Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1

by Stewart Matthews

  “I can’t help you if we find out you knew something you didn’t tell us,” Shannon said.

  Robbie looked back to Dedrick, trying to get a read on him.

  “Couple dudes came by,” Robbie said.

  “When?” Dedrick asked.

  “Three nights ago.”

  “They looking for Colm?

  Robbie nodded.

  “Did you get a look at them?”

  “It was dark,” Robbie said. “All I saw was two old white guys.”

  “How old?”

  He shrugged.

  “I dunno—old.”

  “About what age?” Dedrick was on the verge of losing his temper again. Shannon put a hand on his back to calm him down.

  “Forties?” she asked. “Fifties? Older?”

  “Fifties.” If Robbie had hair on his back, it would be standing on end. “One tall, one short.”

  “That’s all?” Dedrick’s fingers gripped the fence so hard, his nails went white.

  “I said it was dark, man—I couldn’t hardly see nothing.”

  “What lie are you going to tell us next?” Dedrick asked. “You didn’t hear anything because you had your earmuffs on?”

  “All right Detective,” Shannon said. She grabbed him by the shoulder. She turned her back to Robbie as she ushered Dedrick away. “Let’s take a breather here. Let me talk to Robbie alone for a minute.”

  “If he tries to keep playing stupid,” he said quietly, “call him white boy. I always wanted to hear you call somebody white boy.”

  Shannon rolled her eyes. “Settle down.”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll answer Detective Rourke’s questions,” Dedrick yelled at Robbie. “If you don’t—remember, I’ll be waiting for you with a nice, new pair of bracelets.”

  Shannon smiled and playfully pushed Dedrick back toward his car.

  The smile dissolved the instant she turned around, and her face was visible to Robbie. She walked back to the old fence. It sagged where Dedrick rested his hands on it. Robbie’s eyes were glued to that little section of rickety one-by-four boards.

  “I apologize for Detective Halman,” Shannon said.

  “Dude better lay off the ’roids,” Robbie said. “I’m just trying to help y’all and he’s getting all crazy with me.”

  “Believe it or not, I think he appreciates that you came clean,” Shannon said. “We both know you want to help Colm.”

  “It’s cool,” Robbie said. “I just ain’t trying to get my head ripped off by nobody.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Now, you told us there were two men who paid Colm a visit the other day. How long did they stay? Did it look like Colm knew them?”

  “They were here a couple minutes,” Robbie said. “And, yeah, it looked like he knew them. When he answered the door, they ain’t hardly said a word to him before he started screaming at them.”

  Shannon pulled her notebook out of her bag.

  “What about?”

  “I dunno, I was sitting on my front porch, so I couldn’t hear all that well. Sounded like they was arguing about money or something.”

  She wrote down, ‘argument, money’ on the pad of paper just below the address Jill Tiller had given her.

  “If you couldn’t hear them, how’d you know they argued over money?”

  He snorted. “Ain’t much of anything else people get that heated about.”

  “Women, drugs, sports,” Shannon said.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Robbie said. “Maybe when I think about it, I heard the word ‘money’ a couple times. Like those two dudes saying Colm owed them.”

  “Do you think Colm owed them?”

  He looked at Colm’s front porch and shrugged. “I ain’t seen his pocketbook, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How about this,” Shannon said. “You ever see him throwing money around? Maybe having a couple parties here, wearing nice clothes—stuff like that.”

  “Nah,” Robbie said. “I mean, you can look through his front window and see there ain’t nothing in that house worth more than a few bucks. I don’t even know if Colm had a TV.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “If you never really hung out with Colm, how do you know so much about what the inside of his house looks like?”

  Robbie froze. He’d made a misstep, and Shannon hadn’t missed it.

  “Me and Colm would head out every now and again,” he said. “But it wasn’t like we were boys or nothing. Just neighbors who like going to the same bars.”

  Suddenly, Robbie’s expression changed.

  “You look like somebody walked over your grave,” Shannon said.

