Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2

by Stewart Matthews

  No way would Michael have lied to her. Yeah, lately he was moodier, sulkier, a little more distant (which put him somewhere around the back side of the moon), but he wasn’t a liar.

  “I still believe that Leigh Corvath had the car the entire time. No one had anything to gain from this woman’s death, except Leigh, who needed to have his ego soothed. Men like him are all driven by ego,” Marcie said. “Once, I arrested a man who’d killed his wife for talking about how much she liked another man’s dog. Can you believe that? I was lucky it didn’t make the newspapers, or I’d have an outright sensation on my hands.”

  “And you wonder why I have trouble dating.”

  Marcie put a hand on her forearm. “You have a perfectly good man-in-waiting right here—one you’ll have to speak to eventually.”

  The elevator doors opened and the two of them walked in. No sign of Dedrick. Though, the way things had been, Shannon couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t drop in from a trap door overhead.

  She looked up just to make sure.

  “Are you all right?” Marcie said.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Look, it’s not like Dedrick and I are the last two people on Earth.”

  “You shouldn’t put off talking to him. It’s detrimental for the both of you.”

  “I’ll get around to it. The right time hasn’t come up yet.”

  Marcie shook her head at Shannon.

  “I can only focus on one thing at a time, and right now, this case is it,” Shannon said. “I mean, it’s not like the odds aren’t in favor of what you want. You’re right, I’ll have to talk to him eventually.”

  “He’s a good man, Shannon. A girl as pretty as you will maybe get two or three of those in your lifetime.”

  Well, if Marcie was right, Dedrick would be the second, so there wouldn’t be many more to find.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened on the ground floor. They took a left, walked out to the garage, and got into Shannon’s Jeep.

  “You know, I understand,” Marcie said. “It’s hard after a fight to set your pride aside and admit when you were wrong.”

  “I wasn’t wrong.” Shannon backed the Jeep out of its parking spot and headed toward the automatic gate to Blue Island Avenue. “I was minding my own business and he kissed me.”

  “Now, Shannon,” Marcie touched Shannon’s arm in the way that only a doting mother could, “I’ve seen the two of you together plenty of times before then. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed you, but you have to admit there was mutual attraction there. You blush when you look at him, even now.”

  Those stupid cheeks gave her away every time.

  “That still doesn’t make his kissing me okay.” Shannon rolled down the window and swiped her keycard to make the gate open, then turned onto Blue Island. The sun was just above the tops of the skyscrapers to the east.

  “No, of course not,” Marcie said. “But it was just an innocent kiss. He didn’t force himself on you or let his hands get busy, did he?”

  “Outside the women’s prison? No.”

  “Then that’s all. Nothing to hold a grudge over.”

  “I’m not holding a grudge.” That was a bald-faced lie.

  “Come now, you can’t even look at the man,” Marcie said. “I know you feel like your trust was betrayed, and with that I’m sure it’s difficult to want to make amends with Dedrick, but I think even if you don’t want to have a relationship with him, it would behoove you to talk to him.”

  “I will.” Right. She’d hardly convinced herself she would. Shannon’s old Marine Corps DI would’ve chewed her out for being a wuss if she were here now. Hell, her grandma would’ve chewed her out, too, if she weren’t two decades buried.

  “Sooner rather than later,” Marcie said. “I think it’s best for all involved.”

  “I’ll talk to him next time I see him. There. You win.”

  Marcie chuckled. “Such a hard-fought battle.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Once again, Shannon found herself sitting across a table from Leigh Corvath.

  The guy was a mess. His hair went every direction but down. He had a five o’clock shadow darker than truck-stop coffee. The fluorescent lights beating down from overhead in the Cook County Jail interrogation room made Leigh’s eyes look like they hadn’t blinked once in the last seventy-two hours.

  “Have you been sleeping well?” Marcie said. “You look a touch paler than when we saw you yesterday.”

