“Do you?” Marcie popped her head out of the closet. “Because there’s a certain tall, dark, and handsome CPD detective I know….”
“Stop.”
Marcie laughed and vanished back into the closet. “I love my family,” she said. “But sometimes I wonder, just as you do. What would another life have been like? What kind of person would I be if I didn’t come home to Steve and the kids every night? Even if I worked this job, how would I pass the time?”
“I got a dog, named him after my favorite celebrity, and I treat him like he’s my only child.” Shannon closed the door on the cabinet. There was nothing of note inside it. Just a lot of empty picture frames, candles, and a bag of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons—which seemed to multiply on their own in Shannon’s kitchen drawer, too.
She moved to the cabinet door to the right and opened it. More empty picture frames. She sensed a motif. Or perhaps a psychological problem.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Marcie said.
“Frank.”
“I know you enjoy odd music,” Marcie said. “Frank Zappa?”
“Nope.”
“Then don’t tell me. I’ll get it.” She stepped out of the front closet. “Actually, I’d appreciate one hint.”
“You were on the right track—Frank is named after a musician.”
She nodded and shut the closet door behind her. “I’ll figure it out before the day’s over.”
“You’ve probably heard one of their songs in a mov—”
Marcie shushed her. “One hint. Please.”
This was a woman who took her guessing games seriously. It seemed Marcie really did have an excess of mental energy to burn off.
“I’m going to go check around for a bedroom,” Marcie said. “Are you all right down here?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Shannon closed the door on the second cabinet full of picture frames. “Jennica Ausdall had a lot of empty picture frames and not a whole lot of pictures to put in them, it would seem.”
There were decorations on the living room walls—vases, some art prints, what looked to be a pair of genuine paintings, and some other little doodads, but no pictures of Jennica, Cooper, or anyone else.
Strange.
The front door opened behind them. Shannon couldn’t see the door over the back of the couch, but she assumed it was the pair of officers they’d been waiting on. She and Marcie could use some help.
“What the hell is this?”
Shannon recognized the voice. It was Cooper.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
She stood up and saw him addressing Marcie.
“I’m Detective Marcie Talbot with the Chicago PD Violent Crimes Division. You must be Cooper.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I told her,” Shannon said.
His eyes moved to her. He hadn’t noticed she was standing there the whole time. “I remember you,” he said. “You’re that detective from yesterday. You can’t barge into my house unannounced.”
“I’m afraid I can.” Shannon pointed at the warrant taped to the glass door.
Cooper glanced at it.
“Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?” Shannon asked.
“I don’t care.” He stepped out of the entry foyer and turned to his right. A stairway led up to a loft that looked down on the living room. Shannon followed him up.
The loft was actually a hallway. Cooper opened the first door he came across. The bedroom behind it was a mess—definitely a teenager’s room. It smelled like cloves, and in the far corner, beyond a pair of dirty dishes, there were enough trophies, medals, and ribbons clustered together on the floor to crush Shannon alive.
Closer to the door, along the wall to the left, there was a modern, dark wood dresser with a mirror. Its top was covered in junk—old Gatorade bottles, dirty ash trays, more dirty plates, clothes for all seasons, and pictures. Pictures of Cooper and his friends, a dozen or so pictures of Cooper with various girls, and more still of Cooper at high school parties around bonfires, in basements and houses where some kid’s parents had probably gone on vacation for a weekend.
Cooper yanked a drawer open on his dresser, then pulled a ball of unfolded clothes out. He threw them on his unmade bed.
On the near corner of his dresser was a picture of a little boy sitting on a man’s shoulders. The man had practically the same face as Cooper, and the same long, lean arms. Both had smiles as wide as their faces.
She had to get Cooper to warm up to her. Maybe he knew something about Leigh or Robert Norwaldo which would put their part in Jennica’s murder into focus.
“Where have you been staying?” she said.
“With my Uncle Greg in Naperville.”
“That’s only a lateral move from Glen Ellyn, isn’t it?”
“It’s fine.”
“Are the girls cuter?”
He rolled his eyes.
All right, that was a dead conversational thread. What else could she ask to get him talking? He was in football, right?
“Have you been going to football practice?”
“Nope.” He moved on to the next drawer. “I quit today.”
All things considered, that was understandable.
“I get that,” Shannon said. “Sometimes we do drastic things when we’re put under sudden stress.” God knew she’d done drastic things more than once.
“It wasn’t drastic. I hated football. I’d hated it for years, but Jennica wouldn’t let me stop playing.” He brushed past her and flung open a closet door, then grabbed out a large suitcase and threw it on the bed, next to the pile of clothes.
“Why wouldn’t she let you stop playing?”
Cooper sighed. “Like you actually care.”
“I might not. We’ll never know if you never tell me.”
He zipped past her and rolled his eyes once more. Being on the receiving end of that felt worse than she imagined. “She thought I needed to earn a scholarship, and football was the best way for me to do it.”
“You thought otherwise.”
