The Jeep’s parking brake groaned into place under her foot. She should’ve sold the old Wranlger by now, but who could get rid of 2005 TJ? Too many electronics in the new JKs. Anyone with sense knew that.
Its old door creaked shut behind her.
She spotted Detective Dedrick Halman standing near the crime scene cordon tape with a pad of paper in his hand. The sight of him made her heart tap dance a little. He looked like a sharper version of Idris Elba. He was tall, fit and had a smile that could make her sweat if she thought about it too long—it was something about the contrast between his perfectly white teeth and his dark brown skin that grabbed her every time.
Sometimes he made her laugh like a drunk debutante, too.
The little crush she had on him was dangerous for her career, but she couldn’t stop herself from feeling it.
She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her work bag, put them on, then slipped under the tape.
“Hey, Shannon.” Dedrick held the same kind of pencil you’d use on a scorecard at a mini-golf place. He sketched out the crime scene.
“What are doing here?” she asked. “I thought it was my turn to go up to bat.”
“If you had an ex-wife blowing up your phone about custody, you’d be out here too.” He traced the sidewalk into his sketch. “Besides, how could I pass up an evening alone with the lovely Detective Shannon Rourke?”
He spread a cheesy grin over his face.
She rolled her eyes and pushed a strand of her dark hair behind her ear.
“Oh, right,” she said. “I look like I just took a bath inside an old garbage can.”
He laughed and she pulled a notepad out of her work bag and wrote down the time.
“I need a vacation.”
“I thought you had one,” Dedrick said.
“I did,” she said. “For about six hours.”
“Ball-buster Boyd strikes again.” Dedrick clicked his teeth. “You ready to go see the body?”
“Sure.” Shannon followed him deeper into the crime scene. “When Boyd yanks a vacation away, it stings longer than I thought it would.”
“I hear that,” Dedrick said. “We were supposed to go to Disney World three years ago—big gesture by me to make the kids happy and show her I wasn’t all about the job. But, well, here I am. Anyhow, I thought you might want help with this case before your big move to Stockholm. Figured I could help push it along.”
“Oh, God.” Shannon pinched the bridge of her nose.
“What?”
“Stockholm,” she said. “You know, when Boyd called, Stockholm hadn’t occurred to me.”
Dedrick put a hand on her back. She felt goosebumps prickle beneath her dark-blue CPD polo.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “When it’s time for you to go, I’ll take this one over.”
“Thanks.”
Ahead of them, three men stood in the light spilling out of the doorway to AOK King Liquors. By their outfits, two of them had to be witnesses. The third was Officer Byron Jacobs. He had a legal pad and pen in his hand. A voice recorder rested on the pad, taking their statements.
“What did Boyd tell you when he called?” Dedrick said.
“That I had to get my ass down here as quick as I could.” The two men were long and lean, with a brushing of tight, black curls on top of their heads. “Do we know anything about the victim?”
“Just what those two told me through Jacobs.” Dedrick pointed at them. “They’re Congolese. Cousins. They made the 911 call. The one on the left manages the liquor store, the other one is the cashier—the last person to talk to our victim before he was shot, I’m told. Guess which one doesn’t speak a lick of English?”
Shannon snorted.
“Just our luck, isn’t it?” Dedrick smiled at her. “Officer Jacobs took a couple years of high school French. The stuff he doesn’t understand is explained by the cashier’s cousin.”
“How much does he understand?” Shannon said.
“Enough that he could give me the basic details. The victim was shot—quite a bit, apparently. He was white, short-tempered, and came in alone for a pint of Old Smuggler whiskey.”
Shannon’s throat burned at the thought of Old Smuggler. One of Michael’s old friends loved the stuff. When she was in high school, she was dumb enough to let him pour her a shot. It made her lose her voice for two days and swear an oath to Malibu Rum forever thereafter.
“Anything else?”
“He liked throwing money around,” Dedrick said. “The cashier said he wouldn’t take his change. The victim threw a twenty at him on his way out the door.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“The Congolese don’t take well to charity, I guess.”
Shannon furrowed her brow. She didn’t know the first thing about the Congo—other than there were two countries that went by practically the name.
“You don’t think the clerk shot him?”
“That’s real deep blue of you, Shannon—everybody’s a suspect.” Dedrick said. “No I don’t think the clerk shot our boy, but I like where your head’s at.”
“If nobody’s innocent, everybody’s guilty.” She shrugged.
They walked past the Congolese cousins talking faster than Officer Jacobs could possibly understand. Up ahead, an EMT waved off someone who’d stepped too close to the scene from the back of his ambulance.
On the other side of the body, Area Central’s newest crime scene tech, Kristof Rud, snapped a picture of blood splatter.
Shannon noticed a brass casing wink at her in the camera flash. It laid inches from the body. There was a small glass bottle, too—a pint of some booze or another.
“The shooter didn’t clean up after himself,” she said.
“Not this time,” Dedrick said. “He didn’t leave a weapon for us, at least not one that’s immediately obvious. I got a couple uniforms checking the alleys and trashcans nearby.”
“Good,” Shannon said. “Any idea what the motive was?”