  He stared at the chains on his wrists. He was lost in a fog of his own sleepless misery, and only one thing would break through to him.

  “I got a tip about your bookie last night—that Norwaldo guy,” Shannon said.

  A flicker of light popped on inside Leigh’s head.

  “Turned out he did have your car. Word was he sold it to somebody.”

  “Who would buy it?” he asked.

  Shannon leaned over the table. “I hoped you could fill that in for us. Anyone ever make an offer to you?”

  He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “A 1970 Corvette Stingray with an interior like that? Yeah, of course.”

  “Got any names?”

  “Not really. It was just a little bit of everybody—guys at gas stations, guys at car shows, guys who came by the garage. One time a guy at a stop light rolled down his window and flashed a wad of cash at me. I stayed the hell away from that one.”

  That narrowed things down.

  “Nobody significant to you?”

  “Norwaldo.” Leigh shrugged.

  “I figured out that one on my own,” Shannon said. “Did you have any enemies? Anyone who’d want to put you in jail?”

  “No.”

  “You never peed in someone’s bushes or ran over somebody else’s dog?”

  “Of course not.” The suggestion of it shocked Leigh, sweet little altar boy that he was.

  “Even with all the gambling and the sponging off Jennica, there was nobody you bothered?”

  “I kept to myself.”

  “So somebody ran over Jennica for no reason. Unless she did it herself, but I think the odds of that are thin—even if she was vindictive enough to want to put you in jail.”

  Leigh spread his hands and shrugged, his eyes on the floor.

  There had to be more than bad luck here. If someone bought the Stingray with the intent of murdering Jennica Ausdall, it had to be due to the ease of hanging the crime on Leigh. But there were so many working pieces there—the killer had to have known the car was Leigh’s, he had to have known Norwaldo had it, and he had to know when and where Jennica would be.

  It had to be someone close to both of them.

  “Run me through this one more time.” Shannon leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “How did you lose the car again?”

  “My bookie took it.”

  “To pay off gambling debts.”

  Leigh scoffed. “I said that already.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time,” Shannon said. “I know things must get awfully busy around the Cook County Jail.”

  He sighed and played with his chains again.

  “It’s stupid to make a bet when you can’t cover the losses.”

  “I have a gambling problem,” Leigh said. “Everything I do when I gamble is stupid.”

  “Still, that has to be a new level for you, right?”

  He shrugged. He looked like he’d rather swallow a broken wine glass than talk about it.

  “I’m trying to meet you halfway here, so cut out the attitude,” Shannon said.

  “What are you going to do, throw me in jail?” He kept his eyes fixed on the chain between his wrists.

  She motioned to his jumpsuit. “I don’t have to go through the trouble twice. So, I’d advise you to watch yourself before I walk out of here.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” he said. “If you want to leave me here, then get the hell out. I don’t have time for people who couldn’t care less about me.”

  Couldn’t care less about him? Then w
hat the hell was she doing here? Why would she have ever gone back to Norwaldo? If he had any idea the trouble she’d gone through on his behalf—the back of Shannon’s neck started to steam.

  “If it isn’t perfectly obvious to you, Mr. Corvath, when you say you’re innocent, I believe you.” The words came out just under a yell. “I believed you from the start. I thought making you into Jennica’s murderer was trying to put a square peg into a round hole.”

  “Then why am I here?” He smacked the table and shouted back.

  “Because you look like the murderer,” she said. “Detective Talbot thinks I’m being stupid by insisting we come back and talk to you, and I’m guessing there aren’t many sympathetic ears on the way to your cell. That makes me your only advocate right now, but I’m thinking maybe everybody else is right, and your life isn’t worth the trouble.”

  “Detective Rourke.” Marcie sensed the coming firestorm, and tried to calm her.

  “If you think they’re right, then get the hell out,” Leigh growled. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

  Shannon balled her toes up in her shoes. She had half a mind to kick his teeth across the floor.

