Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1

by Stewart Matthews

  For a moment, Shannon felt the Mesopotamian sun scratching at her skin. She smelled cordite and diesel. In her mind’s eye, she saw the dashboard of her Marine Corps truck lying against the ground. She saw all the glittering pieces of glass from one of the truck’s windows piled on the roof.

  She was upside down. The truck had been flipped, and her leg had been mangled.

  The memory disintegrated when Dedrick ran up, and leaned into the wall on the opposite side of The Galway Tap’s front door.

  She nodded at him, then ducked in through the broken pane of glass.

  “Chicago PD!” she yelled. She stood up and leveled her weapon. No one answered.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkened inside of the bar. The chairs were upturned on the tabletops, and all the TVs were off.

  “Looks like no one’s home,” Dedrick said.

  A crash came from the back of the building. It sounded like someone dropped a pan in the kitchen. Shannon’s heart butted against the backside of her ribcage.

  Both detectives crept toward the noise.

  There were likely two entrances to the kitchen. Shannon noted a door behind the bar. Probably another down a hallway to the left, which appeared to lead to the back of the building.

  She looked at Dedrick and tilted her head toward the door at the bar. He nodded and went down the hallway.

  She carefully approached a hinged part of the bar—it could be that whomever broke that window was crouched on the other side of it, waiting for her. Maybe they had a knife or a shotgun, or had taken a manager hostage…

  Shannon blinked her eyes, trying to knock all the scenarios out of her head. She had to focus.

  Short as she was, Shannon had to step onto the bottom rungs of a barstool to see the back side of the bar.

  No one there.

  She lifted the hinged surface of the bar and hunched low, making her way toward the kitchen. She had to stop herself from retching when a whiff of beer entered her nose.

  A marked car screeched to a stop out front. It briefly grabbed her attention. A pair of uniformed officers left the car’s lights on, and sprinted toward the broken front door.

  When the first one made his way in, Shannon snapped her fingers and waved her free arm, getting his attention.

  She motioned for him to go outside and check the back of the building. It took a moment for him to understand, but finally he nodded, whispered it to his partner, and the two of them sprinted past the big front window of The Galway Tap.

  A man’s anguished grunt pulled Shannon’s mind back to the kitchen.

  She walked up to the door behind the bar and peered through a circular window in it. There was blood on the floor—a long streak of it. She couldn’t see who made all the noise inside.

  There was no time to waste. She backed off from the door. She tensed her face, took a deep breath through her nose, then, with every bit of strength she had in her leg, she sent her right foot flying at the door.

  It swung open and crashed into the wall to the right of it.

  “Chicago PD!” Shannon ran through the door, pointing her weapon.

  Ewan Keane glared at her over his shoulder. Blood ran all the way down the left sleeve of his white shirt. He hunched over the sink, the tap on full blast.

  “Hands up!” Dedrick came through the back door.

  “It’s all right Dedrick.” Shannon lowered her weapon. “We’re too late. It’s already done.”

  Robbie Simmons’ dead body lay in a pool of blood on the floor.

  CHAPTER 22

  “I have to admit, you couldn’t have arrived at a better time,” Ewan said. “If I were a superstitious man, I’d say it was kismet when we made today’s appointment together last night.”

  “Whose weapon is that?” Shannon pointed toward a Colt 1911 on the ground near Robbie. At the same time, an officer dropped a numbered yellow card next to it, marking it as evidence.

  “You know I’d hate to insult your intelligence,” Ewan said, “but he’s the one stabbed. I’m the one shot.”

  He hunched over the big stainless steel basin sink next to the dish sterilizer. He rested on his good forearm, holding his wounded left arm over the drain. The faucet ran, helping his blood swirl down.

  “How long until the EMT arrives?” Ewan asked.

  “Ten or fifteen minutes.” Shannon looked at the bloody rag they’d used to wrap Ewan’s arm until the ambulance made it to The Galway Tap. It was deep red—totally soaked through.

  “That one looks saturated.” Shannon grabbed a hand towel from what she assumed was a clean stack sitting on the prep island in the middle of the kitchen. “Let me change it out.”

  He read her with his eyes for a moment. He looked weary as one of the bums idling around Wrigleyville at night, asking for change.

  “Aren’t you supposed to arrest me?” Ewan asked. “There’s a dead man lying on the floor of my kitchen.”

  She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her bag and put them on.

  “Won’t be much of an arrest if you bleed to death right in front of me.” Shannon pinched the corner of the bloody towel wrapped around his forearm. “May I?”

  He tensed his mouth and nodded.

  “You’re lucky it’s still attached after he shot you close-range with a .45,” she said. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Is that so?” He winced. “Which side of town?”

  “Outside Ramadi.” She tried her best to keep her hands steady as she removed the rest of the towel.

  “Your tour with the Marines.” He stiffened his arm again. “I was under the impression they didn’t allow women on the front lines.”

  “Not as combatants,” she said.

  The towel finally let go of the bullet wound—and there was no doubt it was a bullet wound. It was big as a half-dollar and trickled blood so deep red, it looked black.

