She Will Be Missed

She Will Be Missed


         The man in the shower pulled back the curtain and revealed that he looked nothing like a killer at all.

         “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten my license and registration. Is there a problem, officers?”

         Jack Shannon stood in the nude, soapsuds still in his hair and water dripping down his naked body. One hand cupped his lower extremities, while the other desperately fought to keep soapy water from running into his eyes. He blushed, and his attempt at light humor was tragically disregarded by the two officers standing opposite him in his bathroom, weapons drawn. They wore thick Kevlar vests and donned plastic SWAT helmets, though their shields were mysteriously absent.

         “I think you boys overestimated the threat a bit,” Jack said. Still no laughs. “What can I do for you?”

         “Want to tell us why you killed your fiancé?” one of them said.

         “You must be in the wrong apartment. I talked to my fiancé an hour ago.”

         “Interesting. We found Michelle Rosas naked, face down at a construction site nine hours ago.”

         The awkward, blushing grin on Jack’s face turned first to a blank stare, and then to a lockjaw expression of sheer horror.

         “Step out of the shower, and for fuck’s sake, put a towel on.”

         “You don’t understand. I don’t have a car. She works an hour away. There’s no way I could have done this. Are you sure you have the right girl?”

         “Drop the act, asshole,” one of them said, and pulled a picture from his back pocket. He shoved the photograph in Jack’s face. “This is the girl you fucking killed.”
Jack’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped. His face went red this time, but not from embarrassment.

         “No, no! That’s fucking insane. I just talked to her. Look, check my phone.” He pointed to his dresser, where his phone had sat just recently. There was no phone anywhere near his dresser. Fucking Christ.

         "Please, sir, please. You have to understand, I don't have a car! I went to work and came back!"

         The officers were momentarily taken aback. The expression they saw on Jack’s face was not one of a cold-blooded murderer. It was not the expression of one who could slice and dice the way they believed Jack had. His expression was of an enraged, panicked fiancé, recently privy to the news that the center of his world had been ripped away from him.

         But the evidence was there. The body had not been found an hour away, an hour ago. It had been found a short walk away, nine hours ago. A bloody knife, ripe with blood that had already been confirmed as a match to Rosas’s, sat covered with Jack Shannon’s fingerprints just yards from her body. The crowbar that put her out of her misery was found in a similar state. Tire tracks that fit a Volvo S80, the same automobile registered under Jack Shannon’s name, were found at the site. They didn’t have the vehicle, but it didn’t matter much. Shannon would be spending years behind bars. But Detective Brian Ramano saw something in this man’s eye that sparked him to investigate further. He booked Shannon, but he decided to pursue every lead he had on the automobile.

...

         Jack thought about the phone call he had received an hour earlier. He remembered smiling when he checked the caller ID, and he remembered picking up before the first ring had even left its echo in the air.

         “Hey, sweetie. How are you?”

         She hesitated for a moment. “I’m good, dear. Long day at work.”

         He remembered that. She hesitated for a moment. Something had been wrong, but he dismissed it. She didn’t say anything for a long while, so he spoke again - nothing important, just a question about her day. He didn’t really remember what it was, because she interrupted him.

         “Hey, I just got in the car, I’m driving now! I have to go. See you soon!”

         She had sounded falsely enthusiastic. Something about the inflection in her voice was off. But he hung up and went about his day, and thought nothing more of it. He was purely angry when he thought about that conversation. He should have known. Somewhere deep inside, he must have known.

...

         Detective Romano left his precinct and drove to a used car lot three towns away. This was the place an automobile had been sold to Jack Shannon eight weeks earlier. An overly friendly sales associate greeted him the moment he pulled his briefcase from the passenger side seat and stepped from his car. Must be a slow day, Romano thought.

         “Hey there, sir. Any chance I can get you into a lovely new car today?”

         “It’s a used car lot, buddy,” the Detective chuckled as he pulled his badge and from his belt. “I need to speak to whoever sold a 2005 Volvo S80 to a man named Jack Shannon about eight weeks ago.”

