The Coffee Shoppe Killer

by Rod Kackley

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Two of the cops went into the coffee bar, first, while Sean and the trooper who had been behind the driver’s wheel waited outside, out of sight. Once they got a table, they had to hold on, the place was packed, they chilled.

  “Do you see here?” said Cop #1

  “Yeah, she’s right there,” said his partner with a nod toward the serving station where the waitresses placed their orders.

  Coming this way, #1 texted to Sean who was waiting by the SUV.

  It was the best of both worlds for this arrest. Not only was Mary Eileen coming their way, she was also going to walk to the table occupied by two of the best state cops in the business.

  They smiled. Mary Eileen smiled. Everyone was happy. But not for long.

  Once Sean got the text from his men inside, he and his partner quickly walked to the front door.

  Come in now, read the next text.

  And that is just what they did. Sean moved behind Mary Eileen. He hesitated. Sean wanted to remember Mary Eileen as a free woman, before she became a criminal suspect on her way to jail, a woman on trial, and then a woman serving a double life sentence for two murders.

  He wanted to remember the Mary Eileen that he had fallen in love with, not Mary Eileen the criminal.

  She looked over her shoulder, almost with a sense of dread, almost knowing that the something she sensed would go wrong this morning was about to happen.

  Mary Eileen saw Sean’s eyes first. Then she registered the rest of his face. He was smiling. But it was a stiff, tense smile, not the smile of a lover who had found the one he loved, ready to begin a new life together.

  No, Mary Eileen sensed Sean wasn’t waiting for a latte. She knew he was there to tell her that it would soon be time for her to reinvent herself one more time. But this time, she would do it behind the walls of a prison.

  Sean was just as handsome as she remembered him. Oh hell, it hadn’t been that long since Mary Eileen had run away from St. Isidore. Still, it seemed like a lifetime. And in a way it was. Every time she reinvented herself, Mary Eileen felt like she started a new life.

  Oh, how she had wanted to start a new life with this man, this Sean Patrick Flynn.

  But it was not to be. Mary Eileen felt like she was outside her body watching all of this play out on a TV screen.

  He showed her his badge. The men at the table got up behind her. Another man appeared at Sean’s shoulder. Mary Eileen knew they were all cops. She knew that one way or another it was time to pay for every mistake she had made, every crime she had committed.

  Sean read Mary Eileen her rights. He Mirandized her as they would say on the TV crime shows that had taught Mary Eileen so much about her craft. She saw his lips moving, but even though she nodded her head to indicate she understood, Mary Eileen hadn’t heard what Sean had said.

  The cops behind her grabbed her arms and put them behind her so they could put the handcuffs on her wrists. Sean moved to her side, took her by the arm and prepared to lead Mary Eileen out the door and to the SUV that was waiting to take her to jail.

  Mary Eileen held firm. She didn’t budge. Mary Eileen didn’t take a step. Sean moved to face her.

  “When did you know?” she said.

  “I always knew.”

  “And still you fell in love with me?”

  “It is time to go.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Twenty Seven

  Amanda and Joy were positively awestruck when they saw Sean and Mary Eileen coming out of Bean There. Joy immediately unleashed her smartphone, an Android with an excellent camera, to take some pictures. Amanda started texting Chronicle headquarters with the bulletin...”Mary Eileen Sullivan arrested in Detroit. State police found her working in a coffee shop. She put up no resistance. Not a shot fired.”

  “Oh my God, is Sean bringing her to this car?” Joy said.

  “We should be so lucky. Good, God! This is huge,” Amanda fairly screamed in Joy’s ear.

  It was the story of a lifetime for both women. They were in on the arrest of St. Isidore’s most notorious female serial killer. Joy and Amanda had found Mary Eileen at the same time state police arrived on the scene, so they could reasonably claim to have discovered Ms. Sullivan. Esther would have no problem making that stretch of journalistic license; both women were sure of that.

