Under Dark Skies (Five Crime Stories Book 1)

by John Moralee

  “You don’t think …?”

  Bridget swallowed. “Noah …”

  We started digging. The ground was very hard. Our breaths froze as soon as they came out, forming an ephemeral, blue haze like we were two heavy smokers.

  We dug down three feet.

  It took hours.

  There was a large black bag in the hole.

  Bridget passed the metal detector over it. The metal object was in there. But it looked like a body was also inside.

  I stood back, wiping sweat from my eyes. “Should we open it or call the cops?”

  “It could be garbage,” Bridget said.

  “And it could be Noah. I don’t want to see him if he’s all decayed.”

  “It’s been so cold recently that he won’t have decayed,” she said. “He’ll be frozen solid. He won’t smell, if that’s any consolation.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” she volunteered.

  “No,” I said. “He was my friend.”

  I was wearing gloves, so I wasn’t too squeamish about opening the bag. I grabbed the plastic in both hands and tore it open along its length and looked at the contents.

  There was a handgun on the chest. The body was on its side in a crushed foetal position. The eyes were glassy with ice crystals. He had frozen, just as Bridget predicted.

  But it wasn’t Noah.

  *

  “Lewis,” I said.

  “Yes,” said a voice from behind me.

  I looked up from the hole and saw Noah and his Sigma Delta Sigma friends surrounding the grave. There were six of them. They were wearing black, shiny plastic raincoats. The two Aryan men had a hold of Bridget. One had a knife to her throat, the other held her from behind. Their cold eyes glittered in the winter light like diamonds.

  Noah spoke again. “We’ve been watching you since you survived the auto incident. You really should have listened to my father, Clive. You should have stayed out of it.”

  I reached down and picked up the gun, keeping it out of sight. The gun was in my left hand – and I wanted it my right - but that could not be helped. It would still fire at this distance. Apart from the man with the knife, no one else looked armed. I got up, switched the gun from left to right, and raised it. I pointed it at the one with the knife. My rage steadied my hand and I could tell he knew I would kill him. I would kill them all, given the chance.

  But they had Bridget.

  “Let her go or I’ll shoot.”

  Noah said: “Then shoot.”

  He didn’t think I would do it.

  He was wrong.

  I aimed at the knife-holding man’s head and pulled the trigger. The safety was not on, but the gun did not go off. There was a click, but no gunshot.

  “Yes,” Noah said. “It’s not loaded. We wanted you to dig it up. We wanted you to find Lewis. You see, you are going to be charged with two murders – Lewis and your girlfriend here. Lewis died by having his throat cut with the knife you are looking at. And so did she.”

  I was grabbed by two men and pushed towards Bridget. At the same time the knifeman swept the blade across her throat, stepping aside as her bright red blood arced out and covered my face in hot wetness.

  I shouted in horror and despair and the sound carried throughout the woods.

  The men released Bridget and she fell down, clutching at her throat. Her beautiful eyes looked at me one last time. She needed me to save her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

  She was dead in thirty seconds.

  They held me and forced the knife into my gloved hand. Then they disarmed me, letting the knife drop fall. I was held down while the killer removed his blood-speckled raincoat. He collected the raincoats from the others, leaving the men dressed in their normal suits. Taking the gun, he hurried away, no doubt to destroy the forensic evidence.

  Noah bent down beside me. My face was pressed into the damp earth. I could just see him with one eye.

  “This is what happened,” he said. “You suspected my roommate of having an affair with your girlfriend, so you killed him. Then when she got suspicious, you killed her. One of us heard her scream from the frat house, so we came out to investigate. We found you burying them. We managed to subdue you before the police arrived. They are on their way right now.”

  He stood up, brushing the leaves from his pants.

  “What a cold day for killing someone,” he said. “You must be mad, Clive. Heh. Maybe you should try that as a defence?”

  *

  I was charged with two murders. In court, I saw Noah wearing his Sigma Delta Sigma ring when he testified against me. It was like he was rubbing it in my face. His father, impassively observing the trial, wore his ring, too. And so did the DA prosecuting me for murdering Bridget and Lewis. And so did the judge. And the foreman of the jury.

  They wanted me to know they had the power.

  Against my lawyer’s wishes, I was going to testify. I was going to tell the world about Sigma Delta Sigma. I had nothing to lose now. Maybe someone would believe me. Maybe someone would do something. Maybe.

  The Enigma of Lucy Ash

  “You’ll never guess who I saw stepping off the Greyhound at two this afternoon?”

  “Elvis?”

  “Nope.”

  “John Lennon?”

  “Nope.”

  “Give up.”

  “Lucy Ash.”

  That was a name I hadn’t heard in what? Thirty years? In high school she’d been this almost mythical figure, a girl so beautiful all the guys loved her and all the girls hated her. At 16 she was tall, strawberry blonde, with a body nobody could ignore. She was also in the honours class, destined to MAKE SOMETHING OF HER LIFE. Everything had stopped when Lucy Ash appeared in a room, just as though she controlled time and could turn it off at will. Her gentle blue eyes and soft Southern accent had made her special in this boring town in Maine. I’d always wondered how she’d picked up the accent when, as far as I could remember, she’d lived in Paradise all her childhood.

