Veiled Passages (15 page)

Sean swore softly and Maria nodded silently, took a deep breath and then continued. “From the blood spatter, we can assume that the killer came up from behind the victim and slit his throat from left to right. From the cut’s angle, we know the killer is at least six feet tall and possibly taller.  This matches the MO on the other victims we have found in the area.”

Spying something on the ground, Sean pulled a pair of silicone gloves from Maria’s case and slid his hand beneath the body. “Wait a minute,” he said.

The ragged edges of a superhero t-shirt, drenched with blood, covered most of a small rectangular object.  Sliding the shirt away, Sean discovered a school ID, its lanyard slit, covered in blood. He rubbed a piece of gauze against it until the name and photo were clear.  The face in the photo was grinning and even through a wash of red, Sean could see the kid had been full of life.

“Well, at least we know who he is,” he said with resignation. “I’ll go talk to his family.”

Maria put her hand on Sean’s arm. “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.

Shaking his head, he covered her hand with his own. “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But you’ve got enough on your plate right now.  I want you to concentrate on…”

He paused and looked at the name on the plastic card. “Nolan,” he read. “I want you to concentrate on examining Nolan’s body. I want to get this guy before he gets anyone else.”

“You got it, boss,” she replied, but she didn’t remove her hand until he looked back at her. “Remember, this is not your fault.”

“If I had…” he started to say.

She squeezed his arm. “No,” she said, her voice quiet, but with a steel resolve. “No, this is not your fault.  You are doing all you can to find him.”

Nodding, Sean stood, looked down again at the young boy, looked at the photo and felt anger and resolve burning within him. “I’m going to catch this bastard and lock him up for a very long time.”

“I know you will,” Maria said.

He looked at her upturned face, saw the confidence in it and prayed that he could actually live up to her trust.

Chapter Thirty-three

His keys hit the cluttered coffee table with a loud thud.  A long-ingrained habit had him closing and locking his door before opening his hall closet and turning to the gun safe.  He opened the safe, placed his weapon into it and closed the door. Shrugging out of his jacket, he hung it and his service belt on a hook that covered the safe. He pulled the days mail from his coat pocket and finally, closed the closet door and entered his living room.

Tiny, his giant marmalade cat, climbed onto the back of the couch, watching Sean with his mysterious all-seeing green eyes.  Finally, he opened his mouth and a diminutive meow exited.

“Hey, Tiny,” Sean said, rubbing the cat’s head. “Hell of a day.”

He dropped onto the couch, propped his feet on the coffee table, and Tiny rubbed his enormous body against Sean’s head, his powerful purring nearly acting like a massager on Sean’s neck. “Thanks. I needed that,” Sean said, scooping the cat from the back of the couch and placing it alongside him.

Tiny moved from the couch onto Sean’s lap as Sean sorted through his mail. With a quick toss, the unopened envelopes joined a larger pile in the middle of the coffee table. Sean leaned his head back and rested it against the couch. “Hell, Tiny,” he sighed. “This town is getting brutal. That kid today…”

He stopped, feeling the emotion burn against his eyes and sinuses. “That kid,” he whispered, tears filling his eyes. “Damn it, he was just a kid.  He should have been swinging a little league bat, not lying in a pool of his own blood in an alley.”

Tiny rubbed against him, purring in response to Sean’s voice. “He was only twelve,” Sean continued. “A twelve-year old shouldn’t have to deal with a monster.”

Without realizing, Sean reached over with one hand and rubbed the area of his upper arm that had been scarred when he was twelve.  He didn’t remember much about the incident, and what he seemed to remember went against everything he’d been told by his parents. Although lately he’d been having his dreams again.  He drifted to sleep, Tiny nestled next to him on the couch and the sounds of Chicago became distant.

The air was fresh and moist and you could smell the fragrance of soil, evergreens and burning peat in the wind.  It was the scent of Ireland, unique and wonderful in its own way.  And a smell you never forgot. The woods were deep and with each step the vegetation grew denser and the sun grew dimmer. He knew he started his walk in the woods when he was twelve, but as he passed a small brook and looked down at his reflection, he saw the man he’d become.