Dedrick sighed. “Who knows with the city the way it is these days? Drugs? Turf? Didn’t like his shoes? If those casings weren’t there, I wouldn’t rule out a random bullet, like what happened to Shimiya Adams.”
That name evoked all kinds of bad feelings. Shannon would never forget how the entire department felt on the night a stray bullet went through an open apartment window and killed a little girl making s’mores with her friends. She’d never forget how the city felt. If parents couldn’t keep their children safe inside their own homes, no matter how rough the neighborhood, who could ever justify living in Chicago?
“That was stupid to say,” Dedrick said. “Sorry, Shannon.”
“No, it’s all right.”
The coroner, Jean DiMarco, leaned up against the ambulance playing on her cell phone. She lifted her head in Shannon and Dedrick’s direction, and waved the both of them over.
“Come to see the body?”
“Regretfully.” Shannon watched the red and blue lights skim across the tendril of blood reaching from the body toward the street. “What’s the estimated time of death?”
DiMarco pulled a sheet of paper from a clipboard on the ground next to the body. She handed it to Shannon.
Right at the top of the page was all the basic information—estimated time of death, suspected cause of death, and the victim’s identity, if it could be determined.
As soon as she laid eyes on DiMarco’s worksheet, Shannon felt like she’d swallowed concrete.
“Oh my God.”
“What?” Dedrick looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head.
“Show me the body,” Shannon said to DiMarco.
DiMarco squatted down and folded the sheet back so that the victim’s face and upper torso were uncovered.
Shannon’s mouth fell open. She knew she should be more professional on a scene, but she couldn’t help it.
“I have to make a phone call,” she said. She turned around and made her way toward her Jeep.
She only half-heard Dedrick call after her, elbowing her way through the dozen people gawking at the scene. None of them said anything as she did. Not a one even had the decency to pretend to care about Colm. They were only there to see another body in a city already too full of death.
Don’t cry, Shannon. Don’t you dare cry.
Her knees began to tremble. Oh, her stupid knees! They’d always been the first part of her to give out. Five miles into her first morning run at Parris, her knees embarrassed her in front of her DI and all the nervous, homesick recruits who’d barely survived their first night off the bus.
Did her knees think their knees didn’t hurt too? Weren’t they tired? Hadn’t they all been through the same things she’d been through? What made her pain special?
Shannon finally came to a stop on the far side of her Jeep. It was safe here, behind the cover of its tires. She let her weak knees give out. Her palm steadied her on the spit and cigarette-coated sidewalk on the west side of Ashland Avenue.
What in God’s name was she going to tell Michael?
She couldn’t answer the question. But her other hand reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out her cell phone anyhow. She had to tell her brother something.
It rang twice before Michael answered.
“Hello?” He was groggy, probably laying in bed. Frank’s tags rattled in the background.
“Shannon?” he said. “Are you there?”
The words rattled around somewhere in her head before the found footing in her brain and she understood them.
“Yes.” She clenched her jaw. No crying. Homicide detectives don’t cry. They get mad and they work. The curse the world, they curse human nature, and they bury themselves in case files until their eyes cross.
But they don’t cry.
“Shannon? Are you crying?” Michael asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Colm,” she said. “It’s Colm.”
“Colm what?” Already the dread crept into Michael’s voice.
“At 46th and Ashland,” she said. “He’s at my scene.”
It took a moment for the meaning of “at my scene” to dawn on him.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said.
She swallowed.
No blubbering, Shannon. Not in front of Michael. He deserves better from you.
The call went quiet. Impossibly silent, like all the air had been sucked out of Chicago, leaving Shannon and her brother scrambling for a way to speak—as if they ever had much to talk about, despite living together.
“How?” Michael finally said.
“He was shot,” Shannon said. “I’m so sorry, Michael. I didn’t know. I didn’t see his face until now.”
Michael drew a sharp breath on the other end of the call.
“I had to call you as soon as I found out.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
She recognized the familiar sound of Frank licking his face.
“Frank, stop it,” she said. But she knew the dog couldn’t hear her.
For a time, the only sign that Michael hadn’t hung up the phone was the sound of Frank trying to comfort him in the only way a dog knew how. At least it was something, and not the choking silence.
“Do you have to take this case?” he asked.
“No.” Having a relationship with the deceased not only meant she could bow out of the case, but that she should bow out.
“Don’t take it, then,” Michael said. “I know we have to leave soon.”
“I know.” She wiped away a tear.
“I love you, Shannon,” he said.
“I love you, too.” She paused for a moment, then took a breath to collect herself.
Then she stood up.
“Make sure Frank stays in your room,” Shannon said. “I’ll be home late tonight.”
“Okay.”
She disconnected the call.
Shannon looked back at the scene. Dedrick was halfway between it and her Jeep—frozen, unsure if he should come closer to her or keep his distance. She walked around the hood of her car and waited for him.
He stopped a step short of her. She wanted him to wrap his arms around her and tell her it would be all right.
She hoped he couldn’t see how bloodshot her eyes were.
“I’ll be fine,” Shannon said. “You don’t have to look at me like that.”
