Bittersweet Lullaby: Two Sean McClanahan Mystery Short Stories Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  The Bridge

  Bittersweet Lullaby

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  These short stories are inspired by actual tragic events.

  In “The Bridge,” Sean McClanahan, still a homicide detective, pays a terrible price when he encounters a potential suicide victim threatening to jump into the black, cold waters of the Monongahela River.

  In “Bittersweet Lullaby,” Sean, now a pub owner and private eye, is drawn into a heart-breaking crime that he solves in the cleverest of ways.

  Despite having the highest solve percentage in Pittsburgh's Major Crimes Unit history, Sean McClanahan retired early as a homicide detective to take over his family's historic Irish pub. He is now one of Pittsburgh’s most distinguished private eyes.

  “Wicked Is the Whiskey,” the first Sean McClanahan mystery novel, is coming soon!

  Tom Purcell

  Author and Nationally Syndicated Columnist

  [email protected]

  The Bridge

  A Sean McClanahan Mystery Short

  By Tom Purcell

  The police scanner spat at me as I pulled into my driveway: A man was threatening to jump off of the Homestead Grays Bridge.

  I opened my window and set the magnetic emergency light onto the roof. My wife, Lauren, peeled back the drapes and looked at me through the living room window. She’d made us a fine meal. We’d planned to talk things out — her way of giving me one more chance to make things right.

  I waved to her. She didn’t wave back. I turned on the siren, dropped the transmission into drive and gunned it.

  My house was less than a mile from the bridge. I knew I could be there faster than our patrol units.

  I saw the jumper’s vehicle, a Yellow Cab, parked over the curb at the center point of the bridge. Its flashers were on, the driver’s side door was open and the motor was running.

  He stood on a small concrete ledge on the outside of the railing. Both of his arms held onto the steel railing behind him as he faced the cold, black water of the Monongahela River.

  I walked near him and leaned my elbows on the steel railing, a spectacular railing crafted in the 1930s by ironworkers motivated by craftsmanship and pride.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  He turned a quarter step to his right and grimaced.

  “Whatta you want, cop?”

  He was a big man, well over 300 pounds. His scruffy black hair was beginning to gray. He wreaked of alcohol, which didn’t surprise me. Bridge jumpers are often drunk.

  “Why don’t you come over to this side of the railing so we can talk?”

  “Why don’t you try that cop line on someone dumb enough to buy it?”

  I walked back to the car and opened the passenger side door. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a three-week old pack of Marlboro Lights and some matches. I knew I should have tossed them out when I quit.

  “Cigarette?” I asked, as I returned to the railing.

  “I look like I’m in the mood for a cigarette, ya jagoff?” he said, turning to me.

  I shrugged.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “What is this? A date?”

  “My name is Sean. Detective Sean McClanahan.”

  “Well, my name is Santa. Yellow Cab driver Santa Claus.”

  I smiled. As far as bridge jumpers go, he was awfully colorful.

  “You don’t want to do this. Think of your family.”

  “My family?”

  He laughed loudly.

  “Hey, cop, my family never thinks about me. My wife will laugh with delight once they fish my body from the Mon.”

  He was my seventh suicide. I dealt with five successfully. I talked two to come in off building ledges. I talked one into surrendering his shotgun moments before our snipers were about to take him out. One had injected fentanyl-laced heroin into her arm — but I got to her with a dose of Narcan, an opiate antidote, before the drugs could do her in.

  My first suicide was a bridge jumper. I was a rookie cop. He was a high school kid, heartbroken that his girlfriend had broken up with him. It was a freezing February night. He admitted downing a half bottle of Jack Daniels. He stood on the railing of the Birmingham Bridge, shivering. I talked to him for an hour before he realized he didn’t want to die. But as he turned to me to step off the railing — as I reached to grab his arms — he slipped and fell. I’ll never forget him looking up at me as his body plunged into the black water.

  I lit a cigarette, took a long drag, then flicked the match over the side of the bridge. It glowed for a spell before getting lost in the darkness.

  “My wife and I are going through some rough times, too,” I said.

  The strategy with suicides is to get a conversation going. Sometimes potential jumpers want to be talked out of killing themselves. Other times, they are determined to complete the act. Either way, my job is to infuse doubt about the choice they are about to make. The hope is to either talk them down or look for an opportunity to grab them and pull them to safety.

  “What am I?” asked the cab driver. “Your marriage counselor?”

  “Did you and your wife get into an argument?”

  He laughed.

  “I’m the only one arguing — arguing for her to stay. She left me today.”

  He turned toward me. Tears were forming in his eyes — and doubt.

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know. She said she didn’t love me no more. She said I disgusted her. She was gone when I got home.”

  He was sobbing now. I thought about Lauren — she was surely disgusted with me, too. I couldn’t blame her.

  I’d just solved a big case a few hours earlier, one that involved a 10-year-old boy named Leon Staley. His body was cut to pieces, then scattered all over the North Side. His arms were tossed into the river. His legs were tossed into a trash bin. His genitals were stuffed into his mouth.

