Ghost Story (ch 1)

Hands latched onto her upper arms, slinging her face first into the brick wall of the alley. Colby shrieked, twisting against the bruising grip. Her heels slipped on the rain slick asphalt and her purse went flying as she went down hard. Her assailant followed her down, his knee landing in the middle of her back as her head cracked off the pavement. Spots danced in front of her eyes. A white light flashed on feet away. Her cell phone. She reached for it as brutal hands began tearing at her skirt and stockings, pulling clothing aside in frantic haste and she felt cold night air and the sting of rain on her bare skin. The cell phone slid under her scrambling fingers and she grabbed at it. With her thumb, she jabbed at the numbers, praying she hit the right ones.

“Bitch!”

A fist slammed into her head and she lost her grip on her phone. It skittered away to rest near the wall, out of reach. In fury, he grabbed her hair, thumping her head against the ground again and again. Pain exploded from her nose and blood filled her mouth, trickling down her face. She choked on a scream.

You’ve reached 911. Please state the nature of your emergency.

The voice sounded tinny and far away. Pain throbbed behind her eyes as darkness edged in. She could feel him pulling at her underwear, the scrape of gravel on her bare thighs but none of that mattered. In the distance, sirens wailed and she heard him curse. Suddenly, the weight lifted from her back and she was free. There was a sound like running feet and then hands were back, grabbing her arms and turning her. She tried to fight but her arms felt like lead and she couldn’t focus. Darkness edged in and then she was enfolded in light as soft as feathers and she knew nothing more.

         

“Damn it!”

Aiden Gaenor swore as the hospital door closed, blocking his view of the battered woman. Beside him, Detective Gabriel Moses shifted on his feet.

“If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t look like he managed to rape her.” Gabe tucked his small notepad into one of the voluminous pockets of his overcoat, his ebony skin gleaming in the harsh, fluorescent light. “We’ll get her statement when she comes to.”

“We were two blocks away, Gabe. Two fucking blocks. Two minutes earlier and we could have prevented this.”

“And you have to learn we can’t save everybody.” The argument was an old one. Gabe rubbed at his neck. “You sure she’s our witness?”

“Yes.” Honesty warred with instinct. “No, but I have a strong feeling about her.”

“Christ. You and your Irish granny’s superstitious nonsense. Have you ever done anything you didn’t have a feeling about?”

“Yeah. I got married. Since I divorced her six months later, I’d say that about proves my point. Instinct is smarter than logic any day of the week.”

“But you can’t argue intuition in a court of law.”

“Fucking juries.”

Aiden leaned back against the wall, letting go of the adrenaline that had kept him on edge since they’d first got the dispatcher’s call. He knew in his guts that the woman on the other side of that door was Collette LaRou, an administrative assistant who had witnessed a murder three nights ago. She was the only lead they had on the case.

Gabe went to get coffee from the nurse’s station while they waited for the doctor to complete his exam. The door jerked open, pulling him erect, but a nurse merely hurried past, heading down the hall. Aiden settled back against the wall.

It wasn’t as if Chicago PD didn’t have bigger fish to fry. A small time punk gunned down in cold blood as he waited in line for a movie. Aiden snorted. In a line of blind people who saw nothing, noticed nothing and refused to say anything. It turned out, the boy was the younger brother of a well known drug dealer with connections to the gang network that spread insidious tendrils from coast to coast.

Miss LaRou’s call this morning had been a breath of fresh air. She had seen the murder from the food court, she’d claimed. She’d gotten a good look at the gun man when he’d run. And, most importantly, she was willing to talk.

A plains clothes officer rounded the bend and headed for Aiden, holding out a small black purse.

“Here’s her effects, Detective. Been dusted for prints and we were told to turn it over to you.”

Aiden took the bag. “Her phone in here, too?”

“No. They bagged that. Said there were partials they wanted to look at closer.”

“Thanks.”