  Instead, she climbed on top of the table, grabbed Leigh by the shoulders and snapped him backward with a quick shove. “Help me figure this out. Why are there are pieces of this case that don’t fit?”

  “Detective Rourke, get off the table,” Marcie said.

  Shannon’s eyes lanced into Leigh Corvath. “Tell me why!”

  “I don’t know!” he yelled. “I didn’t have the car when Jennica was killed—that’s the truth.”

  “Detective Rourke, get down!”

  “Then who had it?” she screamed back at him. “Who killed Jennica?”

  Their eyes crashed together in a fit—hatred on hatred, loathing collided with mistrust, but they were in this together or they weren’t in it at all, so someone had better come up with something. Shannon reeled him in so hard with the fistful of his jumpsuit she had, she heard some of the stitches coming apart.

  “Shannon!” Marcie screamed. “Let him go!”

  That took her eyes off Leigh. Just long enough that when she returned her gaze to him, his face had softened.

  She let go of his shirt.

  The three of them returned to where they’d been. Shannon and Leigh sank back into their plastic chairs, and Marcie went to leaning against her spot on the wall. The room was quiet, save the humming of the fluorescents.

  “All I want to do,” Shannon said, “is walk things back a bit and see if there are any details we missed.”

  “Sure, I’ll walk it back for you,” Leigh said. “I’m a lifelong loser. I lost when I got arrested for something I didn’t do, I lost when I moved in with Jennica, and I lost when I listened to her brother-in-law and made that stupid bet that got my car taken from me.”

  Shannon looked at Marcie. Did she catch that?

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said—” Leigh cupped his hands around his mouth “—I’m a screw-up.”

  “Yeah, I got that when I saw your apartment,” Shannon said. “I’m talking about what came out of your mouth a second ago—about listening to Jennica’s brother-in-law. Did you mean Gregory?”

  “He’s the only one she’s got.”

  “And he told you to make the bet that ended with Norwaldo taking your car?”

  Leigh stopped. He’d just been struck cold by the same realization as Shannon.

  “Did you get along with him?” she said.

  “We—” A flop sweat broke out on his brow, and he sloughed it off with his hand. “We got along. I was like the go-between for him and Jennica when things got heated—but he didn’t set me up. He wouldn’t. He was trying to help me get back on my feet.”

  “Help you how?”

  Leigh licked his lips, then clamped down with his jaw.

  “Are you going to tell me what he did to help you, or do I have to guess?” She wasn’t going to guess.

  “He’s deep into gambling,” Leigh said.

  “How deep?”

  “Very deep.”

  That was helpful. “I need specifics. I can’t do much without them.”

  Leigh let the chains slip from his fingers. “He’s been fixing games.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Fixing games? What kind of games?” Shannon checked her voice recorder to make sure it was still running. The thing sucked power from batteries like it was going through a growth spurt.

  “All kinds of games,” Leigh said. “Football, basketball, boxing. College, professional, whatever—anything people put money on.”

  “Which game did he tell you to bet on?”

  “This minor-league baseball game. The odds were the longest I’d ever seen, but he told me to bet the spread. I guess he had the closing pitcher on one of the teams in his pocket.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I bet the spread,” Leigh said. “I bet everything I had. Gregory never gave me inside info before, so I jumped on it.”

  And there we have it. That’s how Leigh Corvath made his losing $15,000 bet.

  “When you paid off your debt with the car, did you tell anyone besides Jennica?”

  “No.”

  “Not even Gregory?”

  “Well, yeah I told him, but—” Leigh sank back into his chair. “I told him,” he said to himself.

  All at once, his skin turned waxy. He mumbled something else to himself. Leigh appeared to be out of his own head for a moment—Shannon certainly would have been if she were in his shoes.

  Leigh came back to reality with a jingle of his wrist restraints. “Why would Gregory do me like that? He and I weren’t tight, but we were okay with each other.”