  “Your arm looks broken,” she said.

  “Were you a medic?”

  She looked up at him. “Does it matter?”

  “Only curious,” Ewan said. “If you’d rather not talk about it, I won’t take offense.”

  “Hold this.” She put his hand on the clean towel, then fished around in the first aid kit Dedrick had brought in from the back of his car.

  “I was a truck driver,” she said.

  “I heard that was a dangerous job to have.”

  Shannon found the roll of silk tape. She pulled a strip out and cut it with her teeth.

  “It was.”

  Dedrick popped his head in from around the corner leading to the back of the bar.

  “EMT just radioed, Shannon—they’re five minutes out.”

  His cell phone was to his ear. He volunteered to file the report with Sergeant Boyd back in the office, which was just as well with her. She’d rather dress a thousand wounds than file a report over the phone.

  “Quicker than you thought,” Ewan said to her.

  “Looks like you picked a good time of day to get shot.”

  “Kismet,” Ewan said.

  With his wound dressed, Shannon set her attention on Robbie Simmons’ dead body lying face-down on the ground.

  One of the officers had covered his body with a sheet, but his right hand—and its rose tattoo—stuck out from beneath it.

  “Any idea why he shot you in the arm?”

  “Because I knocked him around before he had a chance to shoot me in the head,” Ewan said. “And to answer your follow-up question, Detective—no, I don’t know why he wanted to kill me.”

  That was doubtful. In any case, she didn’t expect Ewan to tell her anything meaningful until she got some kind of leverage on him. She’d just have to poke and prod him until something came out.

  “Do you think it had anything to do with Colm’s murder?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t see how.”

  “Maybe you rubbed someone the wrong way in the past, and now they’re coming after your family.”

  “If I wronged someone that
badly, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. And my son’s next-door neighbor wouldn’t be here, either.”

  “So you know who he is.”

  Ewan nodded. “Robbie. I remember seeing him at the wake yesterday.”

  “Did you say something to him last night that’d make him want to break down your door and kill you today?”

  “I told him ‘hello’ and ‘thank you for coming,’” he said. “I couldn’t have spoken to him much beyond that. As I recall, he entered McCullough’s with you and your brother, and he left with you two as well.”

  True. Robbie didn’t seem put off by anything at either point in the night—other than Shannon shooing him away.

  “You’re sure he didn’t act strange toward you in any way?” she asked. “Because if I go talk to someone else, and they give me a different story, you’re the first person I’m coming back to with a pair of handcuffs.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to handcuff me now?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Understand that by the time I saw Robbie, I was already a few scotches into the bottle at my own son’s wake,” Ewan said. “I may have missed something he’d said or did. My powers of observation weren’t as honed as they could have been.”

  Fair enough.

  “Where were you when you heard him break down the door?” Shannon peeled off her bloodied latex gloves and tossed them in the trash. She opened up her work bag and took out her notebook.

  “Is this an official questioning?” Ewan asked.

  “My notebook?” Shannon titled it outward, where he could see it.

  He nodded.

  “This is just a pad of paper. It doesn’t make anything official. What it does do is keep me from relying on my own faulty memory when someone asks me about this case six months from now.”

  “Why would anyone care about any of this six months in the future?”

  Shannon looked up from her notebook, where she’d already begun scratching out notes, and blinked at him.

  “A man is dead, Mr. Keane. That may be business-as-usual for you, but I take it seriously.”

  “What exactly do you think I do in a typical day?”

  He raised his chin and smiled at her. If he were twenty years younger, she’d worry about his charms a little more than she did at this moment.

  “Would you mind telling me where you were when you heard Robbie Simmons break through your front door?”

  “Back here.” He pointed at a pan sitting over a burner on the stove. It held a slice of bread. “I was about to make grilled cheese for lunch, but that plan changed when he showed up. As soon as I heard the glass break, I ran to my office around the corner.” He motioned his head toward the door that lead to the small hallway at the back of the restaurant.

  “Why?”

  “I keep a revolver locked in the safe in my office.”

  “I assume you have a CFP?” A gun charge might be a good bargaining chip against him for Colm’s case.

  “Of course,” Ewan said. “I keep it, and my FOID, in a safe at home with my other personal documents. I assure you I keep things above-board when it comes to firearm safety—I have my certificate from the mandatory course, if you’d like to see that too.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Keane,” Shannon said. “Though I’m a bit surprised you keep a weapon here. Boystown is fairly safe, last I checked.”

  “You never know in this city.”

  Too true.

  She did a quick scan of the kitchen with her eyes. No revolver anywhere to be found.

  “If you’re wondering where the revolver is, I can assure you I didn’t toss it,” he said.

  “Then where is it?”

  “Still in my safe,” Ewan said. “I couldn’t unlock the door fast enough to get it out before he was on me.”

  “Would you describe it for me?” She wanted to make sure his story matched up with any and all physical evidence to be found here.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s nothing special. A bog standard Smith & Wesson 627 with a wood grip.”

  She wrote down S&W 627 revolver in safe on her notepad. Leaving here without bagging it would be a mistake.

