money. He tried to stack it together as best he could, but it fit together like sheets of wet cardboard. He shoved it all in his wallet.
The lone twenty he’d slid across the counter hadn’t moved.
“You gonna take that?” Colm pointed at it.
The cashier blinked.
“That’s for the whiskey.” Colm tapped the bill. “The booze. Comprende?”
“Yes,” the cashier said. He pulled the bill toward himself, punched 20.00 into the register’s keyboard, then laid it in the drawer. He gathered the assortment of crinkled, marked ones and a five, scooped out some change, and held it out for Colm.
“No, that’s for you,” Colm said. “Keep that.”
“No.” The cashier shook his head. “You.”
“I don’t want the change. Put it in your pocket.” Colm pantomimed putting something in his pocket so the guy could understand. “Keep it. And take this, too.” Colm blindly grabbed a bill out of his pocket, wadded it up, and threw it at him.
“No, sir.”
“Yes, sir.” Colm didn’t have time to argue with this bitch over money. “Take it and keep your mouth shut,” he said as he neared the exit.
The automatic door slid open. Colm stepped into the humid, late-June air. People didn’t know how brutal the heat could be in Chicago. Even at eleven o’clock at night, it felt like walking into the bathroom while someone took a shower.
He twisted the cap off the whiskey, then he threw it aside. He watched it bounce through the street until it settled in the gutter on the far side, next to a crumpled-up McDonald’s bag and an old sneaker.
Colm laughed when he thought of some drunk old bum walking down Ashland Avenue missing a shoe.
He tilted his head back and pulled a mouthful of whiskey out of the bottle.
It felt incredible to drink again, if only for one night. There’d be no booze for him in Canada. Isabella and his unborn kid needed him to be a good man now. He had to get serious, leave his past in
Chicago, and be responsible for his new family.
“Sir!”
It was the cashier again.
Colm turned to see him hanging out of the front door. He held up the spare change and the money Colm lobbed at him.
“Bro, I don’t want it,” Colm said. “Take it and go back inside. Quit bothering me.”
He turned toward the direction of Isabella’s house and walked faster.
The cashier didn’t say anything in reply. The guy finally learned to shut up and accept a good thing.
“Hey, man, you got a cig I can bum?” Someone said from Colm’s right. The voice was weird—like the guy was making it lower on purpose. It came from an alley. Colm couldn’t quite see him, but he knew it was just some bum.
It was fitting that this city was determined to ruin the first happy night he’d had in years—why change it up now?
“I got nothing for you,” Colm said.
“I know you got one,” the bum said. He followed behind Colm, matching his footsteps.
“Dude, I already said I ain’t got one for you. Now get outta here before I hurt you.”
“Come on,” the bum said. “Give me a cigarette, Colm.”
Colm stopped. He turned around at exactly the right moment to catch an eyeful of muzzle flash.
The light blinded him. The bullet hit him like a mule kick. He stumbled backward and fell, smacking the back of his head on the sidewalk. His vision flashed and his ears rang. He could hardly see. A hot sting lanced his chest and the wetness of his own blood spread across the back of his shirt.
It felt like the bullet caved his entire chest in. Colm gasped for air.
“Sorry man, just business.”
Another flash in the darkness.
CHAPTER 2
Chicago had worn Shannon Rourke down to a nub. An escape from the city was long overdue.
The bodies from all her cases could’ve stretched from the front door of her apartment in Wrigleyville to Lake Shore Drive and back again. Even a CPD detective had her limits.
She grabbed another pair of socks from the laundry basket next to her, and stuffed them in her duffel bag. You can never pack too many socks when you go camping.
A teal bikini top laid in the laundry basket. Shannon wadded it up and stuffed it in her bag. The lake was probably warm enough to swim in by now, and Frank wouldn’t forgive her if she didn’t get in the water with him at least once.
Ostensibly, being a detective in the Chicago Police Department’s violent crimes division gave her a 5-days-a-week, 8-hours-a-day job. In reality, her last day off was two months, thirteen cases, and eighteen homicides ago. Some solved, some not.
That’s just the way things were.
She’d more than earned herself a long weekend at the Indiana Dunes. And in any case, she felt it was necessary to go say goodbye to the dunes before she and her brother moved to Stockholm and started their lives over.
The Indiana Dunes were her sanctuary—a place where she was able to leave all the baggage of her life behind when she couldn’t take anymore.
Anyone outside of Chicago or the region wouldn’t believe there were dunes in Indiana. That’s what made the place so great. It was a local haven right on Lake Michigan—quaint, quiet, and just happened to be an outstanding national park. Maybe one of the top parks she’d ever been to.
The best part was, as far as Shannon knew, no one had been—or would be—murdered there.
God, she couldn’t wait to sit on top of a dune with Frank. They’d watch the sun set over Lake Michigan together—no buildings blocking the horizon, no cars honking or drunk assholes yelling a conversation at each other. Frank would snuggle close to her. She’d put her arm around him. He’d lick her hand, and she’d give him a treat—only after he did a trick, of course.
Giving him a reward he hadn’t earned was a gateway to all kinds of behavioral problems. Especially for an American bulldog. They were a sweet breed, but too headstrong. Frank, especially, could get out of hand without strong discipline, even if he loved her to death.
