Murder by Moonlight

by Vincent Zandri

  “But did you happen to see Chris during the time you were here?” I continue.

  “Look, man, I spend my life in this room,” Sleepy Head barks.

  “As you can see by his mature choice of television,” Bohemian Girl jumps in with a laugh. She’s got a sense of humor, after all. Makes her even prettier.

  I glance at the TV. SpongeBob and his overweight starfish best friend, Patrick, are sitting around a campfire lit on the bottom of the ocean. They’re fighting over who has dibs to a candy bar. Complex plotting.

  “So what’s the story?” I ask. “Was Chris here inside this room all night?”

  “I’m going to tell you what I told the cops and the reporters,” Sleepy Head says. “It just so happens that I was up, along with some of the other guys. We stayed up until, like, 3:30.” Holding out his hand to further stress his point. “It’s a square room with some couches and TV. It’s not like maybe he was here and we overlooked him.” Dropping the hand into his lap. “He wasn’t here.”

  I shoot a glance at the Bohemians. They seem to have nothing to add.

  “Any chance I can get into his room?”

  “You can try,” Sleepy Head says. “But it’s locked. And besides, cops took all his stuff. Everything. I was there to see it. They searched the place up and down. Took his laptop, his clothes. I heard the cops up in Albany even took his new Jeep.”

  “New Jeep?”

  “Yeah,” Sleepy Head laughs. “Brand spankin’ new Jeep. Don’t ask me how he paid for it.”

  “Hey,” Bohemian Boy mock-scolds, “don’t come down on Chris just ’cause he’s rich and we’re dirt poor.” That gets a sour laugh from all three of them.

  “Rich?” I press. “Chris claimed his folks were rolling in the dough?”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Sleepy Head mocks. “When he first got to school last year he had us all believing that his parents were wealthy real estate land barons in Connecticut. Had houses all over the States. An apartment in New York City, house in Miami, you know. Then I overhear an argument he’s having with his old man on the phone about his tuition payments. Turns out rich old man Parker can’t keep up with the payments.”

  “Tell him about the Jeep loan,” Bohemian Girl interjects.

  Sleepy Head goes wide-eyed. He spits out a laugh. “Oh yeah, that was a doozey. Chris shows up this past fall in a new, slightly used yellow Jeep, claims he paid cash for it from his…get this…fucking trust fund. Couple days later, his computer’s on and I happen to do a little snooping. There’s a series of, let’s call them, heated e-mails between Mama Bear Parker, Papa Bear Parker, and little Baby Bear Chris. The old man found out that his name had been forged as a cosigner of the Jeep loan. A loan that’s now about to be reneged upon. His mother’s writing things like ‘what a terrible son you are’ and ‘how dare you embarrass us’ and ‘you’re going to be the death of your father.’ ” Spitting another laugh. “Looks like that one was prophetic.”

  More laughter. Can’t say I blame him. For the first time it seems possible that if Chris axed his parents, it might have been for the most pathetic reason of them all: greed. But I’m still not convinced. Being angry with your parents over a lack of funds is one thing. Pulling a Lizzy Borden on them in the middle of the night is another.

  “You know if he ever made up with his parents?”

  Sleepy Head shrugs. “I’m pretty sure the old man ended up taking care of the Jeep loan and the tuition payments. At least for the semester. But one thing became perfectly clear to us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We all know now that Chris is a lying sack of shit.”

  Me, nodding. “Thanks for your time, guys,” I say.

  “No sweat,” offers Sleepy Head.

  “Yeah, no problem,” says Bohemian Girl.

  Bohemian Boy Bob only offers up an angry nod.

  On the TV, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick are hugging one another like they’re more than just pals.

  I leave.

  By the time I get to Albany, it’s going on seven o’clock.

  Miller time under a black, concrete sky. The January weather has caught back up with Albany, like a shivering crack addict who somehow managed to beat the habit for a single day. Rain’s falling from the sky, half frozen, half wet. Hits the body like birdshot followed by an insult of wind that penetrates leather and skin. If living in a place like Albany builds character, I’m bursting with the stuff. Shitting it out my eyes, ears, and pores.

