Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1

by Stewart Matthews

  Shannon would hit the plane to Stockholm with another closed case.

  But not a clear conscience.

  She saw Dedrick emerge from The Galway Tap.

  “I need to borrow your car.” Shannon tossed the keys to her Jeep to Dedrick.

  He caught them before he even knew they were coming.

  “What? Why?”

  “I have to go talk to Isabella,” she said. “She was right about Colm robbing Ewan. But he had help.”

  “From who?”

  “Robbie Simmons.”

  Dedrick looked at the panel truck from the coroner’s office and shook his head. “Think she knew about that?”

  “I intend to find out,” Shannon said. “That’s why I need your keys. You can get a ride to Blue Island from one of the officers. If I’m not back by the end of the day, take my Jeep home.”

  He reached into his pocket and tossed his keys to her. “Be careful with my baby, Shannon. They don’t keep many of those at the motor pool.”

  “Of course.”

  The Impala was in the same place they’d left it when she and Dedrick initially entered The Galway Tap after lunch. She walked over to it.

  “On second thought, why don’t I come along with you?” Dedrick walked toward her.

  “Someone has to sew things up here,” she said. “I need casings from Robbie’s gun and the casings we found at Colm’s murder scene compared as soon as possible.”

  “You think Robbie shot him?”

  She opened the driver’s door, then eased herself into the seat.

  “He did it for the money.” She closed the door.

  The interior of the Impala smelled like Dedrick’s cologne. Shannon let herself take a breath of it before she slid the key into the car’s ignition.

  Dedrick knocked on the window. She jumped in the seat—did he notice her smelling his car? She lowered the window.

  “If you think Robbie killed Colm,” he said, “doesn’t that close the case?”

  “We still don’t know why Robbie tried to kill Ewan.”

  “And I’m guessing you intend to ask Isabella about that,” Dedrick said.

  “For a start,” she said. “I think she knows more about her boyfriend’s activities than she let on. Or her brother Afonso does.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Shannon started the car.

  “Women’s intuition.” She winked at him and pulled away.

  CHAPTER 26

  At the stop light before the ramp to get on Lake Shore Drive, Shannon pulled out her phone. She dialed Isabella’s number. It rang four times, then went to a generic voicemail box.

  The light turned green, but Shannon had her eyes on the phone. She redialed Isabella’s number. At the same time, someone honked behind her. People in Chicago had no patience for anything—not even an Impala with CPD license plates.

  Isabella answered on the second ring this time.

  “I can’t talk,” she sucked in a tense breath, “right now.”

  “Isabella? It’s Detective Rourke. Is something wrong?”

  No answer but Isabella’s sobbing.

  “Isabella, if you’re in trouble, I want to help you,” Shannon said.

  Isabella tried to say something, but she only huffed and cried. The lack of any answer from her was perhaps the worst answer possible.

  She took the ramp onto Lake Shore. As soon as she was on the highway, her foot smashed down on the accelerator.

  “Hold on, Isabella, I’ll be at your house as quickly as I can.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I’m fine.” She heaved another deep breath.

  “No, you’re not,” Shannon said. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

  Isabella hung up.

  Shannon weaved through traffic. She grabbed the radio mic and held it in the same hand she used to hold the steering wheel. Her free hand dipped into her back pocket and pulled out the slip of paper she’d had Isabella write her address and number on.

  “This is 411 to dispatch,” Shannon said.

  “Go ahead, 411.”

  “I have a female subject, pregnant, residing at 4611 South Marshfield Avenue. I’m en route, and I think there’s something wrong.”

  Shannon dodged a Prius going 5 miles under the speed limit in the left lane. She laid on the horn as she zipped past, then flipped on the car’s lights and siren.

  “Could you be more specific, 411?” the dispatcher asked.

  “No,” Shannon barked back. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I think she might need medical attention. I need a patrol unit and an ambulance at that address ASAP.”

  “We’ll get someone from the area, 411. Drive safe.”

  Drive safe. Right.

  There was nothing worse than darting to a scene like this. Even with all the lights and sirens in the world strapped to her car, there were enough entitled nuts in Chicago who thought they had the right-of-way in every situation.

  Still, she made it down Lake Shore in one piece. She made it down I-90 too, and exited toward Pershing, going past US Cellular Field. The car must’ve done seventy all the way down to Ashland, where Shannon slowed it to sixty. Halfway down Ashland, she passed AOK King Liquors, where Colm had been shot. She never realized how close Isabella’s house was to the murder scene. Was she there that night?

  She turned right onto South 46th street, and slowed up. Isabella’s place was a white duplex, about three houses down from the corner.

  One of CPD’s marked cars was already there. An ambulance was parked right behind it.

  Shannon stopped Dedrick’s Impala in the middle of the street, threw it in park, and ran out without turning off the engine. She ran to the open back of the ambulance, where a paramedic hung his feet off the tailgate and smoked.

  “What are you doing?”

  The paramedic shrugged. “You should talk to the officer.”

  Out front of the house, an officer talked into the radio on her shoulder. “411?”