He stepped into the water, his reflection broken and the ripples moving toward either shore, the past and the future.  He stepped onto the far shore and moved closer to his destination. 

Pushing back a leafy branch, he stepped out into the clearing he knew would be there. The edges of the space were covered in a gray mist, clouding his sight. But he stared at them anyway, hoping to see beyond the darkness. Stepping forward, his foot caught the edge of something, and he nearly stumbled. The thick sod before him was no longer smooth and even; it was raised and irregular.  As if something was just below the surface.

Reaching down, he tore away the grass and dirt in squares, like freshly laid sod, and piled them on top of each other, slowly and methodically. Finally, he came to a piece that covered the irregular ground. Lifting the piece, he found a small gym shoe, covered in dirt and soaked in blood. 

His heart pounded in his throat. Like a madman, he dropped to his knees and attacked the ground, ripping away the other pieces, tossing them across the clearing.  Fear, anger and desperation blinded him to everything except clearing away the sod.  Finally, he stopped, his fingers bleeding, his chest heaving, and sweat pouring from his face.  His vision clearing, he looked down and saw the young boy, Nolan, lying on the ground before him in a pool of blood. 

But the boy wasn’t dead yet.  Sean’s heart soared when the child opened his eyes and lifted his arm. Sean grabbed the boy’s hand just as the blood-soaked ground started to pull the boy down. “No!” Sean screamed, trying to get a better grip on the child’s dirt encased hand. “No!”

The boy’s face turned from pleading to panicked. “Help me,” he whispered, as the ground covered his legs and his chest.

Sean pulled, scraping at the dirt for leverage. “Hold on,” he cried, pulling with all his might.

The ground sucked the boy further in and soon all Sean could see was the one arm he had hold of and the boy’s face. “The monster has me,” Nolan cried. “Sean, save me.”

“I will save you,” Sean screamed, tears flowing down his cheeks. “Hold on, I will save you.”

The boy’s hand slipped out of Sean’s hold.

“No,” he yelled, throwing himself over the dirt and digging with his hands to find the child.

Desperately, he looked up and realized Nolan’s face had changed.  Now Sean’s own face stared at him for just a moment before it was sucked underground. “Save us all,” he heard the muffled plea.

Sean woke with a start as his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It took him a moment to realize where he was. Tiny looked up at him, watchful and waiting. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he reassured his cat. “Just a really bad dream.”

He answered the phone while he wiped the sleep from his face. “Yeah, hi,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t wake you, did I?” Mary asked on the other end.

“No, you did me a favor,” he replied to his sister, already feeling the reality of her voice calming his system. “I just had a crazy dream.”

“Not the one where you bring the, um, healthy blonde home only to find out she’s a man?” she asked.

Sean chuckled. “No, not that one,” he said. “But this one was almost as scary.”

He paused. “Hey, how did you know about that dream?” he demanded.

“Art told me,” she replied.

“He broke the brothers’ law,” Sean grumbled. “I’m going to have to punish him.”

“Well, it was under extreme circumstances,” she said and he could hear the humor in her voice.

“Tell me.”

“Art and Tom had a few too many at a Cub’s game,” she explained.

“Well, that’s not news,” he replied.

Laughing, she continued. “They knew I was getting off my shift soon, so they called me for a ride. I was going to be a while, so they decided to wait in a local bar. A bar they didn’t know very well.”

“And…” he prompted.

“Well, I’d worked the Wrigleyville beat for a couple of years, so I knew the area and the regulars,” she continued. “When I got to the bar, Art was flirting with a gorgeous brunette. Tall, statuesque and obviously very interested. Wearing a leather mini-skirt, high-heels and a gorgeous silk blouse.”

“So…”

“His name was Fred,” Mary chuckled. “Really nice guy, but not Art’s type.”

Sean surprised himself by laughing out loud.

“If he hadn’t been snockered, he would have been able to tell,” she said.

“Adam’s apple,” he added.

“Exactly,” she said. “But he’d been more interested in looking at…um…shall we say slightly lower placed body parts. So, when I broke the news about Fred, Art said it was just like your dream, only it was real.”

 “Okay, I forgive him,” Sean chuckled. “He broke the rule, but it was under extreme circumstances.”

