Bad Moon (Kat Campbell Mysteries)

by Ritter, Todd

  “Please look at the last picture.”

  Kat scrolled through the e-mail until she came to the third and final photo Professor Reid had attached. A black-and-white shot, it showed a young boy sleeping on a bed constructed of stone, leaves, and tree branches.

  “That was taken in May 1940 in a tiny village near My Lai,” the professor said. “There were two full moons that month.”

  “A blue moon?”

  “That’s right,” Professor Reid replied. “The second full moon is called a blue moon in most parts of the world. Followers of mặt trăng vinh quang think differently. They refer to it as xấu mặt trăng—the bad moon. They consider that second full moon to be an imposter not containing the spirits of their loved ones.”

  “What does it contain?”

  “Evil entities that can only be chased away with one thing.”

  Kat examined the photograph again, spotting details she had missed the first time. There were white flowers affixed to the platform. The boy, ten if he was a day, lay flat on his back with his hands folded over his chest. Tucked under his fingers was what looked to be a flat circle of clay—a moon charm made for the dead.

  “Please tell me I’m not looking at a human sacrifice.”

  “I wish I could,” the professor said. “But I can’t. It was believed that only the death of someone young and without sin could appease the bad moon.”

  Kat closed the e-mail with a sharp tap of the mouse. She couldn’t look at the picture anymore. Just thinking about it both frightened and saddened her in equal measure.

  The fear rose to the forefront, however, when Professor Reid said, “If you know a follower, and I suspect you do, I urge you to use caution. As I told you, most of them are nonviolent. But on a day like today, a hard-core believer might not be so peaceful. In fact, he could be more dangerous than you or I can fathom.”

  *

  A minute after she got off the phone with Professor Reid, Kat received another phone call, this time from Eric Olmstead. She didn’t want to talk to him. Honestly, she didn’t have the time. She needed to talk to Glenn Stewart, face-to-face, and find out exactly what he had come to believe while recuperating in Vietnam. But when she answered the phone, the seriousness of Eric’s voice stopped her cold.

  “You need to come over,” he said. “Now.”

  When Kat reached Eric’s house, she found a rig in the street and a film projector in the living room. Both of them looked out of place. The truck, Eric told her, belonged to his father, who was sleeping off a bender upstairs. The projector apparently had been his mother’s because he found it in the basement.

  “The film,” he said, “belongs to Lee and Becky Santangelo.”

  Kat eyed the projector. It was square and bulky, like most things built in the middle part of the twentieth century. Eric had wiped away most of the dust, but some remained—streaks of gray on the projector’s brown surface. The reel of film had been spooled through it and was ready for viewing.

  “Have you watched it yet?”

  Eric shook his head. “I waited for you.”

  He had turned the projector to face a bare patch of wall near the television. While he started it up, Kat closed the curtains and drew the blinds until the living room was dark enough to see the square of light projected on the wall. Eric flicked a switch and the movie began.

  The first image to appear was of a hallway, the walls and floor tilting sharply to the right. After a slight bump, they righted themselves briefly before slipping to the left. Soon they became blurs of saturated color as the camera was carried through the hall and down a staircase.

  The movement resembled the point of view of someone who was either very drunk or very seasick. It made Kat feel the same way, especially when the camera apparently slipped, the lens lurching downward toward the floor in one quick, stomach-churning move.

  Whoever was holding the camera righted it at the bottom of the stairs. The view was of the entrance hall to Lee and Becky Santangelo’s house. Kat recognized the location but not the décor, which was done up in late-sixties chic—shag carpeting, wild colors, geometric patterns on the wallpaper. The only sign of good taste was a vase of white lilies sitting on a side table near the door. It was also where the camera was headed. There was one last blur, this time in the form of a lily slapping the lens, before the camera came to a rest on the table.

  The perch provided a waist-high view of the front door and about a third of the entrance hall. It also finally allowed Eric and Kat to see who had been manning the camera. That would be Lee Santangelo, who entered the frame from the left and moved quickly to the door. Dressed in only boxer shorts and an unbuttoned white shirt, he looked to be partially hiding behind the door even as he opened it.