  Shannon flashed her detective’s star. “Where’s Isabella Arroz?”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but for the last five minutes, I’ve knocked on every door and peeked into every window on this side of the duplex. There’s no one home.”

  Did they have the right address?

  “Go knock on the neighbor’s door.” Shannon pointed to the house to the north. “Ask for Isabella Arroz.”

  Without a word, the officer turned north and hopped the chainlink fence separating the yards.

  Shannon went south. Maybe one of her neighbors saw or heard something.

  She bounded up a crooked trio of concrete steps, then knocked on the neighbor’s front door.

  An old man ripped the door open, scowling. “The hell do you people want?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but do you know if Isabella Arroz lives next door?” Out of habit, Shannon leaned to her right and tried to look past the old man and into his house.

  “Yes, she lives next door,” he said. “And when you see her, would you tell her that some people in this neighborhood need to sleep?”

  “Did something happen?”

  He rolled his eyes. It didn’t feel great to be on the other end of that.

  “It’s those damned kids,” he said. “They’re howling like banshees every time she and her hoodlum brother go out to their car—I don’t need to hear the woman herself screaming bloody murder too.”

  “She was yelling?”

  “Yelling and blubbering like an old lady at a funeral,” he said. “I woke up from my nap thinking the whole goddamn world was coming to an end, but it was only them going out to their car.”

  Well, the crying matched up with what Shannon heard over the phone.

  “Did they indicate where they were going?”

  “The hell if I know! I poked my head out the door to tell them to shut up, but they were already speeding down the street,” he said. “I don’t know why I waste my breath. I don’t talk to them, and I don’t want to.”<
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  “Do you know which way they went?”

  He pointed south.

  “If you’re going to arrest them, give that brother of hers a little mace for me. God knows he could use it.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful, sir.” Shannon decided to let that little remark slide.

  The old man grumbled and slammed the door shut.

  Shannon cut across the front yard, back to Isabella’s side of the duplex.

  “Found anything?” she yelled to the officer, who was already two houses down.

  “Nobody’s home,” the officer yelled back.

  “That’s all right,” Shannon said. “Keep knocking until you’ve been to all these houses.” She motioned at the handful of houses across the street. Didn’t look like anyone was home there, either, but it was worth knocking, at least.

  She walked up the concrete steps in front of Isabella’s side of the duplex. From what the old man next door said, they’d left in a hurry. Maybe she’d get lucky and the door would be left open a crack—it was perfectly legal to pop her head into the house in that case.

  Their front door was apple-red, and the paint had chipped off around the doorknob with age. It was also closed tight. Shannon put her hand on the knob and turned, but the deadbolt had been locked.

  She sighed and sat on the front edge of the porch. She grabbed her phone out of her pocket.

  “Can I go?” the EMT asked from the street. He held up an e-cigarette. “Or should I change out my flavor?”

  Behind him, she noticed Dedrick’s Impala in the middle of the street, the driver’s door hanging open and the engine on. Shannon hopped down from the porch.

  “I don’t think I’m going to need you,” she said to the EMT. “Smoke more if you want—I don’t care.”

  He shrugged and grabbed a small glass vial from his pocket.

  “Cut yourself?” he asked as Shannon walked past.

  “What?” She stopped.

  “Your hand’s bleeding,” he said. “Stay here a minute. I’ll check it out.” He hopped up from the tailgate, e-cigarette hanging from his lips, and rummaged through a drawer nearby.

  When did she cut herself? What could she have possibly done it on?

  “You know, detective, it’s okay to ask me for help when you hurt yourself.” The EMT hopped from the back of the ambulance. He took Shannon’s right hand and wiped at her palm with an alcohol pad. “Believe it or not, helping people is why I showed up here when the call came in.”

  “I thought she’d be here.” Shannon watched Isabella’s house as if it would spew some kind of secret the moment she took her eyes off it. “My witness, that is. I called her and she sounded like she was in trouble. She’s pregnant.”

  “Mhm,” the EMT said. He turned her hand over. Then he turned it back. He held her hand up and examined her wrist. “Did that hurt at all?”

  “Did what hurt?”

  “The alcohol pad. Did you feel anything when I cleaned you off? Because I can’t see where you’ve been cut.”

  She looked at her hand. She realized she hadn’t felt anything because she hadn’t been cut.

  She took off toward the front door of Isabella’s house.

  “Detective, you’re gonna bleed everywhere!” the EMT said. “Isn’t that bad for the crime scene or whatever?”

  Shannon stomped up the steps. Reflexively, she grabbed for her work bag, but realized she’d left it in the Impala, so gloves weren’t an option at this moment. She crouched and peered at the underside of the doorknob.

  Blood.

  Enough blood that a few drops of it had joined together in a small pool at the foot of the door. How had she missed that?

  She got to her hands and knees. She looked across the concrete porch toward the front steps and saw another drop. The porous concrete had almost swallowed it up, but she’d seen enough blood in her time to know it was there. She followed it and saw another on the front walk. Then another and another until the sparse trail ended near splotches of old grease and oil on the driveway.

  She remembered the neighbor saying Isabella and her family had gotten into their car.

  “What’s the nearest hospital to here?” Shannon said to the EMT.

