Moonlight Sonata

by Vincent Zandri

  Except that didn’t happen. This Meadow was quieter. Head down, working to regain lost ground. Still friendly. Still always with a smile. But kept to herself more. No more parties. No more wild stories.

  She made plans for after graduation. There was a small private college in Tennessee where Robert Charles had pulled some strings, and Meadow’s academic shortcomings were glossed over, and coincidentally a new scholarship was founded and named for Charles’s grandfather.

  And then, a few weeks before she was to go off, Meadow got pulled over on a traffic charge. She seemed nervous, and the trooper asked to search her truck, and Meadow, ever the obedient young woman, allowed it.

  Pushed up underneath the passenger seat was a shoot-up kit and fifty dollars in heroin.

  That would be it for Meadow. Final fucking straw. The thing Robert Charles couldn’t fix. Rehab hadn’t stuck with her, and those dreams of going off to college were gone, a busted tail light the lit fuse blowing up any dream she had of escaping Parker County.

  Luck, in some form, intervened for Meadow. There happened to be an ongoing investigation into the influx of heroin in Serenity and Parker County. A task force of a half-dozen law enforcement agencies had cultivated a growing list of addicts willing to pick the option behind Door One—testify against the various dealers in Parker County—over what was behind Door Two: Go to prison.

  That was the option the state police gave Meadow: the witness stand or jail time. When your father was Robert Charles, there’s not much of a choice.

  And according to the prosecutors who took Eddie Dolan to trial, Meadow’s planned testimony led to her death. Why Eddie met her at the local landfill. Why he clubbed her over the head with a pipe. Because he knew her testimony would put him in jail, they said. Eddie had a rep as a runner for some of the area dealers, a go-between in trade for the occasional hit. Meadow’s testimony would tie Eddie into the local drug tapestry and drop him deep in prison, the prosecutor said. Eddie was just a frightened animal, they said, and like any other creature backed into a corner, he attacked to make his way out.

  No one even seemed surprised Eddie raped Meadow. It was shocking, sure, but with a guy like Eddie Dolan, what could you expect? He took his opportunities as he could. It was a note the prosecutors struck over and over, talking about the brutality and savagery of the act. Another act that defiled the memory of Meadow Charles. Another knot in the noose around Eddie Dolan’s neck.

  The lead-up to the trial put on display the divide between the haves and the never-haves of Parker County. The contrast between the Charles clan—hair always impeccable, clothes tailored and sharply pressed—and the Dolans—bad tattoos, home perms, not the best dental care—was sharp enough to split a hair or slit a throat. The TV news loved it and played it for all it was worth. Video of Meadow cheerleading and graduating contrasted with pictures of Eddie, who looked like the guy we never want to make eye contact with coming down the street. Flesh-and-blood individuals were reduced to characters in a twenty-four-hour news-cycle drama. TV crews jockeyed for angles on courthouse steps and people posted selfies with cable reporters and running commentaries appeared in every electronic corner available. What became lost were the people mourning the losses of their daughters and sons, a private act played out for millions.

  An hour before the trial was set to start, Eddie took a plea deal. Life in prison with a chance of parole in forty years. If everything went perfect for Eddie, he’d be seventy-seven years old when he got to be a free man again.

  Meadow Charles, though, was still eighteen years old, and she always will be.

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  Here is a preview from Murder by Moonlight, the fourth Dick Moonlight PI thriller by Vincent Zandri.

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  Chapter 1

  The footsteps sound laden and painful and remind me of the walking dead. It’s just like I expected them to sound. Dead, but somehow still alive. I stand at the big window looking out onto the Hudson River and listen to the victim of an attempted murder slowly climb the stairs to my second-floor office.

  Gripped in my right hand, an early afternoon Jack.

  I sip the whiskey slowly, stare through the glass, beyond the transparent reflection of my scruffy face, cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and the surgically shaved scar over my right earlobe, where a piece of .22-caliber hollow-point bullet penetrated.