         The man nodded and dropped his act. He led Detective Romano inside, through a showroom and into a rear office, where four men in cheap suits and slick hair sat, munching on sandwiches.

         The salesman who initially greeted Romano repeated the detective’s question, and three of the four men shook their heads apathetically. One, however, rewrapped the second half of his sandwich and stood. He extended his hand for a showy, politician’s handshake, and spoke.

         “Ralph Anderson, how can I help you?”

         “Nice to meet you, Ralph. You sold a man named Jack Shannon a Volvo two months ago?”

         “Sure did,” Anderson said, as if proud of doing his job.

         “Is this the man you sold the car?” Romano pulled a photograph of Shannon from his pocket and carefully unfolded it. The used car salesman cocked his head slightly and then shook vigorously. “I don’t think so. Maybe a different Jack Shannon? It’s a common name.”

         Detective Romano hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Do you mind if we double check your records?”

         Ralph Anderson at-your-service responded by turning toward another office and indicating with two fingers that Romano should follow. Anderson moved toward a filing cabinet and thumbed through records. Romano watched him flip to a section entitled, “June.” He thumbed through each file quickly; they were sorted alphabetically. He found Shannon’s file without a problem.

         “Here’s our guy,” he said as he turned to Romano. The Detective opened his briefcase and pulled his own file.

         Everything matched. Social security numbers, credit history, home phone, cell phone, credit card number. Every single thing about these two profiles matched. Everything, of course, except the description.

         “You’re completely sure this isn’t your guy?” Romano said, showing the picture again.

         “Absolutely. That guy is tall and thin. The guy who came in here was short and balding. No way.”

         Romano sighed and turned to leave. But one more thought, one more glimmer of hope, captured his attention.

         “Any chance that car had GPS?”

         “Of course, sir. Our cars are all the best –“

         “Can you guys access the maps from here?”

         “Well we’re really not supposed –“

         “Look, I can get a warrant and we could be back tomorrow. But we would bring a dozen cars, maybe a helicopter. Make a big show about it, you know? Bad for business, I’m thinking.” Morano loved bluffing warrants.

         “Alright, I think we can take a look.”

         Ralph moved to the desk and sat down behind a laptop. He typed and clicked for a while, and finally entered vehicle information. Then he scrolled and scrolled.

         The Volvo had been parked outside one address for the entire period, up until this morning. Detective Romano recognized the address instantly, but it was not Jack Shannon’s. This afternoon, in fact, had been the only time the car had been outside Shannon’s apartment. It had left not fifteen minutes before Romano and his men pulled up.

         “Holy shit!” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

...

         Eleven hours before his arrest, Jack Shannon kissed Michelle goodbye and watched from the porch as she walked to her car. They had not actually moved in together yet, but she slept at his house frequently. She was headed home to shower and change before leaving for work. Jack walked back up the stairs, down the hall and into his apartment to do the same. He showered and changed, and than watched his clock. He was due at work at eight. He waited until five minutes before to leave; he knew if he was the last to arrive he just might get sent home – his boss frequently overbooked – and he, like every man on the planet, could really use the day off.

...

         Romano and his partner were in a difficult position. Just that morning, a forensics expert at their precinct, Rick Jackson, had called in sick. When officers playfully updated him on the latest office happenings, he admitted that he formerly dated the Michelle Rosas. He told them, with an air of helpfulness, that he had lunch with her three months ago. He offered that maybe Shannon potentially found out about the meeting and overreacted. Romano and his partner had constructed a new theory, though. They believed this forensics expert, a pudgy, balding man, had dinner with his former lover to win her back, but failed.

         The car, registered to Jack Shannon, sat outside the home of the forensics expert since its purchase. GPS records indicated that it left his home this morning, drove to the home of Michelle Rosas, and then to the construction site where her body was found. Rick Jackson was literally a forensics expert, so it was no wonder his prints were nowhere and Shannon’s were everywhere. Additionally, Rick Jackson had called in sick that morning. He was not at work that day.

         For a moment, he listened through the phone as Romano’s partner spoke to a staffer.

         “Hey Brian,” Romano’s partner said, “They found a number of hairs on her shirt that don’t match Shannon or Rosas. I’ll send them back to check the database.”