  “Because he wanted to frame you for Jennica’s murder.”

  Leigh Corvath gawked across the table at her. He was beside himself. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

  “What was Jennica’s stake in her late husband’s criminal enterprise?” Shannon asked. “Was someone paying her to stay quiet about it?”

  “What are you talking about?” He wasn’t very good at feigning ignorance.

  “I’m saying Jennica Ausdall didn’t live in that beautiful house of hers because she’d won the Illinois Lottery.”

  “She had a trust left by her late husband.”

  “Come on.” Shannon cocked her head at him. “Even if you didn’t really know what was going on, you heard rumors about Jennica’s family—about her husband’s dubious business connections, and about how all that saved Jennica from a prison sentence for her husband’s murder was a Hail Mary into a sex scandal.”

  Leigh looked at Marcie for help. There was no way he could be this ignorant of Jennica’s past, but in any case, it appeared Marcie took pity on him.

  “What Detective Rourke is getting at, dear, is that her current theory is Gregory Wendt didn’t kill Jennica because he wanted to throw you in jail. He did it because he needed her dead, and you were the perfect scapegoat for the crime.”

  In that moment, it all came together for him.

  “He wanted to cut Jennica off the family money. He wanted it all for himself.”

  Leigh gripped the chains in his hands until his knuckles were chalk. “That son of a bitch.”

  “On the bright side,” Shannon said, “Gregory’s involvement might just be a theory, but things are looking up for you.”

  She got up from her chair, then walked to the door and knocked on it.

  It opened a crack. A guard’s face slid into view.

  “We’re ready to drop charges against Mr. Corvath,” she said. “Get the ball rolling, would you?”

  “Just a moment,” Marcie said. “I don’t think I’m ready to make any conclusions yet. You said so yourself; Gregory Wendt’s involvement is nothing more than a theory.”

  Oh, God. She’d hoped Marcie had come around already. What else could she possibly doubt about the story? With Gregory Wendt’s motivations made clear, thing
s fit together in a way they never had.

  “Based on my informant’s information and the information Mr. Corvath so helpfully provided us, it seems to me that we should be kicking in Gregory Wendt’s door right now.”

  “Uncorroborated information from an informant and an interview with our current prime suspect aren’t sufficient for me.”

  “Too bad,” Shannon said. “This is my case, and letting him go sits right with me.”

  “Oh, Shannon.” Marcie cracked a sweet little smile. “Well, I don’t want to say it.”

  Shannon folded her arms and waited. “Say it.”

  “I’m not satisfied of Mr. Corvath’s innocence.”

  “I gathered.”

  “Yes, and I think when it comes to my judgment against yours, we know who Sergeant Boyd is going to trust.”

  That hurt. It hit Shannon right in her pride. But if Marcie wanted to play the reasonable doubt game, that was fine. There was one last thing Shannon could do to prove Leigh’s innocence. It was risky and dangerous, and if Shannon turned out to be wrong, there was going to be one hell of a price to pay. She’d be fired, for sure.

  Better to risk it than let a man she was ninety-nine percent sure was innocent go to prison for murder.

  She looked Leigh over. The guy was practically dead in his chair. Completely exhausted. Not exactly the best choice for a driver.

  But if, at some point, Shannon found out long-time Illinois Correctional System inmate number blah-blah-blah Leigh Corvath had served his life sentence on a false charge, she’d have a hell of a hard time living without her conscience gobbling her up.

  Screw it. She didn’t have any other choice.

  “You’re not too busy to go for a drive, are you, Leigh?”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Well, Shannon, I can’t say I’ve come close to doing anything like this before.” Marcie’s fingers glided over her nose as she spread the rest of her sunscreen on.

  “You’ve never gone on a day trip into the city before?”

  “Oh, that I’ve done. But never with a suspected murderer.”

  “Never once?”

  Marcie held the small bottle of sunscreen out for Shannon, who waved it away.