“So, tell me about your dream,” she insisted.

“You know, don’t worry about it, you already chased all the monsters away,” he replied. “So what’s up?”

She paused, looking for a way to word things without causing him more worry.

“Give it up, Mary-Mary,” he said. “Don’t try to couch it, just spill it.”

“Okay, last night, while Bradley and I were out, Copper broke into the house,” she said.

“Ma!” Sean exclaimed, standing up and instinctively moving toward the door.

“She’s good. She’s fine,” Mary added hurriedly. “Mike was here and he warned Clarissa. They went into the workroom in the basement and Ma armed herself with the ax.”

“An ax?” he repeated slowly. “Does the man still have a head?”

“Luckily for him, he didn’t venture down the stairs,” she said. “The police were called and Bradley, Ian and I were on the scene within minutes.  Copper got away.”

“And how’s Ma?” he asked.

“Wanting another go at the man,” Mary confessed. “I was more upset than she was. She’s got nerves of titanium.”

“Well, she’s always had the hard job,” he said. “Waiting at home, praying that we’d each come home safe every day. It either breaks you or makes you strong.”

Mary sighed deeply. “I’m so sorry, Sean,” she said. “I was supposed to be taking care of Ma…”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “This is not your fault…”

He paused and thought about Maria’s words to him that very day. “What the hell is wrong with us that we take the blame for circumstances that are far beyond our control?” he asked.

“Simple,” Mary replied. “We’re O’Reillys, we think we can control the world.”

Chapter Thirty-four

“If I can’t get to her, I can destroy her world,” Gary Copper murmured as he read the information on the computer screen and followed the directions precisely.

He molded the plastic explosives around the detonator and carefully packed it all into a generic mailing envelope. The address, in bold black print, was “Freeport Police Chief Bradley Alden, Freeport Police Department, City Hall, 524 W. Stephenson Street, Freeport, Illinois, 61032.”

Whistling as he worked, he stretched the thin copper wire that activated the detonator to the top of the envelope, slid a half inch of it through a small slit in the brown paper and cemented it along the ridge outlining the pull strip.  Blowing gently on the glue, he waited until it was dry before carefully folding the top of the envelope down and securing it in place.

“Well, now, Chief Alden,” he said with a smile, “I have a letter for you that is going to blow your socks off.”

Passing the mirror next to the door on his way out, he stopped and studied his reflection.  The white wig and the make-up aged him considerably and the larger, baggy clothing he purchased from Goodwill camouflaged his size.  Shrugging on an oversized brown tweed overcoat, he bent forward slightly and limped down the stairs toward his car.  

Carefully placing the envelope on the passenger’s seat, he cautiously drove the mile and a half to downtown Freeport.  The downtown was bustling, with people walking between the businesses and shops on a regular basis.  He purposely parked a block away from City Hall in a seldom traveled area of the downtown.  Reaching over, he hid the envelope within the voluminous folds of his overcoat and, pulling a battered tweed fedora over his head, he slowly let himself out of the car. Mimicking the walk of an elderly man, he made his way up the street.

The side entrance to City Hall was unlocked and Gary made his way through the glass doors and up the center staircase.  Following the signs, he turned right on the second floor and headed toward the offices of the Chief of Police.  Licking his lips in anticipation, he felt sweat blossoming on his upper lip and, without thinking, wiped it away with his sleeve. 

He looked up.  Only a few more steps and he would be outside the office door.  Only a few more steps and Bradley Alden would be closer to his death.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” Dorothy, the Chief’s assistant asked.

She stood behind a tall receptionist counter in front of the office.

Gary nodded slowly, keeping his head lowered. “I have a letter for Chief Alden,” he said, his voice shaky and weak. “I need to be sure he receives it.”

“The Chief is in a meeting right now,” she replied, extending her hand for the letter. “But I’ll be sure he gets it as soon as he’s done.”

Gary raised his eyes and met Dorothy’s eyes. “He has to open it,” he insisted. “It’s very personal and he’s the only one who should open it.”

Dorothy stared at him for a moment, fumbled with something behind the counter, and then reached out again. “I promise,” she said. “No one else will open the envelope.”