Shannon rolled her eyes and grabbed it.
All the expected paperwork sat inside the folder. The first page was a notice that a 911 call had been made, with a box checked indicating that an electronic transcript of the call was being processed, but not yet available. Behind that was another page with an address scrawled out in Boyd’s handwriting.
“Northern Cardinal Preparatory Academy?”
“Fancy place for a devil dog such as yourself, I know,” Boyd said. “But you know what they say about justice being blind, et cetera, et cetera.”
Shannon closed the folder. She got up from her chair, then grabbed her work bag from her desk.
“There are a few officers on-scene already,” Boyd said. “Try to be more enthusiastic with them than you are with me. If they realize that being a Violent Crimes detective is as boring as being a beat cop, I’m all out of fresh faces for my unit.”
“I’ll try not to mess it up for you.” Shannon made her way toward the elevator.
“Atta girl!”
She knew she shouldn’t be this surly about going on a case. But after the string of losing cases she’d had in the months since solving Colm’s murder, it was hard to muster up any enthusiasm.
Shannon pushed the call button for the elevator. The first-floor number stayed lit for a few seconds. Someone probably got on below her.
How was she ever going to find a way to earn Isabella’s trust? What did a woman like her expect from someone? Did she want Shannon to talk to the Parole Board and get her a lighter sentence? Did she think Shannon was another pig cop, and therefore completely irredeemable?
Isabella’s arrest should’ve proven that wrong. How many officers would’ve shot back at her? She’d probably be dead if anyone but Shannon had gone after her outside that scrapyard.
The elevator dinged. In front of Shannon, the doors slid open.
Detective Dedrick Halman stood on the other side. As soon as he laid his striking brown eyes on her, his expression dropped.
Uh, crap.
She looked away from him like he’d turn her to stone if she held eye contact, pretending there was something wrong with the snap on her work bag. He passed by without a word, thank God.
Shannon stepped into the elevator.
After counting to three, she poked her head from the elevator and stole one last glance at him. All she saw was his back, his well-tailored, charcoal-colored suit, and the little white line of his dress shirt returning her peek from behind the collar of his jacket.
He was so beautiful, she almost melted. Even when he was pissed, he had that gob-smacking type of smolder she’d only seen in Calvin Klein ads.
The elevator dinged. Shannon stepped back from the doors. They closed and nothing moved. She’d forgotten to press the button for the ground level.
CHAPTER 3
“It’s a mess, detective.”
One of the officers on scene, a bow-legged man in his early fifties who introduced himself simply as “Gunny,” held the yellow cordon tape up for Shannon to cross under.
“I heard something about a car.” She was already digging for a pair of latex gloves in her work bag. “Cars usually make for messy victims, in my experience.”
“The body’s a mess, sure. The scene itself is where you should really be concerned—contamination is a real threat here. Not only are we outside, we’re in the middle of a parking lot. And try as hard we might, we couldn’t get all the kids to just stay inside.”
Far off to Shannon’s left, a crowd of students churned at the edge of the parking lot. Kids were crying, talking, and buzzing back and forth. More than a few took selfies with the crime scene in the background, like one would with a distant celebrity trying to have a peaceful lunch.
How many of them had seen something?
“Not like it makes a bent nickel’s difference that they’re out here anyway,” Gunny said.
“They’re fun to complain about.”
“That’s right. Sometimes an officer needs to bitch.” He nodded toward the center of the parking lot where a coroner’s van and a temporary shelter consisting of white tarps laid over metal scaffolding stood. “I promise you she ain’t nothing you’ll want to look at too long.”
The wind ran headlong into the side of the coroner’s tent and threatened to knock it over. One of the Cook County Assistant Coroners, Jean DiMarco, was there to scurry over and keep the thing from tumbling off.
“Know anything about our victim yet?” Shannon said
“A couple of witnesses said she was the campus mom—President of the Northern Cardinal Booster Club, President of the PTA, and a real asset to have around for a bake sale.” Officer Gunny smiled at Shannon. “Pretty as you, too, I’m told.”
