Shannon could probably come up with a few reasons. “Let’s not play this game,” she said.
“What game? Who’s playing a game?” He shook his hands and the chains between his wrists rattled. “My life’s at stake, not yours.”
She smiled at him. “Mr. Corvath, there’s an eyewitness at the scene who saw your car drive away from Jennica Ausdall’s murder.” She leaned over the table toward him. “A colleague of mine pointed out an imprint on Jennica’s body which partially matches the sequence on your license plate. Just an hour ago, I found hair stuck to your car which looked suspiciously like Jennica’s—and if it wasn’t, I think I’ll keep you around anyway, because you obviously hit someone with that car.”
Leigh turned his eyes down toward his lap. He clenched his jaw. “I was at my apartment, alone, sleeping in this morning.” His voice was as low and impassioned as crackling embers. “I wasn’t up until 11—I doubt I was out of the house before 11:30.”
“Can anyone vouch for you? Any neighbors see you leave around then?”
He said nothing in return.
“I’m going to give you some perspective here. Not only is there a mountain of hard evidence against you, but I’m going to assume from your silence that you also don’t have an alibi. See, this is what I don’t understand about people like you. You know you did it, I know you did it—why keep wasting everyone’s time? All you’re doing is adding years to your sentence. Save the entire legal system some trouble and confess.”
The only sound in the room was the restraint’s chain jingling as Leigh played with it.
“I know you and Jennica had a volatile relationship,” she said. “What did she do to piss you off? She say something wrong? Look at another guy? Wear her shoes in your car?”
“I wouldn’t kill Jennica.”
Shannon lifted his face up by the chin and looked him straight in the eyes. “Stop lying to me.”
He didn’t back down from her gaze. “I wouldn’t kill Jennica—I couldn’t have.”
There was something about the way he looked at her. It was maybe a twitch of his eyes, or an inflection in his voice—something she couldn’t pick out, but it settled right in her gut.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Leigh looked away from her. He shook his head.
“Mr. Corvath, if there’s something else, you need to tell me. All the evidence is pointed against you right now. You understand that, right? You get that if I walk out of this room without any sort of reasonable doubt that you killed Jennica, you’re going on trial for murder?”
Leigh searched her eyes—as if he was probing her, like there was some question about whether he could trust her or not. “I didn’t have the car,” he said. “I’d lost it a couple days ago.”
“Lost it? Like, what, you swept it under the rug by accident?”
“No.” He looked at her like she was a moron. “Someone took it from me.”
“Someone stole it? But you drove it into work this morning.”
He clenched his jaw. “It was parked out back with the keys in it,” he said. “I thought they gave it back.”
“The people who stole it.”
Leigh wiped the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He looked wound up enough to split open.
“People who steal cars don’t typically give them back,” Shannon said.
He sighed. “My bookie took the car from me to pay off a gambling debt,” he said. “Okay? I’m a compulsive gambler. Have been since high school.”
And there it was. The rusty hinge on this open-and-shut case. She’d have a thing or two to say to Sergeant Boyd about salvation.
“I owed him money,” he said. “But Jennica got tired of paying for my screw-ups, so I gave him the car and he called the debt off.”
So what was he saying? His bookie killed Jennica Ausdall? Why?
“What’s your bookie’s name?”
“If I give you his name, don’t go asking about me.”
She smiled at him. Like hell she wasn’t going to go asking about him. “Let me put it to you this way—if I don’t go asking about you, you don’t get out of here. That’s assuming you actually didn’t have the car, and assuming your bookie tells me the same.”
Leigh threw his hands up. They didn’t get too far off the table top with the chains of his restraints hooked into it. They made a lot of noise, at least. “You understand that this man might kill me for talking to you about him?”
“Why? Because he’s afraid I’m going to raid his operation?”
“There’s that, yeah,” Leigh said.
“You think I care about what’ll probably be a misdemeanor arrest for gambling?” Shannon asked. “Even if he’s a multiple offender, it’s a Class D felony, which isn’t something my sergeant will be excited about. I’m a CPD Violent Crimes detective, Mr. Corvath. I want convictions for murders, and I want convictions that’ll stick. I don’t care about sports bets. So, if you have an alibi, I want to know about it.”
He seemed unconvinced.
“Don’t you get it?” Shannon said. “If he had the car when Jennica was murdered, you didn’t. That gives me a new prime suspect, and gets you out of here.”
“Right.” Leigh laughed.
She slid her pocket notebook and a pen across the table toward Leigh. “Write down his name and address. I’ll do the rest.”
He sighed. But Leigh Corvath’s level of enthusiasm for Shannon’s investigation didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he wrote the address down, which he did.
She picked her work bag up off the ground and moved toward the door. She couldn’t afford to let a lead go cold.
“Wait,” Leigh said. “What happens to me next?”
“Processing,” Shannon said. “Officer Harker is going to take you over to the Cook County Jail for a seventy-two-hour hold, pending my investigation.”
He hung his head like a man getting fitted for a noose.