  I studied Carson’s face to see if he was lying. Carson had a habit of telling bold-face lies just to gauge your reaction, like his version of humour. Carson was 48, with male-pattern baldness and a bulging gut he was proud of achieving. He worked at the mall as a security guard. He was dressed in his blue uniform and baseball cap. We were on the sidewalk outside the high school where I was a music teacher.

  “How can you be sure it was her?”

  “She looked like the yearbook photograph. And I went up to her and asked.”

  “She confirmed it?”

  “She did more than that. She told me she was coming home. She’s staying at the Farrel’s bed and breakfast until she finds a house to buy. She said she’s real interested in seeing who’s still in town that she knows. You had a thing for her, didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t everyone?”

  “Yeah, guess so. But she ignored me. She liked you. You impressed her with your guitar playing.”

  “Did she mention me?”

  “No.”

  “Did you mention me to her?”

  Carson shrugged. “I had to go on duty. I was kind of stunned to see her. Time hasn’t stolen her looks, Brody. Seeing her is like being eighteen again.” He looked down at his paunch. “Well, for some of us.” He shook his head as if dislodging a fly. “Anyway, we on for the poker game?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Carson walked to his car and drove off. I located my car in the staff parking lot. It was Wednesday night – poker night with the guys, Carson, Ted, Steve and Ripper – and I wasn’t due home until eleven, so I decided to drive around for a few minutes, clearing my head with the windows down and the cool air rushing inside. I thought about high school. I made up my mind that I would see Lucy Ash. I was curious about two things: Did she look as incredible as thirty years ago? And what had she been doing since?

  Lucy Ash was an enigma.

  After graduation day, she’d left town suddenly and dramatically. She’d tak
en her father’s Dodge and left it six hundred miles away, where it was discovered four months later, stripped down to the bare axles. (It was assumed thieves had done that, but maybe not.) Of Lucy Ash … no trace had been found.

  Some people thought she’d been murdered.

  Some thought she’d changed her name, becoming a movie star.

  Some thought she’d been abducted (by aliens, a serial killer, Mickey Mouse – there were as many theories as people living in Paradise.)

  The Enigma of Lucy Ash lived on, like the tall tales kids told in the woods of mad axe-murderers, haunted Indian burial grounds and monsters under the bed.

  I cruised down Jefferson Boulevard, with its A-frame houses that looked like alpine cabins, slowing down when the B&B came into sight.

  I didn’t stop directly outside. Something made me stop six houses short and sit there in the cool evening sunlight, smoking a cigarette.

  I was afraid of seeing Lucy, as I could imagine myself falling hopelessly in love with her all over again. I thought about Nina and the kids, Beth and Tony, and I wondered if what I was doing constituted some kind of mid-life crisis. I was forty-eight in November. 48. I was not the man I’d been at eighteen, and I was not the man I’d wished to be at 48. I was a small-town teacher with most of my house paid for, a reasonably successful marriage, and two wonderful kids. It was not a bad life, but it wasn’t all that I’d wanted.

  My Gibson guitar was hardly ever used outside the classroom. I didn’t write my own songs any more. I was too old to be discovered. I was that thing 99 out of a 100 people are cursed to be – ordinary.

  Lucy Ash represented all of the things I had not achieved.

  She was the unattainable dream.

  It was 8.30 and the sun was fading in the lazy, gradual way of summer, shifting through shades of blue. I was thinking about forgetting it, when I saw her come out and start walking towards Main Street.

  She was dressed in a white dress and suede jacket. She walked with a sway of her hips, almost like dancing. You could image her on a catwalk. She had that grace, that symmetry. Main Street was seven blocks away. I started up my engine and caught up with her. She looked at the car and actually recognised me. Her smiled reached into my chest and tugged at my heart.

  “Brody!”

  “Hey,” I said. “Lucy Ash, if I live and breathe! I thought it was you. Can I give you a ride?”

  I stopped the car, keeping it in neutral.

  Lucy cocked her head to one side, smiling and nodding. I opened the passenger door and she climbed inside, smoothing down her dress as she drew her long legs into the car. I could smell Chanel No. 5. I moved off and asked her where she wanted to go.

  “A bar. Any bar.”

  “I know a good one. The Haven.”

  “That will do.”

  *

  A kiss woke me. I opened my eyes and saw it was morning. Nina was above me, already dressed for work. Nina was a paediatric nurse at the JFK Memorial. She was tall and slim and I loved her more at that moment than I had when we first met at college. I loved her dark, frizzy hair and chocolate-coloured freckles and the way she grinned in the mornings, making me feel like it was worth getting up. She was about to walk away when I reached up, wrapped by hands around her slender neck, and drew her face towards mine. I returned the kiss, surprising her with the urgency and longing of it. When I released her, she stood back, licking her lips, touching them with her fingers.

