Murder by Moonlight

by Vincent Zandri

  “You’re probably right that the cat doesn’t get me anywhere. And, yeah, it might not even be the Parkers’ cat. But he did provide a good excuse for me to spend some more time with Robinson.”

  Aviva makes a frown. No, scratch that. More like a pout that makes her richly dark face and thick lips seem all the more sensuous and inviting. If I could, I’d jump into her sea of smooth, long, black hair and swim in it for a while.

  “What do you have against that poor man, Richard? He’s just a vet, for God’s sake.”

  “He’s always running ChapStick over his lips. Plus, he pulled a scalpel on me. I swear it.”

  “So the guy’s got dry lips, and how do you know he wasn’t just putting the scalpel away? Your perceptions aren’t always the sharpest.”

  “OK, granted, my head, it isn’t always right. But damn it, Viv, people who use too much ChapStick are nervous. You should add that to your list of John Grisham liar’s tells. If he were a smoker, he would be chain-smoking. Get what I’m saying? And he had no other use for that scalpel than pointing it at me, trying to intimidate me. Capice?”

  Aviva attempts to calm me down by holding up her palm, her collection of silver bracelets sliding down her arm. “Crystal, darling. I have no reason to refute your theories.”

  I swallow a deep breath, wrestle with my shrimp for a few seconds. “Christopher worked closely with the vet. Robinson seemed insulted that I would even inquire about the kid, even though I’m working for the mother, working on uncovering evidence that would clear him.”

  “But instead you’re finding evidence that just might incriminate him further. Like that, ah, vomit you speak so highly of over dinner, for instance. Also, you’re starting to convince yourself that the innocent kid is guilty, even though the cops most certainly did not do a thorough investigation prior to arresting him.”

  “Snagged.”

  I decide to shut up for a minute while I finally get a piece of shrimp into my mouth before I starve to death. Across the sushi counter, the white-aproned owner and sushi chef, Yoshi, is staring at me, smiling. He nods, as if to ask me if I like the shrimp I’m butchering with my chopsticks. I smile and nod back. Yoshi is straight from Japan, speaks hardly any English, and once enjoyed the rare honor of having prepared sushi for John and Yoko. Or so he claims. But then, I’m a dick. It’s my nature to be suspicious.

  Aviva gently nibbles on a piece of tuna, sets what’s left of the piece back onto her plate with the chopsticks. “What else is spinning in your fragile Moonlight mind?”

  “Joan is supposed to have pointed out her son as the killer while she was still laid out on the bed, covered in blood.”

  “Her head was severely damaged by blows from a heavy axe. I’m just a simple artist, but I have trouble believing she knew what she was doing. In any case, I assume she has no recollection of it.”

  Aviva brushes back her hair, sits up straight. I manage to grab an innocent look at her cleavage, swelling from beneath her white, sheer, satin button-down, just a hint of the lacey black push-up bra she wears underneath. The simple silver necklace she wears over the smooth, mocha-colored skin on her neck and chest also catches my eye, almost as much as her big dark eyes. When the thirtysomething visual artist puckers her sensuous lips and blows me a quick kiss, I nearly drop off my stool.

  “Where was I?” I say.

  “Trying to get a look down my shirt,” she says.

  “Thank God Yoshi doesn’t understand English.”

  “Yoshi understand the English very well,” the sushi chef interjects from behind the bar.

  Aviva laughs. “Snagged again,” she says.

  “What do you think about the cops jumping to conclusions?” I press.

  She shrugs her shoulders. “I think the brain works in mysterious ways. Like I said, I’m just an artist, not a brain surgeon. But I did take some clinical psych classes in college and I do know this: even a brain as damaged as Joan’s would not necessarily have kept her from knowing precisely who tried to kill her.” She hesitates for a moment, staring down at her plate. Then lifts those eyes back up to me. “Let’s put it this way. Immediately after that pistol went off beside your head, and that bullet shattered, were you able to understand precisely what had just happened?”

  “After I came to on the kitchen floor, saw the blood, felt my head, I was cognizant of everything I had just done. Only problem was, I could barely move. It took all my strength to get to a phone, and then I passed out again.”