The officer left and Aiden wandered a short way down the hall to the waiting room. Settling into a seat, he dumped the purse’s contents onto the low table. Lip stick. A compact. A small brush. A plastic case for contact lenses. A movie theater ticket for a new fantasy 3-D release. No mail or clutter. Not even a gum wrapper. He plucked the thin billfold from the pile, flipped it open and grunted at the driver’s license. Collette LaRou. Age twenty-six. Her residence was listed as an apartment on the east side. Not a great neighborhood, but decent. He dug further. Two hundred dollars cash. No credit cards. Not even a debit card.

“Here.” Gabe swung into the room, holding out a foam cup of something steaming that resembled mud. “What do we have?”

Aiden took the coffee and handed over the billfold. Gabe eyed it and then sighed.

“You and your damned Irish luck.”

“Maybe. I want to run her through the system tonight. Something doesn’t sit right with all this.”

“Coincidence?” Gabe flipped the billfold closed and handed it back.

“She witnesses a murder and three nights later is viciously attacked in an alley after she comes forward?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe in coincidences like that.”

“We’ll have to find out if she got a look at her assailant. We might catch a break there.”

“Detectives?”

A slim, younger man stepped into the waiting room, the stethoscope around his neck declaring his status.

“Can we see her now?”

The doctor shook his head, sliding his hands into the pocket of his lab coat. “She’s not awake. I’ve sent her down for a CT scan. With the amount of head trauma she sustained, there’s no telling when or if she’ll wake up or if she’ll remember anything when she does.”

“How bad is it?” Gabe asked.

“Other than the obvious scrapes and contusions, her nose is broken and she has a concussion at the very least. The CT scan will show how much bruising we’re dealing with.”

“Was she raped?” Aiden’s harsh rasp made the doctor flinch.

“No. There’s no signs of forced intercourse, no damage or bruising that would indicate rape.” He shrugged. “You may as well go home, detectives. I sincerely doubt she’ll be up to answering any questions tonight.”

Gabe dug a card out of a pocket and held it out between two fingers. “Call us as soon as she wakes up.”

It wasn’t a request.

Aiden jotted the information from her license down before dumping her effects back into her purse. The doctor took it, promising to make sure she got it back. He followed Gabe to the elevator and out of the teaming emergency room into the night air.

Gabe shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. In the distance, a rumbling roar from the direction of O’Hare International Airport announced another flight departing.

“You going back to the station?”

Aiden nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to run some preliminaries up on our witness and see what the lab has come up with on tonight’s attack.”

“You need to quit sleeping at your desk.” Gabe huffed a breath and glanced at him. “The damn place is starting to smell like your socks.”

Aiden chuckled. “Go on home, Gabe. Muriel will be wondering where you are and there’s no need for both of us to lose sleep.”

“All right. I’ll meet you back here in the morning then.”

“Night.”

Gabe caught a cab home while Aiden took the unmarked sedan back to the station. The normally bustling building was empty but for a few stragglers like himself who had no life and no inclination to get one.

His marriage had actually been pretty good. For the first few days, at least. Everything after that had been a descent into an emotional hell he had no intention of entering again. From her pretty face to her pretty lies, his wife had shattered his dreams. When she admitted she’d only married him because she was pregnant with another man’s child, he’d walked away and never looked back.

His desk was a mess of sagging files and notes taped to various surfaces. He settled into the chair and woke his computer.

Collette LaRou was a model citizen, he discovered. No tickets against her license or warrants for her arrest. He made a note of the company that managed her apartment building. He’d call them tomorrow. She’d held her job at the insurance company for three years, paid her taxes and kept her nose clean.

Four hours later, he sat back, swearing.

Not a single record of her existed beyond three years ago. Three years of taxes paid. Her license had first been issued three years ago. Even her Social Security record only showed activity for the past three years. God, he hated cases like this. There was only one reason he could think of.

WitSec. His witness was already in witness protection.