Murder by Moonlight

by Vincent Zandri

  “Easy, kiddo,” Maxwell scolds. “We’re on sacred GS ground here. Let’s can it with the language.”

  “My bad,” Chris apologizes.

  A minute later, Chris pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He fires one up while he waits for his ex-troop leader to run the head of the fireman’s axe under water and while he deposits the blood-soaked gowns and Ferrance’s body parts into a fifty-gallon, plastic-lined drum. Really, you have to admire the attention to detail.

  Christopher is nearly finished with his cig when Maxwell dries the axe, then takes his position before me, raising the axe and pressing the sharp blade against my right knee, marking the precise spot of what will be his first chop.

  My eyes are open, but I’m back to fading in and out of consciousness. Blacking out for a second and coming to, blacking out again. Inside my skull, my brain is on fire with adrenaline and fear. If that bullet frag is ever going to shift, leaving me immediately brain dead, now would be one hell of a great time.

  I want to scream and cry but I can only feel my breath leave my body. Not through my mouth but through every pore. I close my eyes when Okey slowly pulls the axe back into a ready position. But then just as quickly I open them, as if something inside makes me want to witness the act. Curiosity, at a moment like this.

  A smiling mouth full of nicotine-stained teeth is the last thing I see on Maxwell Okey’s face before it explodes into a wave of blood, brain, and bone.

  Before cutting me down, Jonathan Parker binds his baby brother’s ankles and wrists with duct tape, sits him in the far corner of the basement. I’m guessing he’d be happy to do the same for Erin and Robinson had they not turned tail, made for the stairs, and become easy targets for a navy man’s 9 mm automatic. Now they lie on the dirt floor on their faces, kissing the very earth they helped stain with blood.

  “Don’t speak,” Jonathan orders his little brother. “Don’t. Even. Fucking. Think.”

  Christopher doesn’t say a single word. He keeps his eyes focused on the dead, bleeding body of his former troop leader. Never once does he steal a glance at his now-on-the-way-to-hell former lover Doc Robinson or his trusted girlfriend.

  It takes Jonathan a few minutes to figure out the winch on the block and tackle. Eventually, he lets me down gently. Dropping to one knee, he asks me if I have the strength to get myself dressed.

  I nod, even though I seriously doubt that I retain the strength even to prevent myself from passing out. But while he pulls a cell phone from his leather jacket, I do my best to slip into my jeans. Looking up at him, I see him pound three digits into the cell phone.

  9-1-1.

  As he explains the nature of the emergency and how to get to it through the woods, I can’t help but lock eyes with Christopher. He nods at me, offers me a gentle smile. He even raises his bound wrists and issues a short but friendly wave, as if we’re two old friends who have just recognized one another from opposite ends of a crowded bar.

  Bowman was doing the right thing by trying to expedite the kid’s arrest, trying to put him away for good by bribing that law prof, Dr. Jim O’Connor. Knowing what Bowman must have come to know when he was sleeping with Joan—he must have weighed the risk and recognized that it was worth it. That is, until I uncovered the bribe and, in the process, cost the poor bastard his life.

  When Jonathan closes the cell phone, he bends down again and helps me with the rest of my clothing. When I’m fully dressed, he helps me to stand. It’s then I realize my right leg is pretty badly bruised, the left one sprained at the ankle. Still, I refuse to sit down again.

  I’ll take the pain now and I’ll smile about it.

  There isn’t much to say in the basement of that Boy Scout camp while we wait for the cops to arrive. But after a time, Jonathan turns to me and says, “Sorry. You know, for the way I acted.”

  And after a weighted minute or two of silence, Chris goes against his big brother’s order of silence and starts in on what fun he used to have in these woods as a Boy Scout. He talks a blue streak about birds and plants and how amazed he is that most people don’t know that if you were all alone in the woods and starving, you could eat as much rabbit as your stomach could hold and still starve to death. Interesting stuff like that.

  When I work up the courage to ask him what the Great Society actually is, he assumes a serious expression and answers, “I’m not at liberty to speak of the Great Society until I enter into it fully vested.”