  I can’t avoid them: the footsteps, heavy and labored like a beating heart. I do my best to sight in on a flock of seagulls swooping down at the river in random arcs before pulling out of their dives barely an inch ahead of crashing into the water. Its nature’s grace incarnate. But beauty is the last thing on my mind.

  The day is cold and concrete gray. The usual meteorological song and dance for Albany. A lost-in-time city gripped by cold from November all the way through May. The time my mortician dad did the majority of his business. Tax season, he used to call it.

  It’s only January 4, but already I’m beginning to feel like the state capital will never know warmth again. What did Shakespeare call it? The winter of our discontent? I wonder if anyone ever experienced a contented winter up in Albany. Skiers, maybe. Snowboarders. People with the money to hop a flight to Palm Beach.

  I’m mouthing the whiskey glass once more when the footsteps stop. The door opens, and she walks into my office without knocking.

  “Mr. Moonlight,” she says to my back. “I hope I’m not too early.”

  The voice is noticeably slurred and delayed, which I also expected. But then, the woman has been through one hell of a painful ordeal. I chug down what’s left of my whiskey, run the fingers of my free hand down my face, wishing I’d shaved. Ah, what the hell.

  I turn.

  Setting the now empty glass and whiskey bottle inside the open desk drawer, I attempt to smile warmly, but give up trying almost immediately. I close the drawer without slamming it.

  “You’re right on time, Mrs. Parker.” Holding my hand out toward an empty wooden chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  “Do you always drink alone?”

  “Only when I am alone.” I force a second smile for effect, but it’s no use. Then, “Hope it won’t be a problem.”

  “Has it been for you? In the past, I mean?”

  My second smile dissolves like freshly fallen snow on a puddle of warm blood. Do I tell her now about my failed suicide attempt, or do I leave it for later? Maybe she already knows. This is SmAlbany, after all. She closes the wooden door behind her, painstakingly makes her way into the office, gingerly sits herself down. Life is no easy task for this zombie-like woman.

  In truth, she should be dead.

  “I understand if this…my appearance…is difficult for you,” she comments, peering into my face and then lowering her head. She feels ugly. Somehow proud, too, but ugly. She’s badly scarred and to be honest, it makes my back teeth hurt and my throat constrict just to look at her.

  I take a load off in the old swivel chair behind the desk, nod.

  “I’m not fully healed,” she explains. “I may never fully heal.”

  She’s a small, thin, fragile woman. A woman who’s lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time. But that doesn’t prevent her from taking pride in putting herself together. She wears an expensive, matching tan jacket and skirt, black leather boots that rise up to her knees. There’s also something that at first appears to be a scarf wrapped around the upper portion of her bird-like neck. But only when you look closer can you see that it’s actually a man’s necktie. A blue and scarlet striped rep tie. No doubt, one of her recently murdered husband’s mementos.

  A snow-white patch covers the empty socket where her right eye used to be before a fireman’s axe chopped through it. The other one is wide open, deep blue, and fully functional. But it’s lost all s
ign of life.

  Her dirty blonde hair is coming back in places. Patches mostly, like clumps of grass that grow through the cracks in the sidewalk during springtime. Since the peach-fuzz hair is newly sprouted, it does little to hide the edge of the curved plate that’s been inserted in the place where the skull was split and shattered in the axe attack. I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine hair ever growing back there.

  A scar the width of a vein runs from her lower lip up through the upper lip and travels like the jagged line on a roadmap until it meets the damaged eye. Even though four months have passed since the September morning when the attacks occurred, the scar is still thick, purple, and tender looking. Like it formed an hour ago. When her facial muscles constrict and contract, it appears to be throbbing like a live electric cable.

  “I would have met you at your home,” I offer, after a beat. “You had to make the stairs.”

  “I’m not a cripple, Mr. Moonlight,” she insists, her words still slow but direct. “I bear the scars and injuries of a killer who still roams the streets of Albany.”

  “Which is why you are here.” A third attempt at smiling. But I can’t do it. Three and out.

