Or had something worse occurred?
Scarlet was dead.
Did I have something to do with it?
I looked at my face in the mirror. It didn’t seem to belong to me. It belonged to someone else. Someone who looked just like me. Someone with my face, my voice, my name, my life. Someone who was following me, trying to kill me. The man who had tried to kill me once before but failed. Maybe the same person who killed Scarlet. I had no way of knowing; of being sure about anything.
There was a knock at the door.
It startled the daylights out of me.
I took a deep breath, exhaled it.
Unlocking the door, I opened it onto an old man pushing a cleaning bucket and a mop.
“What the hell you doing in there?” he snapped.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” I said before pushing past him.
6
IT WAS NO COINCIDENCE that my old partner, Mitch Cain, was waiting for me inside the hallowed stone walls of the Stormville P.D. booking room. Dressed in blue blazer and tan khakis, he was patiently sitting on the edge of one of a dozen identical metal desks set out equidistant from one another inside the wide-open space. Gripped in his right hand, a big white Styrofoam cup of Krispy Kreme coffee. In his free hand, a lit cigarette.
An identical coffee cup sat on top of the desk to his left. God bless him.
Without exchanging a single word, I picked up the second cup, cracked the plastic lid.
“Thought you quit,” I said.
He stole a quick glance down at the cigarette.
“The more Lynn tries to make me quit,” he said, “the more I feel compelled to do it.”
“What do you expect from a nurse?” I said, recalling the face of my ex-wife.
Cain smiled that tight, ironic smile I had come to recognize in most cops once they had been on the job for more years than anyone cared to count. A tight, pressed lip, corner of the mouth kind of thing. A smile that probably was no stranger to my face either. At least, before my accident.
I took a quick look around the dimly lit room.
The place was as hollow as a church.
Two or three comatose cops sitting at metal desks, hands positioned atop computer keyboards—chubby, static faces glowing in the radiant light that shot off their monitors.
Joy stepped in. He approached Cain and me, transparent rain gear still protecting his uniform blues like Saran Wrap.
“They’re ready for us, Detective,” he said.
When Cain shot Joy a silent look, the kid about-faced, exited the room by way of an unpainted solid metal door that led out into the parking garage.
Stamping out his cigarette in a metal ashtray, my old partner set down his coffee. He pulled the black-plated Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster, sprung the clip with his thumb, then slapped it back home. Running his right hand through cropped hair and down a clean narrow face, he exhaled a breath, re-holstered the service weapon.
He said, “I see no need for briefings. You know the seriousness of the situation.”
“Dead serious,” I said. “Which is why I’m a little surprised you called me in.”
“Listen, Divine, we cannot give Internal Affairs or Prosecutor O’Connor an opportunity to plunge into a full blown investigation. It just wouldn’t …” He raised his right hand as though looking for the right words. “It just wouldn’t look … ‘copastetic.’”
“Co-pa-se-tic,” I corrected.
“What?”
“It’s copasetic, not copastetic.”
He smiled.
“That head of yours,” he said, “it’s working pretty good these days, old partner.”
“I’ve been taking better care of myself lately. Doctor’s orders.”
He added, “Well, then, just you follow my lead and you, me and Jake will get through this thing without a hitch.” Grinning. “Per the usual deal, there’ll be a little bit extra for your trouble.”
I listened like a good, pension collecting on-again/off-again cop should and sipped my coffee. Until my brain kicked in. I pictured Scarlet lying back on her bed, thick auburn hair fluffed up against her pillow, eyes wide open, lips smiling. Maybe I had become more than her masseuse; become her casual lover. Maybe the reality of her death hadn’t begun to sink in. But somehow I knew she deserved better than what I was hearing from both her husband and her husband’s second in command. And then there was the issue of my hands—the blood, the scrapes. Just what if I’d had something to do with Scarlet’s death? What if I was somehow blocking the memory?
I gazed into Cain’s slate-gray eyes and took a shot.
