Death Before Coffee

Acknowledgements-1

AcknowledgementsDeath Before Coffee is special to me as I wrote it before I retired from the Toronto Police Service. I tucked it away. Until now. I hope you enjoy it.

I would like to thank the men and women that I have worked with over the years for their wisdom, support, and commitment to the people in the communities they police.

Thank you to my editor, Cheryl Freedman, for picking up what I was putting down. And to Cathy Chow (www.catchgraphics.ca), for creating my on-line presence, all of my stunning book covers, and for having the creative eye.

I would also like to thank my wife, Chantalle, for her unending belief in me and my vision for The Mike O’Shea Crime Fiction Series. #Thanksfortyping.

My children, Sam and Ben, who continue to inspire me as I watch them unfold into the world.

And I would like to thank you for giving life to the characters that were in my head and are now on these pages.

Desmond P. Ryan

Real Detective. Real Crime. Fiction.

Chapter One

3:06 a.m., Thursday, August 23, 2018Running. Always running. Getting closer, panting to catch up. Chest pounding. Mouth dry. At the door. Yank it open. The bang. And the click. Sal. Blood everywhere. Squealing tires. Standing. Helpless. The smell of Julia’s perfume.

Mike O’Shea awoke from the dream he knew so well, his white T-shirt soaked with sweat clinging to his chest. He kicked the tangled sheets from his legs in an attempt to free himself from his lived nightmare. He hated these f*****g sheets. Too rough. Carmen had paid a fortune for them. Like her, they were overpriced.

Looking over at the vintage clock radio on his nightstand, Mike sat up and rubbed his eyes. He steadied his breathing. In like the vacuum, out like the wind. Nice enough woman, that meditation teacher or whatever she called herself. Brought in by the Toronto Police Service to work with him and the other high-strung coppers they’d sent to the ‘lunch-and-learn’ sessions a few months ago. He’d liked the idea of meditation. Might help with the panic attacks. Not that he had panic attacks, of course; ‘panic attacks’ were the shrink’s words. Whatever you wanted to call them, though, they seemed to be getting worse over the last year or so. He was probably just tired. Worn-out. Overwhelmed.

In the moments when he was honest with himself, Mike had to admit that he was, in fact, completely, totally, and absolutely f*****g exhausted. I just need to catch a break, he’d told himself many times. Just need some time to regroup, to pause, to sleep. A few days—or months—would do the trick.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like being a cop. Hell, he lived and breathed it, even if he didn’t drink the corporate Kool-Aid. Even if Homicide still hadn’t caught Malcom, the shooter.

Yeah, he still loved The Job. The people and their f****d-up stories. The chance to unfuck-up their stories. The chance to give people answers, closure, relief. Everything they hadn’t given him.

Fucking Sal.

On nights like these, after dreams like these, he doubted himself, waking as he did with feelings that he’d carried with him even before his life all went to s**t. Feelings that fed the stories echoing in his head, albeit in different iterations at different times.

Coulda caught up with Sal sooner. Shoulda pulled my gun. Woulda shot Malcolm on the first—if not my second—chance. But I didn’t. I just let Sal get capped and that fucker get away. It all just reminded him that he should have known better, done better, been better.

You’re not helping anyone, Michael. Not even yourself.

He had spent five years in the Juvenile Prostitution Task Force. He and Sal had been tracking a prostitution ring that lured vulnerable young women and girls from shopping malls in Toronto. Once these fuckers had the girls, they broke them and then fed them to men hungry to screw something younger than their own daughters. To keep things fresh for the clients, these girls were rotated between Toronto, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo.

One girl in particular—Chelsea Hendricks—fit the profile and became the face of the investigation. She was a small-town girl pissed off at Mom and Dad for any number of teenaged-girl reasons, and she dealt with those reasons by running away to the Big City with no cash, no plan, no clue.

The two eager coppers had spent months tracing her disappearance, obsessed with finding her and cracking the ring. They were so close, so f*****g close. And then it all went to s**t.

Sal shot in the head, dying in Mike’s arms. Shooter aimed at Mike. The gun jammed. Took off before Mike could get his own gun out of the holster. Or maybe he froze, depending on who was telling the story.

Asshole was still out there somewhere.

Mike had refused time off after Sal’s funeral. There was work to do. Someone had to catch the asshole, and he was the only witness. Homicide had stepped in, but after taking Mike’s statement, they refused to speak to him about the case. His case. Fuckers threatened him with a host of Police Act charges if he didn’t step aside. Stop interfering, as the head of Homicide called it.

Fuckers.

Now, as he sat in his room in the dark, it all flooded back. He could hear the gun, his ears ringing just like they did that night in the underground parking garage. He could feel the weight of Sal’s body, still warm, slumped in his arms. His sweat felt the same as Sal’s blood had, splattered all over him along with pieces of Sal’s brain. He could smell the Armani perfume Julia wore masking the smell of gunpowder, car exhaust, and death.

And he knew, as viscerally as he did then, that it was all his fault. Sal’s mother knew. Chelsea’s mother knew. Mike himself knew. Had he been a better copper, a better detective, a better partner, Sal would be alive today. He had his chance to make it right, and that chance had f*****g run out.