  “I remembered something,” Robbie said. “He been throwing money around.”

  She looked at him, waiting for more.

  “We’d walk to McCollough’s Pub over on Albany sometimes. You know, just to chill or whatever. Last time we was there, he was buying like he won the lottery—shots, beers, whatever. He was laying drinks on anybody coming through the door. Didn’t matter if it was a dime or some crusty old dude, Colm bought their drinks. Dude racked up a tab like I ain’t seen anybody do before, and didn’t trip over it. I was a couple drinks in by the end of the night, but I remember watching him pay for the bill with straight cash.”

  Shannon clicked her pen a few times. She narrowed her eyes at Robbie. “You forgot about that?”

  “I was lit that night,” he said. “I’m lucky I can remember my own name.”

  “You seem a tad forgetful,” Shannon said. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

  He shrugged. “Ain’t every day I get two cops asking me questions.”

  No, probably not. But Robbie looked like a kid who’d seen his fair share of cops.

  “I think I’ve got all I need here,” Shannon said. “I appreciate your time, Robbie. Can I count on you being here if I have any follow-up questions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And next time, if you wanna come around without him,” he pointed at Dedrick, “that’s cool with me. A woman like you’d get a lot more out of me than he would.” Robbie smiled at her.

  Shannon smiled back. Better to let him think she liked him than not. She could feel his eyes studying her butt as she walked back to Dedrick, who leaned up against her Jeep with his hands in his pockets. Mr. Cool himself.

  “What’d he say?” Dedrick inclined his head at Robbie as he crossed the street in front of his house.

  She filled him in on the details while Robbie pulled past in his Camry. Dedrick stared him down until the car pulled out of sight.

  “I think our next move is to get a warrant,” Shannon said. “We need to check Colm’s house for any evidence that he owed someone money or otherwise had a large sum of it.”

  “You believe what he told you?”

  “It’s worth checking out. Somebody wanted Colm dead, and he gave us a working theory as to why. In any case, I think it’s wise to get a marked car to watch Colm’s house until we can get our warrant.”

  “All right, kid,” Dedrick said. “You call in a patrol unit, and I’ll get to work on the warrant while you get some sleep.”

  The mention of sleep sent her into a yawning fit.

  “I’m not taking a nap,” Shannon said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “I can handle it on my own.” He pulled open the passenger door on her Jeep and got inside. “You’ve got an eight-hour vacation to take—that is, after you run me back to my car over on Ashland.”

  “I can’t make you work on the warrant alone.” Shannon rubbed her eyes. Dammit, all it took was the thought of a break and her body went into a full-on mutiny.

  “It isn’t like you can type on one-half of my keyboard while I type on the other—you’re exhausted, Shannon. Take the morning off and come back around two. You’re useless without sleep.”

  She lightly punched his knee. He smiled at her.

  “I went without sleep way longer than this in the Corps,” she said.

&n
bsp; “I know. You’re a real tough gal,” he said. “Now take me back to my car and go get some rest.”

  “You know,” she said, “you’re a lot less entertaining when I haven’t slept.

  CHAPTER 7

  The morning rush hour in Chicago was not something to trifle with. After heading south from Colm’s townhouse and dropping Dedrick off at his department-issued Chevy Impala, Shannon had to double-back to Wrigleyville.

  She didn’t get home until ten AM—a full two and half hours after she and Dedrick left Colm’s place.

  By the time she opened the door to her upstairs apartment, her brain almost couldn’t figure out which key went into the lock. Maybe she’d gone without sleep when she was nineteen, but at age thirty-one, she couldn’t do it anymore. Through sheer force of will, she solved the problem. She stabbed the lock with the key, turned the knob, and practically fell through the doorway.

  Thankfully, Frank was there to steady her.

  He jumped up to greet her, as he sometimes did, and as she sometimes told him not to. He stretched his paws up to her chest and leaned into her. His tongue swiped at the bottom of her chin.

  “Hi, buddy.” She scratched him between the ears. “Now, get down.”