  Lauren had been unusually patient with me about this case. She saw the news stories — she saw the pictures — and she pined for that boy. She knew how crucial the first 72 hours are after a murder. She knew all too well how hard I worked to snare every killer, to take him off the streets, to make the world a better place.

  Yeah, that was it. Make the world a better place. After 10 years of detective work, I had the highest solve percentage in the history of Pittsburgh’s Major Crimes Unit, and a wife who had given me one last chance — one more opportunity to make our lives right and put her ahead of a job that was eating me alive.

  I caught that child murderer — nailed him just a few hours before I stood on that bridge. I called her right away and told her the whole story. This kid Leon was a sweet natured boy. He lived on the North Side with his mom, a widow, and every day after she went to work, he made sandwiches to give to the street people living around his neighborhood. He loaded up the basket on the front of his bike and went on his daily run.

  Two days earlier, he approached a man named Willie Norton, a 58 year-old vagabond who had kicked around the North Side for years. He gave Norton a sandwich and the two got to talking. Norton offered the kid $10 if the kid would perform a sex act. The poor kid panicked. As he ran to jump on his bike, he kicked over Norton’s radio and it broke into several pieces. Norton went mad and strangled the kid. To cover up his crime, he cut the kid apart — tried to make his work appear to be that of some crazed pedophile.

  I put the evidence together. Norton confessed to every detail — to details only the killer could kn
ow.

  It was one for the textbooks and we broke out the champagne at the station. But I had a better place to go. I had a woman waiting for me at home. A woman who wanted to know every detail from start to finish.

  “Our wives can be hard on us,” I said to the jumper. “They don’t know what we go through. They don’t understand how much we care for them. It’s not your fault she left you.”

  I flicked what was left of my cigarette over the railing and watched the orange tip fall slowly into the water 110 feet below. He watched it, too. I pulled out another cigarette, lit it and offered it to him. This time he turned and took it.

  “What’s her name?”

  “What?”

  “What is your wife’s name?”

  “Claire.”

  “She got family? Friends?”

  “She has a sister.”

  “Where does her sister live?”

  “McKeesport.”

  “What’s her sister’s name?”

  “Lisa. Lisa Scott.”

  I walked over to my car and grabbed my cell. I Googled Lisa Scott and found her number on whitepages.com. I called the number.

  The phone rang several times before it was picked up.

  “Hello?” I heard a cranky woman answer.

  “I’m looking for Claire.”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “This is a police emergency. Wake her up.”

  “What kind emergency?”

  “Her husband is in trouble. Wake her up now!”

  A few minutes later, Claire answered.

  “Hello?” she asked, irritated.

  “Is this Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Detective Sean McClanahan, Claire. I’m standing on the Homestead Grays Bridge. Your husband is on the ledge threatening to jump.”

  “Who? What?”

  I cupped the phone.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I called to the jumper.

  “Billy.”

  “Your husband, Billy,” I continued. “He’s despondent over you leaving him. He’s going to kill himself.”

  “You wake my ass up in the middle of the night for that!”

  She slammed the phone down. I got a dial tone.

  “What’s she saying?” asked Billy.

  I held up my index finger while I pretended she was still on the line.

  “Yes,” I said into the phone. “He loves you very much, too, and he wants you to come back.”

  I nodded, pretending she was talking to me.

  “Settle down, ma’am,” I continued. “Please don’t cry. Yes, I’ll get him.”

  I set the phone on the trunk of the car and walked toward him.

  “What’d she say?” he asked.

  “She’s crying, Billy. She wants to talk to you. She said she loves you very much and could never live without you.”

  “My old lady never said nothin’ like that.”

  “You better hurry, Billy.”

  I reached my hands toward him to help pull him over the railing.

  He looked at me closely. He didn’t trust me, but he wanted to believe me — he wanted her to love him and want him back.

  “Hurry!” I said.

  He flicked his cigarette into the Mon, then turned slowly giving me his free hand as he used the other to hold onto the railing. I grabbed it and pulled all 300-plus pounds of him over the railing. We both fell hard onto the pavement. He got up and jogged toward my car. I got up and followed. He picked up the phone and put it to his ear.

  “Hello? Baby? I love you, baby.”

  But the line was dead. He turned toward me.

  “I knew you was a lying sack of shit as soon as I set eyes on you!”

  He tried to run back to the railing, but I tackled him. I rolled him onto his stomach, cuffed him and dragged him to the curb. He was breathing hard now and unable to get onto his feet.

  “How can you lie to a man like that?” he asked, sobbing.

  I turned toward the railing and pulled out a cigarette. I lit it and took a long drag. She probably had wood burning in the fireplace, a bottle of cabernet waiting to be opened.

  But she was gone now. I was certain of that.

  I took another drag and looked down at the black, barren water, my only satisfaction being the taste of hot nicotine and my latest victory protecting and serving the public.