“You plan on booking Jake tonight?” I said. “Or is all this copasetic stuff about giving him a little head start?”
As stale as it was, the air inside the booking room was sucked out like starlight into a black hole. Cain’s cop grin suddenly morphed into a cop frown.
“You suddenly grow a conscience overnight, Divine?” he whispered, firing up another smoke. “This is an extremely sensitive situation which will require every bit of your professional talents and resources.”
In other words, my old friend and partner was asking me to do exactly what he told me to do.
Joy walked back into the room.
Cain exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. First he gave the rookie a confirming nod. Then he looked back up at me.
“I don’t mean to be pushy, Divine,” he sighed. “It’s just that your S.P.D. needs you like never before.” Pausing for a beat, as if to correct himself. “Rather, I’m asking you, as an old partner and a member in good standing of this most decorated force, to just go along for the ride.”
“Part-time member,” I interjected. “I made that false bust, remember?”
“We all make our little mistakes,” he said. “Besides, your head … well, let’s just say you weren’t up for that kind of job.”
This frigid sensation enveloped me. Like my pants had somehow just fallen down around my ankles with everybody watching.
I glanced over at the two uniformed cops, their faces never veering from their computer keyboards. I knew they had to be dying to get a better view of our apparently friendly exchange. But I also knew they wouldn’t dare.
I drank some more coffee and ruminated over Cain’s choice of words: Asking you as an old partner …
“No choice,” I said like a question. The non-committing part-timer suddenly committed.
He grinned. “Not really, no.”
He checked the pockets of his blazer to make sure he had everything he needed: keys, smokes, lighter, wallet, extra bullets. He raised his right leg, set the sole of his shoe against the desk’s edge, checked to make sure the small black revolver holstered to his ankle was secure.
Copasetic …
Putting his leg back down, he began walking in the direction of Joy.
“Hey,” I called out.
He turned.
I said, “You haven’t mentioned a word about my boy.”
This time his smile was neither cop ironic nor cop forced.
He said, “Kid’s okay. Just started Little League.”
Little League, I repeated to myself. I didn’t know why it hurt so much to hear those two words. Sure, I had a visitation schedule with my son, but it was never enough time together. Sometimes I felt jealous of Mitch—the stepfather become the dominant parent.
I asked, “How’s he doing?”
Cain sort of smirked, nodding over one shoulder and then the other, as if to suggest not bad, but not great. “It’s tee-ball,” he said. “Kids are awkward at that age. But the kiddo’s having fun. I help with the coaching.”
That hurt. Cain, coaching my kid—it felt like a punch to the stomach. Here was the good former partner now become the good dad to my son.
I guess he must have sensed my disappointment, because he perked up a bit, took a quick look at his watch.
I took one last sip of the still-too-hot coffee, set it back down onto the bo
oking desk. My hands felt like they were on fire. I lifted them up to my face, blew on them. That’s when I remembered the cuts and scrapes. Almost abruptly I shoved them back into my jacket pockets.
“There’s a kill scene waiting for us,” my old partner said.
I exhaled a breath, felt my cut up hands buried in my pockets. I just could not get it through my head that Scarlet was dead; just could not get over the fact that I might have had something to do with it.
“Hell of a way to make a living,” I said as I picked up my coffee, started walking.
“It’s the only real living you got,” Cain said.
7
HE STOOD OVER THE body—a large, dark-haired ghost of a man.
He felt strange in a way, almost as if his own soul had left his body along with his wife’s. He knew he should be doing something now. Crying, wailing, something. Like they do on T.V. when someone as close as a wife dies.
But despite the gruesome kill scene, Jake Montana was not sure he felt a goddamned thing.
Maybe it was the result of shock. Or maybe shock had nothing to do with it. Maybe his heart was empty, bankrupt, and that’s all.
No need to have called 911. Because right outside the door, his own police were waiting patiently to begin their crime scene investigation.