  At first, Kat couldn’t see the person standing on the other side. It was dark there, for one thing, and Lee had really only opened the door a crack. But when the visitor took a step forward, Kat recognized her wide, searching eyes and face drawn tight with worry.

  Maggie Olmstead.

  Eric gasped his surprise. Standing next to the projector, he wordlessly reached out his hand. Kat took it and gripped it tight as they watched his dead mother converse with Lee Santangelo. There was no sound with the film, just flickering images from long ago. Yet Kat knew what Maggie and Lee were talking about.

  Mrs. Olmstead was looking for Charlie.

  Onscreen, Maggie tilted her head, trying to get a better view inside the house. Lee stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the camera and, incidentally, the camera’s view of Maggie. Eventually, Lee tried to shut the door but was stopped, most likely by Maggie. After a few seconds more, the door closed for real and Eric’s mother was gone once again.

  Just as in life, the film carried on without her. Lee picked up the camera on his way back from the door. What followed were more streaks of off-kilter hallways, more sudden lurches from one focal point to another. During one particularly dizzying moment, Kat saw nothing but the blurs of Lee’s bare feet as he ascended the stairs. Then it was into a bedroom—the same room Lee Santangelo still occupied, although in a far different state.

  When the camera settled down again, it was to give the viewer a glimpse of a television. Unlike the widescreen, high-definition set currently filling that room, this television was a tidy square of black-and-white images. Pointed at the TV, the camera remained steady, as if in awe of what was happening onscreen.

  On the television, two astronauts were bouncing impossibly high on what could only be the surface of the moon. The footage was grainy, made even worse by the age of the film itself, but it was still an amazing sight. No wonder Lee had stopped whatever he was doing to capture the moment. Kat would have done the same thing.

  After a few seconds, the camera jerked to the right, away from the television and toward the window. Someone stood naked before it, peering outside—no doubt the woman Eric’s mother had seen from the yard. Only it wasn’t a woman. Even with their back to the camera, Kat could tell it was a young man. The shoulders were broader than a woman’s. The hips not as rounded. The person at the window was all bone and sinewy muscle. The only thing remotely feminine about him was his hair, which brushed his shoulders.

  “My God,” Eric said. “All this time the mystery woman was a mystery man.”

  “Yep,” Kat replied. “No wonder Becky Santangelo didn’t want to talk about it.”

  The man turned around when he noticed the camera. He approached Lee quickly, head bobbing out of frame, hand thrust forward to block the lens. There was another blur as the camera changed hands, with Lee now the focus of its gaze. He yanked off his shirt and fell back on the bed, giving the camera a lustful grin as he caressed his crotch. He reached for the camera with his free hand, causing yet another dizzying spin as the young man once again came into view.

  He stood still a moment, letting the camera get a good look at him. His unruly hair draped over his eyes. His skin, especially his face, was deeply tanned, signaling that he had spe
nt most of that summer out in the sun. But the tan wasn’t dark enough to cover one notable feature—a dime-sized mole on his chin.

  The scene abruptly ended, the square of light replacing it on the living-room wall. A whirring sound emanated from the projector, which had run out of film. Eric switched it off while Kat continued to stare at the wall, stunned.

  The glimpse of the boy’s face had been brief. A few seconds, tops. But it was enough. She now knew what the Santangelos had been hiding all those years. She also knew who had been with Lee that night, and his name was Burt Hammond.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nick was in the car when he got a phone call from Tony Vasquez. Since holding the phone with one hand and steering with the other was a recipe for disaster, he waited to answer until he was safely stopped on the side of the road. He switched off the CD player—“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” in honor of his new forensic anthropologist friend—and picked up the phone.

  “What’s up?”

  “Dental records gave us a positive ID of the body under the mill,” Tony said. “It’s Noah Pierce.”

  “How does Lucy think he died?”