He laid next to her. The long patch of black across his back made him look like an ink stain on the wood floor of her bedroom. He lifted his white chin and looked toward the window, his one white ear standing up straight, his black ear flopped over.
Shannon reached over and scratched his head.
Probably some noise came from Wrigley and caught his attention. Shannon couldn’t hear the Cubs playing through the sounds of El Vy’s “Return to the Moon” blasting through her headphones, but if she stuck her head out of her bedroom window, she could just see the top of the stadium lights.
Matt Berninger climbed into his falsetto about Eden Park, then the song cut off.
She had a call from the CPD Area Central Office.
Shannon sighed. She shoved her duffel bag away and looked at Frank.
“Should I take it?”
He wagged his tail.
“Guess I have to.” She answered the call. “This is Detective Rourke.”
“Shannon, we’ve got a scene down near 46th and Ashland.” It was Sergeant Boyd.
“I thought you went home?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Doesn’t Sergeant Jackson take over the night shift?”
“Her kid’s sick.”
“So she gets the night off?” Shannon leaned her shoulder up against the foot of her bed. “That doesn’t seem entirely fair.”
She could hear Boyd simmering on the other side of the call. She shouldn’t tease him like this, but how could she help herself when he made it so much fun? Getting a rise out of him was one her favorite pastimes.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s fair,” he said, “there’s a job to be done, and I’m doing it. Unfortunately, my job necessitates that I leave a particularly funny Andy Samberg movie about a moronic popstar because I have to lecture a moronic detective about her duty to the city of Chicago.”
Okay, that was enough for now. It wouldn’t be sporting to make him blow his top too quickly.
“I’m sorry, Boyd.” She stuffed back a laugh. “Tell me about the murder.”
“There’s been a shooting out near a liquor store, and I need you to go take a look at it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just to be clear—you know I finished a case today, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I haven’t had a day off in two months.”
He sighed. “Well, Shannon, I know that, but I don’t think all the would-be murderers running around the streets of Chicago know about your work schedule yet. If you like, I can try to throw a meeting together.”
“That’d be great,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll put out notices on all the street corners and two-bit strip clubs tomorrow morning. Until then, I need you to get your ass down to 46th and Ashland. This place is called AOK King Liquors.”
“Yessir.” She pushed herself up off the floor. “My ass is getting down there, sir.”
“Good.” He ended the call.
She stared at her duffel bag for a moment. So close to getting out for a weekend, but sadly not close enough. It was a real tragedy.
“You wanna go work this one for me, buddy?” she said to Frank.
He tilted his head and sneezed. His tags rattled.
“I didn’t think so.”
Shannon walked to her nightstand, then opened the top drawer. She pulled out her keys, her star, and her service weapon, a Glock 17. It was already in her belt holster. She slid the holster over her right hip.
She turned off the lamp on her nightstand. Shannon left her room, and any notion she’d visit the dunes this weekend.
Frank padded ahead of her. His claws clicked on the hardwood floors of her apartment—a reminder that she hadn’t walked him nearly enough this week. She’d have to clip his nails before work tomorrow.
She glanced at the clock next to the front door. It was nearly midnight already, and Shannon could feel she’d be out all night. The idea of getting up be
fore work to deal with Frank’s hygiene became much less appealing.
He nosed the leash hanging off the coat rack next to the door.
“I can’t right now, buddy.” She grabbed her work bag off the kitchenette table. “Talk to Michael. He should be back soon.”
Frank wagged his white tail.
“Don’t stay up.” She scratched him under the chin. She loved those prickly little whiskers hiding near his pink lips.
The front door opened behind her. It was Michael.
“Going somewhere?” He had on his Cubs Fukudome t-shirt—a fan favorite.
He was tall enough (and Shannon was short enough) she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye when she stood this close to him.
“How’d the Cubs do?”
“They finally got one over St. Louis,” he said. “But I think half of Wrigley had already hit the bars by the seventh-inning stretch. Typical Cubs game on a Thursday night. I left The Dugout when it started getting too loud to hear the actual game.”
Frank’s nose pressed into Shannon’s thigh.
“Would you mind taking him out for a walk?” she said. “I think he’s going chew through the walls if someone doesn’t put him on the end of his leash.”
“I got him.” Michael grabbed the leash off the coat rack.
“I’d take him, but work called,” she said. “I guess I’m not getting any time off after all.”
“I’m sorry.” His shoulders sank. He looked almost as upset about it as she was. “I know you needed it.”
“Yeah, well, the murderers in this town have quotas to meet, I guess.”
Michael laughed. “Everybody’s working for somebody.”
It made her feel a little better to hear her brother tell a joke. Michael needed his sense of humor more than she did
“Okay, I gotta go. I’ll probably be out all night, so don’t wait up for me.”
“We won’t,” Michael said.
CHAPTER 3
The blue light from the squad cars flashed half a mile down Ashland.
Shannon parked her old Jeep Wrangler as close as she could get to the crime scene, which had drawn a small crowd of disaffected onlookers needing a distraction, even at this time of night.
Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1 Page 1