Murder by Moonlight

by Vincent Zandri

  “Don’t know. It’s also possible whoever did this wrapped his hands and feet in plastic shopping bags.” Suddenly smiling, staring off into the distance over his left shoulder. “It’s how I’d do it, anyway.”

  “Me too,” I agree. “What shoe size is Chris?”

  “Ten D.”

  “Like the entire planet.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “What about Chris’s ride? The yellow Jeep Wrangler?”

  “Naturally, it’s been impounded and it’s been examined by my team and the prosecutor’s forensics team, also. Not a shred of evidence linking him to the murder and attack was found on it or in it.”

  “No blood?”

  “None that we’re aware of.”

  “His neighbor, Maxwell Okey, says he saw a yellow Jeep parked outside the house on the morning of September 15th. It had a mud stain on the rear fender.”

  “Again, circumstance and conjecture. I have people looking into this Okey. His history.”

  “Nosy fella.”

  “Too nosy. Makes me wonder what he really knows and what he really has at stake in all this shit storm.”

  I sense where the lawman’s going with this. “You think somebody paid him off to make a big deal about the Jeep?”

  “I’m saying it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.”

  “Somebody like Bowman?”

  “Maybe.”

  Turns out Kindler isn’t a bad egg. His thought process doesn’t work all that much different than my own, even if I am a head case. I sit quiet for a minute, until something else comes to mind.

  “Speaking of the Jeep,” I say. “I read Ferrance’s newspaper accounts. Surveillance cameras at Christopher’s college indicate that the yellow Jeep wasn’t parked inside the designated parking area like normal.”

  “We don’t think of that as a problem at all.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “Fact is, Mr. Moonlight, Christopher’s Jeep was parked off campus.”

  “Convenient,” I offer.

  He shrugs. “You know the way kids are. Especially brooding college students. Christopher attests to parking his car and aimlessly wandering around campus for a while, until returning to his dorm lounge sometime around three-thirty in the morning, where he fell asleep on a couch.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Other students.”

  “Mind if I have a talk with them?”

  “So long as it would be in the best interest of your client.”

  I nod. I also change the subject. “You met Chris’s boss?” I pose. “Dr. Robinson, the vet?”

  Kindler stiffens. “Listen, Moonlight. He’s got some personality issues, for sure. But we need him on our side.”

  “I find him just as creepy as Okey. Always running ChapStick over his lips.”

  Kindler runs his hands through his gray hair. “Just please don’t do anything to upset him. We’ll need him as a character witness. Notice how I’m using the word ‘need’ a lot here.”

  Guess now’s not a good time to tell Terry Kindler, Esq., that last night I pulled a gun on the vet, held him in a headlock.

  Or maybe he already knows.

  “What about Christopher’s relationship with his parents? I’m guessing it wasn’t all that close.”

  A telltale Adam’s apple bobs up and down in the good lawyer’s throat. “Why do you say that?”

  “When I visited the house, I took a look into Chris’s bedroom. Unlike his brother’s room, the place was whitewashed of any memory of son number two. No posters on the walls, no pictures, no mementoes. Nothing. It’s as if his mother cleaned it out, turned the place into a spare bedroom.”

  Kindler, gazing at me. “From what I understand, his mother never touched the room. If it’s as clean as you say, I can only assume the boy decorated it in a, let’s call it, minimalist manner. Besides, no one’s been allowed into that place since the night of the crime. I’m still surprised you got in.”

  “I have my methods,” I tell him. Then, “Minimalism I can take. But cold I can’t. What was he like as a child? Grades, activities, hobbies? I’ve seen pictures of him playing basketball. He looked kind of awkward trying to make a layup, not that I was ever much of a basketball player either.”

  “Grades were good. Above average. No real trouble to speak of. Got involved in Boy Scouts at an early age, spent lots of time in the woods in back of the house. Never pierced his nose, never got a tattoo.”

  “The woods.”

  “There’s quite a bit of state-owned acreage that’s forever wild behind that development. All a part of the Five Rivers educational complex run by the state. You could get lost in those woods.”