Question: Would he become suspect in the murder of his own wife?
Answer: Almost certainly.
Did he kill her?
Almost certainly not. Because if had killed her, he had no memory, no recollection of it. Nothing to go on. And it wasn’t like him not to remember.
That is, unless he’d been drinking. Heavily.
The doors and windows to his home were closed and locked. No broken glass, no jimmied door frames, no sign at all of foul play. Not a soul had attempted an intrusion. He was certain that a fingerprint analysis would support that conclusion.
Of course, there was the issue of Divine.
He knew Divine had been there at some point during the night. He knew that Divine was performing a massage on his wife. He knew that if he were to push the issue, he might point a finger at the former detective. But not yet. For now he needed Divine for other things. Like proving that Scarlet’s death was a suicide and not the homicide it appeared to be. Otherwise, Montana—Captain for the Stormville P.D.—ran the risk of indictment in what would be referred to as the brutal slaying of his own wife.
The big man gazed down upon his hands, turned them one way, then the other.
To his relief, they appeared healthy and clean. No defensive wounds. At least that was a positive start.
He shifted his gaze to the bloody mess that had been his living breathing wife just a few hours before—throat cut, chest, belly and shoulders punctured numerous times. Blood soaking the sheets and mattress.
If she wasn’t murdered, how on God’s earth could she have cut herself so badly?
“Why can’t I fucking cry?” he whispered.
Flashing through his brain, the fleeting memory of his wife flying across the kitchen of their cozy suburban home—his pregnant wife landing hard on the floor, on her stomach …
Then, a knock on the bedroom door.
8
IT’D BEEN NEARLY ELEVEN years since I first met Jake Montana.
It was only my second night on the job without having to wear uniform blues. Me and my newly assigned partner, Mitch Cain, had graduated to the level of Junior Detective. That night we’d been ordered to participate on a drug surveillance op going down inside the Henry Johnson assisted housing complex somewhere in the south end of Stormville’s no man’s land, not far out of view of both the river and Green Haven Max. Or, as some cops like to refer to it: the Garden of Evil.
Considering that this was our second full day on the job as J.D.s, we were ordered to meet up with then Lieutenant Montana. He’d recently transferred down from the Troy P.D. and was presently assisting a handful of F.B.I. inside the bed of one of those white unmarked command vans with black-tinted windows—the kind of van that just screams COP!
I remember Cain dressed all in black—black sweater, black jeans and sneakers, gray eyes covered in narrow sunglasses. And me, dressed the same way. I remember our having to sit on low swivel chairs (you couldn’t possibly stand), saying not a single word while the big mustached Jake announced that throughout the op, all he expected of us was to stand back along the staked out perimeter and “Observe, observe, observe!”
Our target that early evening was a well-known drug dealer.
A young man by the name of Cox who was wanted on a three-hundred grand Bench Warrant for failure to appear in Stormville County Court. Seems he failed to answer to charges for the sale and possession of high-grade heroin and numerous automatic assault weapons, including an entire case of 7.62 mm Soviet-made A.K.M.s.
We learned that the Stormville P.D. along with the F.B.I. had been looking for Cox for more than three months, but with zero luck. That is until Cox’s girlfriend, Rachel—a small, wiry, Ivory Soap-skinned kid of seventeen came forward with information about an upcoming deal. From what we were told, the kid had stood before the monstrous Montana, her right cheek recently black-and-blued from a swift Cox left hook, petite size 2 body trembling. She wanted to do the right thing from now on. Or so she insisted. She wanted to get away from Cox, change her life for the better. She wanted to become a “good kid.”
Of course Jake applauded the kid’s decision to turn her life around before it was too late. But first, he said, he’d need her help.
The drugs-for-guns deal was to go down in the broad daylight of early evening inside the subsidized apartment complex. Jake would need Rachel to maintain her role as the ever-loyal girlfriend, lure Cox out into the open, whereupon undercover police would then seize him and his home.