  I called Steve Ferrance from my cell while on my way back to town, told him I’d be a half hour late for our date. The reporter didn’t seem to mind. Told me he’d have a couple of beers while he was waiting. He’d watch the busses coming and going from the Greyhound station. He’d watch the girls. You’re not married? I asked him. But he only giggled, sniffled, and exhaled.

  Answer enough.

  It’s ten minutes after seven when I arrive at Matty’s Bar, which is located on the second floor of a four-floor, brick-and-metal building that also houses the old bus station on the first floor. I recognize Ferrance from the grainy headshot they print beside his daily crime byline. He looks older in person. More gray-haired. Paunchy. A guy approaching his midforties, maybe a high school athlete who doesn’t get much exercise anymore. I’m guessing divorced alcohol abuser as opposed to full-blown alcoholic. Guy who hasn’t been picked up by a major daily in New York, Washington, Chicago, or Boston, and, at his age, ain’t got a hope in hell of it ever happening. Dreams are for the young, or so Ferrance believes, whether he’s conscious of it or not. I know the type. They smile a lot, wryly. But they’re rarely happy about anything anymore.

  Nor do they dream.

  I hold out my hand when I approach the otherwise empty bar, introduce myself as “Moonlight.”

  “Have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  He’s wearing a brown blazer, blue button-down shirt, white undershirt underneath. Pants are khaki and wrinkled. Speaking of divorce, you can see it in his clothes and in his eyes. The ringless but still ring-dented finger on the left hand shouts volumes. What was that line about dreams?

  He takes a long pull off a Budweiser bottle, says, “Word’s gone out on the grapevine that you’re working for Mrs. Parker. Can you tell me a little about it?”

  A woman approaches the bar from out of a smoky back room blocked off with hanging hippie beads. She’s older, gray-haired, bifocal eyeglasses hanging off a substantial chest via a thin chain wrapped around her neck. “What can I get for ya?”

  “Same as him. Back him up while you’re at it.”

  I lay out a ten spot on the bar. Pays to be nice to the press.

  She goes to get the beers.

  “We talking on the record here?” I ask.

  “Nope. Not yet, anyway.” He’s got no reporter’s notebook on the bar. No apparent tape recorder or smartphone loaded with a recording app. Maybe he’s just got a good memory.

  “What’s up with ‘off the record’?”

  “I’ll be honest,” he says. “I’ve been working this bitch for more than a month now. And while at first I believed Bowman and the Bethlehem cops, I’ve come to think differently.”

  “Not your job to think.”

  Dead silence. At first I think I’ve pissed him off. But he just grins that wry grin, nods, brings his beer bottle to his mouth, drinks down the rest of it, which pretty much amounts to half a beer. Setting the empty back on the bar, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I report it as I see it,” he says suppressing a beer belch. “If that’s what you mean, Moonlight. But I am a thinker and I do have my theories. And I’m still not convinced that Joan Parker knew what she was doing when she supposedly fingered her son.”

  “Sure, there’s that. But I have to be honest, myself. I’m beginning to think the kid did it.”

  Ferrance nods again. This time in agreement, as though conflicted over what he believes. Aren’t we all. “The evidence against Christopher is overwhelming,
I’ll admit. All you have to do is examine the timeline of events and, circumstantial or not, he looks like the perfect perp.”

  Our beers arrive. Ferrance has got his mouth wrapped around the full one before she has a chance to take his empty away. I decide to let mine sit for a bit and age gracefully.

  Reaching down beside his stool, the reporter grabs hold of his valise, unclasps it, pulls out a sheet of paper, sets it on the bar. There’s typewriting on the paper. A closer glance reveals a bulleted list. I’m a sucker for bullets. Even though I’m reading it upside down over his shoulder, I can see that it is, in fact, a timeline of the events of the Parker axe attacks, because that’s what the heading says in big bold letters. Moonlight, master detective.

  Ferrance takes another pull off his new beer, sets it down half empty. Perfect metaphor for his life, or so I suspect. “Fact,” he says. “Chris was at the college the morning his parents were discovered, more than two hundred miles from the crime scene.”

