Daughter of Darkness Read online

  Ed Gorman

  Daughter of Darkness

  ***

  A gripping, psychological thriller in the best tradition of film-noir…

  It began with the missing week of her life…

  Found in an alleyway, completely dazed, with no memory of who she is, or how she's gotten there, an obviously well-to-do young woman is taken to a nearby shelter run by a nun. There she meets former cop Michael Coffey, who often stops in to visit Sister Mary Agnes. When it becomes obvious that she is suffering from sudden, agonizing, recurring headaches, Coffey volunteers to take her to the nearest ER. But, haunted by an elusive memory she has of a motel, she insists that he drive her to the location first. There they discover a brutally murdered man in the room, and blood-splattered clothing that would certainly fit the young woman.

  Is she a cold-blooded killer, or has someone set her up?

  Instead of turning her in to the police, Coffey takes his mystery woman back to his house. And even when she disappears from there without a word, he is positive she's innocent, and remains determined to help her. But the truth which his investigation gradually reveals is so shocking that it will be almost impossible to prove. For the real criminal is someone she trusts implicitly, someone who is about to wreak the ultimate revenge-someone who has tampered not only with the truth but with this innocent victim's very mind!

  ***

  From Publishers Weekly

  A beautiful young woman is found unconscious in an alley, with no memory of who she is or how she got there. When a mysterious impulse leads her to a cheap motel room containing a corpse, all the evidence points to her as the most likely suspect in the murder. The detective on the case, a sensitive recovering alcoholic named Michael Coffey, falls in love with her and sets out to prove her innocence, despite the evidence. The book bounces around between Coffey's efforts to help the amnesiac (who turns out to be named Jenny) and glimpses of a madman, Quinlan, living out his sexual fantasies by way of drugs and hypnotism. Gorman (Guilty as Charged) keeps the pace swift and navigates smoothly among the many subplots, but his characters, which he defines mostly by comparing them to various movie and TV stars, fall flat. The author drops one bombshell at the end, but-because he simply informs the reader flat out rather than revealing the surprise dramatically-the bomb fails to explode, and the novel's resolution collapses into melodrama.

  ***

  Scanning by unknown hero.

  OCR, formatting & proofing by P.

  ***

  DEDICATION

  To Sheila Gilbert,

  for her skill, her patience, and her generosity.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I'd like to thank Sue Reider, John Heifers, and Tracy Knight for their help with this book.

  EPIGRAPH

  "Who love too much hate in like extreme."

  -Homer

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  A week earlier, a Tribune columnist had noted that Chicago was becoming "an exciting city of shopping malls."

  The columnist had no way of knowing that only six days after her column appeared, life in one particular Chicago mall would get exciting indeed.

  The date was Sunday, April 8th, the first truly springlike day of the year. The mall was packed. There were serious shoppers, browsers, shoplifters, loafers, and lovers of various kinds, especially those in junior high and high school, for whom the mall was a mini universe of fast food stands, a six-screen theater, three record stores, and a huge Gap outlet. Nirvana comes to suburbia.

  Judith Carney was easily overlooked in such a crowd. At five feet, six inches, one hundred and twenty-two pounds, and thirty-seven years of age. there was nothing remarkable about her at all. Her short hair had recently been tinted a darker color to hide stubborn streaks of gray. She wore a demure white blouse, blue slacks, blue hose, and a pair of blue flats. She carried a hand-tooled leather purse, one she'd bought from the Pueblo Indians when she and her husband and the kids had traveled the Old West last summer. She was plain but not un-appealingly so. When she smiled, she was very nearly pretty.

  She had been at the mall for more than an hour. Thus far, she'd bought two small items, a Sue Grafton paperback at B. Dalton's, and an umbrella at Penney's. She'd needed a new umbrella for some time and just hadn't gotten around to getting it.

  In her hour at the mall, she'd gone to the ladies' room three times, each time to run cold water and swallow aspirin. She was suffering a very strange headache, one that also seemed to radiate pain in her ears as well. If the last few aspirin didn't do the trick, Judith would go home. She couldn't fight the pain much longer.