“Sure,” he said. He looked up at the moon, keeping his eyes away from her. “You knew that man?”
“I grew up with him,” she said. “He was my brother’s best friend.”
Dedrick looked at his shoes. He put his hands in pockets and his broad shoulders bowed a little. He did his best not to look like he pitied her.
“There’s no reason you have to work this case, Shannon,” he said. “I’m happy to take this one off your hands. Boyd’s fine with it. You know that.”
“I do,” she said. “But there’s every reason for me to work this case.”
Dedrick sighed.
“Detective Rourke, respectfully, as your friend, your co-worker, your colleague—let me have this one. You’re too close to this man, and that’s going to affect your impartiality. I know how detailed you are in your work, Shannon, and I don’t want your feelings to make you miss something, or go after the wrong person.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me take this case.”
He wasn’t going to give this up easily, was he?
“No.”
A Marine never gave up, either.
“Don’t pull that stubborn soldier-girl hoorah crap on me tonight.” Dedrick strained not to raise his voice. “Don’t take this case. I’m begging you. You’re leaving CPD on a good note. Don’t cross it all out at the last minute.”
She let her eyes wander to Colm’s body.
“I owe Michael,” she said. “I’m working this case, and there’s nothing you can say that’ll make me change my mind.”
“You owe it to your junkie brother?” Dedrick threw his arms up in frustration. “Because last I checked, you told me it was you who gave him a place to live, and it was you who made him go to twelve-step before he killed himself with heroin. I’m on the outside of whatever’s between you two, but it looks to me like he owes you a little more than you owe him.”
“You’re right,” she said. “You are on the outside.”
She walked past him. Shannon could do this one fast, and she could do it right, but with a week to solve the case, there was no time for arguing.
For Michael.
CHAPTER 4
“Kid, this one isn’t staying in Chicago when you go,” Dedrick said.
“Don’t call me that.” Shannon held her bearing toward Colm’s body. “You’re only five years older than me.”
“I’m thirty-seven, Shannon.” Dedrick’s hard-soled dress shoes tapped against the asphalt behind her. “That’s only four years.”
Jean DiMarco stood wide-eyed and grim-faced next to Colm. It was as if she didn’t expect Shannon to come back, like she expected her to turn around and run at the first sign of struggle.
“I’d like to examine the body again, please.” Shannon stopped just short of a cluster of bullet casings on the sidewalk.
DiMarco looked over Shannon’s shoulder—probably at Dedrick—then looked back to Shannon. She crouched down and slowly lifted the covering off Colm’s face.
He looked better than she remembered, even given the circumstances of the moment. His red hair was close-shaved to his skull, and the bags he always carried under his eyes looked a little shallower than they had when she’d last seen him thirteen years ago.
Apparently he ignored her advice, and the advice of everyone else he knew with good sense (who could be counted on one hand) and had gotten the tattoos on his neck done. Why anyone would want to see the face of a skeletal marionette peeking out from the neckline of their shirt every time they looked in the mirror, Shannon would never understand.
Then again, Colm was Colm. Stubborn and impu
lsive as ever.
“Would you show me the wounds, please?” she asked.
Again, Jean looked at Dedrick.
He nodded.
The sheet slipped down past his shoulders. The second she saw Colm’s body, she wished she hadn’t. She should’ve listened to Dedrick. She should’ve started her Jeep, driven home, and cried with her brother.
But she hadn’t.
Shannon swallowed a dry lump down her throat and pulled the small flashlight out of the work bag slung over her shoulder. She pushed in the rubber button on its rear and shined it at the gunshot wound in the upper-left quadrant of Colm’s chest.
From there, training and routine blocked out her emotions.
The bullet’s entry wound was clean. She didn’t need to pull off his raggedy t-shirt to see that. And the t-shirt itself suffered powder burns. The shooter was close when the trigger was pulled.
Made sense. There was an alley a few steps back and to her right. Probably, he’d ambushed Colm from there.
“Is there an exit wound?” Shannon asked.
“I haven’t moved the body yet,” Jean said. “I wanted to make sure we had the photos and sketches finished first.”
Shannon looked at Rud. He stood a couple paces past Colm’s head, staring at her with his camera at chest level.
“Did you get enough shots of the body?”
“Yes—I think so,” he said.
“You think so?” she asked. “Did you or didn’t you?”
He looked at the screen on the back of the camera, and, presumably, shuffled through his photos.
“Yeah,” Rud said, “I got it.”
“You’re sure? Because once we’ve disturbed this scene, there’s no going back to how it was.”
“I know.” He nodded. “We’re good.”
Shannon looked at Dedrick. He shrugged.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s check for an exit wound.”
From close range, there had to be one. That is, unless the shooter was a gun nut, or some kind of weirdo who knew the exact muzzle velocity he needed to ensure the bullet didn’t leave Colm’s body from close range.
Shannon, Dedrick, and DiMarco rolled Colm onto his side.
The exit wound was slightly lower, just near the bottom of his shoulder blade—so he’d probably been shot by someone taller than him. Shannon guessed Colm was around five-feet, nine-inches tall.
Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1 Page 2