Shannon rolled her eyes.
A clamor came from the students’ direction.
“Let’s quell any riots before they start.”
“Sure thing, Detective.”
Shannon took a couple more steps toward the other officers on scene, Jean DiMarco, and the body before something struck her.
“Where are her kids?” she called to Officer Gunny.
“Say again?”
“She’s got kids who go here, right? I need you to find them for me. Make sure they don’t see this mess.”
“We already got her son in-hand,” Gunny said.
“Good. I’ll come talk to him when I’m done.”
It was a hell of a thing to come across the dead body of your parent, Shannon knew, whether you loved or hated them.
“Good morning, Detective.” Jean DiMarco stood outside the tent, clipboard in hand. “I assume Officer Gunderheit gave you a quick rundown on things.”
“He gave me the impression that I’d need a puke bag handy.”
DiMarco waved a hand at Shannon. “Don’t step there.”
Shannon looked down. A rivulet of blood traced a crack in the pavement. It had to have made its way at least ten feet from the body.
She stepped over it.
“And Officer Gunderheit gave you the correct impression,” DiMarco said, “you won’t want to look longer than necessary. It appears someone ran over the victim with the intent of making sure the deed was unquestionably done.”
Shannon walked over to DiMarco and the tent entrance. DiMarco handed Shannon a pink carbon copy with all the preliminary information gathered so far.
“Jennica Ausdall,” Shannon read it aloud. “White female, approximately 45 years of age with blond hair, and a pair of baby blues.”
“Are we ready, detective?” Jean DiMarco tensed her mouth, as if she were readying herself to catch a punch with her chin. She pinched the edge of the sheet hanging over the opening.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
DiMarco pulled the tarp back.
What laid behind it could barely be called human. It was a mass of red and pink with the bare minimum of distinguishable humanity necessary for Shannon to have no doubt this was a human being. There were blood-slicked ribbons of blond hair, white teeth or maybe some kind of shattered bone, and the bottom half of a leg jutting out like an I-beam from a half-finished skyscraper.
Parts of this woman had been flattened, thinned out, and spread across the asphalt in long red streaks filled with squiggling tire tracks.
A pair of dulled eyes grasped at Shannon from the mess. Breakfast began to churn in her stomach.
She had to turn away.
“How do you people move a body like that?”
“Very carefully,” DiMarco said. “With shovels.”
“Has anyone taken the pictures we need?”
DiMarco pointed at a crime scene tech aiming her camera at a bronze placard against the building. It was flanked by a procession of flowery bushes and other decorations.
“Then let’s get the body out of here,” Shannon said. “I don’t think anyone wants it here longer than it needs to be.”
Shannon took out her pocket notebook and got busy scribbling down her observations. That was the only surefire way t
o wash the image of the body out of her mind.
Blond hair, whitened teeth, body mutilated by motor vehicle tires.
But what size were the tires?
Shannon walked around the little white tent until she saw a nice cluster of tire tracks drying brown in the clear September sun. She knelt beside them, searched through a pocket in her bag where she kept odds and ends like a small flashlight, a small packet of tissues, and Vick’s VapoRub (VapoRub was the only thing she’d found that truly blocked the stench of a decaying body), and her fingers found a small tape measure. She pulled it out and stretched it across one of the bloody tire tracks.
The track was a hair shy of nine inches wide, but one of the treads near the edge of the track looked partial. Shannon studied the grouping of tracks until she saw another running off alone.
This one looked even and clear. Her tape measure said it was around nine and one-quarter inches wide.
She noticed a unique feature in the track—the Chevrolet Corvette logo. The two crossed flags must have been carved like a negative into the tire.
Shannon stood up and looked for the crime scene tech. She found her leaning against the side of the school, playing with her cell phone.
“Hey!” Shannon waved at her.
