Red Moon Rising

by J. T. Brannan

  I note that my SUV is parked next to the house, answering the question I’d had back in Ben’s car earlier that day. He’d obviously picked me up from here the night before, to go on our date together, and I feel slightly relieved that I don’t have to track my own car down.

  The dogs respond first, Molly pawing frantically at the door while I hear Luna and Nero padding heavily across the kitchen floor and whining in high-pitched tones that bely their size and appearance.

  Moments later, the door opens and the dogs burst forward, Molly’s paws clamping onto my thighs as she desperately tries to lick me while the other two circle happily around me, wagging tails hitting me so hard, they hurt.

  Amy is in the doorway, and although I can see she is smiling, it seems somehow not quite genuine and I wonder what is going on, what the problem is. Have the police been here again? Have they already called, trying to find me, to connect me to Menders’ cabin?

  “I’m sorry,” Amy says, “I didn’t know who he was, honestly, I –”

  I wonder who she is talking about, what’s been happening, when an all-too familiar face appears behind her, grinning sheepishly.

  “Hi, Jess,” Paul Southland says, and my heart momentarily skips a beat and sinks in my chest at the exact same time.

  13

  Despite the shock to my system (what is he doing here? – was he involved in the Hyams’ death? – what does he want from me? – why isn’t be back in New York?), I speak first to Amy about the horses, make sure they’re okay; I feed and fuss over the dogs; I even check the news websites for any information about Doug Menders (there isn’t any). Anything to avoid confronting Paul, who stands silently waiting for me by the door to the hallway, leaning nervously against the painted wooden frame.

  If he looks nervous, then I’ve got no idea how I look; I don’t even know how I feel. I woke up this morning in the bed of a man I’d slept with, a man who I’d been on dates with and presumably have some sort of relationship with, without remembering any of it; and now here in front of me is the other man, the man who – once upon a time – I’d decided to spend the rest of my life with, the man who left me unconscious in a hospital bed, the man who’d taken the engagement ring from my finger while I lay in a coma and moved all of the things out of my apartment, the man I’d moved thousands of miles to avoid.

  The man a part of me still loves.

  Finally, Luna and Nero close by my side, I turn to him and give him my full attention.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Amy asks, although I barely hear the words.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”

  She retreats upstairs, where she’s got a spare room while I need the help.

  I still haven’t taken my eyes off Paul.

  “Surprised to see me?” he asks, obviously hoping his boyish charm will still work on me.

  I try hard for it not to.

  “I heard you’d gone back to New York,” I say, trying to make it sound as if I would have preferred it if he’d done just that.

  He shakes his head. “No, I’ve been staying in a hotel in Anchorage. My firm hasn’t exactly kicked me out, but I think ‘partner’ is now a long way off, that’s for sure. I’m keeping a low profile for now, until this whole thing blows over.”

  He tries to make light of the situation, but I can see that it pisses him off.

  “You got arrested?” I ask, maybe trying to piss him off even more.

  “Brought in for questioning,” he says awkwardly. “But it still doesn’t look too good for a senior defense attorney in one of the big New York firms to be involved in a case that might involve rape, torture, murder, not to mention serial killing.” He shakes his head sadly, though I am far from feeling sorry for him. “No, it doesn’t look good at all.”

  I look at Paul again, see that some of the old arrogance (confidence, I’d thought at the time, when I’d been in love with him) is gone now; it’s in his posture, the slump of his shoulders, the way his head now seems to hang down between them. Gone is the chest-out, chin-up look of the young prince, out to conquer the world.

  And suddenly, a part of me does start to feel sorry for him, at least a little.

  I think for a moment about what to say, then decide to get straight to the point.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  He seems to think about the question deeply, as if he doesn’t even know himself. “I don’t know . . .” he starts gently. “I guess I . . . just wanted to see you. After all, it’s been so long, and I’ve come all this way, gone through all this shit, and I still haven’t seen you, not really seen you . . .”

  At least that answers one of my questions; in the muddle of days that I’d missed, or rearranged, I haven’t seen Paul already, not here in Alaska. That would help, I was sure; much less chance of saying something that would seem out of the ordinary. If we had already met up, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what we’d said, how we’d left things.

  As it stands, I might just be able to get through this.

  “You want to see me now?” I ask, unable to help myself, all of this having been bottled up inside me for months. On the telephone, I’d been caught completely unawares by his call, unprepared for how I’d respond to him. Now, I am ready. “I was in hospital for months, how about coming to see me then?”

  I keep my voice cool, but laced with venom. “Oh, that’s right,” I continue, snapping my fingers as if just remembering, “you did. You came into my room, reached over my unconscious body, and pulled the damn ring right off my finger.”

  “That’s not fair,” he responds, although he cannot keep looking me in the eye. “I . . . I . . .” He staggers to the kitchen table, across the stone-flagged floor, and grabs hold of the back of a chair for support. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, and I am shocked, not used to seeing weakness of any kind in this man. “Can I sit down? I’ve not . . . been sleeping well, I . . .”