  Shortly after leaving the ladies' room this last time, Judith decided that what she really needed was a little time off her feet. She went to the food court and bought herself a Coke and an oatmeal-and-raisin cookie. She didn't really have much of a sweet tooth but oatmeal cookies had pleasant associations for her. Her mother used to bake oatmeal cookies on cold winter afternoons when Judith had to stay in (she had a predisposition to head colds) and read her Nancy Drews. It was funny all the memories that a cookie could bring tumbling back.

  She had just finished her cookie when the headache suddenly got much, much worse. She was well beyond the curative powers of aspirin-or any other over-the-counter medicine. She needed to go home.

  She was sitting at a small table watching the people fanned out across the food court. Sunlight streamed through the long skylight on the roof. Everybody looked so healthy and Midwestern and happy on such a fine, lazy Sunday afternoon.

  For instance, the woman sitting right across from her. A grandmother, had to be. A grandmother and her little granddaughter out shopping for the day. And now Grandma was giving her little granddaughter her treat for the day. The cute, pigtailed girl was shoveling a chocolate ice cream sundae into her mouth with great vital enthusiasm. Every few moments, Grandma would dip a white paper napkin into her glass of water and then daub the napkin on the girl's sweet, sticky mouth.

  These were the two Judith decided to kill. She had nothing against them personally. Had never seen them before. It was probably because they were sitting so close to Judith. No other good reason, really.

  She set her purse on the small food court table. Opened it up. Reached inside. Brought out the .45 that belonged to her husband.

  And opened fire.

  She killed Grandma first, a crown of blood-soaked white hair flying off the top of the older woman's skull. Then the little girl. Judith put two bullets straight into the little girl's forehead.

  Screams. Shouts. A black man in a short-sleeved white shirt, yellow bow tie, and jaunty summer straw hat grabbed Judith around the shoulder and neck and seized the gun. But Judith offered no resistance, really. To her, this was all like a dream. In fact, all the shrieking, sobbing faces seemed to recede behind a thickening white mist. Even their voices began to recede.

  She would go home and tell her two little girls to play quietly so Mommy could get some sleep. And then she would lie down on the sunny bed, lazy as a cat, and read a few pages of her new Sue Grafton book. And then she would drift lazily off to sleep. And when she woke up, everything would be fine, just fine.

  That was when the cops showed up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A homeless man found her in the alley and brought her inside to Sister Mary Agnes.

  In the Downtown South area of Chicago, Sister Mary Agnes' shelter was legendary. Not the Downtown South of trendy restaurants and festivals of fine arts, but the dark and neglected part where men still sleep in gutters and women sell themselves for the price of their next fix.

  Sister Mary Agnes had fixed up an infirmary of sorts and this was where the woman was taken. The white room contained a cot, a tall glass case f
illed with medicines, and a toilet. The air smelled tartly of antiseptics used earlier in the evening.

  The woman was gently placed upon the cot and covered with a white sheet. Sister Mary Agnes got the lights on and started to examine her.

  The first thing that struck the nun was the woman's face. She had the classical beauty of a statue. Her body was as slender and supple as that of a dancer. You did not often see women like this in a homeless shelter, especially not dressed in a Ralph Lauren Western shirt and jeans. Sister Mary Agnes guessed the young woman's age at twenty-five or so. One thing, though, the woman wore too much garish makeup. The nun, being a nun, wiped the makeup off when she cleaned the woman's face with a washcloth and hot water.

  The woman was just now beginning to stir. She opened lovely, dark eyes and asked, "Is this a dream?"

  "No, I'm afraid not," Sister Mary Agnes said. "You're in a homeless shelter."

  The woman sat up. "A homeless shelter? What'm I doing here?"

  Sister Mary Agnes put a steadying hand on the woman's shoulder. Like a drunk who was going through delirium tremens, the young woman was now overwhelmed by panic.

