CHAPTER 38
A week after arresting Isabella and Afonso Arroz at the Smitwick’s Metal Recycling Yard, Shannon walked up to the big front desk at the Logan Correctional Center.
“I’m here to see Isabella Arroz.” Shannon held up her star for the desk officer. The name ‘Felton’ was stitched into the dark-blue patch over the right breast pocket of her shirt.
Ms. Felton didn’t appear impressed by Shannon’s star.
“Did you schedule an appointment?” She didn’t look up from her copy of People magazine.
“I called yesterday,” Shannon said. “I asked for two PM. I know I’m a little late.”
Ms. Felton broke her eyes away from an article about the anniversary of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s divorce just to glare at Shannon for a moment.
“It’s 3:30.”
“I know I’m late,” Shannon said. “But, please, would it be possible to do me this one favor?”
Ms. Felton grabbed the handset off the stone-gray phone next to her. As she dialed, her finger stabbed the number pad in a silent protest against Shannon’s perpetuation of injustice.
“I’ve got a visitor for Arroz,” she said into the phone.
A pause. The person on the other end of the line said something barely audible to Shannon.
“The new girl,” Ms. Felton said. “The pretty one. She came in yesterday.”
Another pause.
What would Shannon say to Isabella? ‘Hi, sorry I arrested you, did you know your baby passed before you left the hospital?’ She hadn’t even had a miscarriage. What kind of advice would Shannon give her?
She sighed.
No advice. She’d have to listen. She’d have to be patient and listen to Isabella tell her whatever it was Isabella wanted to tell her. If she wanted to talk about how gross the showers were, okay. If she wanted to lament the lack of beauty supplies, good. If she wanted to complain about the food, fine. Shannon was ready to spend the entire afternoon listening to someone tell her how wrong it was that nearly everything at Logan CC came pre-packaged.
But then, maybe Isabella shouldn’t have conspired to kill Colm. Maybe she shouldn’t have fired on Shannon.
Her shoulder throbbed.
She couldn’t bring that here. She didn’t come to blame Isabella, or to judge her for things she’d done. How could she possibly listen to her if she was too busy resenting her?
This was Shannon’s healing process, too.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” Ms. Felton said.
“What?” Shannon said. “Are you sure you talked to Isabella Arroz?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say why?”
“It’s not my job to know, Detective.”
“Can’t you make her come out?”
“We have regulations and codes to follow too, Ma’am. For instance,” she stood up from behind her big desk and pointed at Shannon’s feet, “that blue line you’re standing on is to be crossed by staff only.”
Shannon rolled her eyes. She took half a step back, stamping the heels of her cross-trainers against the gray linoleum for emphasis.
“What about a police officer who’s come to speak with an inmate?” she said. “What’re the rules on that?”
“Is your visit part of an official investigation?”
“Oh, come on,” Shannon said. “It’s a prison. Make her come out.”
Ms. Felton forced a polite smile. “At Logan Correctional Center, we believe—”
“Fine,” Shannon snapped. She turned and walked toward the glass double doors at the front of the lobby. She opened one partway and stopped.
“If you’re allowed to,” Shannon said, “tell Isabella I’m coming back. Tell her I’m stubborn, and I’ll wear her down long before I’m worn down. Tell her she can’t run from me forever.”
Shannon showed herself out the door before Ms. Felton said anything back to her.
Outside, Dedrick leaned on the hood of his Impala and thumbed through his phone. Frank lay about five feet away, up against the building’s facade where it was nice and shady.
As soon as he noticed Shannon, he hopped up and came running for her.
“How’d he do?” she said to Dedrick.
Dedrick reached out and patted Frank on his hip. “He was great. We took a quick walk, but the whole time, he kept looking at those front doors. I think he wanted to make sure he’d be here the second you came out, so I brought him back.”
“Sounds like my guy.” She smiled at Frank and scratched him under his collar. He leaned into her. “I appreciate you meeting me here. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I came out of there, and…well…you’re—” She looked at Dedrick’s pretty brown eyes and whatever she was going to say flew from her mind.
Way to keep it together, Shannon.
“I’m just glad you came,” she said.
“Me too.” He smiled at her for a moment before his eyes darted down to his phone.
“Anything interesting?”
“Actually, yeah,” he said. “I got a call from a friend at DCFS. They placed Isabella’s little brother and sister with a great aunt of theirs. From the court documents she sent me,” he held his phone up, “it looks like the aunt had tried to contact Isabella and Afonso a number of times over the past four years, but they kept dodging her.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I had the same question,” he said. “People like Isabella and Afonso like to scam the system by keeping checks and food stamps meant to help with the kids. At least that’s what my girl over there said.”
“Your girl over there?”
“You jealous?” Dedrick’s face lit up with a smile.
She blushed.
Dedrick floated up from sitting on the bumper of his car. He had a look in his eyes. One that Shannon knew meant trouble, but she couldn’t help being drawn to it. She’d seen that look in her mind, at the moment when the two of them dropped all the veils of friendship and professionalism between them. The moment when they finally owned the feelings they tried to keep hidden from each other.
“I noticed you’d packed your Jeep,” he said softly. He was close enough that the smell of his cologne wrapped her in cedar. “I thought you might have, but I wish you hadn’t.”
Her heart beat so fast and hard, she barely heard him.
“There was something I wanted to give you before you left for good—something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”
He brushed his fingers across the back of her hand.
Completely unbidden, Shannon closed her eyes. His arm reached around the small of her back, and all conscious thought melted from her. He pressed her body against his. The muscles in his chest practically enveloped her, and she loved it.
Shannon wanted nothing more than to lay her ear against him and listen to him breathe, listen to his heart beat, and to hear the sound of his voice resonate in him as he confessed to her all the things she ached to hear.