  I tell him I understand, and I even try to toss him a courtesy smile. Moonlight, the tolerant head case.

  Relief washes over me when I make out the sound of helicopter blades chopping through the Bethlehem sky.

  I’m hospitalized and sedated. Aviva comes to hold my hand and sit by my side. She cries and says some things I can’t make out. Her face is a fleeting memory as I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. As luck would have it, the bullet in my brain has not shifted and I don’t die.

  I sleep through the early evening and into the morning. Once X-rays are analyzed, I’m told that I’ve suffered a bad bruise on my left ankle and a mild sprain on the right. Could have been worse. I could have had my head chopped off.

  My sprained ankle is wrapped in one of those elastic Ace bandages that my old man used for healing everything from bug bites to broken bones, and I’m offered a pair of crutches that my COBRA medical insurance is willing to pay for. I’m told I also suffered a mild to midrange concussion, either from when Okey knocked me over the head with a sap inside my loft or later on when he sent me tumbling down the basement stairs at the Boy Scout camp. Looks like it’s time to double up on the anti-inflammatories.

  Doctors insist I remain in the hospital overnight for observation. They’d also like to MRI my head again, see if the bullet frag has shifted at all or is in danger of shifting. I ask them if it really matters. They can’t operate on it, and I have no control over it. So what will be, will be.

  Docs also want me to speak with a psychologist about my experiences. Post-traumatic stress disorder can be a real zinger down the road, they insist. It might show itself in years to come in the cruelest of ways. Depression can set in. Suicide attempts.

  I have to laugh.

  “Been there, done that,” I tell them.

  District Attorney Cook calls me on my cell phone, asks me how I’m feeling and if I might be up for an interview as soon as this afternoon. He understands if I need a day to rest and get my head together. I chuckle silently at the head joke. I tell him I’ll come to him immediately if not sooner. He tells me that’s not necessary.

  “I don’t like hospitals,” I tell him.

  I hang up the cell, ask the head nurse politely if she’ll begin filling out my discharge papers. Then I hand her my Visa card for the co-pay, praying to the good Lord above that I haven’t yet hit my limit.

  She doesn’t argue.

  Aviva arrives and helps me into a wheelchair (hospital policy) and pushes me to the elevator. Down on the first floor, I ditch the chair and use the crutches for the long walk down the corridor to the exit. When she asks me to wait while she pulls up in her car, I shake my head, tell her I’ll walk with her.

  “I need the practice.”

  “Stubborn,” she says.

  “I’m a dick, remember?”

  Once I’m seat-belted into the passenger side of her Subaru wagon, she turns to me, sets her hand on my thigh, not far from a small bloodstain on my jeans. Ferrance’s blood.

  “You want to talk about it?” she gently asks.

  I look into her big brown eyes, her soft face. Reaching out, I run my hand through her thick black hair and shake my head. “Not…now.” Damn if I don’t choke up.

  She tries to smile. She really tries, I can tell. “OK,” she says. “You want to go home?”

  A glance at my watch. Noon. It’s cold out, but the sun is high overhead for a change. I’ve been in the hospital for nearly twenty-four hours.

  “You wanna go back there, don’t you?” she says after a time.
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  Me, nodding. “But not yet. First we head downtown. Prosecutor’s office.”

  “Cook,” she says. “Call him first? Let him know you’re on your way right now?”

  “He’s already expecting me.”

  She starts the Subaru, throws the tranny into reverse.

  “It’s already been a long day,” she says, backing out. “Something tells me it’s about to get a lot longer.”

  We pull up outside the county courthouse. Every parking space along downtown State Street is occupied at a time when most county employees are freeing them up, heading out for lunch. But this afternoon the big marble building is buzzing with activity. An army of mobile broadcasting vans is parked on the adjacent side street. Every network is represented, from Fox to MSNBC. The reporters are all standing outside the doors to the courthouse with their cameras and mikes in hand. The vultures have gathered.

  “Sure you want to go in there?” Aviva says.