  “Chris like to hike them?”

  “Spent a lot of time with his troop in them. He’s an Eagle Scout, you know.”

  “How swell for him. Means he knows precisely how to use an axe.” I toss him the three-finger Boy Scout salute.

  Kindler smiles, but he ain’t happy. “You know how to chop with an axe, don’t you, Moonlight?”

  “Yup, you just lift and swing.”

  “Nothing to it,” Kindler adds.

  “Nothing to it,” I agree. “Unless you’re chopping heads with a heavy fireman’s axe.”

  “Exactly! That’s a little more complicated. Requires more strength, too. But we’ve already been over this.”

  I reach into my jacket pocket, pull out the piece of screen I lifted from the Parker house, set it on Kindler’s desk. He reaches out, takes it into his hand.

  “And what’s this?”

  “Piece of screen I, ah, accidentally, cut away from a larger screen that had been neatly cut down the middle by someone who wanted to break and enter the Parker household. Namely, someone with an axe.”

  Kindler shoots me a look like I’m out of my mind for fucking with state evidence. But I’m not out of my mind. My mind just isn’t right all the time. I shoot him a grin like, Them’s the breaks.

  I say, “Screen material is pretty rigid. You know if Chris owned any knives that could make such a clean, perfect cut through a screen? A knife that might also make a clean, professional cut on a telephone wire? Maybe a specially crafted pocket knife only an Eagle Scout would own?”

  He cocks his head, staring at the piece of screen. “I’m not aware of anything, but I suppose it’s possible.” Then, raising his hand. “Mind if I hold onto this little bit of evidence for now?”

  Evidence that he might destroy while he deep-sixes any knives and blades his client might own. But then, we are working on the same team here, after all. “Be my guest, counselor,” I say. “So long as your intentions are good ones.” I toss him a wink, get up, zipper up my leather.

  “Is that all?” the lawyer begs, standing.

  “That’s all for now. I’d like to get a better sense of his fellow students, what they think about his whereabouts. I’d also like to talk to the DA, Paul Cook, see where he’s going with this. Then maybe the law professor. And I’d also like to get a look at the Jeep.”

  “It’s at Fogg’s Garage down the road from the Bethlehem PD, if you must.”

  “I must,” I say with a smile. “No use trying to find a way to prove the cops wrong until I know everything I’m up against.”

  “Like I said, circumstance.”

  “Sure. Now you’re certain the cops haven’t gotten the print from the cut phone line tested yet?”

  “In the process,” he says. “If they come up with a match…” He allows the thought to dangle.

  “Then I’ll be a step closer to being out of a job.”

  He laughs.

  I don’t. “Oh, and can you arrange for a time when I can speak to Christopher myself?”

  Pursing his lips. “It can be arranged. But I’m not sure he’ll be much in the mood to talk.”

  “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll talk.”

  “Like you made Dr. Robinson talk?”

  There it is, right smack upside the he
ad. “He insulted me,” I say. “He also pulled a scalpel on me. Lastly, Mr. Kindler, he was acting like a real spoiled prick.”

  “We. Need. Him. N-E-E-D. We…you…are lucky he called me before calling the police, or you might be in jail for aggravated assault, and I might be out one very special character witness.”

  “Not to mention this well-paying gig.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Moonlight.”

  He comes around the desk, shows me to the door. “I’ll call you with a time you can see Christopher,” he says. “You’re sure that’s all the questions you have for now?”

  I bring my hand up, tap the cosmetically shaved, dime-sized scar on my right temple with extended index finger, just like Columbo used to do. “Oh, there is one more thing.”

  “What is it?” he says, his hand on the door.

  “What about life insurance? Surely the Parkers were insured.”

  He mumbles a halfhearted “Yes.”

  “You happen to know how much?”

  “Just shy of a million and a half.”

  “Mil and a half,” I repeat. “And the two boys were the sole beneficiaries?”

  He shrugs, cocks his head like, Duh. “Naturally.”

  “How much did Peter make working for the court?”

