Red Moon Rising

by J. T. Brannan

  (dead body, he’s dead, dead, dead)

  of Douglas Menders crashes to the floor, silent and helpless, and still and . . .

  Dead?

  I check the clock on the mantelpiece – 12:43, right between eleven in the morning and two in the afternoon, exactly as the medical examiner thought.

  All the breath leaves my body and I drop the lamp, fall to one knee, eyes on Menders as I check for any sign of life, but I know, I know it is too late, I’ve seen this scene before – tomorrow, today, yesterday, whenever – and I know that there is no partner, no blackmailer, no vigilante.

  I know that I am the murderer, the secret killer of Douglas Menders.

  3

  I stand over the dead body of Doug Menders, still trying to make sense of what I’ve done.

  I don’t know if there is any point checking him – when Ben and I find him tomorrow, he is definitely dead. But if he is still alive, still breathing now, can I save him? Or doesn’t it work like that?

  I take a deep breath, lean forward, and – copying Ben’s technique – feel for the pulse at his throat.

  There is none. No breathing either.

  Nothing at all.

  I shiver, horrified by what I have done; then twitch as I look at the doors, the windows, wondering if anyone is there, before I remember that the person or people I was expecting are not coming; they don’t exist. Nobody’s coming. In the reality I’ve experienced, Ben and I don’t arrive here until late tomorrow morning, and there was nothing to suggest that anyone else had been here in the meantime.

  I have no idea if that tomorrow will still happen the same way or not, but I have to assume something similar will occur – the body will be discovered, and the ABI will surely descend on the scene.

  What do I do?

  I can’t help staring at the broken, lifeless body of Douglas Menders, lying on the floor in front of me. Moments ago, he was alive; now he is dead, at my hand, and I do not know how to deal with it.

  What was I thinking?

  Survive, a voice tells me. You were thinking survive.

  Yes, I agree with the voice, that’s right; survival was my only thought. I reacted, did what I had to do, and the result is that I am still alive. A man is dead, but I am still alive.

  And yet I don’t feel victorious, don’t feel that I have won.

  Instead I feel weak – perversely, even more powerless than I’d felt when I’d been tied up.

  I reflect, for the first time, on the possibility that Menders might have only been trying to scare me, had probably not even been going to hurt me in the first place. He’d already explained how he liked the power, the control he could exercise over others, how he wasn’t in a position to do anything physical anymore, but could maybe get his rocks off just by scaring people. Was tying me up, his talk of nobody knowing where I was, threats that he could do anything to me he wanted, just talk?

  I wonder how I would have reacted, had Paul not attacked me the night before. But he did, and I was already on the edge, full of nervous energy. And if you add the whole Zebunac affair into the mix, I am a live-wire, someone who could only be pushed so far. I’d had enough, taken enough, been hurt enough.

  I was the wrong person to attack.

  But did I overreact?

  No, I tell myself, you only hit him once. It was just a lucky (unlucky?) shot.

  And maybe he did he intend to follow through with his threats?

  It was a risk you couldn’t take, the voice in my head tells me, and I decide to listen to it. It’s right, after all – who the hell was Douglas Menders, to put me in that position? I feel guilty, but he brought it on himself, didn’t he?

  I should turn myself in, I know that much. It was self-defense, right?

  But what the hell was I doing here? I know that’s the first question De Nares will ask, and I know that there’s no answer I give that will cast me in a good light. Menders was right – the detective has a hard-on for me as a suspect in Lynette’s death, and my inexplicable decision to go alone up to Menders’ cabin would be almost impossible to explain. I could claim that he abducted me, but Amy saw me leave the house under my own steam, obviously with a destination in mind. Would anyone believe that I’d been kidnapped?

  But on the other hand, Menders was practiced in the art, known by the authorities as someone with a record of this, and perhaps the story wouldn’t be too farfetched? But it would cause everyone to look toward Menders as the killer, and – despite what he said he was going to do to me, my gut instinct insists that he was telling the truth when he said he had nothing to do with it. I don’t want the police, the ABI, chasing shadows.

  I want them to find out who was really responsible for Lynette’s death.

  Of course, Menders could have been lying about not being involved, could have been lying about not having a partner; certainly, after my recent experiences, I’m reluctant to rule out any of the main suspects. Menders and Paul have both shown themselves to be violent, and Pat Jenkins’ behavior did him no favors.

  Unless they were all in it together?

  I wonder for the first time if they knew each other. Paul was – is – a defense attorney. Did he ever work cases in Seattle? Texas? Florida?

  It’s a disturbing thought, but worth checking. What if he’d previously defended one, or both, of the others? Could he have put them in touch with one another, facilitated some sort of “mutual-masturbation kill squad”, as Menders called it?

  The trouble is, I am starting to understand that almost anything is possible.

  If I can travel through time, why can’t Paul have previously known Douglas Menders and Patrick Jenson?

  I’m sure that De Nares will have checked it out, but then again, maybe he hasn’t? Maybe he’s not as professional as he likes to think he is? Small things like that can get missed, and it is often the small things that break cases wide open.