He sat up, alone in the bed. Looking around himself, he was surprised at how quickly the feelings of abandonment rolled in. At the debrief of Sal’s death, the therapist they brought in suggested that Mike had some underlying ‘issues’ triggered by the shooting. She’d used that word, too. Triggered. Nice f*****g choice. The therapist apologized. Whatever.

Then he was sent to see her again after he started having nightmares about the girl Ron Roberts had accidentally shot at the warehouse.

Mike would just sit there, listening to her questions, mumbling one-word answers. Standing appointment. Went on for months. Then she took a week off. She told him to set something up for the following week. Mike shook her hand, left her office, and never called back.

And now, at 3:00 a.m., he tried to shrug it all off. The Hendricks case. Sal. Earlier still, his father’s coffin being lowered into the barely frozen ground. Teaszy and wee Katie clinging to their mother, whose radiant red hair blew across her stoic young face. Father Richard’s comforting hand on his little brother’s shoulder as his brother wept over the open hole in the ground.

And he, Michael—never Mike, always Michael—left alone to console himself.

Chapter Two

3:25 a.m., Thursday, August 23, 2018Mike’s knees were stiff as he swung out of bed, shaking his head to try and silence his thoughts. It wasn’t until after he pulled on yesterday’s briefs that he noticed that Carmen hadn’t been to bed yet.

He looked at the clock again. And listened.

Nothing.

Working late was one thing, but this?

His cell phone was flashing:

1:47 - Hey. It’s me. Working late. Likely an all-nighter. Lucas is with Dad and Carol. Luv ya.

Mike turned on the lights as he made his way down the stairs to the dark living room. He wasn’t a stupid man, and as he made his way through the living room to the kitchen, he began to see the writing on the wall.

All-nighter, my ass. She works in the main office of a bloody bank, not as an emergency room doc, for chrissakes! Wide awake and angry now, he opened a cupboard door and then slammed it shut. Another night that she’s not home. Like two nights ago. And three days before that. And… Hell, he’d lost track of the number of times.

“Fucker!” he yelled at no one in particular. At Carmen. At himself. At whomever she was undoubtably snuggled up to while he actually considered, albeit momentarily, that she might be in trouble.

Thank Christ for Jameson.

He pulled the bottle from the cupboard above the fridge and poured himself a glass. Leaning back against the sink, aware of the dirty dishes behind him, he took a sip, then a gulp. He’d finished what was in the glass by the time he put it to his mouth for the third time. He poured himself another, and then, thinking twice, brought both the glass and the bottle with him to the living room.

He collapsed into the red wingback chair, staring at the couch his wife recently seemed to prefer sleeping on instead of in their bed. He poured himself another glass and drank it. Then he stood, paced, looked at the family photos on the wall again.

I wasn’t half bad-looking back then. And the other half isn’t that bad-looking now.

He returned to his chair, chuckled, and poured himself another shot. Looking at the bottle, he saw that it was already closer to empty than full. He figured what the hell and kept pouring until it there was none left. Then he promptly fell asleep.

*****Sunlight flooded through the front windows, waking him.

Shit. s**t. s**t.

Mike pulled himself up from the chair and stumbled into the kitchen.

8:30 a.m.

Fuck! I’m supposed to be in court in less than an hour.

He looked at the empty Jameson bottle. Then, knowing that his son would be home after school while he was at work and that his mother would no doubt show up at some point in the day, he searched for a place to stash it.

Above the fridge. Back where he had found it. Hiding in plain view.

He hurriedly gave the kitchen a quick once-over before opening the drawer where they kept the coffee. None there.

Shit! How am I supposed to survive without a coffee? It’s just not right.

With no time to waste searching, Mike slammed the drawer shut and rushed up the stairs, his head beginning to pound.

The shower did not help.

Chapter Three

2:55 p.m., Thursday, August 23, 2018The stuffy courtroom and the curmudgeonly judge who presided over it were not helping Mike’s present condition. He had become increasingly ravenous as the morning wore on, and the shitty café sandwich he’d grabbed during the lunch recess was sitting like a weight in his gut.

And there was no coffee. Order didn’t go in last night, the girl had said. Juice and water only.

Fucking millennials and their f*****g six-dollar-a-bottle freshly squeezed organic bullshit juice.

He had been forced to settle on bottles of much-needed water instead.

Court having reconvened after the late lunch and a brief recess, Mike was finally being summonsed to the stand as the first witness. The chugging of the window air conditioner matched the beating of the hammers in his pounding head, and when he looked over at the jury, they seemed as tired as he was. He tightened the tie around his neck, feeling the stubble he had neglected to shave off that morning, and fastened the top button of his suit jacket.

Then taking a deep breath, he straightened his back to make himself appear bigger than he felt and stepped into the witness box to the left of the judge. He was just so damn tired and had to dig deep to find the confidence he knew the jury required of him as lead investigator. He took another deep breath, pushed his broad shoulders back, and took on the weight of the trial.

The court clerk did not look up from her keyboard as she swore him in. Instead, she sounded bored, like a tired waitress reciting the list of drafts on tap for the thirty-sixth time that day. Mike looked down at the smarmy bastard sitting at the defence table to his right and whispering into his lawyer’s ear.