  “But other than passing out from the concussion, you didn’t black out and lose your memory.”

  “So you think Joan knew what she was doing when she fingered him on the morning of September 15th.” A question.

  “I think it’s absolutely possible. I think people who suffer head traumas react in all sorts of different ways. Nothing is exactly textbook.”

  “And then later, she lost that memory?”

  “Again: possible. I also think the love a mother has for a son can override anything.”

  “Even murder.”

  “Even murder. I knew a student, a freshman at the college where I teach, who beat another student into a near-death coma. Witnesses testified that the aggressor—in this case, an eighteen-year-old black boy—kicked the head of the other eighteen-year-old boy until blood ran out of the nose, eyes, and ears. The boy survived but to this day remains severely brain damaged.”

  I eat another shrimp. I recall the incident Aviva is referring to, since I was a cop at the time. “So what’s your point?”

  “Despite witnesses, despite the fact that the aggressor began to brag to the entire campus about the incident as if he were some kind of tough-guy hero, the boy’s mother refused to believe it. Even after the kid was kicked out of the college and brought up on charges of assault and battery.”

  “Kid’s in the clink now and will be for a good long time.”

  “Doing fifteen to twenty up at Dan…Dano…”

  “Danamora,” I interject.

  “Yes, Danamora,” she confirms. “He’d be in his late twenties and I can bet his mother is still fighting for his innocence, fighting to clear her boy’s pure name.”

  I take a moment to eat some more. And drink some tea. Wish I had a cold beer.

  “Peter Parker was able to make coffee after suffering unspeakable head injuries,” I comment after a time. “He was bleeding profusely and he retrieved the morning paper. God, there was so much fucking blood.” Looking up quick. “Oops, my apologies, Yoshi!”

  “No fucking way,” he says with a grin. “He read newspaper? Dying man read newspaper?”

  Aviva sighs while I burst out laughing. Puke, bashed-in heads, blood…not exactly prime dinner conversation. Then again, Yoshi hacks up live fish for a living. Maybe he made sushi for John and Yoko, but when he’s using that knife on a jiggling, writhing tuna plucked fresh from the sea, the last thing he’s thinking about is peace and love.

  When Aviva resumes eating, I add, “Peter also tried to stem the blood flow that was gushing from his head wounds with wads and clumps of toilet paper. He obviously couldn’t comprehend what had happened to him.”

  Aviva holds another piece of spicy tuna in her chopsticks. Skillfully she maneuvers the piece of sushi down into the little ceramic dish of soy, ginger, and wasabi.

  “His body,” she says, “and what was left of his working brain, it went on autopilot after the attack. I’m guessing that’s how the body’s defense mechanisms dealt with the shock of the attack.”

  “By clinging to normalcy,” I intuit.

  “Exactly. Clearly, Peter was a man of habit. He took great comfort in his habits. Now that much is textbook. Clinical Psychology 101. I totally would have been a shrink or a brain surgeon if not for this art thing, Moon.”

  We eat for a while. Rather, I make a mess of eating. Aviva nibbles. Sexily.

  “How long we been seeing each other?” I pose after a time.

  Aviva shrugs. “About three wonderful, glorious, sensual
months. Why?”

  “Ha ha. How come you never talk about marriage and kids? I mean, not even a whisper or a hint.”

  Another woman might’ve choked on her chopsticks after that conversational U-turn, but Aviva just serenely chews and swallows another piece of spicy tuna. Across the counter, Yoshi is making what looks to be a California roll, slowly pressing the avocado, cream cheese, and shrimp together with a kind of malleable wicker mat. He’s also patiently awaiting Aviva’s answer. I guess it’s all too true. He does understand the English very well.

  “I’m an artist and a professor,” Aviva says at last. “I’m with young people all day. They’re not a job to me. I love kids. I mean, really love working with them, for them. They are as much a part of my life as you are, and when they make mistakes it hurts me as much as if they were my own. When they get in trouble and make the wrong decisions about drugs, alcohol, the opposite sex…it makes me feel like I’ve failed them in some way. So…I’m covered when it comes to kids. As for marriage, I don’t see marriage as a viable option for me. I’m an artist first, and Moonlight’s girlfriend second. I don’t want to be in a nursery all day. If I’m not teaching, I want to be in my studio, painting.” She smiles, proudly independent. “Sorry, Charlie.”