  Frank relented. He sat down, his tail sweeping the front doormat.

  “Good boy.”

  He stood, then nosed the leash hanging off the coat rack to her left, then looked at her.

  “Maybe we’ll go out a little later,” she said. “I’ve been running around the city all night.”

  He sneezed and shook his head. He wouldn’t give up that easily.

  Neither would Shannon. The two of them made a good match like that. Frank would’ve pushed around some sweet old lady looking for a big dog, and he would’ve had the run of any middle-class family who dared take him in, thinking he’d be nice for the kids.

  He touched his nose to the leash again.

  “After I sleep,” she said, and made her way toward her room.

  Frank didn’t follow. In the past, he would stand at the door and use the tip of his nose to bat at the leash for hours at a time. He always bored of that eventually, at which point he’d crawl into her bed and sleep until his next chance at a walk.

  She passed by Michael’s room. His door was open a crack.

  “Michael?” Shannon pushed it open slowly.

  Her brother lay on top of the sheets of his bed in the same Fukudome t-shirt he wore last night. He was asleep. His laptop sat open next to him.

  He was too big for her to move, so she went back to the living room to grab a blanket to cover him with. Frank gave her a dirty look when she dared show her face without grabbing the leash off the wall.

  Shannon’s old comforter—a light-colored, plaid blanket she’d had since middle school—was on the couch. She grabbed it, went back to Michael, and laid it on top of him.

  That’s when she noticed his computer was open to Facebook. Colm Keane’s page, to be exact. She leaned closer to it and read people’s notes to him. It appeared that word of his death had gotten out.

  She wasn’t surprised. Maybe Michael let others know after she called him last night.

  Shannon knelt at the side of his bed. She scrolled the page down a bit, looking at Colm’s old updates, hoping something would take hold of her. Maybe he’d left a trail of what he’d been up to, or someone had location tagged him somewhere significant.

  She stopped.

  A picture she recognized was on the laptop’s screen. She remembered the moment one of Michael’s friends had taken it. She couldn’t remember the kid’s name (was it Jimmy, or Jason?) but she remembered the old railroad bridge they all used to hang out under when they were teenagers.

  Colm sat on a concrete footing which held up the bridge. He raised his Coors Light up high, smiling wide. Michael leaned up against the same footing, his beer tucked in to his folded arms. He had that signature smirk on his face—the one all the girls in Shannon’s class loved. Shannon sat cross-legged in the yellowed grass beneath the bridge, tagging along with her brother, for fear of being left home alone when her father came back stinking drunk.

  Drinking stolen beer under the railroad tracks at sixteen. A little sadness choked her. Did Michael ever have a chance?

  He turned in his sleep.

  There was nothing new to learn about Colm here.

  Shannon put his laptop back the way she found it. She closed the door behind her, softly as she could.

  Across the hall, Frank laid in front of her door. He lifted his head and wagged his tail when she looked at him. It whacked against the wall loud enough that she was afraid Michael would wake.

  “Come on, knucklehead.” She opened her bedroom door, and Frank slipped in with her.

  With her heavy curtains drawn, not a shaft of sunlight entered the room. She’d worked enough late nights on CPD’s behalf to know that blackout curtains were a wise investment.

  She heard Frank jump up on her bed. Then she nearly tripped over her half-packed duffel bag.

  Shannon groaned and kicked it across the room. No chance she’d get to go to the dunes now, but that was fine. She’d be in Stockholm soon, and when she was, everything would be perfect.

  She fell face first into her bed, thoughts of flights and jobs and getting the hell out of Chicago swirling around her head.

  Frank snuggled up next to her hip.

  CHAPTER 8

  There’s something charmless about waking up to the sound of a ringing phone.

  Her phone’s vibrations shook the entire bed from the front pocket of her jeans. Even Frank, the dog who slept through some drunk breaking Shannon’s window after a Cubs loss last October, stirred. He groaned and twisted around until he laid on his back.

