Marcie's Murder

A Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel

Michael J. McCann

The Plaid Raccoon Press

2012

Also by Michael J. McCann

The Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel Series

Blood Passage

Supernatural Fiction

The Ghost Man

This is a work of fiction.
All names, characters, institutions, places and events portrayed in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

MARCIE’S MURDER

Copyright © 2012 by Michael J. McCann

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

ISBN: 978-0-9877087-3-1 (e-Book)

Bought by Maraya21

kickass.so / 1337x.org / h33t.to / thepiratebay.se

This book is dedicated to the memory of Joan Clark Lord and Janet Clark Parker, two wonderful women who are sorely missed.

1

Hank Donaghue was asleep in a motel room in Harmony, Virginia
at 2:21 a.m.
when
t
he door went flying off its hinges with a crash. He jerked awake, shock
ed
.
The dark room filled with
sudden
noise and movement. The lights came on.
S
trong hands gripped the front of his t-shirt and
pulled
him upright.

“
S
on of a bitch!” a
man
screamed into his face.

Hank chopped upwards with his forearms, trying to break the man’s hold
. T
hey twisted sideways together
and
Hank fell off the
side of the
bed. The man fell on top of him, pinning him down. Hank worked an arm free and groped above him.

Someone
swept Hank’s cloth
es
off the chair
next to the bed
and shouted
,
“
Gun
!”

Hank
looked at the
yellow stripe along the outer seam
of the
second
man’s trousers
.
Cop.
He looked up
at a young man with blue eyes,
a blond brush cut and
a trimmed blond mustache
. T
he
officer
point
ed
his
weapon
straight at Hank’s forehead in a business-like two-handed grip.

“Freeze,
asshole
.
”

Hank let himself go limp. “I’m a police officer.
From
Maryland
.
”

The man on top of
Hank
pushed off and grabbed a handful of Hank’s t-shirt
. “You’re a goddamned killer and your ass is busted
.
Get up or we’ll shoot you right here and be done with it.”

Hank got to his feet
. A
nother cop
stood
on the
far
side of the bed, gun leveled.
He was a few years older than the blond cop, wit
h short dark hair and thick
eye
brows. He stared at Hank with
flat
brown eyes.

The
y
moved Hank down to the end of the bed where the
re
was
more room to
work
. They turned him around and cuffed his hands behind his back. They weren’t gentle about it.

Hank was wearing only
the t-shirt
and boxer shorts, but the
blond
cop patted him down anyway.

“He’s clean, Chief.”

“He’s dirty,
the son
of
a
bitch
.
”
T
he
c
hief
took
a fresh grip on Hank’s t-shirt. He was
about five inches
shorter than Hank
and
was
about fifty years old, judging from the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes
and the amount of white that was beginning to shoot through his thinning red hair.
T
he body
beneath
his
white shirt and khaki trousers
,
however
,
was muscular and fit, and the look in
the man’s
eye
s
betrayed a meanness and aggression that Hank
immediately
recognized. This was a cop who always traveled in a straight line, demolishing anything in his path that threatened to prevent him from reaching his objective.

This was his town, his law, and his moment.

Hank took the punches without making a sound. The first one struck him in the stomach, bending him over. The second clipped his jaw as he rolled his head, trying to minimize the impact, but the third caught him on the left temple and
he
dropped like a shot steer. After that it was a blur, a series of punches and kicks that ended
with the
c
hief’s hands around Hank’s neck
as
someone else
tried
frantically to
pull
him
away
.

“Billy, that’s enough!”

“Chief Askew! Let go!”

The hand
s jerked away from Hank’s neck.
He dragged air down his throat like a fish gulping water.

Other h
ands gripped Hank at the armpits and pulled. “Get up! On your feet!”

Hank made it to his knees
, still breathing heavily. He
opened his eyes
and
looked at
a uniform
with
a single gold bar on each black shoulder flash.

“I’m a cop,” Hank mumbled, “from
Glendale,
Maryland. There’s
been
some
kind of
mistake.”

“
Close
your mouth right now,” the man told him quietly. He was younger
than
Chief Billy Askew
, in his middle-thirties, ruggedly handsome, with wavy black hair, green eyes,
dark complexion,
high cheek bones and a
dimpled
chin. “I’m
going to
put you in the cruiser
,
so just let it happen.”

“Branham, get him the fuck out of here!”
Chief Askew
shook
his
bruised hand
. “Get him out
!
”

Branham
got Hank on his feet and
hustled
him
outside.

The Harmony Mot
or Inn
consisted of a central lodge and two long single-story wings, one extending north and one extending south. Hank’s room was three doors from the end of the southern wing. His rented
vehicle
, a
Grand Cherokee
with Maryland plates
, was parked in the spot directly in front of
his
room.
Beyond
it,
blocking the driveway on the left where it wrapped around the end of the south wing, sat a darkened
police cruiser
. A
nother cruiser
sat two doors up on the right, also
on an angle.
A third vehicle was
parked close
enough
to Hank’s
car
to make it impossible to
open the driver’s side door
. This one w
as a black Ford Explorer with a Town of Harmony Police Department crest on the doors
above
the legend
Chief of Police
.

“Move,” Branham urged
Hank
, guiding him around the
Grand Cherokee
to the cruiser
on the right
.

Hank’s
bare
feet
stumbled
on a
crack in the
asphalt.

Branham caught him, hauled him up and
promptly
stuck a knee into the back of
Hank’s
knee, taking him off balance
again long enough to push him over the trunk of the cruiser.
It was a fairly impressive
maneuver
, given that Hank was six
feet
three
inches tall
and
weighed
two hundred pounds.

“Don’t move.” Branham opened the back door of the cruiser and hauled Hank upright. “In you go.”

Hank tumbled into the back seat. Branham pulled him up and swiftly
released
one of the bracelets, dragg
ing
Hank’s arms around
to
handcuff him in front.

“Sit tight
.
Stay calm.” He slammed the door on Hank and went back into the motel room.

Hank sat alone in the
dark
interior of the police cruiser
.
His left cheek felt wet
from
a cut that was bleeding. His left temple ached madly
and
his rib cage, his buttocks
and
his left thigh
were sore
from
having
been kicked.
H
is
right shoulder
, which still wasn’t one hundred percent
thanks to a four-month-old gunshot wound
,
throbbed dully.
He looked down and saw that his t-shirt
and boxers were
spattered
with what he assumed was
blood.

He wasn
’
t exactly dressed for company.

He
’
d done nothing wrong
and
it was
obviously
a case of mistaken identity
, so
Branham’s advice to sit tight and stay calm was solid, the kind of advice he himself would have given a suspect he felt was not the
person
he wanted.
T
he
c
hief had said something about a killer, so there must have been a murder in town. They
’
d jumped on Hank’s
hand
gun, a Glock 17, but since it hadn’t been fired in a while Hank was confident it wouldn’t take them an
ywhere they shouldn’t be going.
They would find his identification and badge in his room and know he was telling the truth about who he was.

Stay calm. It
’
ll get sorted out.