His other hand came up from her shoulder blades. He cupped the back of her neck. Her heart wrapt against the inside of her chest in anticipation. She almost couldn’t stand it anymore.
Mercifully, Dedrick brought his lips to hers. They were gentle as butterfly wings. His hand slid into her hair, his fingers weaved through her loose curls, and finally, the two of them locked to each other.
She pressed into his kiss. Shannon wanted to explore every part of his lips—the small creases, the soft skin, the way they made her weak when he smiled.
With Dedrick holding her, she was small and she was vulnerable—but she was safe. Nothing could reach her here. Nothing from her past could torment her. Nothing would pull them apart, if that’s what they both wanted.
She pushed herself away.
“Dedrick—” Shannon looked up and into his soft eyes.
“What’s wrong?” He let her slide out of his arms.
Why had she ruined that moment? Why couldn’t she let something beautiful be beautiful without destr
oying it with her own hangups? She could have cried.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was stupid of me.” He handed her Frank’s leash, grabbed his keys out of his pocket, then walked toward the driver’s door of his Impala.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped.
“It wasn’t that stupid,” Shannon said.
Dedrick smiled at her, though he couldn’t totally wash the disappointment off his face.
“When you make it to Stockholm,” he said, “forget about me.”
Her heart could have shattered right then and there. Why did she let her insecurities get in the way of everything good in her life?
He got in the car and started the engine.
Frank barked once at him. Shannon waved goodbye. Dedrick tapped the horn and drove off.
She wanted to tell him her Jeep wasn’t packed for Stockholm. With the mandatory time-off for physical therapy for her shoulder, she’d finally got her chance to take Frank to the Indiana Dunes.
After that, Shannon would be back in Chicago. She’d be back on the job for CPD.
CHAPTER 39
“I got a hundred on this one.” Miss Honey slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the top rail of the pool table. “You up for it?”
Michael watched the guy she played against look back at his friend resting an elbow on a nearby table and sipping a vodka tonic. He shrugged.
“You won three outta four so far, bro,” he said. “She wanna lose a hundred, that’s her problem.”
His friend had taken Miss Honey’s bait, but her opponent still looked unsure.
“Come on, sugar,” she said, “gimme a chance to win something back.”
He rubbed chalk on the end of his cue stick. “Rack ’em up.”
“There we go!” She clapped. She walked over to the coin receiver, placed her quarters in the slide, and pressed it in. The balls rolled out like thunder in the pool hall.
She wasn’t losing this game.
“Another cranberry juice?” The waitress put her hand on the crook of Michael’s elbow.
“Sure,” he said. “And get her another whiskey sour.”
The waitress looked at Miss Honey.
“The lady at the pool table?”
“Yep.”
“You two aren’t like…” She looked at Michael across her eyes. “You know.”
“We’re not,” he said.
The waitress smiled at him. “Okay, then, I’ll be back with your drinks.”
Back at the pool table, Miss Honey hooted after sinking two balls on the break. That guy she played had no idea what he’d just been roped into. Nobody around here did. That’s why they drove all the way out to Kokomo.
Michael’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and looked at it. A number he didn’t have saved in his contacts called him. Normally, he wouldn’t answer, but he wanted to step outside for a smoke anyhow. He tapped the green answer button on his phone’s screen.
“Give me a second,” he said into it.
The music in the pool hall was too loud to carry a conversation, so he stepped through the side exit just past his table.
Once out in the muggy, Indiana air, he trapped the phone between his shoulder and his ear.
“Go ahead,” he said as he dug for his father’s cigarette case in his pocket.
“Michael?” It was a man’s voice—dry, but smooth.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Ewan.”
His skin turned clammy. He stopped fishing for the cigarette case. “How’d you get this number?”
“I heard through the grapevine that someone claiming to work on my behalf went looking into my son’s murder.”
“Oh yeah?” Michael said. “That was nice of someone.”
“I know it wasn’t you,” Ewan said. “You’re smart enough to stay out of something when the bosses ask you to.”
“That’s right.” Michael grabbed the cigarette case and flipped it open with his thumb.
“Still, it’s peculiar that someone sneaking around, looking into Colm’s death, would say they worked for me. Most people wouldn’t care for all the trouble that may come with telling a lie like that. Most people wouldn’t care to investigate my son’s death at all.”
Michael lit his cigarette. “Yeah, most people in Chicago tend to their own business—or so I hear.”
“Most people,” Ewan said. “But someone who was close to Colm might lack good sense.”
“No argument from me.” Michael puffed his cigarette. The line stayed silent, until he thought he heard the sound of ice clinking in a glass. A car drove past, blasting Kendrick Lamar over the stereo.
No one spoke. It was as if he and Ewan were feeling each other out through the dead air, judging intents, making future plans and counter plans. Until finally…
“Goodbye, Michael,” Ewan said.
The call disconnected.
Michael finished his cigarette, then went back inside to see how Miss Honey’s hustle went. He knew he’d only be able to ignore Ewan Keane for so many years.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks goes to my wife, Arianna, for putting up with all the nights I locked myself in my office and pecked away at this book, and all the others, published and unpublished.
Thanks to the Honorable Salvador Vazquez of the Lake County Superior Court Criminal Division for lending his legal expertise as it pertains to warrants and the legality of investigative tactics.
And thank you to all my friends and colleagues at the Author’s Corner, notably Mike Omer and Shayne Rutherford for their beta reads of Chicago Blood and for being my sounding board, and Perry Constantine for his keen eyes.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Sign Up To Get Book 2 for 99c!
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Sign Up To Get Book 2 for 99c!
Acknowledgements
Chicago Blood: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 1 Page 21