“He never really talked about it,” Michael said. “But I’m sure a girl who looks like her had plenty of chances if she wanted to.”
“I think she was,” Shannon said.
“What? Why?”
She pointed at the bottom of the picture. It was barely noticeable, obscured by all the bright lights flashing in the club and a few glasses sitting on the table in front of them. Jimmy Butler clear on the other side of the photo probably grabbed everyone’s attention, too. You had to use your imagination to see it, because it was half-buried by Robbie and Isabella’s legs, but it was there.
Robbie’s fingers interlaced with Isabella’s. The two of them held hands. They looked happy with each other.
CHAPTER 31
The security guard out front of Mitchell Hospital was the same guy Shannon flipped in the hallway on her way out of Isabella’s room earlier this evening. He wasn’t pleased to see her.
“I don’t care who you work for,” he said, already waving her off as she approached the front door of the hospital. “CPD, FBI, NRA, NAACP—turn around right now and get off my campus. I ain’t got the patience for you.”
Shannon could barely make eye contact with him. She was deeply ashamed of what she’d done to the poor guy. She held her hands up, careful not to spill any of the coffee she’d bought.
“I’ve come to make peace.” She held a coffee out for him. “I was wrong. I want to apologize for tweaking your arm earlier—”
“Tweaking my arm?” he said. “Lady, you flipped my ass onto the hospital floor!”
“And that was wrong of me to do. I know you were only doing your job, and I should’ve listened when you guys told me to stop.”
“You’re damn right you should have.” He took the coffee. “I ain’t paid enough to fight a cop.”
“Very few people are.” Shannon took a sip from her own coffee.
“Ain’t it late for you to be drinking that?” the guard asked.
“I think I’ve got a long night ahead of me.”
“Oh yeah? What you working on?” He took a drink from the cup she gave him.
“When you saw me today, I was after a girl,” Shannon said, “I think she has a part to play in a murder case.”
He looked at Shannon like she was crazy. “Why didn’t you say nothing before?”
“I was busy.”
He laughed.
“If I had said something, would that have made any difference?”
“It damn-well might have,” he said.
“Right. I’m sure you all would’ve put your tasers down as soon as I screamed I was on a case.”
“I ain’t saying you wouldn’t have gotten shocked once or twice.” He sipped the coffee. “But it wouldn’t have gone further than that, that you have my word on.”
How nice.
“Is that a professional courtesy or a hint of chivalry?”
“All of us here got respect for the work you folks at CPD do,” he said. “Male or female.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me visit the girl I’m here to see?”
He considered that for a moment. Then, as if he thought better of it, he grabbed the radio on his shoulder anyway. “What’s her name?”
“Isabella Arroz.”
The guard let go of his radio. He didn’t seem too pleased to hear Shannon request to see Isabella.
“Had to be her,” he said.
“What?”
“Your girl left today.”
“That was quick,” Shannon said.
“Damn quick. So quick she forgot to make arrangements for her baby’s body.”
A chill washed over Shannon. “She left the baby behind?”
He nodded. “I been doing this job twenty years, and I ain’t never seen anybody leave their own kid behind like that.” He looked up at the moon like it had some kind of answer for him. “I mean, we understand grief and all that, sure, but ain’t once have I seen a mother leave her child like that girl Isabella did.”
How was that possible? Isabella was so drugged when Shannon saw her a couple hours ago, she had no idea who Shannon was. How could she have left the hospital? And what mother would leave behind her baby’s body?
“Did anyone see her go?”
“The front desk probably, but they all swear they didn’t,” he said. “The way all those ladies get talking with each other, it’s a miracle they spot anybody coming or going through that door.
“Anyhow, we got her leaving on camera.”
“She wasn’t alone, was she?” Shannon asked.
The guard shook his head. “You want to see the video?”
“Not if she left with a guy missing half his ear.”
The guard looked surprised at Shannon’s guess. “How’d you know that?”
“That’s her brother,” she said. She turned around and started through the semicircular drop-off and pick-up zone in front of the hospital.
“Goodbye!” the guard called after her. “Nice talking to you.”
There was no time for any of that. She jogged through a flower bed out front of the hospital and didn’t stop until she was at the front passenger door of Dedrick’s car.
“What’d he say?” Dedrick sat behind the wheel, looking nearly as beat-down as Shannon, but somehow still fresh. She was lucky he didn’t have the kids tonight, or she might’ve not been able to convince him to come along.
“He said we need to go check Isabella’s house.” She buckled her seatbelt and closed the door.
“All right,” he said, “but did you have to give him my coffee?”
“Coffee is a better social lubricant than alcohol. I had to get him talking.”
Dedrick put the car in drive, then hunched over the wheel and sighed.
“You keep treating me like this, and one of these days, I’m gonna leave you,” he said.
CHAPTER 32
From down the street, Dedrick and Shannon didn’t see any lights on in Isabella Arroz’s home.
“You think they’re actually asleep?” Dedrick asked as he turned the car’s engine off. They parked near the corner—just far enough to keep out of sight of anyone who wasn’t looking for them.