  Thoughts of selling the story to a publisher and maybe even getting a movie deal ran rampant through their minds as Joy and Amanda watched Mary Eileen walk toward them with her hands behind her back. Sean was apparently holding her by the handcuffs. His fellow officers followed them. No one showed any signs of a struggle.

  There was a bench seat behind Joy and Amanda that would have been perfect for Mary Eileen, but St. Isidore’s favorite reporters didn’t get that lucky.

  A state police squad car, called by Sean from inside Bean There arrived to transport Mary Eileen back to a jail cell in Detroit. She would be processed, a lawyer would come, and the legal proceedings would begin.

  When Mary Eileen did get back to St. Isidore there was little doubt as to her guilt or innocence. As a matter of fact, she not only confessed to Sean after he read the Miranda warning to her, Mary Eileen apologized.

  “I know what I did was horrendous and wrong. I felt so miserable like I couldn’t go on,” Mary Eileen said. “I would have ended it all, but I didn’t have the courage to kill myself.”

  The only question was, whether she knew what she was doing when she killed two men and disposed of their bodies, or if Mary Eileen had lost touch with reality and the difference between right and wrong.

  Should prosecutors and the members of the jury feel a measure of pity for her as they might for anyone who suffered severe mental and emotional problems that left them incapable of functioning as a rational adult? Or should they consider her to be a cold, calculating, man-hating, serial killer?

  JUST AS IT WAS THE story of a lifetime for Joy and Amanda, it was to be the court case of a career for St. Isidore County Assistant Prosecutor Patricia Fry.

  Chief County Prosecutor Peter Logan could have taken the case himself, but with a woman on trial for her life, he felt the cause of justice — getting a conviction — would best be served if a woman handled the prosecution.

  “It’s mine?” Patricia Fry said. She was amazed to be getting the most famous, or infamous case in St. Isidore County’s history. The only thing that beat it was the kidnapping of a young girl by a former high school teacher. The case never went to trial because police shot the suspect to death.

  The case of Mary Eileen Sullivan was much different. While it was true there was no doubt that she was guilty, Mary Eileen had already confessed, Patricia knew that her lawyer, a sixty-seven-year-old wizard of the law, Michael Morris, could always throw her a curve ball and enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

  Why am I getting this case? Patricia knew the answer without asking it aloud. Because I’m a woman, she thought. In a way that’s insulting because if the suspect were a man and not a woman, I’d still be on midnight drunk tank duty.

  “Of course, Logan could be setting me up to fail,” Patricia told her BFF and roommate, Allyson.

  “He is a pig. There’s no doubt about that,” Allyson replied. She and Patricia were on the same team — two women trying to make a career first, and a name for themselves second, in the St. Isidore County Prosecutor’s Office. Both women were in their late twenties, Allyson was twenty-nine, Patricia was a year younger. And they were both from the Detroit area. St. Isidore seemed like such a second-class pop stand compared to the Motor City.

  “But this is where we start, and we move up from here,” Patricia would say whenever Allyson got down about it. Their classmates, most of them from the University of Michigan School of Law, had gone into either corporate or private practice, hanging out their own shingles. Allyson and Patricia had one more thing in common. They were raised by cops.

  “They’ve got bad guys here, too,” Pa
tricia would remind her roommate. “We can do good work here.”

  And now she had a chance to do good work. Patricia could send a double murderer to prison for the rest of her life.

  “I’m still worried this is going to be a lose-lose situation.”

  “How?”

  “The best I can do is what everyone expects; life in prison without parole,” Patricia said. “They just want a woman to put a woman behind bars. With me at the table, the defense won’t have a chance to play the sexual discrimination card.”

  “So, cool. What’s wrong with that? Use it to your advantage. You are woman, go ahead and roar.”

  “But if by some fluke Sullivan gets off, I am total burnt toast.”

  “That is true, girlfriend. That is true.”