  And this is yet another reason I don’t want to turn myself in. If I’m in jail, I’m not looking into the case. Sure, I might “escape” again by waking up on a different day, but what if I wake up next week, and I’m still in prison?

  No, I realize I’ve already made my mind up about that – I’m not handing myself in, I’m not telling the authorities that I killed Menders.

  I’m going to get the hell out of here.

  I look at the body again, and go instantly weak at the knees, feel vomit in my throat. But I choke it back, not wanting to spread my DNA all over Menders’ carpet.

  I can’t believe I’m already thinking like a criminal.

  But I know that – if I’m not admitting what I’ve done – that’s exactly what I need to do.

  Think like a criminal.

  Cover my tracks.

  I feel terrible to be thinking like this – like a criminal, like a killer. But I also know that I do not want to be investigated, I do not want to be imprisoned, I do not want my search for Lynette’s real killer, or killers, to be stopped, or impeded in any way.

  I remember my conversation with Ben as we lay in bed – tomorrow night’s conversation – and how he told me that the crime scene guys hadn’t found any evidence. Which tells me now, that – if I’m careful – I might just get away with it.

  I shudder as I wonder if this is how a lot of killers feel – they’ve committed a crime, maybe by mistake, maybe a worse crime than they intended to commit, a homicide instead of a rape, or a robbery, and then they are left terrified, desperate to cover up all evidence of their activities.

  The thought makes me feel sick, dirty and sick, like it’s against everything I’ve ever fought for, I’ve become what I’ve always fought against. But at the same time, I know that thinking like this is doing me no favors; life has moved on, my situation has changed, there is no way I could have ever foreseen any of this. But this is my situation now, and I have to deal with it as best I can. Maybe I’ll be caught at some stage, maybe punished for what I’ve done; but as long as I’ve found Lynette’s killer, I will accept
that punishment gladly.

  Until then, though, I am going to do whatever it takes to remain free.

  I pull gloves out of my jacket pockets, put them on, and leave the body behind, heading for the kitchen. I see a dish towel on the back of a chair, immediately recognize that it was not there when I was last in the kitchen, and grab it.

  I return to the living room – doing my best to ignore the corpse that lies there – and start rubbing the cloth over all the surfaces and objects that I fear I may have touched with my bare hands, especially the brass lamp, the “murder weapon”. I realize that other DNA evidence might be left behind – stray hairs, skin cells and the like – but I figure that as long as I get the major items out of the way – like fingerprints, the tire iron, the de-icer, my car – then it will at least give me a few days’ grace.

  I wipe the place clean, from top to bottom, and I find it ironic that the lack of fingerprints and evidence was one of the reasons I’d previously believed that Menders had been murdered by a professional killer.

  I wonder what to do next, how I’m going to spend the rest of my day, realize that I’m supposed to be out on a date with Ben tonight. But how the hell am I going to be able to talk to him, having done what I’ve done, knowing what I know?

  And then I remember something, and my heart leaps in my chest, my feet moving before I’ve given them a conscious demand.

  Moments later, I am in Douglas Menders’ bedroom, staring at his desk.

  There are the binoculars and the telescope.

  There are the astronomy books.

  And there, where previously there was only an empty space, is a journal.

  A journal which could reveal the true identity of Lynette’s killer.

  4

  The journal sits on the car seat beside me as I wind my way back down the hill, eyes ever-watchful, mind on high-alert as I look for other people, other vehicles, anyone who might be able to place me on this road when the police finally go canvassing for witnesses.

  I still don’t know what’s inside the journal, what I might find there. The desire to open it, to read it, devour it, is overwhelming, but my desire to escape is even more powerful.

  Back in the cabin, I’d suddenly had a feeling of crushing, irresistible fear, worse than anything I’d already felt; the dead body, the smothering darkness, the crosses, the crucifixes, the paintings, the surveillance gear, the musty, cloying atmosphere that seemed to be closing in on me with every passing second, it all added up to a scene from Hell, a scene I had to get out of before I lost what little sanity I had left.

  And so I’d grabbed the journal and ran, leaving behind the same eight-by-five empty space on Menders’ cluttered little desk that Ben and I find tomorrow.

  I pull out onto the Farm Loop, relieved that I’ve still not seen any traffic. I know I’ve left tracks back up there – tire tracks, boot tracks – but I know they will be gone soon, obliterated by the snow.

  I want to keep on driving, but there are two competing instincts within me, fighting hard – the desire to get to safety, and the desire to pull over, rip that journal open, and find out exactly who the real killer is.

  I’m away from the road winding up to Menders’ cabin now, and at last I feel that maybe – just maybe – I can risk having my first look inside.

  After all, if there is evidence in there that reveals who murdered Lynette, and maybe others besides, I need to get it to the authorities immediately; the sooner they know, the sooner they can do something about it. The killer, or killers, could be out there looking for more victims right now, as I mess about here in my car.

  I’m scared, but the truth is more important and I pull the wheel to one side, sliding the SUV off the road, no longer caring if anyone sees me.