  She inhales a breath and then leans forward. Reaching down, she lifts her bone-colored purse, sets it on her lap. Stuffing her hand inside, she comes back out with a compact disc housed inside a transparent plastic case. She tries to hand it to me from across the desk. But even this simple act seems to take a great effort. And of course, her injuries prevent her from reaching across it, anyway.

  I shoot up fast, hold my hand out for her.

  “Photographs of my son, Christopher. I thought you’d like to see them. See how we raised him.”

  I take the case in my hand. The plastic feels as cold and dead as she looks.

  “This isn’t necessary, Mrs. Parker.”

  I sit back down, stare at the generic CD. It’s got “Chris’s Life” scrawled on the silver metallic side in thoughtful, if not feminine, Sharpie script. She’s even added a little smiley face beneath the name, “Chris.”

  “Call me Joan…please.” The pseudo-drunk way she pronounces her name makes it sound like “Shoan.”

  “Joan,” I repeat, setting the case on the desk. “Makes no difference to me if he was raised by a pack of wolves in the woods.”

  She shoots me a hard look. Something I wouldn’t have thought possible a few seconds before. Despite her crippling injuries, the woman still sports some spunk.

  “My bad,” I say. “I was reaching for a little humor.”

  “I’m not sure I can laugh anymore,” she says.

  I look into her good eye and view a world of pain and anger so profound my heart skips a beat. “Understood,” I say. “Let’s get down to it then, shall we?”

  “Time is of the essence,” she agrees.

  I open the top drawer; pull out a fresh yellow legal pad. I set the pad on the desk beside the CD and close the drawer back up. Fingering a pen, I write down, “Joan Parker, axe attack survivor, wife of Peter Parker, law clerk and murder victim, mother of twenty-two-year-old Chris Parker, the accused.” I finish by scrawling a long line under my notes.

  “Mr. Moonlight, I would like you to show this city that my son, Christopher, is not guilty.”

  “He’s already been charged by Bethlehem’s finest. Murder and attempted murder in the first degree based on the evidence. Based on eyewitness testimony that came directly from you, Joan.”

  “Mr. Moonlight, I have no recollection whatsoever of telling the Bethlehem police, who are most definitely not fine, that my son, Christopher, took an axe to me and his father. My skull was caved in. I was nearly entirely bled out.” Pausing to breathe. Then, “I simply have no recollection of the event.”

  She tries sitting up straighter in the chair, as if adding conviction to a statement she must have delivered a thousand times over the past few months. I know she’s in pain. And for a fleeting moment, I consider offering her a shot of whiskey. But when I picture myself having to carry her back down the stairs, I think better of it.

  What we do, instead, is sit in uncomfortable silence for a short while. But the silence isn’t complete. Outside the window, you can’t help but hear the faint squeal of gulls as they swoop up and down over the river.

  At last, I clear my throat. “Do you feel that you were coerced into pointing the finger at Christopher, Joan?”

  She cups her right hand, brings it to her mouth, coughs into it. “I told you, I don’t recall a thing.”

  I pretend to write down a notation, but in reality, I’m only just scribbling some Xs and Os. When I’m through, I scrawl a line under the scribbles. Moonlight, the detail man.

  “Christopher was two hundred miles away at college in Rochester when Peter and I were horribly attacked. My oldest son, Jonathan, was out to sea with the Navy.” Slamming a now fisted right hand against her stick of a thigh. “There’s a killer out there! He killed my husband! He tried to kill me!”

  I nod. “Have you entertained the thought that your son might be found guilty in a court of law regardless of my opinion?”

  “Not for a second.”

  “Who’s his lawyer?”

  “Mr. Terry Franklin Kindler.”

  I know the name. Crusty old defense lawyer from across the river in Troy. Type of guy who can afford to hop a flight to Palm Beach when it gets too cold for the wife. I write the name down, anyway, scrawl a line under it. Gives me something to distract myself from Joan’s tragic face.

  “What’s Kindler’s take?”