  I could complain, and maybe I should, Patricia thought, chewing on her lip, but then where would I be? The answer was painfully obvious to her, back in Midnight Court with human vermin that were worse than homicidal; they were boring.

  So, instead of complaining about the unfairness of being singled out to prosecute a woman just because she was female, Patricia sat literally on the edge of a chair in front of her mentor’s desk two days later, and like any good student waited for him to speak.

  Twenty Eight

  Driving his state-issued Crown Vic through the narrow streets of downtown St. Isidore was more than a challenge for Sean, especially being as distracted as he was by the prospect of meeting with A.P. Fry.

  “What does she need me for?” Sean asked his boss, State Police Commander Jack Hart.

  “A.P. Fry says she needs your testimony; you testify. It’s a simple as that.”

  “And my cover gets blown.”

  “Your cover gets blown, big fucking deal. This case is over. There isn’t a soul in town who doesn’t know you were sleeping with her.”

  Sean had to admit that Mary Eileen had done wrong. She had killed, not once but twice, and then she’d done her best to hide the evidence.

  He also knew that as far as Commander Hart was concerned, his career as a state cop was close to being over. Sean had slept with the subject of a double-murder investigation. He might even be in love with her. It was all over the state police cop shop as well as every local law enforcement agency that had an internet connection. There was a good chance since loose lips can lift a career while sinking another, that somebody in blue would slip the story to one of the reporters running around St. Isidore.

  If that happened, Sean was toast. He knew it. Hart knew it. And in a way, that was a very liberating feeling. “If it doesn’t cost me anything to be generous, what the fuck, I might as well go all the way,” Sean had told his reflection in the men's room mirror before going into Hart's office.

  With the law-and-order fever that had taken over the nation, talk show pundits across America were calling for Mary Eileen’s lifelong imprisonment. There was no way Sean was going to let that happen without a fight. If there was ever a doubt in his mind as to what he had to do, it was removed two days before his meeting with Hart when Sean saw Mary Eileen at the county jail.

  Most prisoners shuffle to their side of a bulletproof glass partition that divides those in prison orange from their loved ones, friends, and attorneys. Mary Eileen didn’t shuffle. She glided. Even though she’d been in a jail cell with three other women for the past thirty days, Mary Eileen Sullivan had not lost her sense of style.

  Sean was amazed. She was the one he loved. Sean had admitted that to himself a couple of days before, but it was driven home when he saw Mary Eileen from the other side of the glass. And she was carrying his child. Mary Eileen was several months along now. Her baby bump was showing.

  She smiled. Sean smiled. Their hands met on opposite side of the glass partition. It was the only thing that kept Sean and Mary Eileen apart.

  “How is it?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You look good.”

  “Liar.”

  It was a lie. A bruise under Mary Eileen’s left eye had not healed, nor had the scratch marks on her cheek. Sean noticed the knuckles on her right hand were swollen and raw.

  “The other woman looks worse?”

  “Much.”

  “They want me to testify.”

  “I know.”

  “I can't.”

  “Yes, you can. You will.”

  Sean took a breath. He sat up straighter.

  “I’ll wait for you."

  Mary Eileen smiled and began to stand. She took her hand from the glass, kissed her fingertips and blew the kiss to Sean. They both knew he might have to wait for the rest of his life before he could touch her again.

  Fuck professionalism.

  The skies over St. Isidore were cloudy, as usual. It had just rained. Nothing about the weather improved Sean’s mood. But it certainly reflected his attitude. As Sean piloted the State Police Crown Vic through morning rush hour, he decided to do what he could to keep Patricia Fry at bay. Sean figured his career with the state police was over. There was no way he’d be able to get a job in law enforcement again. The cable TV people didn’t know about him yet. But once Sean took the stand and began to tell his story; they’d be all over him like flies on shit.

  Since his career was over, it wouldn’t cost him a dime to be generous to the woman he loved. So what the fuck, why not go all the fucking way, Sean thought. Why not go all the fucking way?