  “No choice. I need to get to Cook, tell him what I know. Even if he is making a media spectacle out of it.”

  She tells me to get out and wait for her while she finds a spot farther up the hill. “Don’t go in there without me,” she insists.

  I get out, wait.

  By the time she finds a spot and makes her way back, the reporters have noticed me. They’re scrambling for me like a pack of wild dogs. But when an APD cruiser pulls up, I know the boys in blue have come to save the day.

  The passenger window goes down. The cop leans over the seat. “Get in!”

  Aviva appears and opens the back door, holds it for me while I toss in the crutches and then shove myself in. She comes in after me and just manages to get the door shut when the vultures attack.

  “Mr. Moonlight!” they shout. “Do you care to make a statement regarding your horrible ordeal of yesterday afternoon?”

  “No comment!” the cop responds on my behalf. He puts the window up. The vultures press their bodies against the cruiser. The cop pulls out. I don’t look back.

  We drive around to the back of the building to a set of metal doors labeled “Maintenance Only.” The cop leads us up a small walk parallel to a drive that accesses a loading dock. As he opens the metal doors with a key attached to a ring on his belt, more vultures make the corner and charge us.

  The door is held open by the cop. I hobble inside, Aviva directly behind me.

  He shuts the door, locks it from the inside.

  “Cook will see you in his office,” offers the cop. “We’ll take the service elevator. Safer that way.”

  Three minutes later, I’m sitting in Albany County DA Paul Cook’s top-floor office. Aviva isn’t allowed insider status to the proceedings. But quite a few other people are, including Joan Parker. She occupies the end of the dark brown leather couch Cook’s got shoved up against the plaster wall to my left, directly beneath his numerous diplomas.

  Seated beside her is Kindler. He’s dressed in one of his dark-blue power suits capped off with a maroon-striped bow tie. The real kind you tie yourself.

  Standing by the side of the couch is a late-middle-aged cop with a shaved head and a wide paunch: APD Chief Daly. Thick arms crossed at his chest, his clean-shaven face is flushed red, as if he just jogged the four flights upstairs to the office. But I know the truth: Daly likes his booze about as much as Cook likes to put away the bad guys.

  Since this is his office, the prosecutor holds court, the short but fit, tan-skinned man seated behind his wooden desk, three large picture windows behind him looking out onto Broadway and the Hudson River beyond it. His desk is clear except for a phone and a computer. Cook’s got intense brown eyes, black hair, and a trimmed mustache. His charcoal suit isn’t as expensive as Kindler’s, and I’d be suspicious if it were. But it’s neat and it brings out the spit and polish and anal retentiveness in him.

  He asks me if I wish to sit. I tell him no. I might be Moonlight, the ravaged. But I’m also Moonlight, the dogged.

  “Before we get started,” he says, “Mrs. Parker has something she wishes to say to you, if that’s OK.”

  I nod, focus my eyes on my would-be killer’s mother. She looked frail, broken, and scarred when she first entered my office a few days ago, but now she appears close to death. Her hair looks as though it’s turned gray overnight. Or maybe I just never noticed it until now. The jagged scar that runs from her brow down over her right eye socket and onto her cheek seems more pronounced, more purple, more tender looking than before. Instead of a fake-eye prosthesis, she wears a thin, black, strapless patch over the eye socket. As for the color in her face, there is none. She’s a pale ghost of her former self. Even the brown pants suit she wears seems far too large for her, as if there’s no more flesh and bone to fill it.

  She sets both hands on her knees, clears her throat.

  “I want to offer you an apology, Mr. Moonlight,” she says, her one good eye filling with tears.

  “I’m happy to refund your money,” I offer. “This whole thing…Chris…It’s not your fault.” I don’t mention the Bowman question, which is her fault. I also don’t say a word about Jonathan and his having rescued me, but in the process having shot the man who took an axe to her and her husband while Chris stood by his side and looked on. Not that anyone has said a word about the navy man, but I’m certain he’s spent the entire night at the APD being questioned and re-questioned.

  “But it is my fault,” Joan says, “and I only ask that you do me the favor of hearing me out.”