  With her eyes closed and her face half-buried in her pillow, Shannon’s hand searched for the pocket of her jeans.

  She pulled out the phone and checked the screen. Its brightness made her squint her one uncovered eye.

  It was Layla Pierce—her old friend from the Marines.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Shannon,” Pierce said. “How’re the dunes?”

  Shannon balanced her phone on the side of her face. Her free hand went down to rub Frank’s ear.

  “I didn’t get to go,” Shannon said. “A case came up last night.”

  “You don’t think it’ll keep you from coming here, will it?”

  “No,” Shannon said. “I can pass the case off if it isn’t solved by then. I’m working with someone on it.”

  “That guy you told me about? The cute one?”

  Oh, no. Why had she ever told Pierce about Dedrick?

  “Since you didn’t say anything, I’ll take that as a yes,” Pierce said.

  “Take it as a maybe.”

  “Well, you won’t miss him when you come to Stockholm,” she said. “It’s a target rich environment. I swear to you, Shannon, every guy here is six feet tall, blond, and beautiful. They love American women. You won’t believe it until you see it.”

  “Mhm.”

  It was too early to have to endure Pierce’s boy craziness. The girl hadn’t changed one bit in over a decade. She would’ve worn Prince out with her sex-drive.

  “How’s the camping?” Shannon asked.

  “Let me ask you something,” Pierce said. “What’s a six-hour drive from where you are right now?”

  “What?” Shannon blinked and rubbed her eyes.

  “Where could you be in a six-hour drive from Chicago? Louisville? Green Bay? Cincinnati?”

  “Any of those, I think,” Shannon said.

  “In six hours, I can get you to Copenhagen. That’s Denmark, Shannon—another country. In ten hours, I can have you sitting in a beer garden in Hamburg. We can set up a tent right on the Elbe, if that’s what you want to do.”

  Shannon pictured herself sitting on a log, drinking a German hefeweizen, listening to each album from David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy. She’d start with Low, then move to Lodger, then Heroes.
Maybe it wasn’t the order most people would choose, but it was the order she liked.

  “The German boys are pretty cute, too,” Pierce said.

  “What about Michael’s job?”

  “Ambassador Griggs hosts a gala or dinner or whatever at least twice a week,” Piece said. “Michael will definitely be worth his weight in gold. We’ve been short a sous chef for the last three months. They might throw a parade for him in the kitchen when he arrives.”

  “And he’ll be busy?”

  “Yes, very.” Pierce laughed. “He might work as much as you do right now.”

  Shannon paused for a moment. After everything her life had been thus far, working at the US Embassy in Stockholm seemed like an impossible dream. Sometimes she wondered if she were still a little girl hiding in her closet, inventing futures for herself while her drunk father rampaged through the house, hunting for Michael.

  “All this talk,” Pierce said, “and I’m surprised you haven’t double-checked on your own job.”

  “I’m not worried about myself,” Shannon said. “We both know I can handle a security job doing background checks.”

  “There’s the girl I knew,” Pierce said. “Cocky as all hell.”

  Shannon snorted. She grabbed the phone and sat up in her bed, then turned on the bedside lamp.

  “So you’re sure you’ll be here by next week?” Pierce asked. “Because if you aren’t, you know I have to move on to another candidate—I’ve already left your position unfilled way too long as it is.”

  “I’ll be there.” Shannon rolled over on her belly and pulled open the bottom drawer of her nightstand. A pair of plane tickets had been tucked in an envelope. “I’m looking at my tickets right now.”

  “Good,” Pierce said. “You know, I can’t believe you took on another case this week.”

  “I know. But I had to take it,” Shannon said. “I can’t tell you why right now, but I’ll talk all about it later.”

  “Over drinks,” Pierce said. “With cute, Swedish boys.”

  “If they want to hear about murder.”

  Pierce laughed.

  The phone beeped at Shannon. She pulled it away from her face, then looked at the screen. It was Dedrick. He probably had news about the warrant for Colm’s townhouse.