  I reach for the journal, heart rate increasing steadily as I open it.

  There are a lot of pages – hundreds? – and I scan them, looking for names, dates, any solid information that might be relevant.

  Names, names, names . . .

  But try as I might, my first scan yields no names.

  No days or dates, either.

  Shit!

  It is just a rambling monologue, on the face of it offering no indication of when it was written, over what period of time.

  I sigh, stop flipping through, and read the first page I come to, somewhere right in the middle.

  give me something to do – maybee, maybee, maybee.

  what do I want? I want. I want to. I dont know. what the fuck do I want? Want. want. want. want. Do I know. No. why? I do not know.

  It is barely intelligible, his scrawl indecipherable in places. Sometimes he uses capitals, other times he doesn’t; sometimes the spelling is good, other times it is not; sometimes his sentences seem to make sense, and other times I have no idea what it is he is trying to say.

  But why would I? I presume this journal was only for him, perhaps was some way of dealing cathartically with his feelings and emotions.

  I flip to another page, read some more.

  Stars, tests, me, me, me, wat am I doing here…

  I do not no her name yet, I wil find out yes

  yes, yes, yes

  Ursa Major is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere, one of the 88 modern constellations

  – and so it goes on, listing more facts about the star system, and from the difference in writing, I can see that he had tried hard to spell everything in this section correctly, had perhaps even copied it out of some textbook.

  But who is the girl he mentions? Is it Lynette Hyams? Amy Reiner?

  Is it me?

  There is no other point of reference, no way of getting a time-frame of any kind.

  But it hints at the voyeuristic tendencies that Menders had, suggests that – even if he was not directly involved in Lynette’s abduction, torture and death himself – he might very well have seen something relevant, just as he’d told me he had, something that might be right here, in these pages.

  I flip through again, page after page, looking for names.

  Where the hell are the names?

  I sit back, upset, angry, horrified. There is something in this journal that will lead me to whoever killed Lynette, I am sure there is . . .

  There has to be, hasn’t there?

  But where?

  I know I am going to have to read the whole thing, cover to cover, maybe more than once, to try and translate the text, interpret it, seek the evidence that I am sure is there. But that will take time, time I might not have.

  Should I take it to the police? Show Ben? The ABI would hand it over to a team of experts, they would be able to extract all the information that it contains. But then how would I explain how I came by it? I know that I would be arrested in a heart-beat.

  No, I need to read it myself, digest it. I open it at the beginning, but a car passes by at that exact same moment and I nearly have a heart attack, right here in my car.

  I slam the journal closed, gun the engine up and pull out back onto the road, panicking now, desperate not to be identified, not to be caught.

  Damn.

  Despite my relative safety, my heart is still thumping in my chest, hard enough to hear. Not only have I been subjected to two physical attacks in the last twenty-four hours, I have now killed a man and am paranoid about being found out. Combine that with my near-death experience in New York, and it’s too much for me to take.

  I need to get away from here, get away, get away . . .

  But where?

  And then suddenly I remember something, grab the cellphone off the seat next to me, dial a number that I memorized the night before.

  “Pine Hills Retirement Village,” a young, chirpy female voice says after only a single ring. “How can I help you today?”

  Her bright, airy manner relaxes me slightly, so at odds with my experiences in the mountains. Just minutes before, I was in an old cabin in the woods, staring at the dead body of a monster; now I am in the air-conditioned comfort of my SUV,
chatting to a nice young lady on the telephone, half a world away.

  The feeling is surreal.

  “I . . .”

  And suddenly, talking is hard, and I am not sure if it is from the damage to my throat from the rope which Menders used to drag me inside his house, or if it’s just the stress and fear that have left me like this.

  I concentrate, try harder.

  “I . . . I’d like to speak to one of your residents there, if I can?” I finally manage.

  “Oh, no problem,” the lady says. “Are you a relative?”

  “No,” I say, “I’m an old friend.”

  “What is the name of the resident, please?”

  “Glen Kelly,” I say, as I get onto the track that leads back to my ranch.

  “Dr. Glen Kelly?” she asks for confirmation.

  “Yes,” I say, surprised that he is still known by the title. “Would it be possible to speak with him, please?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Kelly isn’t available at the moment.” My heart sinks, thinking he might be ill, or out of town, that I might not get to speak to him in time. But then she says, “He’s competing in our annual tennis tournament,” and I relax at the news. He’s there, and he’s obviously still fit and healthy. “It’s a real hit with our seniors here, and Dr. Kelly still has a terrific serve, he’ll probably make the finals.”

  “That’s great,” I say.

  “Do you want to call back later, or can I take a message?”

  “Does he have a direct line to his room, or house, or whatever?”

  “He does, but we’re not authorized to give that out without his permission, I’m afraid.”

  “Okay,” I say, almost without thinking, the words coming of their own accord, “can you pass on a message?”

  “Yes, of course. What’s your message?”

  “Please tell him that Jessica Hudson is coming to see him.”