  I nod. Turn. “You get all that, Yoshi?”

  The sushi chef goes wide-eyed, shakes his head like he suddenly doesn’t understand. He finishes the sushi roll, sets it on a small white plate, and then places the plate on the stainless-steel countertop before us. Then, when only I’m looking, purses his lips as if to say, Girl’s got a point.

  “By the way,” Aviva says, “when was the last time you called your boy out in LA?”

  “Last month,” I whisper, feeling a surge of cold guilt slide down my spine.

  “Ten-year-old prepubescent kid might appreciate a check-in now and again from his dad,” she suggests, lifting a piece of sushi with her sticks, dipping it in sauce.

  “I will. When I get home later, I’ll call. I promise.”

  But the truth is, whenever I speak with my son, who’s been living in Los Angeles for over a year now, my heart aches like an open wound. So, me being Captain Head Case, I rarely call him anymore. It’s a problem and Aviva knows it, and she’s been trying to work with me on it.

  “A promise is something you’re supposed to keep,” Aviva insists, peering into my rapidly blinking eyes. “You’re a man, Richard. But you’re a bad liar.”

  I try to eat some sushi, but it all falls off the sticks onto the counter.

  “Yeah, you good man,” Yoshi says. “And bad fucking liar.”

  There’s a plain, business-sized envelope Scotch taped to the front door of my loft. It’s got my name written on it in a pretty, blue ballpoint scrawl. Moonlight, with a tiny circle over the “i” instead of a dot. I peel it off, unlock the door, slide it open, make my way inside. Not into my first-floor apartment but up the wooden stairs to my office.

  I sit down behind the desk, turn on the desk lamp. The single, dull bulb lights up the desktop in an inverted arc of white light. Makes me feel like I’m on the set of an old black-and-white feature flick. The Maltese Falcon, maybe. Or The Killers. Maybe I should start wearing a trench coat. Adopt a fedora, while I’m at it.

  Digging into my jeans pocket, I pull out the jackknife, unfold the big blade, slice open the envelope. I set the knife down, finger out a check. It’s got a yellow Post-it note stuck to it. It says:

  Down payment.

  Thank you,

  Joan.

  I count the zeros.

  There’s enough for two weeks’ work, full time. The check comes from the joint account of Peter and Joan Parker. Feels weird accepting a check from a dead guy and his should-be-dead wife. I set it under a paperweight that isn’t really a paperweight but a Penn Senator saltwater fishing reel that used to belong to my dad’s dad.

  I recall that little bit of cut-away screen I lifted from the Parker residence. Reaching into my leather jacket pocket, I retrieve it, set it on the desk. And since I’m sitting at the desk, I open up the bottom drawer, pull out the bottle of Jack, unscrew the cap, take a long drink right out of the bottle. Attitude sufficiently adjusted, I open up the laptop, power it up.

  Time to do a little research.

  I go to the Times Union newspaper online archives, punch the names Peter and Joan Parker into the search box, and wait for the results. When the thirty or so articles appear, I go to the first one and click on it. Scanning it through, I open the next one and read that, too. It takes an hour and two more belts off that bottle for me to read them all, including re-reading the piece I scanned only moments after Joan first came here to consult with me. But I get it done.

  Turning around in my chair, I stare out at the Hudson. I watch the port spotlight that sweeps the river in regularly timed intervals. If a ship’s been docked, maybe I’d hear the clanging of a ship’s bell. But the slips are empty and the river is still, dark, and heavy.

  The sixty-four thousand dollar question: Did Christopher really attack his parents with a fireman’s axe? I consult with my built-in shit detector. Thus far, it sees no reason to dispute the cops’ findings, however hastily they might’ve been arrived at.