  “About seventy-five, plus perks.”

  “And Joan?”

  “Homemaker.”

  I think about it for a minute. “Chris have any financial problems at school? He paying his tuition, keeping up with the Jeep payments?”

  “Turns out, there has been some trouble there. But it was all rectified before Peter’s death.”

  “Rectified,” I repeat.

  “Taken care of, resolved.”

  “I know what it means, Kindler. I’m educated beyond my means.”

  “As it turns out, so am I, Mr. Moonlight. In Corpro sana en vito sana…”

  “Prego e grazia,” I say, making my swift exit out the door.

  It costs me seventy bucks in unleaded for Dad’s Caddy to transport me in smooth style from Albany to the suburban campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, or RIT, just before three o’clock. But it’s worth it. Because, after all, the old man is still looking down on me, giving me the occasional heads-up or even a smile now and then. It would make him proud to know how well I’m caring for his car.

  A big light-up campus directory map posted at the college’s entrance shows me that if I follow the main road all the way down to the lower campus, I’ll find Fennell Hall, the dorm I’ve been told Chris called home. The building is located at the far east side of the campus property.

  When I come to it, I park in the big lot outside the old brick-and-marble building, head inside. There’s no one at the door to stop me or ask me my business or comment on my botched suicide. No security guard, no hall monitor, no work-for-tuition students. So much for security.

  A few feet in from the vestibule is a square common area. The walls are painted hospital white and they’re covered with various posters advertising one thing or another. One shows a colorful panoramic view of Florence, Italy. “The Semester Abroad” is printed across it in big bold letters.

  Another poster displays an image of an obviously sick and miserable college student. “Have you had your flu shot yet?” queries the poster. Somebody’s taken a Sharpie to the sick kid, drawn an oversized needle and syringe, and jabbed it into the sick student’s head. Maybe Chris was the artist.

  I withhold a chuckle.

  Thrift-store couches and easy chairs that don’t match are pressed up against three of the walls. All of them worn and ratty looking. A large throw rug covers the bare wood floor in the center of the place. Someone tossed an empty Doritos bag onto the rug instead of making it into the large trash can set a whole three feet away. When I went to Providence College to major in English, my dad used to say, Richard, it’s the effort that counts. I nearly flunked out three times.

  A television is mounted to a fourth wall by means of a bracket system, just like you’d see inside a hospital room. The TV is tuned to SpongeBob SquarePants reruns with the sound muted. There’s a student sleeping on his stomach on one of the couches. A boy. Or should I say, a young man. This is the collegiate PC world, after all.

  I walk over to him, kick the couch. His head shoots up. Eyes half-mast, he looks over one shoulder, then the other. He wipes the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, looking up.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “Closer to Lazarus. But we’ll go with that for now.”

  He sits up, swings his legs around, presses his spine against the couch back. He’s wearing a tan Windbreaker and a gray sweatshirt under it that says “College.” His hair is black and cut short on the sides. He smells like a combo of BO and locally grown pot.

  “You know Christopher Parker?” Small private college. An even smaller dorm. I’m thinking it’s a safe bet these kids all know one another, seeing as they live under the same roof, so to speak.

  He inhales a breath. Lets it out. “You a cop?”

  “Not anymore. I’m a PI. I’m working for Chris’s mother. You know him?”

  He nods. “Yeah, I know him. He lives here.”

  Just then the doors open. Another boy and a girl appear. Excuse me…young man and young woman. They’re dressed in long dark coats that look like they were purchased at the downtown Rochester Sal Army. Their hair is black and long, and her fingernails are painted black. So are her lips. Goth. They both have backpacks slung across their shoulders. They walk close to one another, as though attached at impossibly narrow hips. They sit down together on one of the empty couches, press up tight to one another. They remind me of a young John and Yoko. Bohemian lovers with a major B.

  “Who’s this?” Bohemian Boy inquires of Sleepy Head.

  “Some ex-cop. Says he’s a private eye. He asked me about Christopher.”

  “What did you tell him?” asks Bohemian Girl. Suspicious as all hell.