  “Wow.”

  “I love you,” I said. It was something I didn’t say often enough. I vowed I would say it every day.

  Nina grinned. “I would love to continue that kiss, but I’ve got to leave. Wake Tony and Beth in half an hour, will you?”

  “Sure,” I said. Tony was our youngest kid. He was six. We’d been lucky to have him before Nina started her menopause last year. His big sister Beth was sixteen going on thirty. As a teenager Beth spent more time in bed than when she was a baby. Waking her for school was like disturbing a crocodile. Nina left and I got ready before the monumental task of waking the kids.

  First, I knocked on Beth’s door and announced the time in a loud voice. She grunted and said she was awake. I knew it would take two attempts with Beth, so before doing that I woke Tony and supervised him cleaning his teeth and having a shower. Tony hated showers. You’d think the water was acid, the way he screams. I dressed Tony in his favourite T-shirt, Levis and Nikes. Then I tried waking Beth again.

  She yelled this time. Definitely awake.

  I went downstairs with Tony and made breakfast for the three of us.

  Beth shuffled in wearing her bathrobe, eyes half shut. “Dad, you didn’t have to wake me like that.”

  “How should I have done it? With a nuclear bomb?”

  “Ha. Ha. Real funny. Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s on an early shift.”

  Beth ate her cereal with her eyes closed, complaining about how bright the day was. Tony watched the TV, dripping milk on his T-shirt as merchandising-related monsters battled for the universe.

  And I thought of Lucy Ash.

  *

  Last night had been the worst of my life. I was hoping it had not happened, that I’d dreamt it all. But I knew it was real because even the most vivid nightmares have the accompanying sensation of them being false on the subconscious level.

  When the breakfast was finished, I got the car out of the garage while Beth and Tony got ready. I dropped Tony at the kindergarten, then headed for the high school. Having her dad work where she went to school embarrassed Beth. She cringed in her seat as I pulled into the parking lot.

  “Dad?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Who was that woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “The one I saw in your car yesterday.”

  I looked at her and saw the fear in her eyes.

  “That was just an old friend,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “So Mom knows about her?”

  No, I thought. “I might have mentioned it. I just gave her a lift, that’s all. It’s not important. Why?”

  Beth blinked away tears. “Nothing. As long as Mom knows.”

  “Come here,” I said, giving her a quick hug.

  “Not here, Dad! Jeez!”

  I watched her hurry from the car, joining her friends. I put a hand under my shirt and felt my heart thudding. Beth knew! What had I been thinking? Why had I risked everything by seeing Lucy Ash?

  *

  I never ate lunch in the high-school cafeteria. I’d loathed the food when I was growing up and it had not improved much since, so I always went out, usually with some teachers in the music department, but that day I went alone. On the walk to the Choca Mocha coffee-house, three police cruisers passed, sirens wailing. There was something going on in the park by the bandstand. Maybe arresting a drug dealer, I thought. They did hang out there when the kids got out of school, trying to sell dime-bags of coke. The Chief of Police was on a crackdown – no pun intended. I could see a crowd of civilians being held back by police. The police had sectioned off a square around the bandstand. I crossed the street and joined the crowd, stopping at the line of yellow tape.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a man in his eighties. He was holding the lead of a yapping terrier.

  “Some woman’s been strangled.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Very.”

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Like I know? What am I – an encyclopaedia? Ask the cops.”

  But I didn’t have to. The paramedics were moving the body onto a gurney to be taken away in their ambulance. I recognised the blonde hair and stylish clothes.

  “Oh, Lucy …”

  “What’d you say?” the old man said.

  “Just thinking out loud,” I mumbled and backed away from the crime scene in a daze. The body looked like a doll, a life-size Barbie, not a real human being, a dead human being. Her dress was ripped, torn away fro
m her chest. From this distance I could see a dark line around her pale throat, which was bruised purple. My own throat closed up as I imagined being strangled, knowing I was dying but unable to prevent it. I guessed strangulation was one of the worst ways to die. It was personal, ugly, and it lasted minutes. Lucy’s body was placed inside the van, the doors closed, and she was on the last trip of her life, to the morgue.

  There was a detective looking at me. He was a big man with severe glasses and a buzz-cut hairstyle. I held his gaze for a few seconds, then he turned to a colleague.

  Now the body had gone, the crowd broke up.

  I wondered if I should tell the cops about yesterday.

  I decided to think it over. You heard frightening stories of innocent people ending up on Death Row. I’d need to consult a lawyer before volunteering for an interview (or was that interrogation?)

  I thought about during the afternoon classes. My students had heard about the murder in the park and they were just as distracted as I was.

  Carson was waiting in the parking lot after classes. He was leaning on my car like he owned it. “Brody.”

  “Carson,” I answered.

  “Lucy Ash is dead,” he said.

  “She was the woman in the park?”

  “Yep. Some detectives stopped me in the mall right in front of my boss. Asked me questions. Real embarrassing. They wanted to know everything.”