  "Everything's fine. You need to lie back and relax."

  "Who're you?" the woman said suspiciously.

  "My name is Sister Mary Agnes. I run the homeless shelter here. Now why don't you lie back down? I want to shine a flashlight in your eyes."

  "For what?"

  "To see if you have a concussion."

  "Are you a doctor?"

  "No, but I've picked up a few medical pointers over the years." She smiled. "And I play one on TV."

  She gently eased the woman back down on the cot. From the folds of her black habit, the nun took a small silver penlight. For a short, stout woman, the nun moved with surprising grace and economy. Her rimless glasses, which usually slid down her pugged nose, reflected the fluorescent overhead.

  "What happened to me?" the woman said. She was somewhat sweaty and disheveled, but she bore no outward signs of injury, no bruises or cuts.

  "I don't know."

  "How did I get here?"

  The nun shone the penlight first into one eye then the other. "No sign of a concussion."

  "How did I get here?"

  "One of our residents found you in the alley."

  "The alley?"

  "Umm-hmm. You were propped up against the wall. He thought you were sleeping off a drunk."

  "Oh, God." the woman said. Panic had been replaced by quiet fear. "You know what?"

  "What?"

  "I don't even know who I am." Before the nun could say anything, the woman said, "I don't even know what my name is."

  "Maybe we should gel you to the hospital."

  The woman seized the nun's arm. "No. No hospital." Fear was now terror.

  "Why not?"

  "I'm… not sure. Just… I don't want to go."

  "But you need a real doctor to examine you. Amnesia is serious."

  "Maybe it's just a momentary thing."

  "Maybe," the nun said. "But I'm still not equipped to handle it."

  There was a knock on the door. "Yes?" Sister Mary Agnes said.

  A middle-aged man wearing a faded blue T-shirt and a pair of loose gray work pants came into the infirmary. He walked with small, careful steps, as if he was afraid his knees might give out at any moment. He looked painfully sober. He raised his right hand. A woman's leather wallet rode in the middle of his palm.

  "I went out and looked in the alley like you said, Sister," the man said. "I found this." He handed her the wallet.

  The nun eyed the cowhide wallet quickly. "Thanks, Ron. I appreciate it."

  He said, "Harrigan's up in the TV room watching some old movie. You want me to tell him to go to bed?"

  Sister Mary Agnes combined compassion with a drill sergeant's tenacity. She had strict rules for the men who stayed here and God forbid you broke any of them.

  "Just tell him to keep it low," she said. "He's having a bad time."

  "He fell off the wagon, huh?"

  The nun nodded. "Yeah. So now he's got to dry out all over again. You know the insomnia you get when you're drying out."

  "You give him any sleeping pills?"

  "Three of them. But obviously, they didn't do much good. So let's let him watch TV." She turned to the woman on the cot. "This is the man who found you."

  Ron grinned shyly, obviously intimidated by the woman's beauty.

  "Thank you, Ron," the woman said.

  "My pleasure, ma'am." Then, to Sister Mary Agnes, "Maybe I should put a time limit on him. Two or three hours, say."

  Sister Mary Agnes fought back a smile. The men loved to boss each other around, to act as her lieutenant. The men were harder on each other than she could ever be.

  "Just get some sleep, Ron," Sister Mary Agnes said gently, "and let Harrigan worry about himself."

  "Okay," Ron said, obviously disappointed, obviously eager to go up to the TV room and boss Harrigan around a little. "If you say so, Sister."

  He nodded to the young woman and walked carefully out of the infirmary.

  "Is that mine?" the woman said, staring at the billfold.

  "I assume so. I asked Ron to go check the alley. See if he could find anything you might have dropped."

  The wallet was a good one. Fine leather, hand sewn. The nun opened it up. "Well," she said, "Whoever you are, you seem to be doing pretty well for yourself."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "There's over a thousand dollars in your wallet."

  "Why would I carry that much money?"