  “She can’t be sure,” Tony said. “After a more thorough examination of the remains, her best guess is that he was strangled to death. Anything more violent most likely would have left some trace on the bones, not to mention blood in the mill itself, which would have been seen by police at the time. And you and I both ruled out accidental drowning.”

  So a stranger hadn’t lured Noah into the mill and then into a car, whisking him away from his grandparents. Instead, the sick fuck had strangled the boy right there in the mill, most likely before anyone realized he was gone. An open trapdoor and a dumped body later, and one nine-year-old kid was gone forever.

  “Why was Noah holding Dennis Kepner’s toy rocket?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Tony said. “What do you think?”

  “That Dennis had it with him when he was snatched from the park,” Nick said. “The perp then used it to lure Noah into the mill.”

  Tony took a stab at humor to lighten the mood. “Do you always have to show me up?”

  “You can tell Gloria it was your idea,” Nick said.

  “What about the camp Dwight Halsey vanished from? Dig up anything useful there?”

  Nick briefly recounted his talk with Craig Brewster and the strange, sad story of Camp Crescent, including how the police and the owner automatically assumed Dwight had met his fate in the surrounding forest. When he was finished, Tony asked, “And what’s your opinion?”

  “That he might have died in the woods, but at the hands of someone else.”

  It was becoming all too clear that was how most, if not all, of the crimes occurred. Nick no longer suspected someone abducting the boys and holding them captive for days. He assumed they were all killed quickly, perhaps right where the culprit found them. The only incident that didn’t back up that theory was Dennis Kepner’s disappearance. Nick chalked that one up to the killer knowing that neighbors could be watching.

  “Listen,” Tony said, “it’s still pretty crazy where I’m at. The press got wind of the body and want some explanation. Gloria is hounding me about it, too. Oh, and get this, I just got word from the police in Fairmount. There was a whole other file on Dennis Kepner that they failed to tell me about.”

  “What’s in it? Anything new?”

  Tony let out a frustrated sigh. “You’re assuming I got a chance to look at it already. How did you do this job and not go crazy?”

  “Screw Gloria,” Nick advised. “Throw something small to the newshounds. They’ll gnaw on it for a day or so. But check the new Kepner file. I’ll track down Bucky Mason’s father and see what he remembers.”

  He was hoping to sneak that in without the overwhelmed lieutenant noticing. No such luck.

  “Nick, maybe I should send a trooper there instead. Gloria—”

  “What did I just tell you about that?”

  “That’s easier said than done,” Tony said. “She’s still my boss. And she’ll be mad as hell if she finds out you’re interviewing family members as part of this investigation.”

  “Fine,” Nick replied. “Send a trooper. But whoever it is will have to drive pretty fast.”

  “Goddamn it, Donnelly. Are you already there?”

  Nick wasn’t. But he sure was close. He estimated he was only a few miles outside Centralia.

  “Just let me talk to him. We’re both on the same side here. We both want to find out what happened to the boys and who did it. I want to do my part.”

  “Fine,” Tony said. “But be professional.”

  “Hey, I’m always professional.”

  Lieutenant Vasquez couldn’t help but chuckle. “Nick, you weren’t professional even when you were a professional.”

  When the call was over, Nick edged back onto the road and contemplated the GPS system built into the dashboard of his car. It disagreed with his assessment that Centralia was close by. According to its map, there was nothing up ahead. No roads. No buildings. Nothing. But Vinnie Russo, Nick’s source, didn’t lie. If he said Bill Mason Sr. was alive, well, and living in Centralia, then it was a certified fact.

  He hoped.

  The second signal that something was amiss came a mile down the road, when Nick saw a sign warning motorists of hazardous smoke and toxic fumes in the vicinity. The odor was next—a foul mixture of smoke and sulfur that smelled simultaneously of cigarette butts and rotting eggs. Gagging, Nick closed the windows and shut off the air conditioning. It was of no use. The stench had already invaded the interior of the car.