She looked up and jogged over. “Can I help you, Detective?”
“I need you to lift a couple of these tire tracks for me. You got something that’ll work?”
The tech stooped down. She studied the drying blood. “I’ve got a gelatin compound in the van that should come back with a nice, clean profile for you.” She stood up. “I’ll go get it.”
Shannon nodded at her.
A complete print from the tire that ran over Jennica Ausdall might be enough to put this case away before the end of the day—odds were good there weren’t too many Toyota Corollas with Corvette logos embedded in their tires. First, Shannon had to get a positive ID on the car.
She looked over at the growing crowd of students. Someone had to have seen something. She made her way to them.
Dead ahead and at the front of the crowd, a petite blond woman in a pair of UGG boots stood in the grass at the parking lot’s edge—just on the other side of the yellow cordon tape—and sobbed into a crumpled-up tissue. She looked old enough to be a parent.
Her bleary eyes met Shannon’s almost right away. “Are you a detective?”
“I am.”
“I want to talk to you. I think I was the last person to see Jennica alive.”
Well, this might be easier than Shannon hoped. Maybe Boyd wasn’t too far off with all his silver-tongued prognostications about salvation.
“Did you know her?”
The woman nodded. “She was only out there because of me—because of my screw-up.”
“What’s your name?” Shannon took her notepad out of her bag and flipped to a fresh page.
“Dakota Van Etten.” She blew her nose then spelled her last name for Shannon.
“Why do you think Mrs. Ausdall—”
“Miss Ausdall,” Dakota said. “She was very clear about not being tied to her late husband, Samuel Wendt.” Dakota pointed at a bronze placard on the wall to Shannon’s right. A man’s smiling face had been cast as a relief in the bronze.
“Was that him?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dakota said.
“Now, why would you say she was out here because of you?”
“Because it was my mistake,” Dakota said. “I’d forgotten to pick up the banner for the football pep rally next Friday. When Jennica found out, she offered to go pick it up for me, and then….” Dakota melted into a fit of sobbing.
She swiped the well-used tissue across her eyes, but all it did was push clumps of mascara across her cheeks like skid marks. Shannon reached into her bag, and grabbed a fresh tissue out of the travel pack she kept, then handed it to Dakota.
“Thank you.” She squeezed Shannon’s shoulder and tried to smile.
“Did Miss Ausdall have any enemies that you know of? An ex-boyfriend or a jealous sister? Anything like that?”
Dakota shook her head. “She doesn’t have any siblings, and her boyfriend was good to her.” She dabbled her eyes again. “He was young, but he was so, so good to her. They were beautiful together and he loved her. I know he did. And now….” Dakota trailed off.
“Did you hear or see anything of what happened to Jennica?”
Dakota bit back her tears. She nodded. “I had just walked into the gym when I heard Jennica’s scream, and then … nothing.” Fresh tears poured from her eyes. She didn’t have to explain what she meant—she’d heard the exact moment Jennica was run over and killed by the car.
“Did you see anything?”
“Yes.” She could barely talk through all the crying. “I went back outside, and I saw a dark-blue sports car turning out of the lot.”
“What kind of sports car?”
Dakota shrugged. “It looked old.”
“Old? How? Was it rusted?”
“No, like a classic car.”
“Did you notice anything unique about it?”
She squeezed her tissue and stared into it like she’d see the answer in her tears. When nothing came from it, big tears rolled down her cheeks, her eyes still on the tissue. Then out of nowhere, she straightened up like she was standing on a live wire. “It stopped.”
“The car stopped?”
“It died,” Dakota nodded. “I remember that. It died, then the engine started and it tried to get away, but it died again. Then it started and took off for good.”
Okay, so Jennica Ausdall was killed by a car that barely ran. Maybe Shannon would get lucky and on the way out, she’d find it broken down on the side of the road with bits of blood and brains stuck in the tires.
“What happened next?”