“If they’re in there, not a chance,” Shannon said. “You ready?”
“I am if our boys are.”
Shannon put her short-range radio to her mouth. “Check in.”
Six other officers answered her call. They’d stationed themselves at various points around the Arroz household. Two waited in their cars—one in front of the house, and one in the alleyway behind—in case someone tried to run. Two more officers would join Dedrick and Shannon at the front door, and the final pair of officers would take the back door.
Everyone was ready to go.
“Looks like our boys are punctual tonight,” Dedrick said.
Good. Shannon was concerned that the short notice of her request would equate to holdups, but everything fell into place.
“They’re not all ‘boys.’ You should use a more gender-neutral term.” Shannon pulled back the slide on her Glock. “It’s a new millennium.”
“Sure,” he said. “Does that mean we’re hitting the showers together back at the station?” Dedrick flashed a cheesy grin at her. He popped the trunk, then got out of the car before she punched him in the leg.
“What an enlightened attitude.” Shannon joined him at the rear of the Impala.
He picked through papers, binders, and all sorts of mundane things needed for their jobs. He kept it all in his trunk. Along with a hard shotgun case.
Dedrick pulled the case forward. He sat it on top of a grocery bag which held a spare change of clothes, should they ever have to work in bad weather.
The case’s latches clacked open under his thumbs. Inside, his black Remington 870P laid on gray egg-crate foam. There were two boxes of shells next to it—one filled with triple-aught buckshot, and the other with rubber slugs.
He slid the shotgun’s pump forward then slipped in six rounds of buckshot
.
Shannon was content with her Glock. That’s all she’d ever needed.
“Ready when you are,” Shannon said.
Dedrick pumped the shotgun, chambering a round. He jammed another shell into the receiver.
“Let’s do it.”
“Move in,” Shannon said into the radio.
She and Dedrick started down the street hunched over like they were in a war zone. They crouched behind trashcans, leaned up against fences, hid behind a car which had been left at the curb for so long, the city paved the latest coat of asphalt around it.
All the while, Shannon kept an eye on Isabella’s house.
Nothing had changed. No lights came on, no blue glow from a TV radiating through the curtains in the front window—not even a porch light from the old man’s half of the duplex next door.
They met the pair of officers assigned to breach the front door with them at the end of Isabella’s driveway. Shannon saw the second pair of officers—the team assigned to the house’s back door—hop the fence into the backyard.
Good so far.
“Go!” Shannon whispered.
She, Dedrick, and the pair of officers with them sprinted for the front door.
On the porch, one of the officers brought his battering ram to bear on the doorknob.
Dedrick went first, shotgun aimed into the house.
“CPD!” he yelled.
Shannon followed, yelling, “Police! Get on the ground! Police!”
The two officers at the back door yelled similarly. “CPD! Get down! On the ground! CPD!”
It all mixed into an unintelligible flurry of screaming, anger, and spittle in the darkness. Lights flipped on in the house. Children cried and screamed from the back.
No one in the living room.
The officers in the rear of the house signaled to Shannon that the kitchen was also clear.
Shannon caught Dedrick’s eye. They paired off and went to clear the bedrooms together.
They moved down the small hallway. Was that someone’s footsteps? She couldn’t hear it over the sound of children wailing. Was that a gun being cocked? They stopped at a door decorated with stickers of Mickey Mouse and his pals, the Ninja Turtles and Daniel Tiger.
Dedrick busted the door in with the butt of his shotgun. “CPD!”
“Police!” Shannon yelled as she came in behind him. “Police! Get down!”
The children screamed bloody murder.
Shannon turned the lights on. As soon as the room lit up, Dedrick swung his shotgun down fast as he could.
Isabella’s little brother and sister sat huddling each other, tears streaming down their faces, mouths twisted in horror. They were balled up with each other on a twin bed made up with sheets from the new Star Wars movie.
Shannon checked the closet, to make sure someone wasn’t waiting to ambush them. Nothing in there but a smattering of clothes, shoes, and an old comforter bag filled with toys. She holstered her Glock and turned her attention to the kids. They were in hysterics.
“It’s okay, guys.” Dedrick tried to calm them down by running his fingers through their nests of dark hair. “We’re here to help you—we wouldn’t hurt you. We’re the good guys.”
The sobs slowed down. Dedrick knelt at the side of the bed, his big hands on each child’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry for scaring you guys,” he said. “We wanted to help you. We thought there might be bad people in here.”
“What?” The little girl began crying harder. “Bad people?”
“No, no sweetheart, don’t cry! They’re not here.” Dedrick stroked her cheek. “Don’t worry. Detective Rourke and I just checked—no bad people anywhere in here, right?”
“Right,” Shannon said. “I just made sure, personally.”
One of the officers leaned into the room from the hallway. “House is clear. Nobody home.”
“See?” Shannon said. “No bad people.”
Both children looked relieved by this. The little girl wiped tears away with her hands, and the little boy brought the sleeve of his Ninja Turtles pajamas up under his nose to wipe away his snot.