  A half mile later, the smoke welcomed him to Centralia. It was an insidious cloud that sprouted on the side of the road and snaked through a forest of dead trees for as far as Nick could see. Occasional tentacles wafted across the road like fog banks, and Nick had to slow down as he drove through them.

  Emerging on the other side of the smoke, he saw that the road swerved sharply to the right. Directly ahead was another road, although a concrete barrier prevented him from driving on it. Even if the roadblock hadn’t been there, a large fissure in the road would have stopped him. Roughly three feet wide, it stretched down the entire length of asphalt, turning most of the road into rubble. Occasional wisps of smoke rose from the crevasse.

  Nick had no choice but to turn right, which led to more smoke and dead trees. He eventually passed a gated cemetery, smoke twisting among the graves. It made Nick think of hell on Earth, and he whispered a prayer for the poor souls who had been buried there.

  The smoke eventually cleared. The sulfurous stench did not. Nick could still smell it, thick in the air all around him. He studied his surroundings, trying to get his bearings. What he saw was a town that looked as if it had been wiped off the map. Rolling down streets that contained no houses, Nick saw hints that someone had once lived there. Stop signs stood sentinel at the corners. A bit of driveway, slowly succumbing to weeds, led to an open field. At another bare lot, a mailbox, flag up and door down, waited for a delivery that would never come.

  When Nick glanced left, he saw the steeple of a church just above the trees. He veered the car in its direction, hoping it would lead him to someplace occupied. But when he reached the church, he realized that God—and his followers—had abandoned it long ago. Weeds blocked the front door, which had been padlocked, and a gaping hole marred the roof. The cross had fallen off the steeple and was now sunk upside down in the ground next to the church itself. Hell on Earth indeed.

  Moving past the church, Nick finally caught sight of a house. Well, half a house. What had once been a duplex was now only a single unit—a tall and ridiculously narrow structure colored dark gray by the smoke. One side appeared normal, with windows, shutters, and a single chimney sprouting from the roof. The other side had no windows, just an expanse of vinyl siding and what appeared to be five exposed chimneys rising to the eaves. They were brick support beams, Nick realized, built to keep the house stand
ing when its other half had been torn down.

  He idled in front of the house a moment, taking it all in. There was no mailbox out front, nor was there a number next to the door. But someone still lived there. An American flag hung from the porch railing. Below it, leaning against the foundation, was a message that had been spray-painted on plywood. DON’T BOTHER US!

  Nick didn’t really have a choice. Either it was the home of Bill Mason Sr. or that of someone who might be able to point him in the right direction. He just hoped whoever lived there didn’t own a shotgun. He’d seen enough of those for one day.

  Hopping onto the porch, he was about to knock when a voice rose from the other side of the door. It was a woman’s voice, old but firm and full of spitfire.

  “Whoever you are should read the sign and go the hell back to wherever you came from.”

  “I’m not here to bother you,” Nick said. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Are you with the government?”

  “No. I’m working with the state police. I’m looking for information about a boy who vanished from here in 1972.”

  The door swung open immediately, revealing a short woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Her hair was gray, her face weathered and hard.

  “Which boy?” She looked up at Nick with eyes the same color as steel. “Frankie or Bucky?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Perry Hollow’s town hall was a building with delusions of grandeur. Sitting squat and heavy at the end of Main Street, it looked far more important than it really was. Kat was all for imposing architecture, if it was warranted. But running up the hall’s marble steps, she knew that a building devoted to waste management and dog licenses didn’t warrant Corinthian columns.

  The mayor’s office was on the second floor, forcing Kat to climb more steps with a half-spooled film reel under her arm. But since it was a lazy Friday morning, no one was around to notice the strip of celluloid curling from her armpit. Chalk one up for bureaucracy.

  When she hit the second floor, Kat turned left and entered the mayor’s office. The tiny waiting area bearing the American and Pennsylvania flags was empty. So was the receptionist’s desk, which allowed Kat to march into Burt’s inner sanctum and toss the reel of film onto his desk.