“I remember someone grabbing me by the shoulders. It was Principal Tutler, and he was with the janitor. The two of them came running outside when I had my back turned, I guess. Oh, and Jennica’s brother-in-law, Gregory Wendt, was with them.”
Shannon scribbled down Principal Tutler, janitor (unnamed), brother-in-law Gregory Wendt in her notepad. “Where were you at that time?”
“I was right here,” Dakota said. “I didn’t want to go any closer.”
“You were standing exactly where you are now?”
She sniffled and nodded. “For about an hour.”
Shannon turned around. She wanted to get an approximation of what Dakota Van Etten had seen.
Sure enough, from between the parked cars, she saw a long gash of drying blood and the side of the white tent over Jennica Ausdall’s body.
“Mrs. Van Etten, would you mind if I took down your contact information? Just in case I have any further questions?”
“Not at all.” Dakota recited her phone number and email address for Shannon, who wrote them in her notebook.
“Would you be able to point me in the direction of Principal Tutler?” Shannon said.
Dakota turned around and scanned the students behind her. “There.” She pointed at a pair of men talking with Officer Gunny, beyond a cluster of students sitting and crying in the grass. “Tutler is the taller one with gray hair, and the shorter, rounder one with the dark hair is Gregory Wendt.”
Tutler had on a collared shirt and a pair of ill-fitting slacks. Not exactly the type of guy Shannon pictured running one of Chicago’s most prestigious prep schools, but she wasn’t exactly cast in the image of a typical CPD detective, herself.
Gregory Wendt was short and round, but his turtle-shell glasses and slicked-back black hair made him look sharp enough to cut glass. By the way he wore his suit—tailored to perfection with a pocket square matching the collar of his shirt—he looked like he could give Dedrick a couple sartorial pointers.
“Thank you.” Shannon slipped under the cordon tape and walked over to them.
After Shannon passed by a few more students milling around, she saw a teenager with dark hair and olive skin sitting on a rock jus
t in front of the principal and Mr. Wendt with his head buried in his arms, his arms resting on the knees of his long legs. In some ways, he looked like a more athletic version of Gregory Wendt.
“Principal Tutler?” Shannon flashed her detective’s star. “I’m Detective Shannon Rourke from CPD. Would you have a moment to speak with me?”
Now that she was close to the boy, he looked tall enough to squish her like an ant. At a guess, he was probably somewhere around six-foot-six.
Tutler looked at Wendt, silently asking for his permission to talk to Shannon.
“I’d be happy to speak with you, Detective,” Wendt said. “I’m sure Mr. Tutler has quite a lot of work to take care of.”
“That I do,” Tutler said. He shook Gunny’s hand. “Thank you for all your help, Officer. I’ll be available in my office should you need to speak with me.”
“We’ll check in later,” Gunny said.
Principal Tutler left without so much as acknowledging Shannon.
“Well, Mr. Wendt, I’m prepared to take a statement from you, if that’s how you want it,” Shannon said.
She expected Gregory Wendt to step away from the boy sitting in the grass, but he placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and drew him closer.
“I’ve given a statement to Officer Gunderheit,” he said. “I think my time would be better spent with family now.”
“Probably true,” Shannon said. “But since I made my way out here, I’d like to speak with you myself.”
Wendt looked at the boy. “My apologies for causing you inconvenience, Detective, but I’m not sure you know what it’s like to unexpectedly lose a parent,” he said. “It’s an experience none other can match, and I need to be at my nephew’s side now.”
“Sir, I’ve come to understand you and Principal Tutler were among the first witnesses on the scene, so I need your statement. If you want me to ask my questions here, I’m happy to fire a couple off.”
“I gave Officer Gunderheit my statement.”
She looked at Gunny for some help. He gave her an indifferent shrug. Huge help.
That didn’t give her many options. Shannon took out her handcuffs. She slapped a loop around Wendt’s wrist before he heard the handcuffs ratchet closed.
Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2 Page 2