  I go to him, helping him down into the chair, noticing for the first time how his brow is sweating, his armpits too. I wonder if he is ill, or if it’s something else.

  “Thanks,” he says, still weak; then his eyes flash for a moment and my entire body tenses and moves away, the dogs by my side instantly, and I have no idea if Paul is really suffering, or if it’s some sort of act.

  But why?

  I keep my distance now, edging round to the other side of the table before taking a seat, the dogs still close by.

  “Why are you here?” I ask again, more softly this time.

  Paul raises his head and looks up at me through hooded lids. It looks like he’s been drinking and – like he says – not getting enough sleep.

  “I needed to see you,” Paul says, and it sounds genuine enough. “I . . . after speaking on the phone, despite what you said, I could tell you still felt something. I guess I thought if I could just see you in person, I could convince you that I’m sorry, I’m really sorry for everything, I really am. But then all this shit started happening – you were arrested, I was arrested, who knows what the hell is going on. You’re released, I’m released, and I just know it’s a bad idea to see you, people are talking already, we’re probably under surveillance by the ABI but I’m using what little influence I have left to shut down any of that sort of shit, but I knew it was dangerous coming here, but I knew I couldn’t just fly off back to New York without at least seeing you once. And so I waited in that damned hotel room, waited, and then just said ‘fuck it’, got a taxi and came over. And that’s that, that’s what happened, that’s why I’m here.”

  He’d really got into a roll there, the words just spilling out, and I’m convinced even more than ever that he’s been drinking, maybe since he arrived in Alaska, maybe since before he left New York. He really is a shadow of his former self, and I know it is not just the accusations from the Hyams case that are going to scupper his chances of making partner.

  I decide to ignore the fact that he’d contradicted himself – you got arrested, I got arre
sted, he’d said, in stark opposition to his prior claim that he’d only been brought in for questioning. But I file it away for later; it will be easy enough to check with Ben, if it comes to it.

  I look at him across the table, still keeping my voice soft. “What do you think will happen?”

  I am conflicted, confused; I want to scream at him, yell at him – Get out of here, you son of a bitch! Get out! – and hit him, slap him, grab him and haul him out into the fields; but I also want to go to him, to hold him close, to feel his skin against mine, and the dichotomy of my feelings threatens to shut down my system entirely. There is such a plethora of different emotions darting about within me. It would be bad enough for Paul to be here on any normal week; a direct, physical presence was bound to test my mettle, the barriers I’ve built up to help protect me from the psychological scars he’s inflicted on me. On this week, with my mind already messed up from Lynette’s death and my subsequent, unexplainable bouncing around from day to day, his presence here threatens to overwhelm what little sanity I have left.

  “I don’t know,” Paul mumbles, and the whole situation seems suddenly very surreal; Paul doesn’t mumble, he never mumbles; he doesn’t drink either, he gets up early to hit the gym before racing to the law office and impressing the hell out of everyone he meets.

  But people change, I guess.

  I’ve changed.

  Lynette Hyams changed; she used to be alive.

  Did Paul have anything to do with it? The thought sends a shudder through me, and I don’t even hear his reply to my question.

  “Sorry?” I say. “I missed it, what did you say?”

  “I said, I just want things to go back to the way they were, you know? You, me, the apartment, New York, everything just how it was.”

  I observe Paul, how he has changed; his sallow skin, his eyes deep in their sockets, and it’s clear that he’s been suffering since long before he came to Alaska. Maybe he does feel guilty? Maybe he desperately does want to get back together with me, to make it up to me?

  He doesn’t make excuses for the ring, for the apartment, for what he did, and – to a certain extent – I respect him for that; at least he’s not trying to weasel his way out of it, at least he seems to recognize that there are no excuses.

  But the thought hits me again.

  Did he have anything to do with the death of Lynette Hyams?

  The way he looks, the way he’s acting, I just don’t know; he doesn’t seem to be the same Paul Southland that I knew and loved, once upon a time. Who can say what he’s capable of?

  And yet if the serial killer theory is to be believed in this case, then the same perpetrator was also active here several years ago which would – on the face of it at least – seem to rule Paul out entirely.

  I recognize now that this same argument could also be used for Pat Jenkins. Where was he living, back in 2010? 2006? Did he ever come to visit his brother during that time? And did Artie have alibis for that period too? It’s worth checking, but I’m sure that De Nares and the ABI are tracking down those leads, if they haven’t done so already. I know that De Nares sees me as the main suspect, but I trust that he is not fixating on me and allowing it to ruin his professional judgment. Other leads will surely be followed up properly.

  I hope.

  But I think again about the circumstances, the possibility that more than one person is involved in this. What if Menders was responsible for those earlier murders, the ones found in Chugach, and the ones before that, found just outside Anchorage? The bodies were so decomposed that it couldn’t be proved if they were raped, at least not conclusively. The use of blunt objects might well indicate someone who was unable to rape someone.

  But Lynette was raped, brutally so. Could Paul have some connection to Menders, could they have been working together? But I believe that even less than I believe that Pat Jenkins was involved.