  Her throat rattles when she clears it, as if it’s still full of arterial blood. “You don’t read the papers, I take it?”

  “I need to hear it from you.”

  “Bethlehem police were too narrow in their search. They set their sights on Christopher and never took their eyes off him.”

  I nod again, as though agreeing. Like it’s about time I stopped disputing her theories. She is a potential client after all, and I don’t have them lining up outside my door. Work ain’t always easy to come by for a head case with a piece of .22-caliber hollow point lodged inside his brain.

  “Will Kindler speak with me?”

  “He’s been instructed to do so.”

  “As I understand it, Christopher is still being held inside the Albany County Correctional Facility?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll need to speak with him also.”

  “It would be in his best interest. Did you know it was his idea to hire you?” She attempts to raise a smile on her pale, hard face. But it has the same appeal as a jagged crack in a concrete sidewalk.

  “Christopher doesn’t know me.”

  “He knows you, Mr. Moonlight. Knows you almost died yourself.” Raising her right hand, touching the side of her head. “Must have taken a great deal of strength to come back from that kind of low point.”

  That answers that. Like I said, SmAlbany. Outside the window, more gulls, more squeals. My botched suicide has made me the subject of local curiosity. Or in Joan’s case, and her son’s, the object of pity. And, interestingly, recommended me to them as a real good fit for their cause.

  Best for me to change the subject.

  “You do realize, Joan, that I may not be able to prove your son’s innocence.”

  I set the legal pad down on the desk, set the pen on top of it.

  “It’s a moot point,” she insists, raising her right hand slowly, touching an extended index finger to the thick purple scar. “You just find the truth, and he will be freed. My son didn’t do this!”

  “Loud and clear. Any idea who might have wanted to kill you? You got any enemies?”

  The question isn’t lifted from the Moonlight private detective boilerplate questionnaire. It’s me trying to act like a real investigator.

  I don’t read the papers every day, but I recall her husband, Peter, got mixed up in testifying against his mob-connected cousin a few years a
go. Guy by the name of Freddie “the Fireman” Parker. Methinks old Freddie would most definitely fall into the “enemy” category, especially since he wakes up inside a concrete cell every day thanks to Peter Parker. God rest his soul.

  She grabs hold of her purse strap, stands up as a woman not far from the grave would stand.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for an enemy who would do such a thing, Mr. Moonlight. That’s precisely why I’m here.”

  No mention of Freddie as a candidate. Maybe her head injuries have caused her to forget all about the family mob connection. I scrawl one last scribble on the notepad before standing, coming around the desk.

  “Guess I should have thought of that,” I say.

  “I’ll allow that one to slide,” she says.

  I show the axe-attack victim to the door.

  Click here to learn more about Murder by Moonlight by Vincent Zandri.

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  Here is a preview from A Place for Snakes to Breed by Patrick Michael Finn.

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  1

  By now she knew her father slept hardest in the hour before sunrise and that by the depth of his snoring she could move through the house to pack up her shit without worrying about waking him to face the hairy scene he’d make about trying to get her to stay.

  She crossed into his room and took his wallet from the dresser, behind his snoring and down out the window in the wasted riverbed the coyotes yelping and bawling for food in the dark and remembering the sound of his voice, tired but gentle, she winced as she pulled five twenties out. If there had been more she would have taken it. She knew she’d need more, much more, and soon. Two days soon. A worry that lasted as long as a breath.

  Darkness crawled into every window and covered her feet like sludge. And then the dim green light in the kitchen from the clock on the stove, a signal at the bottom of a black water lake. She looked in some drawers for the phone book and the freezer kicked on and she went stiff and the Percocet drained from her face and the needles of pain in her split lips and swollen eyes and the stitches in her brow pulsed in waves so radiant it was like the Mexican girls were beating her up all over again. She wavered and braced herself against the sink when she felt her stomach gurgle and brought her fist to her mouth until the sickness passed and then padded to her room for two more pills she swallowed without water.