He grabbed half the mound of clothes on his bed and stuffed them in the bag. “I guess it probably was,” he said. “Jennica had that really annoying quality of being pushy about something and usually being right, too—but we’re rich. Why do I need a scholarship? Give it to some kid who can actually use it.”
“Did your mother work?” Shannon asked.
“No.”
“So she probably lived off of what your father made when he was alive.”
“Probably.” The second half of the clothes were scooped up by his long arms and dropped into the suitcase, which he then zipped up and sat by the door
If he walked out of this bedroom, Shannon knew she was going to lose him. He clearly didn’t trust her—in his mind, she was probably another annoying adult like his guidance counselor or his math teacher. What teenager spent more time than they had to with their math teacher?
Still, even if he didn’t realize it, he had to know something. There had to be a way she could get him to open up.
“Is that a picture of your father?” Shannon pointed at the photo on the corner of Cooper’s dresser.
“Yep.” Cooper walked over to his closet and pulled a shoebox down from the top shelf.
“I heard about what happened to him.”
“You and everybody else.”
“Were you close to him or was he a total dweeb, too?” She cringed. Dweeb? Was she trying to be cool for him? That word was outdated by the time she went to high school.
Shoebox in hand, Cooper stepped to his dresser. He opened the lid, began picking up the photos in front of him, and dropped them in the box. Shannon snuck a quick glance around him and saw the box was full of old pictures. There were some of Cooper smiling with friends, smiling with a girl he’d probably dated, and she thought she may have seen one or two of happier times with his mother.
“You don’t want to forget this one.” Shannon held the picture of
Cooper and his father out to him.
He turned to her and slowed down. His hand crept up like the picture was made from ash—that even the gusts created by his movements would cause it to disintegrate and whirl away into the atmosphere.
Could be Shannon had made a better inroad with him that she thought.
“You’re kinda old school, aren’t you?” she said.
“Huh?” Cooper sounded distant, like his mind had phased out of the room and into some happier memory.
“All the pictures.” She motioned at the shoebox under his arm. “Probably aren’t too many people your age who have any pictures outside of what’s on their phones.”
He took the picture of his father from Shannon. “I just like having something to hold on to. I don’t trust anyone to handle my pictures but me.”
“Considering what I found in those cabinets in your mother’s living room, that makes sense.”
That caught him off-guard; she could see it on his face. Now Shannon felt she was getting somewhere with him.
“You saw the empty frames.” There seemed to be a faint hint of shame in his eyes too.
“I saw them.”
His fist balled up.
“Did Jennica do that?”
He nodded.
“I get why it was hard for her to look at pictures of Dad after what happened. But she could have put them away.” A quiver crept into his voice. “She didn’t have to burn them. She didn’t have to keep the empty frames around like some sick reminder that he was gone.”
Shannon approached him slowly. She rested her hand on his arm, and guided him to sit on his bed.
“You know what the hell of it is?” There was a bitter pang in his voice.
“No.”
“A month after she burns all our old family pictures, she goes and has that memorial to Dad installed at the school.”
“The plaque in the garden?”
Cooper sniffled and nodded. “I was twelve years old. I couldn’t figure out why she’d act like she cared about him in public, but when we were home alone, she hated him. She made a rule that I couldn’t say his name in the house—I couldn’t even say the word dad.”
He wiped his nose. “From then on, I felt like there was no way I could trust her.”
Shannon patted his back. “I know what that’s like.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “No you don’t. You’re just saying that as like an interrogation technique or whatever.”
“You aren’t the only one in Chicago with a messed up childhood. You’re probably not even the only one in Glen Ellyn, or even on this street.”
He chuckled. “What did your parents do?”
“A lot of things. For starters, my father was a mobster.”
“What? Aren’t you a cop?”
She nodded. “That’s what they tell me.”
“They let you be a cop when your dad was in the mafia? Is Rourke an Italian name?”
“He was in the Irish mob,” she said, “and, yeah, they did let me be a cop.”
He stared at her, completely astonished. “Well, are you gonna tell me about it, or is that not how this works?”
She laughed and leaned her good shoulder up against the wall. “I thought it was funny you called your mom by her first name. Because I called my father ‘Tommy.’”
“Did he ever get arrested?”
“I was young the last time he did,” she said. “I don’t remember much about it, except after he was gone, men came by the house to check on my family, especially one guy in particular who, I found out later, was his partner.”
“Why’d he come by?” Cooper was completely enthralled by the whole thing.
“To give my mother money, I imagine. She didn’t work, either. I’d guess he also wanted to make sure she wasn’t talking to anyone she shouldn’t be talking to.”
“Did your mom ever tell you what he was up to?”
Shannon shook her head. “I was too young to understand.”
“Well, what about when you got older? Did he ever come home and tell you he’d stabbed a guy that day or something?”
“The only time he talked to me was when he wanted me to go get him a fresh Scotch, or when he wanted to beat on my brother. He always said I was a squealer, so he didn’t tell me anything about what he did—not that I wanted to hear about it.”