  “Mitchell.” Knots of thick, white vapor shot out of his mouth when he spoke. “Over on the far side of Washington Park.”

  “I know where it is.” Shannon was already halfway to the Impala. “Can you put in a call to the UC hospital and see if Isabella Arroz has checked in?”

  “No.” The EMT looked at her like she was crazy. “HIPPA laws.”

  Fine. She’d go check it out herself. If her hunch was wrong, Isabella probably wasn’t leaving whatever hospital she was at anytime soon. There’d be time to check elsewhere.

  “Do me a favor,” Shannon said, “tell that officer she doesn’t have to knock on anymore doors.”

  “Isn’t that your job?” the EMT asked.

  Shannon didn’t have time to answer him. She closed the Impala’s door and started the engine. She kept the lights on and gunned it toward Bernard Mitchell Hospital.

  CHAPTER 27

  Shannon’s GPS said it’d take her seventeen minutes to get from Isabella Arroz’s house to Mitchell Hospital.

  She did it in eight—one of the perks of having CPD lights on her car. She would’ve requisitioned something from the motor pool like Dedrick had with this Impala, but she’d feel like a traitor to her Jeep.

  The parking attendant directing traffic into the hospital’s front loop tried to stop her as she sped past. With the Impala’s red and blues flashing, he should’ve gotten the point.

  She took an emergency parking spot, cut the engine, and jogged into the hospital.

  Three women sat at the front desk, chatting amongst themselves. Shannon flashed her star at them. One nodded at her and hit the button to open the double security doors which separated the waiting room from the hospital’s emergency department.

  A detective’s star was good enough to get her through the door, but how far would it really take her? Shannon imagined if she asked any of the nurses buzzing back and forth through the hall beyond the double security doors, they’d balk the same as the EMT had.

  Nothing to do but keep walking.

  Shannon peeked through any open doorways she happened to come across. Most were empty. Half-comatose patients watching TV from their beds through slitted eyes occupied some others.

  No Isabella.

  There were probably three dozen rooms in the emergency department of Mitchell Hospital—any one of which Isabella could be in. No one here would look kindly on Shannon if she began knocking on doors.

  She’d have to figure out a way to find Isabella discretely.

  To her left, Shannon found the answer to her problem—the nurse’s station. It was a big, semicircular counter with a computer on it and lots of official-looking documents in slots behind it.

  And it was empty.

  Shannon checked left down the hall, then right. Nurses buzzed in and out of rooms in their colorful scrubs, too busy with their patients to worry about what she may or may not be doing.

  She practically jumped behind the big counter.

  But what was she looking for? Shannon paused for a moment. She had to find something with Isabella’s name on it—an insurance card, a room number, or a report.

  She shuffled through the papers in the slots. One stack was blank forms for uninsured patients, another was forms for patient allergy information, and a third was a set of instructions on how to do the Heimlich maneuver.

  There weren’t any paper records here.

  And of course Mitchell Hospital didn’t keep paper records—it’s the twenty-first century. If she were to find any information about where Isabella was, she’d find it through the PC.

  It was probably locked. She tapped the space bar. The monitor flicked on. Yep, locked—she needed a username and password to see anything.

  She sighed. Maybe if she hung around long enough
, she’d catch Isabella’s brother coming or going. He wouldn’t be hard to recognize, but she’d probably have a hell of a time getting any information out of him. He didn’t look like a talker.

  Her odds with the computer were better.

  Maybe someone left a username and password lying around on a sticky-note or a slip of paper. Shannon felt around the back of the monitor. Nothing but wires and dust. She checked under the big, semi-circle desk. She saw more wires, more dust, and a lone sock—which raised some questions.

  She shuffled some papers around on the desk. In an emergency department this large, there had to be someone forgetful or careless with their login information—someone who could never remember their password.

  Like Ewan.

  Shannon grabbed the keyboard and flipped it over. A teal sticky-note was attached to it. On it, someone had scrawled their information. Username: SBOWLES. Password: 5H4RK4TT4CK.

  Easy.

  Shannon entered the information and the computer unlocked. A searchable patient database was the first thing she saw. She put in Isabella’s name, and the computer did the rest.

  Isabella Arroz was in room 132. Shannon’s eyes continued to scan down the screen until she saw the words, ‘premature birth.’

  Oh God. Of all things, why did it have to be that? Was this some cruel twist of fate—Shannon Rourke put on a case where a baby’s life is in jeopardy?

  Pea-soup green walls blocked any other thoughts out of her mind. In her head, she heard that Marine Corps nurse ask why Shannon hadn’t told anyone.

  Shannon’s knees went weak. She blinked and gritted her teeth. The cream-colored walls of Mitchell Hospital came back to her.

  She made her way down the hall as casually as she could. None of the nurses seemed to suspect her. A hospital like Mitchell didn’t leave time for suspicions.

  Room 132 waited ahead and to the right. She knocked on the door before she opened it partway.

  “Isabella?” Shannon whispered.

  A curtain blocked view of the room’s bed. She walked in.

  The room was quiet. The lights were on. Some machine beyond the curtain beeped, and she heard the subtle hiss of oxygen.