  I nod. Hell else can I do? Every set of eyes in the room is glued to her.

  “When Christopher was a young boy,” she begins, softly issuing her words, “his father and I developed a special concern for him. He spent a great deal of time alone in his bedroom instead of socializing with the other kids in the neighborhood. He would draw things. Pictures of his family. Myself, his brother, his father. Oftentimes these pictures would contain violence and more often than not they would depict one or all of us being stabbed or shot or mutilated in one way or another. We sought out counselors, child psychologists. They all suggested limiting video game time. But Christopher wasn’t allowed to play with video games. We didn’t allow them in the home. They suggested limiting the television. But that, too, was severely regulated. Did Christopher look at violent magazines or, what do they call them…graphic novels that depicted senseless murder? If he did, we weren’t aware of it. And he most certainly would have found a safe place to hide them.”

  She takes some time to breathe in and out, to regain her strength, which is clearly fading. Standing there in the middle of Cook’s office, I have my doubts she’s going to make it through the day alive, much less another ten years.

  “Then one day we notice a terrible odor coming from inside Christopher’s bedroom. It’s an odor like none I ever smelled before. He had to be about twelve at the time. Seventh grade. His father and I, not wanting to confront him directly, waited until he went to school. Then we searched his room. We didn’t find any magazines or books or photos. But inside his closet we found the remains of animals. A small cat, a squirrel, two rabbits. They’d all been badly mutilated in one way or another. Stabbed, strangled, cut up. The animal bodies were decaying inside a bucket inside his closet.”

  Another pause, longer this time.

  “Christopher was immediately hospitalized. He was heavily sedated and placed into intensive therapy. He stayed a month and made great progress. Doctors were encouraged. We were encouraged. It was believed that my son’s morbid fascination with death might be attributable to a stage in his young life. A loose screw, if you’ll forgive the metaphor, that simply needed tightening. Upon his release, we were instructed to medicate him and keep up his therapy sessions. But doctors also wanted him to get involved with something, to find a positive passion in his life. That turned out to be the Boy Scouts. With the help of our neighbor Maxwell, Christopher joined the local troop and flourished as a Scout, eventually becoming an Eagle Scout. He even visited the White House and s
hook the president’s hand. We believed that Christopher had indeed gone through a stage that was clearly finished. He was excelling and had earned a positive place in society. That place was made yet brighter by his acceptance at the Rochester Institute of Technology.”

  She pauses again, lowering her head, focusing her eyes on her shoes. Leaning on my crutches for support, I steal a glance at Cook and Kindler. They’re dead silent, stone stiff, legal eagle eyes beamed on the injured woman.

  “But,” I utter in her stead.

  “But,” she says, “we…Christopher’s father and I…began to suspect that our son was slipping back into his psychopathic ways not soon after he entered his freshman year. He stole our personal computers, sold them on eBay. He managed to increase his financial aid package by forging his father’s signature. He cashed checks his father gave him for school and spent the money frivolously, then asked for more money, saying he’d lost the check—”

  “Is this before or after you started sleeping with Detective Bowman?” It’s a simple question but it has the same affect as a bomb.

  She bites her bottom lip.

  Kindler clears his throat, runs a nervous hand through receding hair. Cook and Daly keep their veteran lawman’s cool, but their eyes light up.

  “Yes, I carried on a rather lengthy affair with Mr. Bowman. I suppose it’s time to go public with that.”

  “And Christopher knew about it,” I say. “And knowing about it, perhaps it made him mad. Mad enough to act out in ways you and your husband found psychopathic—murderous, even.”

  “I conducted myself with the utmost discretion, I assure you.”

  “So then it’s possible Chris didn’t know about that affair. Let’s take your word for it. For shits and giggles, Joan.”

  Kindler leans forward. “Moonlight, let’s stop this—”

  “Shut up, Terry!” Turning to him, eyeing him up and down. “You knew all about the affair, didn’t you? Had to know how much it had to do with Bowman’s suicide, but still you said nothing. You can take that shit up with Cook later on.”