CHAPTER 11
The bookie’s house was in Aurora—about an hour west of District 12 by car. It was getting near rush hour. With Shannon’s luck, she’d end up smack-dab in the middle of it on her way back to the city from the bookie’s place.
She pressed the gas pedal down on her Jeep, then changed lanes and passed a Buick sauntering down the left lane like it was in the world’s worst parade.
The car honked at her. Shannon waved at it with the most plastic smile she could muster.
All the stress she endured from day to day was bound to bubble up and come to the surface at some point. Probably by ruining her skin. Maybe she should look at taking out a good life insurance policy while she was still young-ish and healthy looking.
Shannon’s phone rang.
She glanced away from the road—breaking her own rules—and read the screen. It was a local number she didn’t recognize. Probably a scammer. A CPD detective was the wrong person to call.
“This is Detective Rourke.”
“Good afternoon, Shannon.”
She knew Ewan Keane’s silky baritone the second she heard it. Her fingers squeezed the phone’s case—Ewan’s voice wasn’t great for her stress, either.
“Hi,” she barked. “Did you call me to confess everything and turn yourself in?”
Ewan laughed. “No, not this time. Still holding out, I’m afraid.”
“Then we have nothing to talk about.”
“Now, Shannon, I’d have to believe that if the father of one of your other victims called to thank you for the job you did, you wouldn’t be nearly so cold.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
He chuckled again. “You’ve got a peculiar way of treating family.”
“We aren’t family.”
“Your father thought we were.”
“Tommy thought a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” she said. “He thought cops were crooks and Chicago’s Irish mob was packed so full of saints, the Vatican should’ve opened a new franchise on Lake Shore Drive.”
/> “I’m not sure your father was as devout a Catholic as you make him out to be,” Ewan said.
“You’re right about that. Tommy’s devotion stopped at his own nose—you could make the argument he was devoted to laying beatings on Michael, but I think that was more a passionate hobby than anything else.”
Ewan sighed.
“What?” she said. “Am I wrong? Did I make up all those nights he chased my brother down with a belt? Did I hide in the closet and blast music through my Walkman because it was fun?”
“He had his demons,” Ewan said. “I know as well as anyone else. But one day I hope you’ll see your father had a tender side.”
“I don’t think you know me half as well as you think you do.”
The call fell quiet. There was nothing in Shannon’s ears but the humming of her Jeep’s tires as they rotated across the highway. Her muscles went tight as piano wire. Ewan Keane didn’t make social calls.
“Well, now I’ve completely lost my train of thought,” he said. “I’m not sure how we got on the topic of your father, but you have my apologies. I realize that hearing about him from me must be particularly difficult for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you believe I had a part to play in his death.”
She could hear the polite smile in his voice. It was funny, the way Ewan delivered his worst blows with a grin.
“Tommy’s suicide was his doing. If I were like him, I would’ve killed myself, too.”
Shannon could deliver a verbal haymaker all her own. And the way Ewan went quiet, she knew she’d connected.
“My intention was to call you some weeks ago, Shannon, but I was caught up in rehabilitation after being shot. I don’t quite have regular use of my arm, despite all the surgeries, but I’ve put my full effort behind regaining what I had. I’ve come to hear that you may understand what I mean better than most.”
When did he find out about her shoulder? She hadn’t told him. Was someone in the department feeding him information about her?
“I’m doing fine.” A little bolt of pain arced across her shoulder joint, calling her bluff.
“Glad to hear it,” Ewan said. “And how has Michael been after Colm’s death?”
“He’s fine, too.” She didn’t want to talk about Michael to him. She’d rather talk about Tommy again. She’d rather chew sandpaper.
“I wish things were better between Michael and me,” Ewan said. “I feel as though I offended him, but I can’t really see what I did.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course not.”
Another pause.
“Is that everything?” Shannon said.
“You probably won’t take my offer, but should you ever want to speak with me about, well, anything really, I’d love to have you come sit at The Galway Tap some evening.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I won’t take that offer. Thank you for your call, Mr. Keane.”
Shannon hung up.
CHAPTER 12
Leigh Corvath’s bookie lived at 1101 Trask Street in Aurora.
The bookie’s name was Robert Norwaldo, and he kept an unassumingly suburban ranch home with brick facade, and a big maple tree with a tire swing out front.
Shannon grabbed her work bag and got out of her Jeep. She smiled at a woman her age pushing a stroller past. “Hello.”
“Hi.” The woman smiled back.
It was that kind of neighborhood.
Shannon stopped at the end of the driveway. Before she went to knock on Robert Norwaldo’s door, she took a moment. If, indeed, Leigh Corvath’s car had been here, there might be some evidence left of it, and it’d be smarter to look for it now rather than after she talked to Norwaldo.
Careful not to step on or disturb anything, she crept up the driveway.
What was she looking for, exactly? A spare set of 1970 Corvette Stingray keys left in the grass? Some freshly snapped pictures of the car parked in the driveway?
What about tire tracks?
To the right of the driveway, there was a flattened patch of dirt. It was long as a yardstick and no wider than her hand, but it was there. Shannon approached it. She dropped down to her hands and knees and ran her eyes over it.