“We’re safe?” the girl asked.
“Of course!” Dedrick said. “I wouldn’t let any bad people make you guys unsafe. I’m a police officer.”
The little girl cracked an unsure smile at him.
Dedrick took a spot next to them on the bed. His leg smothered Kylo Ren’s face on the bedsheet.
“Can you guys tell us something?”
Using a glance, the kids checked with each other.
“Did Isabella come home earlier?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said.
It wasn’t hard to see she wasn’t telling the whole truth, so Dedrick turned to the little boy, who couldn’t have been older than seven.
“What about you?”
“Bella said if you guys come here, we aren’t supposed to—” The little boy slapped both hands over his mouth.
“Stupid!” The girl pushed him. She was probably somewhere around ten.
“Hey, now,” Dedrick said. “Be nice to your brother. He’s not stupid. He just wants to tell the truth. That’s a good thing.” He looked at the boy. “Right?”
The boy nodded. His hands stayed over his mouth.
“But Bella told us not to talk to you,” the girl said. “She said police are bad guys. She said you’d arrest us and beat us up if we talked to you.”
“Did she say that?” Dedrick said. “We’re talking now, aren’t we?”
“Yes.” The little girl didn’t sound too sure of that.
“Have I arrested you?”
She shook her head. The little girl had the same shining, straight, black hair as Isabella, and it swayed across her shoulders.
“Have I beat you or your brother up?”
She checked with her brother, who shrugged. “I guess not.”
“Well, what do you think then? Am I bad a guy?”
The little girl studied Dedrick for a moment. She narrowed her eyes, as if she could peer through any lies he might have veiled himself in. She looked him up, down, and all over until she was satisfied that maybe, just maybe, this time her older sister had been wrong about this one thing.
“How about you?” Dedrick said to the boy.
He dropped his hands from his mouth, threw his head back and laughed.
“Does Detective Rourke look like a bad guy?”
“She’s a girl,” the little girl said back. “She’s not a guy!”
“That’s true.” Dedrick beamed at her. “So if I’m not a bad guy, and Detective Rourke can’t be a bad guy, what does that make us?”
Both kids pondered this for a moment. It was a thoughtful question to consider. What answer would this police officer with the friendly smile and the tired eyes want them to say? What would get them in trouble, and what wouldn’t? And how could they rectify their answer with what Isabella had told them already?
They’d have to navigate carefully.
“Good guys!” the boy said.
“That’s right!” Dedrick said. He held up his hand for a high-five, and the little boy slapped his palm.
Shannon couldn’t help but smile. Even given the circumstances for why they were here, who wouldn’t think that was cute?
“So do you guys think you can tell us the truth now?” Dedrick asked. “Do you know where Isabella went?”
Again, the kids looked at each other. They conversed with their eyes quite a bit, these two.
“Yes,” the girl said. “She and Afonso went to Canada.”
The hair on the back of Shannon’s neck stood on end. If Isabella and Afonso made it to the border before the authorities were alerted, they were good as gone. If they didn’t, and Border Patrol picked them up, things would be a lot harder all around.
She started to say something to Dedrick, but he held up a hand while keeping his eyes locked on the kids.
“Okay,” Dedrick said evenly. “Canada. Can you tell me h
ow you know Isabella and Afonso went there?”
The girl looked around the room. Her hands chased after each other in her lap. However she came by that information, she didn’t want to say it out loud.
“It’s all right,” Dedrick said. “You won’t get in trouble. I promise.”
Her mouth twisted into a grimace. “I was up past bedtime. I like to play in the closet sometimes.”
“That one?” Shannon pointed to the little closet in the corner of the room with the bag of toys inside.
“Yes,” the girl said. “Sometimes I hear Bella and Afonso talking.”
Shannon walked over to the closet. She pushed the clothes on hangers aside, then pulled out the plastic comforter bag with all the toys.
“Through the wall?” Dedrick asked.
The little girl shook her head. “I heard their voices.”
Shannon took the shoe boxes off the shelf at the top of the closet and sat them on the floor. Short as she was, she couldn’t quite see if she’d cleared the shelf or if there was anything else on it. She shined her light up there and saw the very top edge of a metallic vent cover shine back.
“A vent,” she said. “In the closet.”
“That wall is shared with the living room,” Dedrick said. “I bet that vent goes straight through.”
He turned his attention back to the little girl.
“This is very important, okay?” He looked straight into her eyes so she could see he meant business. “Even if you weren’t telling the truth before about anything you said, you have to now. I promise I won’t get mad if you lied.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
Dedrick grabbed her little hands. “You’re sure your sister said the word, ‘Canada?’”
“Yes.” She pointed to a map of North America pinned on the stretch of wall to the right of the bedroom door. “Canada.”
“Can you go over to that map and point to Canada?” Dedrick said.
She hopped up from the bed, and reached up toward the map. Her finger touched Canada—exactly on the stretch of land which connected to Michigan over the St. Clair River.
“Do you know where they went?” Dedrick said. “What city?”
“No.”
“I do,” Shannon said.
Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1 Page 18