  “Is it a keyed safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind giving me the key?”

  “It’s hanging in the lock. Probably a little bent. When it occurred to me that Robbie didn’t come to chat, I had to turn around and grab him quick as I could.” Ewan motioned toward the .45 on the ground. “The only reason we’re speaking now is because he didn’t have a clear line of sight from the front door of the bar all the way back to my office. He had to get close to me.”

  “So he was within arm’s reach of you in that little hallway over there,” Shannon said. “But he couldn’t pull the trigger on you.”

  Ewan tried to lift his wounded arm, but thought better of it.

  “He certainly did pull the trigger on me. I tackled him into the hallway a moment after, which was just fast enough to stay alive.”

  “What happened after that?”

  He nodded toward Robbie’s body. The sheet came to a point over his neck where it rested on the back end of a knife. It reminded her of some of the tan tents she’d seen at Marine bases in the past.

  “I grabbed my letter opener off my desk and defended myself,” Ewan said. “I had no intention of killing him. I got him a couple times in the arm with it—probably some good cuts on his hands, too—but I did my level best to run to the bar. There’s a loaded 12-gauge behind it. I figured if he saw that, it’d be enough to scare him off.”

  “But he stopped you here,” Shannon said, “in the kitchen.”

  “The boy lost his mind. I saw him point the gun at me again,” Ewan said. “I knew running would’ve been suicide, so I did the only thing I could—I turned around and fought him with what I had.”

  He was remarkably cool about the entire thing. That wasn’t unexpected from a man who lead a life like Ewan Keane’s. Probably wasn’t the first time someone pointed a gun at him, and it probably wasn’t the first time he’d stabbed somebody. Admittedly, that was all conjecture on Shannon’s part. Ewan didn’t have much of a record to speak of, and he would be sure to point that out if she ever verbalized her suspicions.

  “You’re pretty good with a knife,” she said. “I don’t know many police who’d be able to land a killing blow like that in the heat of a fight.”

  “I can recommend a good Krav Maga instructor to the department,” Ewan said. “I’d be happy to pay him to come out. As far as I’m concerned, his teachings just earned him much more business from me.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” she said. “I think we’ll manage without.”

  Ewan looked at the sheet covering Robbie and shook his head.

  “I don’t know why that boy came here,” he said. “I never wished him any harm.”

  “The paramedic is here.” Dedrick entered through the swinging door leading to the bar. “They asked if they should come back to the kitchen, but I told them Mr. Keane can probably walk himself out. I figured the fewer feet we have in our crime scene, the better.”

  “Agreed,” Ewan said. He took a tentative step from the sink. He would have tripped, had Shannon not been close enough to catch him before he fell. Though, calling it ‘catching’ was generous. He had a hundred pounds on her, easily, and it was more like she blocked him from face-planting.

  “I got him, Shannon.” Dedrick took Keane’s arm from around her shoulders then helped him toward the door.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to have a look around for a minute and check out Mr. Keane’s story.”

  “Shannon, there are security recordings in my office,” Ewan said. “Everything from the last forty-eight hours is sitting in a folder on my computer’s desktop.”

  “I’ll take a look at it,” she said. “I have more questions to ask you when the paramedic is finished.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We never spoke about Colm
.”

  Ewan and Dedrick hobbled off together.

  CHAPTER 23

  When the door swung shut behind Ewan and Dedrick, Shannon turned her attention to Robbie Simmons’ body beneath the sheet. His last act on Earth was to make Colm’s case ten times more complicated than it already was. Why in the hell would CTA mechanic Robbie Simmons want to kill Ewan Keane?

  She put on another pair of latex gloves, then pulled the sheet off him, wadded it up, and threw it on the counter. She went through his pockets. He had the usual—keys, wallet, and phone.

  She dropped the keys in an evidence bag. Nothing too exciting there, unless she wanted to take his F150 for a joyride.

  Shannon unfolded his brown leather wallet. Using a set of tweezers, she pulled out each debit and credit card, his ID, and exactly thirty-four dollars in cash. There was a Subway punch card stuck in one of the card slots of his wallet. For completion’s sake, she tugged at it with the tweezers.

  A piece of it ripped off. It was soft as snotty tissue, and the torn paper fibers came off it like cilia. She guessed it had been through the wash a few times.

  Shannon tried to turn the wallet inside-out to get at the card better, but it refused to obey. She stuck her fingers into the card’s pocket, found the bottom edge, and tore it out. Half the card’s printing stuck to the wallet’s lining.

  The City of Chicago would thank her for her meticulous work in emptying Robbie Simmons’ wallet, she was sure. She dropped the Subway card in the evidence baggie with the rest of his cards. A large piece of it flaked off the back.

  No. Not a piece of the card—it was a folded piece of paper stuck to it.

  Shannon fished it out of the evidence baggie. She brought it over to the stainless steel counter next to the wadded-up sheet, and using her tweezers, she carefully unfolded the note. The paper’s edges wanted to stay together—it had probably been washed, too—but with a little care, perseverance, and some light swearing, she had it spread open on the counter.