  But, I remind myself, Douglas Menders is now dead, and Paul is now here in my home, only a short distance – relatively speaking – from Menders’ cabin.

  Is it a coincidence?

  Or is it something more?

  I shift uncomfortably in my chair, and the dogs’ ears twitch in response; my friends are tensed to act quickly if they are needed.

  “I’m not sure there’s any going back,” I say, trying to keep strong. “Not anymore.”

  “Too much water under the bridge, I guess?” he says, eyes downcast.

  “I guess.”

  His eyes look up at me at last. “How are you holding up, anyway?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” It’s the truth, at least. How am I holding up? For the first time, I consider, maybe I’m not holding up so well?

  “It’s weird, right?” Paul says.

  “What is?” There are so many weird things going on, which one does he mean?

  “You know, I heard about what you told the police, I know why you got arrested, you said that girl got killed before it actually happened, am I right?”

  Paul seems animated, for the first time since being here, and I guess it’s because he feels he’s onto something, his professional instincts aroused.

  But how does he know? Did somebody at the ABI leak the information? Palmer PD? Anchorage? I sigh; it could be anyone.

  But I don’t want to admit anything to him, not right now, maybe never; I still don’t know his real agenda here.

  “You know better than that,” I say to Paul. “I’m never going to comment on an ongoing investigation, whether I’ve been exonerated or not.”

  “Ah,” he says with a tone that borders on satisfaction, “still the Assistant DA, right? Even out here, even after all this time.”

  I shrug. “I guess it never leaves you, even if you want it to.”

  “I guess not. But still,” he persists, “it’s kind of strange. And – if you didn’t have anything to do with it, and I really don’t think you do, not in a million years – it’s a little like what you told me, you know, a few years ago.”

  What the hell? Predicting a murder – or seeing it first, or whatever you want to call it – is similar to something I’d told Paul about before?

  My brain clouds over as I struggle to imagine what that might possibly be; but I know my memory hasn’t been the same since the attack in New York, I know that the bullet left my head a mess.

  What is he talking about?

  I need to know, and yet I have to be careful about how I find out.

  “And what was that?” I ask, acting as if I know exactly what he is talking about but playing the game, as he might expect me to do.

  Paul smiles at me, although – in his current state – the effect is more disturbing than charming. “You know,” he chides, waiting for me to admit to whatever it is that we discussed before. Instead, I continue to look at him until he speaks again. “You know,” he persists, “that problem you used to have, those doctors, that whole thing back in Boston.”

  That thing back in Boston? Wow, I have no idea what this man is talking about, absolutely none at all.

  So what am I going to do about it?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, deciding in an instant to be honest, to simply level with him; I need to know, and I don’t care what he thinks.

  I can see he doesn’t believe me, that he’s about to give me the Oh yeah, right routine, and I put up a hand to stop him. “I’m serious,” I say. “After the attack, my memory, it’s . . . not what it was. I really don’t know what you mean.” I hold his gaze for a few moments, then ask the question I so desperately need answered. “What happened in Boston?”

  14

  “Even without that attack in New York,” Paul begins, “I guess you might not remember too much about it. According to your Mom – your Dad would never talk about any of this – you were treated with electro-shock therapy and hypnosis, when you told me a few years ago, you only remembered very vague details.”

  This was already starting to freak me out. Electro-shock therap
y? Hypnosis? And my mother had provided details to Paul? It was already starting to get a little hard to take in.

  “What did I tell you?” I ask him.

  “You . . . how do I put this? You had episodes where you claimed things had happened . . . bad things . . . that couldn’t be proved. But apparently you were convinced these things had really happened, and it was very hard for your parents to deal with, your Dad was afraid that his ‘crazy daughter’ would ruin his chances of promotion within his firm, right? The only person who believed you was your brother.”

  “Jack?” I ask, breathless, unable to know what to believe.

  “Yeah,” Paul says with a nod, “I guess. Although I never met him, you know . . . err . . .”

  That’s right. Jack died long before I met Paul, and the thought of my brother threatens to send me over the edge. And so I cut it off, forcing myself to concentrate on what Paul is telling me; what I’d apparently told him, a lifetime ago.

  “Well anyway, you couldn’t remember any of the actual cases that happened, you know, those incidents which you thought had happened, when you told me about it, you just remembered the basic outline, seeing the doctors, being treated, that sort of thing.”

  I pick up the hidden inference. “But you looked into it yourself?”

  Paul looks embarrassed, as if I’ve caught him with his pants down. “Well . . . uhh . . . yeah, I looked into it. I’m sorry, but I guess I knew what your Dad meant. I was going to get married, and I thought I had to know if there was . . . something wrong with you, you know?”

  “You didn’t want me spoiling your chances of making partner,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  He shrugs his shoulders. “I know you must hate me for what I did to you anyway, so why lie now, right? Yes, I checked into it because I didn’t want something from your past rocking up and spoiling my chances of making partner. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, shaking my head and – finally – meaning it. “Go on. What did you find out?”