  “Rochester,” I say. “I just left there.”

  He looks up at me. “Nosing around?”

  “Kids I spoke with said he wasn’t inside the dorm the night before. Said they would have seen him.”

  “That’s what they told me and the cops. But…” He lets it dangle.

  “But…”

  “But I did speak to one kid who said he saw Chris jogging on campus the next morning.”

  “Didn’t peg him as much of a jogger. But he did play high school basketball. What time was he seen doing roadwork?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Be important to know.”

  “Yes, and it’s conflicting reports like these that are stonewalling the open-and-shut investigators like Bowman and that just might lead to Chris being paroled any day.” He shakes his head, smiles that smile. “Any minute.”

  “Plus his mother’s recanting.”

  “Yup.” Bringing the beer bottle to his mouth.

  I sip my own beer for the first time. Shrug. “But still, the timeline doesn’t lie.”

  His eyes back on the paper. “OK,” he says. “As you already know, Christopher told investigators he never left the campus that night. But prosecutors say surveillance video proves that Chris was lying.”

  “How?”

  “Because Chris’s Jeep was caught on tape as he was driving through one of the campus parking lots at 10:30 p.m. on September 14th. Now, that’s just a few hours before the attacks took place. But enough time for him to make the two- to three-hour drive from Rochester to Albany along Route 90.”

  I drink some more beer. I listen, closed-mouthed.

  “So then, at 10:36 p.m. that same brand-new yellow Jeep Wrangler is shot by a surveillance camera mounted to the rooftop of an off-campus medical center. The Jeep, my detective friend, is headed in an easterly direction. It’s from this moment on that the Bethlehem police and prosecutors have come up with a theory on how Christopher committed the crime of the century…at least as far as Bethlehem, New York, is concerned.”

  “Home of the Great Society.”

  “Excuse me?” he perks up.

  “That’s what they call themselves,” I explain taking another drink of beer. “The residents of Bethlehem.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He nods. “The big sign on the way into town.”

  I suddenly find myself wondering about that law school professor Kindler mentioned, Jim O’Connor. I think about bringing the name up to Ferrance since the law prof has been hired by the prosecution to come up with a solid theory behind Chris axing his parents. But Ferrance is divorced, stuck in Albany, a boozer, and he’s also on a roll. So I let it go. For now.

  “At 12:45 a.m. a New York State Thruway toll collector by the name of John LaValley hands a ticket to a young man driving a yellow Jeep with big tires and mud stains on the back. That’s a slow hour for automobile traffic. And if that’s not enough, at 1:51 a.m., another toll collector thinks she may have seen a yellow Jeep driven by a young white male speeding into her lane at Exit 24 into Albany.”

  Coming up for air, he steals another drink of beer and drains the bottle. His eyes immediately scope out the bartender.

  “Guess what?” he says, turning back to me.

  “The suspense is killing me,” I say.

  “The Parkers’ Brockley Drive house is only nine miles away from that thruway exit.”

  “The killings took place right around four or five in the morning,” I interject.

  “Maybe earlier than four, even,” Ferrance tweaks.

  “How’d the kid get in without somebody hearing him?”

  “Prosecutors think Chris got in the house by using a spare key that was kept—”

  “In the flowerpot at the front door.”

  Eyes back on his timeline. “At 2:14 a.m. Chris deactivates the burglar alarm using the master code. Later, he smashes the alarm keypad inside the garage and the panel down in the basement in an attempt to make it look like your common everyday robbery gone real fucking bad.”

  “Positively brilliant, Mr. Ferrance!”

  He rolls his eyes again, giggles. Nice to see a reporter with a sense of humor. “But what Chris isn’t aware of is that the information pertaining to the alarm system is stored in a sort of mainframe that’s located miles away from the house.”

  “So destroying the panel did nothing for him.”

  He lifts his beer bottle, forgetting that it’s empty. I raise my hand, motion to the waitress for another round. Outside the bar, you can hear a Greyhound pulling into the terminal. You can see the silver-bodied bus through Matty’s plate-glass window.