  Maxwell Okey says he spotted Christopher’s yellow Jeep parked in the driveway only moments after the murder/attempted murder took place. Maybe I gave the mechanical engineer a tough time about it, but what are the chances of the Parker kid and some random murderer owning the same make, model, and color Jeep Wrangler? A Jeep with a mud stain on the rear fender? For all I know, Maxwell was the one giving me a hard time. Judging from the Pet Sounds vet clinic you’d think Chris was a saint. Not a killer. Maybe it’s possible that Maxwell just hates snoops. Professional ones, in particular. Maybe he’s just sick of answering questions from cops, reporters, and a real-life PI. Or maybe he really has formed an opinion about Chris Parker, would-be axe murderer, based upon his own observations.

  Moving right along.

  Nothing is stolen from the house. The front door isn’t jimmied open with a screwdriver or a pry bar. It isn’t kicked open, nor is the glass broken and the deadbolt unlocked by hand. The door is opened with a key. Standard, garden variety, chrome-finished Yale lockset. The key to the lockset is kept hidden inside a flowerpot. No one knows about the hiding spot but the Parkers. Christopher, the college student, among them.

  But here’s where things get weird.

  Even though the perp has a key to the joint, the phone line is cut and a window screen in the garage is sliced neatly down the middle. The alarm system is tampered with, and even the enunciator panel in the basement is crushed with a single blow from a blunt object. Maybe from an inverted axe head. Weak attempts at making it look like some stranger actually broke into the place instead of using the key? The built-in shit detector in me screams, You betcha, boss!

  I watch another sweep of the port spotlight. What I’ve got to ask myself is this: Assuming the kid did it, how the hell did he do it all alone and why? Why do it at all? We all go through periods when we hate our parents. Especially as adolescents and young adults, when we physically feel them cramping our styles with their rules, regulations, and old-fashioned philosophies. We might even hate them so much at times that we think about killing them. We fantasize by lining them up in imaginary gun sights. But we don’t ever really pull the trigger. We take a deep breath and we get over it, and we move on from whatever caused the temporary hatred in the first place. “Temporary” being the key word here.

  But the question still looms: Why would Chris Parker sink an axe to his parents’ skulls?

  The obvious answer: money, ching, cash. And since Peter didn’t have any of that in sufficient quantities, I naturally gravitate to the next best option: insurance.

  Life is expensive, especially for a working stiff like Peter Parker, a family man with no other resources than his hard work. What does a guy like him resort to when he has no money in the bank, no stocks or bonds, no properties other than
the twice-mortgaged house he already lives in? He buys life insurance. Maybe plenty of it.

  How much life insurance did Peter take out on himself and his wife? According to Steve Ferrance’s Times Union pieces, the two barely got by on modest middle-class means. But a nice life insurance policy could be worth upward of a million bucks upon their sudden deaths.

  I turn around, pick up the piece of cut-away screen. I wonder if the kid had access to a knife that could make such a clean cut. If he did, it won’t look good for him when it comes time to face a jury of his peers. But if he didn’t, then it’s quite possible that the perp is somebody else entirely. Maybe somebody who wants it to look like Christopher wanted his parents mutilated, bled out, and just plain dead.

  The plot, she thickens.

  But in my brain, I can’t help but think about the fragile relationship between parents and their kids. I’m guessing Chris’s relationship with his mom and dad wasn’t fragile so much as it was toxic. Makes me wonder about my relationship with my own child. Toxicity isn’t something that just happens spontaneously. It builds up over a period of time. An extended period of missed phone calls here, or a few ignored birthdays there. I raise my right hand, set it down on the phone. I think about calling my son. Just to say hello. It’s three hours earlier in southern Cali. But then my stomach grows tight, my heart throbs, and my brain begins to hurt.

  I slide my hand off the phone as if it’s gradually getting too hot to hold.

  Maybe I’ll call my son tomorrow. Maybe I won’t. Maybe one day he will line me up in his imaginary gun sights. Feeling myself falling fast into that familiar black pit of despair, I open the desk drawer, pull out a bottle of Advil. I pop a couple into my mouth, swallow them with another pull off the bottle of Jack. I need to find a way to distract myself, somehow; distract myself with work, with my investigation.