She’d be lucky to find a squiggle in the dirt, as hard and packed as it was. But after a moment of searching, she noticed the slight imprint of tire tracks, and in the midst of them, she thought she saw a set of crisscrossed flags—the Corvette logo imprinted in the dirt.
Shannon reached for her phone. She had to get a picture of it.
“Miss, can I help you?”
She looked up.
A black lady in a set of pink scrubs stared at her from just inside the house’s front door. She had a no-nonsense face topped by the nicest curls Shannon had ever seen.
“Probably not,” Shannon said.
The woman didn’t appear to appreciate Shannon’s blunt sense of humor. “Let me rephrase that, then—tell me what you’re doing or get off the driveway.”
“I’m Detective Shannon Rourke from CPD Violent Crimes.” Shannon stood up and brushed the dust off her hands and the knees of her jeans. “I’m here to speak with Robert Norwaldo. Is this his home?”
“Yes, Mr. Norwaldo lives here.” She had the same kind of guarded posture Shannon took on when she saw door-to-door evangelists coming down the street. “May I ask what this is regarding?”
“A murder investigation.”
The lady’s face went slack. It probably would’ve been smarter to bring that up a tad more gently. “A what?”
Shannon walked toward the front door, then stopped just outside of arm’s reach. “I’m going to ask Mr. Norwaldo a few questions. I’d politely lie to you and promise not to take up too much of his time, but I know I’ll stay here as long as it takes to satisfy my curiosity, and I think you’re the kind of woman who doesn’t appreciate liars.”
“Uh-huh.” Her eyelids pinched together like she was trying to see through Shannon. Unsure what else to do, she turned around and disappeared into the house.
Norwaldo must’ve been close by, because a few seconds later Shannon heard an old man bellow, “Hell no I don’t want talk to a cop.”
“I think you should,” the woman snapped back.
“You’re my damned nurse,” he said. “I didn’t hire you to hear your opinion.”
“That detective outside asked about a murder.”
“I ain’t deaf. I heard her. When she said it, I heard you drop a load in your undies, too.”
There was a click, then a sound like squeaky wheels and a pair of feet stomping over wooden floorboards—feet that had taken enough abuse. They headed toward Shannon.
“I said I didn’t want to talk!” the old man shouted.
“I ain’t deaf either,” the nurse said.
They moved to where Shannon could see them. Instantly, she understood why Leigh Corvath hadn’t bothered telling her about this guy—no way would he have been able to drive.
Robert Norwaldo was wheelchair-bound, and his eyes were as cloudy white as the winter sky. He was blind.
He was an older guy with a minutes-old high and tight haircut on top of his head. Norwaldo wasn’t unlike the kind of man Shannon had seen a thousand times during her stint in the Marine Corps—except most of the salty Marines Shannon used to know didn’t have a beer gut like his.
“Mr. Norwaldo, your guest,” the nurse said.
“Ain’t no cop ever been my guest, and that ain’t about to change today.”
“That’s fine. Talk or don’t,” the nurse said. “I’m taking my fifteen.”
As the nurse passed Shannon just outside the front door, she gave her a look that said, he’s your problem now.
Shannon smiled politely. A cranky old man in a wheelchair wasn’t close to the worst problem she’d had today—even if Norwaldo seemed about as pleasant as a rusty nail coming through the bottom of her shoe.
“You gonna say something?” Nor
waldo said. “Or you just gonna stand there and make me guess at you until you go away?”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “Mr. Norwaldo, do you know a man named Leigh Corvath?”
“Oh, now don’t you sound pretty? What size clothes you wear?”
“Answer the question.”
“Not until you tell me your cup size.”
Shannon scoffed.
“Oh, what, you don’t like me asking you questions?” A greasy smile slid across his face.
He wasn’t half as unsettling as he wished he was.
“All kinds of creeps have asked me that question in my lifetime. The only difference between you and the rest of them is you’re a little older and a whole lot blinder.”
Norwaldo laughed. It sounded like he had a shop vac for lungs. “No, I don’t know nobody named Leigh Corvath.”
It didn’t surprise her to hear him say that. She could’ve almost counted on it. “That’s funny. After I arrested him today, he said he knew you. He said you take sports bets and he owed you money he didn’t have.”
“Wasn’t me.”
Shannon looked toward his driveway. His nurse paced up and down it, intermittently looking at her cell phone in one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other.
“Where’d your Stingray go?” Shannon asked. “I talked to a blond lady pushing a baby carriage on my way up here from my car, and she said you had one this morning.”
Norwaldo laughed again. “If she saw anything other than a crappy, white wheelchair van in my driveway, she’s worse off than I am. At least I’m only blind—I ain’t hallucinating, too.”
“Now that’s odd,” Shannon said. “Because I noticed you’ve got an absolutely perfect lawn.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“There’s a little patch of dirt just off the side of your driveway—just one bald spot—and I swear I saw a familiar tire track in it. You don’t think I’m hallucinating, too, do you?”
“You didn’t see a damn thing.”
It’d been too long since she had a witness like this guy. Shannon smiled. She stepped into the house.
Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2 Page 6