         They both knew Rick Jackson, being an employee of the state, was in the database. If he was their guy, they would know momentarily. They needed those records; they desperately feared they were about to send the wrong man to prison for life. They also realized Rick Jackson could be miles and miles away by now.

...

         “Any minute now,” Jack muttered to himself, “Any minute now they’ll realize they made a mistake, and they’ll let me go.”
         He sat in his cell, worried that he might never, ever see the light of day again.

...

         His phone vibrated in his pocket, and Romano answered even before the first ring finished.

         “Talk to me.”

         “We got our man,” his partner said. “Get your ass to Jackson’s house, now. We’ll meet you there.”

         “Sucks man. Really sucks.” They had been at Jackson’s house four days earlier. Poker Night. He was a friend.

         “It’s his own fucking fault. We almost put some kid away for someone else’s crime.”

...

         Finally, hours later, a detective came to Jack’s cell.

         “We are so, so sorry sir. You’re free to go. We got our man.”

         

“You mean I can go? How did she call me if she was dead?”

         “We’re not entirely sure, but we just found your cell phone in that Volvo, and we checked out the missed call. We know you weren’t bullshitting us. You have the patience of a fucking wildebeest.”

         Jack didn’t know wildebeests to be particularly patient, but he accepted the compliment graciously. He stepped out of the cell and then, for an instant, turned back to Romano.

         “Could I ask just one favor?”

         

“After the day you’ve had, anything.”

         “Could I get a few minutes alone with the fucking bastard who killed my fiancé?”

...

         Jack Shannon stepped into a little interrogation cell. Detective Romano assured him the cameras were off and any recording devices had been muted. They patted him down, and made him know damn well if a single bone in Jackson’s body was broken, they would issue no further courtesies.
He had two minutes. “Hello, Mr. Jackson.”

         “Who the fuck are you?”

         “I’m the guy who ruined your life,” Shannon said with a disarming smile.

         “You did this shit?”

         “Yup. Next time you try to fuck someone else’s fiancé, keep this in mind. Enjoy life in prison. I’ll be at your sentencing.”

         Rick Jackson screamed and yelled, but there was no believing him. Jack Shannon left the precinct, lit a cigarette, and chuckled. Fucking morons, he thought. His prints were all over the crime scene. The car clearly used to carry out the murder was in his name. Despite all this, he was still able to convince them their own man killed his fiancé. He didn't even care about this guy. He just thought it was funny he'd be in lockup for life. He was getting way too damn good at this.

...

         Ten hours before he was arrested, Jack Shannon smiled to himself as he left his job as a construction worker. He had perfectly timed his arrival. His boss slapped him on the wrist for being late and sent him home. Had he actually been sent out to work, he would have just put off his plan to the next day. Not much of a problem. The poison in Rick Jackson’s milk carton would keep him running to the toilet bowl for three days. He had time.

         Jack hopped a bus and made his way to Jackson’s neighborhood. He put on a pair of leather gloves and whistled to himself as he stepped off the bus. He walked two blocks and unlocked the door of the little Volvo, and then drove to his fiancés home with a switchblade and a tire iron.

         She obviously let him in.

         She obviously recorded a little message for him, considering she had a switchblade at her neck.

         He took her cell phone and pocketed it. He would make a call in a few hours and set the recording on a timer. Then, he’d pick up his own cell phone. Cake. He would drive the car to his apartment, wait a few minutes while a fictional criminal stole his own phone “while he was in the shower” and dump the car a block away. He’d sprint back and be just in time to watch the fireworks.

         A pudgy balding homeless man has no qualms buying a car under someone else’s name, especially when that someone gave them a free shower and a new set of clothes.

         And no one misses a homeless man, especially when no body is found.

         People usually don’t suspect a charming construction worker to be an overprotective serial killer, either.

...

         He hailed a taxi. This state had simply been a playground for him. They had his fingerprints now. There was nothing left for him here.

         “Where to, sir?”

         “Onto the next, my friend. Head to the airport.”

         Michelle Rosas would be missed, he knew. But not by him.