  Sister Mary Agnes shrugged. "I don't know. But your clothes are expensive, too."

  "They are?"

  "Ralph Lauren."

  "Is there any ID in the wallet?"

  "No. Just the money."

  The woman closed her eyes, rested the back of her hand on her forehead, as if she had a terrible headache. "This doesn't make any sense. Any of it."

  "The big thing right now is to just take it easy," the nun said. "Don't get any more worked up than necessary. You're safe, that's the important thing. How about a Diet Pepsi or something?"

  "I am pretty dry."

  "Good. I'll be right back, then."

  Sister Mary Agnes walked through the empty first floor. Fifteen picnic tables were spread out over the wide concrete floor. In the back was the kitchen. The shelter fed up to two hundred men and women a day. The Archbishop saw to it that Sister Mary Agnes' shelter never ran out of food. It was said that the nun intimidated the Archbishop and that he would do anything to avoid a confrontation with her. Sister Mary Agnes had heard this same story many times. She didn't believe it but it was amusing to think about.

  She passed the steps that led to the second floor. Up there, forty cots covered a large room. In the winter, men slept on blankets on the floor, anything to get out of the cold. The Archbishop saw to it that Sister Mary Agnes was also kept in sheets and blankets.

  Sister Mary Agnes walked more slowly than she had earlier in the day. At her age, a certain melancholy came over her at day's end. She had gone to the convent straight from the farm, back when she was sixteen years old. She'd served as a nurse in World War II, and had gone into the concentration camps with the American armies. She still had screaming nightmares about the camps. The camps changed her. She hadn't believed in true evil until she saw them. She'd believed, up until then, that virtually all men and women could be redeemed if only they would submit to God's wisdom. But the camps showed her otherwise. The camps showed her that there were men and women who were truly evil and could never be redeemed. Years later, when she found out that the Vatican and the Pope had helped key Nazis escape to South America, she knew that true evil had even claimed the souls of her own clerics. This had engendered in her a profound and long-lasting crisis of faith. She came back to Chicago in 1949 and went to work in the ghettos of the city. Only through working with the poor and the outcasts was she able to find Christ again.

  In the d
ark kitchen, the nun went to one of the two super-size refrigerators a local merchant had donated to the shelter after the good sister had given him an hour-and-a-half lecture (right in his own store) on the true meaning of charity. She was used to being in the kitchen at this time of night. Her old friend Michael Coffey often stopped in for a diet soda about now.

  Coffey… she smiled when she thought of him. All the guilt he felt for the death of his wife and daughter. She'd been able to help him at least a little bit. And for that she thanked God.

  She wondered where Coffey was now…

  CHAPTER THREE

  There were three kinds of cab drivers at the Windy City Cab Company. The first was the lease driver, who paid the company daily for the cab he drove. The second was the owner-operator, who paid a weekly leasing fee and who would own the cab when the lease had been paid. The third was what they called the medallion driver. This meant that you bought and owned your own cab.

  Three years ago, Michael Coffey had been a Chicago homicide detective. His police career ended on a snowy November night when an escaped killer surprised Coffey in a dark apartment. Coffey killed him. Two years earlier, the man had murdered Coffey's wife and daughter. What made the situation even worse was that while the shooting was taking place, Coffey was out with some of his cop buddies bowling and drinking beer. If only he'd been home…

  Her maiden name had been Janice Cooperman. She'd lived down the block from him as they were growing up, this in a neighborhood over by DePaul University. He was Catholic, she was Jewish. Both his people and hers said it would never work. They said this when he started walking her home in fourth grade; they said this when he took her to their very first eighth grade dance; they said this when he gave her his class ring in eleventh grade; they said this when they took a junior-year apartment near Northwestern, which they both attended; and they whispered it at their wedding, where a priest and a rabbi conducted the ceremony. Little Janice Cooperman with the long, dark bangs and the big, dark eyes and the devastating sweet smile. He'd fallen in love with her that very first day her folks moved in down the block; and he loved her still. And would always love her.