  Finding Assistant Prosecutor Patricia Fry’s office was as much of a challenge as driving through downtown. After discovering the county courthouse, which was attached to city hall, Sean had to go up one escalator to the third floor, then walk down a hallway to an elevator and go up three more levels.

  “Whoever built this monstrosity should be shot,” Sean muttered under his breath.

  The threat of violence didn’t do much for the other three people in the elevator, all of whom were much smaller and far less intense than Sean. Two women and one man — who of course was afraid that if Sean got weird, it would be up to him to put him down — nervously looked at each for comfort as Sean tapped his fingers on the butt of his Glock.

  One of the women sighed in relief when she noticed the gold State Police badge on Sean’s belt.

  It’s not like Sean didn’t know he’d made an impression on the three civilians and it did serve to lighten his mood. But he still dreaded the pre-trial conference set for nine a.m. with Patricia Fry.

  She didn’t keep him waiting long in the lobby. The Sullivan trial was the only thing on Fry’s agenda for the next three months. Prosecutor Logan had cleared her calendar and assigned her drunk-tank detail to a couple of rookies fresh out of law school.

  Being handed the Sullivan case, for whatever reason, was the break Patricia had been waiting for, but it still scared the hell out of her. If she dropped this ball, Patricia was only too aware that she’d never get another chance at any decent assignment.

  Mary Eileen Sullivan's file was more than a last-chance career case. Patricia knew because of the national, and even international coverage this case was generating; her next step could be a statewide office, or even, not so far down the road, Congress. As long as she didn't blow it, this could be Patricia’s ticket out of St. Isidore.

  She had to go for life without parole. For Patricia to live her life to its fullest, Mary Eileen Sullivan was going to have to live hers in prison. This cop, Sean Patrick Flynn was going to have to live with it.

  Twenty Nine

  Patricia Fry’s office door opened and a mountain of a man walked into her life. Sean Patrick Flynn was easily a foot taller that the assistant prosecutor and probably outweighed her by at least one-hundred pounds.

  “Jesus, the guy is solid muscle,” Patricia would tell Allyson that night.

  “Tall?”

  “Built.”

  “Hot?”

  “Sizzling.”

  But that morning, Patricia couldn’t let any of that show. It seemed like every guy in law school had been over six-feet-tall and
was a total gym rat. Patricia had learned early on that is she gave an inch to these cavemen, they’d take everything she had.

  Rather than stand up to shake Sean’s hand, and be stuck looking up so high that she’d feel like she was falling over backward; Patricia stayed behind her desk and motioned Sean to take a seat.

  “It was the only way I could look him in the eye,” Patricia would tell Allyson while they worked on the last half of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  “If you stood?”

  “I’d be looking right at his cock.”

  “Not where you wanted to be.”

  “Not this morning, that’s for sure.”

  With Sean in the chair across from her desk, Patricia felt comfortable, at least more comfortable than she would have if she’d been in Sean's office.

  The office is my turf, Patricia reminded herself. Even more than the courtroom, this is my neighborhood. And nobody fucks with me in my neighborhood.

  She leaned back just a bit in her chair, but never lost eye contact, as she waited for Sean to speak.

  “Ms. Fry...”

  She raised her hand to stop Sean. Now, she had the advantage. Patricia was just where she wanted to be.

  “Good morning, Detective Flynn. It is detective, right?”

  Sean didn’t answer. He was accustomed to being the one who asked the questions.

  “Tell me about your investigation into the murders at the Coffee Shoppe. You went undercover, correct?”

  “Yes, we began...”

  “Did you fall in love with Mary Eileen Sullivan.”

  Hard as it is to believe a five-foot-three-inch, one-hundred-ten-pound woman could slap a guy Sean’s size hard enough to ring his bell, Patricia Fry had just done it. Even the biggest fell to Mike Tyson. A verbal right hook delivered by Patricia has stopped Sean.