Her nervous consent given, the bait was set.
Two days later my new partner and I were standing beside the white van while a dozen plainclothes cops assumed strategic positions all along the brick and concrete complex. We waited anxiously, our eyes peeled on a narrow two-story unit that was flanked on both sides by identical units, each with their own narrow driveway out front. Parked in the middle of our driveway was Cox’s black Mercury Grand Prix.
Whispered orders were issued over micro headsets.
Time crawled by.
Hurry up and wait!
Until finally Cox’s front door opened and out stepped little Rachel.
“I got a positive on the bait and the target,” the wiry Mitch Cain spoke into his headset.
The tenacious new J.D. already taking the initiative.
Rachel seemed to be crying while Cox—a six foot, dark-skinned man of about twenty—followed her. He was dressed in baggy Tommy Hilfiger blue jeans that hung low on his hips, baggy boxer shorts puffed out around his waist. His long black hair was braided, his chest bared to reveal a washboard stomach and what looked to be a 9 mm Glock tucked inside the waistband of his jeans.
From where Mitch and I stood, I recall how he was swinging his arms wildly in the air, hip-hopping, shouting, “What is the problem now, girl?”
But it was only when the crying Rachel got into the front passenger side seat of the Grand Prix that I got a solid grip on her M.O. Not only was she attempting to convince Cox of her anger, she was luring the armed drug dealer into his car.
A big brave move for such a small person.
While one radio voice observed that a visual had been made on the suspect, a second voice insisted that the rest of us “stand by.”
Heart be still.
First came a very abrupt “Now!” shouted over the radio.
Then, with Jake leading the frontal charge, four officers converged on the car—two on the left flank, two more on the right. All five of them faced both the suspect and Rachel. With service weapons drawn, beads planted squarely on Cox’s head, the officers screamed their demands for him to “Show your hands; step out and away from the car!”
But within the time it took to issue t
he order, Cox had already removed the Glock from his pants, raised the barrel up high. That’s when the call came over the radio: the suspect had “taken away the initiative.”
Gunshots rang out.
The windshield exploded.
Cox’s driver’s side door opened.
Jake Montana, along with the four cops, dropped down to their knees—combat position. Still armed and apparently unhurt, the suspect managed to throw himself over the trunk of the car where he started across the drive. But he didn’t cover twenty feet until Jake caught him in his sights, discharged his weapon. The single 9 mm Smith & Wesson round dropped the bail jumping dealer dead on the spot.
Then another tragedy struck.
As soon as the police proceeded to raid the apartment building, Jake peered into the Grand Prix to check on the condition of his star witness. It didn’t take but a second or two to see that she had taken a bullet to the head, directly above the right earlobe. Just a well- placed shot that could only have come from head on—from where Jake stood during the apprehension.
You couldn’t help but see it in his face.
Jake’s face screamed bloody rotten guilt. You knew right away that her death rested on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. Didn’t matter who truly was to blame or not to blame. My department superior was assigning himself with the responsibility.
I stood back by the white van, feeling numbed from adrenaline still pumping through my veins. Jake approached the passenger side of the car. He slowly opened the door, very gently reached inside, ran his hand over the young kid’s wide-open eyes. With his thick hand he gently closed her eyelids.
If it was possible to feel a violent silence, I felt it that morning.
I mean, I remember it all, frame for frame, like it all went down five minutes ago.
I can’t tell you for certain, but I’m pretty sure the he had to be crying when Jake Montana walked over to Cox, where he was lying face-first on the grass, and emptied two more rounds into his back.
Didn’t matter that then Lieutenant Montana was never accused or formally charged with any wrongdoing. Didn’t make any difference that he was instead commended for his actions under fire. But I will swear to you now that never once did I see him crack even a single smile from that day forward. It was as if in the accidental shooting of that young kid, a large piece of his own life had died along with her. And no amount of forced vacations or department shrinks could change the way he felt about what he’d done.
Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls Page 3