“Why would he say that?”
“Probably because he knew I wouldn’t keep a secret for him,” she said. “A lot like you and your mother, I didn’t trust him. I hated him.”
Cooper smiled at her. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
A car’s horn honked outside.
“Did you come here alone?” Shannon said.
“I forgot about Uncle Greg.” Cooper ran to his bedroom window. He pulled the blinds open and waved outside. “He’s been sitting in the driveway since I came in, waiting for me.”
“How’s he handling all of this?”
Cooper shrugged. “He’s been fine. I think I’m going to stay with him for a while. I’m eighteen, so I guess I could get my own place if I wanted, but I think it’d be too hard to do that and finish school at the same time.”
That was refreshingly responsible for a kid his age.
“So you’ll be at his house for a while?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind giving me his address or a phone number where I can reach you?” she said. “Just in case I have any other questions. I promise I’ll call you if I ever plan on coming over.”
He grabbed the shoebox of photos off the dresser. “I’ll give you my cell number.” Cooper recited it for her.
Shannon wrote it down in her notebook. “One more thing,” she said. “Do you know anything about your mom’s boyfriend and his gambling?”
“Leigh?” Cooper tucked the shoebox under his arm, then grabbed his suitcase with his free hand. He started toward the steps. “I know he’s terrible at it, and that it got him in trouble more than once.”
“Did he and your mother argue about it?”
“You kidding me?” He started down the steps and Shannon followed. “I told you they’d argue about anything.”
“What about his bookie?”
“They could’ve argued about that.” He reached the bottom step and let the bag’s rollers glide across the floor. The horn honked outside again.
“No, I mean, did you know anything about his bookie?”
Cooper shook his head. “Sorry.” He stopped at the front door and rested his hand on the handle of his bag.
“That’s all right, Cooper,” Shannon said. “I’ll call you if I think of any other questions.”
He opened the door, then smiled at her. “Thanks, Detective.”
When he stepped out, Shannon waved goodbye.
At the same time, Gregory Wendt rolled down the window of his Mercedes Benz. “How’s your investigation faring, detective?”
“It’s fine.” Not that she’d say otherwise to anyone outside of CPD.
“There’s a rumor that you arrested Jennica’s boyfriend, Leigh, yesterday.”
“The rumor mill works fast,” she said.
Gregory smiled and laughed. His teeth were a perfect white against his tanned, butterball face. “I always thought he was a bit rambunctious,” he said. “Jennica needed someone patient to balance her out, but what she did was choose a man with a temper and a gambling problem.”
“What do you know about that gambling problem?”
“I kept to my own business.”
Of course. “So you don’t know anything about a man named Robert Norwaldo?”
“I know less about him than I do you, Detective.”
Shannon fired off an unamused smile at him. “If anything about him jogs your memory, you let me know.”
“I shall.” He waved at her, then backed out of the driveway and rolled up the window.
Shannon watched him go down the street before she went back into the house and closed the door behind her.
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“Was your dog named after Frank Sinatra?” Marcie’s voice came from the upper floor.
Shannon walked around the corner of the foyer where she saw Marcie standing at the top of the steps. “No.”
“How about Cooper? Did he tell you anything useful?”
The cabinet with the empty frames was partway open. Shannon walked over to close it. “Nothing I hadn’t already figured out myself.”
CHAPTER 18
“So, you think Leigh Corvath’s blind bookie knows more than he’s telling you?” Marcie sat in the passenger seat of Shannon’s Jeep as they drove from Jennica Ausdall’s house in Glen Ellyn to Robert Norwaldo’s place in Aurora. She had a datebook opened on her lap, and was filling out the boxes with wording Shannon couldn’t see—on the account of the lettering being rather small, and also, she was driving.
“He’s got something more than he told me,” Shannon said. “I found tire tracks at his house that were a match for Leigh’s Stingray.”
“And from that you assume he had a part in Jennica Ausdall’s murder?”
“Mr. Corvath says the bookie had the car.”
“Mr. Corvath is wearing an orange jumpsuit in county right now, and like so many other men guilty of a crime, will say whatever deflects suspicion off him.”
“My theory doesn’t deflect suspicion from him,” Shannon said. “He’s still the man behind the wheel when Jennica Ausdall is run down.”
“And you believe the bookie lent Leigh’s car back to him for that?”
“Maybe the bookie wanted Leigh to go to the store and pick up some milk, but he decided to run a couple other errands while he was out.”
A bump on I-88 between Glen Ellyn and Aurora sent Marcie’s black pen bouncing from her hand. She bent down and picked it up, then went back to scribbling in her notebook. “Have you considered that it’s possible the bookie never had Leigh Corvath’s car to begin with?”
“It’s possible, but why would Corvath specifically name his bookie? Why not some hapless jerk who doesn’t know how to dance around the law?”
“It could be misdirection,” Marcie said. “The man running an illegal gambling operation looks more suspicious than the man running a flower shop.”
Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2 Page 9