  “He didn’t get a chance to tell me anything yet.” Me, smiling.

  “You got a license Mr. P…I?” Bohemian Boy asks. He says “PI” like he’s saying “Pee” and “Eye” for a lip-reading deaf guy.

  “Think you could spot a fake if I showed it to you?”

  His girlfriend shoots him a glance. She silently backs up my point whether she knows it or not. I decide to pull out my wallet anyway, open it up to my laminated license for New York State. I show it to him. The picture of me does me justice, even if I am head-shaved bald, the skin on my skull a battleground of scar tissue. Since then, I’ve allowed a small stand of salt-and-pepper hair to grow back. Just barely enough to hide most of the scars. I close the wallet, return it to my pocket.

  “Moonlight your real name?” asks Bohemian Boy.

  “You can call me Mr. Moonlight. Like the song.”

  “What song?”

  “The Beatles covered it.”

  He looks at his girlfriend. “That on Abbey Road, Mr. Moonlight? My parents are into that namby-pamby elevator music shit.”

  The Beatles…namby-pamby? Elevator music? It’s all I can do to restrain myself and not toss her into the trash can.

  “Can we cut the chatter?” I pose after a beat.

  All three sets of glaring eyes give me that never-trust-anyone-over-thirty look. I remember twenty. How impossible it was to imagine being thirty one day. I’ll never see forty again and now it’s easy to imagine fifty.

  “What do you guys recall about the night of September 14th and 15th?”

  “The cops already been here,” Sleepy Head insists. “We told them everything we know.”

  “I told you I’m not a cop. I’m working for Chris’s mother, Joan. She’s hoping to save her son, and your schoolmate, from a one-way visit to the electric chair.” Maybe I’m cranking up the dial on the facts amplifier all the way to eleven, but it sounds good and dramatic.

  “They still use that shit?” Sleepy Head says. “Mothe
rfuckers.”

  “Joan,” Bohemian Girl says. “She’s the one survived the attacks. But she accused Christopher of being the attacker, didn’t she?”

  “But she recanted later on in the hospital,” Bohemian Boy jumps in. “She got real messed up in the head.”

  “And now she’s hired me to prove that Chris could not have done that kind of hack job on her and her husband,” I add. “We all friends now? We all on the same page?”

  My guess is the hack-job comment will go over good with this ghoulish crowd. But they just sort of look at one another quizzically, like I’m some crazy, kinky bastard walked in off the street. I forget sometimes that this is the generation raised on realistic video games where an axe hacking off a head is everyday entertainment. Play Again…

  Instead of standing in the middle of the floor, my 9 mm hand cannon weighing heavily under my right armpit, I sit myself down on the armrest of Sleepy Head’s couch. I cross my arms and exhale, like I’m losing my patience. “Unlike the cops,” I explain, “I only really need to know one thing: Was Christopher here in this room on the night of September 14th and 15th?”

  “You mean did any of us witness him here?” asks Sleepy Head.

  “He’s asking us if we can vouch for Chris,” Bohemian Girl says. With a good haircut and some soap, she might be fairly attractive. “We weren’t here for the entire night,” she goes on. “We happen to have a life outside this social-slave, bureaucratic-prescribed, clique-mongering campus.”

  “Easy,” I say. “One day you’ll be begging this slave campus to accept your own kinder. And who’s we?”

  “Bob and I are ‘we,’ and we aren’t about to bring more children into this overpopulated, unsustainable, greenhouse-gas-wrecked world.”

  Can’t say I blame her. I look at her boyfriend. “That your name?” I inquire. “Bob? Like the cartoon sponge?”

  His face turns red. Bob’s got anger issues. “I’m thinking of changing it,” he hisses. “Something a little more original and memorable.”

  I can tell he’s dead serious. And I agree with him. He doesn’t look like a Bob to me.

  “How’s about Aloysius?” I suggest. “Or maybe go by a sign…The artist formally known as Bob.”

  Nobody laughs. The Beatles I can understand. But was Prince really that long ago? Damned generation gap.