  Bittersweet Lullaby

  A Sean McClanahan Mystery Short

  By Tom Purcell

  Sit down and enjoy your Guinness and I’ll tell you how I resolved the most difficult case of my career.

  It dates back to early January. You remember the cold spell that settled over the city then? Well, it was hurting business here at the pub. Even our diehard regulars stayed home.

  That’s when Maureen — my pub manager, bartender, waitress, cook, bookkeeper, bouncer and best friend — came to me with an idea. She’d been talking to our whiskey vendor about sponsoring a talent contest — the cold weather offered an excellent opportunity for the vendor to promote its hot toddy recipe.

  The concept was to invite amateur singers to compete for the opportunity to perform live on Steel Town Sports television during intermission at a Penguins game. Three judges from a local record label would determine whether or not the performer was good enough to be signed to a contract.

  As the caretaker of my family’s historic pub, I was reluctant to stage such a competition at first.

  McClanahan's isn't just any Irish pub, but a Pittsburgh institution. The worn oak booth you’re sitting in was handmade by my grandfather in 1929 just before the stock market crash. Union meetings were held here, numbers booked and funds raised to help the widows of men taken in coal mine and steel mill accidents. And God only knows how many Pittsburghers owe their existence to the Irish aphrodisiacs — Jameson and Guinness — that their parents imbibed here.

  But with the harsh cold weather killing business, Maureen persuaded me to give it a try one Sunday night. It was an instant hit. The first contest drew in performers from all over the city and filled the pub to half capacity — amateurs with incredible talent.

  Take one fellow, Rollie Pollie. By day, he’s a 350-pound postal carrier, but by night he does an Elvis impersonation that would make you think the King was here in the flesh.

  Another standout is Antonio Calabro, a retired construction worker. He sings Frank Sinatra tunes with such strength and clarity, you’d think the old crooner had returned from the dead.

  One of my favorites is Terry Donovan, a graduate student at Pitt. He does a Jerry Seinfeld impersonation that has the room in stitches.

  Well, the following Sunday was well below zero, but the pub was packed. A line of performers wrapped around the side of the building waiting for their chance. I went out to offer them some hot tea and coffee. That’s when I met Sandy Smith.

  She stood there with her two little girls, all three of them shivering. There’s no way I could let them suffer. I ushered all three of them through the back door and seated them in my booth across from the hearth. I threw some extra logs onto the fire.

  “I’m Sean McClanahan,” I said, walking back over to the table.

  “I’m Sandy,” she said, smiling. “Sandy Smith. These are my twin daughters, Matilda and Madeline. They’re five.”

  She took the girls’ coats and caps off. They were beautiful little girls, both with long blond hair and big blue eyes. When she took her own cap and coat off, I saw where the girls got their beauty. Sandy’s long blond hair danced over her small shoulders. Her black sweater hugged her gentle curves and illuminated her porcelain teeth and ocean-blue eyes. No doubt about it, Sandy Smith was a knockout.

  I got all three some vegetable soup and hot cocoa and it warmed my heart to see them devour that meal. After they ate, Sandy began tuning her guitar, while her girls worked on a coloring book. She told me that the girls’ dad was supposed to watch them that night, but never came home. She said she needed to get back so the girls could fini
sh their homework.

  Rather than make her wait her turn, I walked her onto the stage and introduced her.

  “Our next performer has two beautiful young girls who need to get back home, so we’re going to let her perform right away.”

  The crowd gave a generous applause as she sat on the stool. She dropped her pick. As she reached down to pick it up she bumped her head on the mic. She adjusted the mic, then began to talk.

  “This song is called ‘Young Wife,’ a song I wrote myself.”

  It’s hard for me to describe what happened when she began to sing. Her voice was low and steady, but powerful — as though all the pain she’d ever known in her life had been welded onto her vocal chords.

  I don’t remember her lyrics exactly, but they were about a 17-year-old girl who grew up in a coal mining town. The girl’s daddy drank and her momma was poor. But the girl had talent. She dreamed of being a performer. She was an A student with a scholarship to Julliard, but she fell hard for a smooth talker. She got pregnant the first time she was with him. She gave birth to beautiful twin girls and her duty was to them now.

  When she finished singing, she didn’t get the standard applause — the gracious kind that mediocre performers always got. It was so quiet in the pub, I wondered if anyone was going to clap. But then it came. A clap here and a clap there, and then it grew into a burst of thunder so loud I thought the ceiling might collapse.

  The crowd pleaded for another song and Sandy obliged.

  “I call this song ‘Street Angel, House Devil,’” she said in her soft, hearty voice. Then she began strumming and singing. That song was about a man who was the nicest man in the world — until his heroin ran out and he tried to dampen his pain with cheap whiskey. It was about his violent ways and jealous rages. How he beat his wife and sometimes ran off with their two daughters to spite her.

  When she finished, I didn’t know if the audience was going to cry or applaud. Suddenly, a thunderclap broke out again. It resounded long and hard. Everyone in the pub felt the pain in her performance — and praised her ability to turn her pain into such beauty.