  “Cops think it’s somewhere around 3:30 to 4:00 a.m., give or take,” he goes on, “that Chris grabs an axe from the garage, slips upstairs, and goes to work on his parents while they lie in bed.”

  “Creepy,” I say, picturing the Parker bedroom.

  “At 4:45, the phone company records show that the phone line is cut. Before he took off again, Chris does a little more staging in the house, cutting the garage window screen to make it appear like an outsider is pulling the B and E. Yet he leaves his mother’s purse on the dining room table. Just stupid, you ask me.

  “At 5:12 he re-enters the New York State Thruway, heads back toward Rochester. At 8:30, a yellow Jeep is once more captured by camera on the roof of that hospital. He’s headed back in the direction of the campus.”

  “It all fits, circumstantially,” I say. “But I’m going to ask you what I asked Maxwell Okey: How can investigators be sure that what they’re looking at is Chris’s Jeep? Anybody think of getting a license plate?”

  Ferrance cocks his head. “No such luck. But there are those mud stains. When I spoke to Mr. Okey…and what a freak he is, might I add…he admitted seeing them on the rear of the Jeep. Just like the thruway toll collector. In my mind, they might be as good as a plate. Maybe better than a fingerprint. That is, the stains can be matched to both RIT and Bethlehem.”

  “Cops think so?”

  “It’s enough for them to bust him and keep him in jail all this time.”

  “Until now, that is.”

  “Until Mrs. Parker changed her tune.”

  “And without forensic evidence to link the kid directly. Despite all that blood.”

  The waitress brings two more beers, sets them down, even though I haven’t finished my first one yet. Ferrance pushes my ten spot back at me, produces a twenty, gives it to her, tells her to keep the change.

  “So what is all this?” I ask him. “Tuesday night Crime Stoppers Club?”

  “Truth be told, I want to ask you a favor.”

  “You bought the beers. I knew I’d have to put out sooner or later.”

  “In the course of your investigation, I’d like you to give me an exclusive heads-up on what you find. Especially if what you find leads first of all to the kid getting released, and second of all to him getting off the hook completely.”

  “This here relationship reciprocal?” I pose.

  He gives me t
he Boy Scout hand signal for honesty and pride. I toss one back at him just to make it official. Then I stand up. “You still not sure the kid did it? Even after reading off that timeline?”

  “It all fits, but it’s all circumstance. Plus, I have a hard time believing a kid like that could have pulled it all off alone. I still think a second and maybe even a third man held the Parkers down while another one did the chopping, and I think a jury is going to see this shit the same way.”

  “So you think it’s possible he had help, but that Chris was still in on it. So if his mother meant it when she fingered her boy for the crime, why go to the trouble of hiring me to prove him innocent?”

  “Mother’s love for a son,” he suggests, cocking his head. “She convinces herself she can’t remember a thing about what happened. It’s all a blank or, at the very least, a real bad dream. She heals up as much as humanly possible, gets what’s left of her head straight, and that love for her baby boy comes rushing back in. Overrides everything. Even her own attempted murder and the murder of her husband. Or hell, maybe she really doesn’t know what happened, really has no recollection. And she doesn’t trust the system her own husband made his living from.”

  “Cops might have coerced her statement while she was under tremendous duress?”

  His eyes go wide. “Gee willikers, you think something like that could happen, Moonlight?”

  I laugh. He laughs. But it feels shitty to laugh, considering we’re talking about murder and mutilation.

  I start toward the door. But not before I toss an over-the-shoulder glance at Ferrance chugging the beer I left behind. Poor guy. I feel his pain, his loneliness, his desperation.

  Booze only makes it worse. Take my word for it.

  So does winter.

  So does living in Albany.

  I slip back behind the wheel of the Caddy, turn it over. As luck would have it, the small layer of ice that’s formed on the windshield doesn’t need to be scraped. The wipers take care of pushing it off since it’s mostly just slush. Why do I live here again? Why don’t I live out in LA where my boy is? LA must surely need head-case PIs, too.