Black Moon Rising

by Ann Simas

  “Feeling groggy, though.”

  “I bet.”

  “And thirsty.”

  He looked around, but saw no cup. “Let me check that it’s okay for you to have some water.” On his way to the door, he realized he should have gone immediately to tell the nursing staff that Della was awake.

  Before he reached the nurses’ station, the transport elevator doors opened and the hit-and-run driver’s gurney was wheeled out. Luca nearly exploded with expletives when he realized they were taking her to the room adjacent to Della’s.

  His angry stride took him over to the charge nurse. “You cannot be serious,” he said, furious.

  “Sorry,” she said, though she obviously wasn’t, “it’s the only free room we have right now. If anyone moves to the floor or dies, we’ll see what we can do about a switch.”

  Luca knew he had to live with that setup for a while, but he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t even cringe at her cold bluntness. “I don’t want her bothering my sister.”

  The nurse looked at him like he was crazy. “This is the ICU, Detective. People, including your sister, are closely monitored on this floor.” She gave him a look. “Besides, your sister is still—”

  “Shit! I got distracted. She’s awake and she’s thirsty.”

  The nurse gave him a disgusted look before she skirted around him, barking orders for someone to get ice chips to room 710 and another to get Dr. Fenton on the horn and let her know the coma patient was awake.

  Luca knew better than to get in the way while a contingent of medical personnel came-and-went to his sister’s room. He stuck to the furthest corner, until finally one too many bodies stepped in and he was instructed to wait outside until they had finished with Della.

  He walked down and got another cup of coffee from the vending machine, making a snack selection while he was at it. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and that was now eighteen hours in the past.

  He wandered back down the hall and stopped outside the door next to his sister’s room. The shared desk and computer was occupied by the pulmonary doc, Madani. Luca greeted him and asked if he wanted a cheese-and-peanut butter cracker. The doctor looked up, his expression serious. “No, thanks. That stuff’ll kill you.” He grinned unexpectedly. “My poison is M&Ms.”

  Luca chuckled. Maybe the guy wasn’t such an asshole after all. “Did her tox screen come back?”

  Madani removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “She’s clean as a whistle. No alcohol, no drugs. She’s a healthy adult female who looks like someone ran over her, instead of the other way around.” His tone was heavy with accusation.

  Luca, suspecting what he did about Boyson, couldn’t dispute it. “Has she said anything about the…incident?”

  Madani replaced his specs and crossed his arms over his chest, which was covered by a plaid shirt made by Columbia, if Luca wasn’t mistaken. He had one just like it at home. “She was pretty incoherent, kept muttering about calling someone. Seemed frantic about it.” He stood up and closed her file. “If she’s under arrest, isn’t she supposed to be allowed one phone call?”

  Luca squirmed. That’s what happened when they got booked into jail, but this prisoner hadn’t made it that far. In fact, courtesy of a Fremont PD rogue officer, about the only place she’d almost made it to was the Pearly Gates, or maybe she was a serial hit-and-runner, and her final destination had been in the opposite direction. He looked at his watch. Almost midnight. “I suppose I could let her use the phone. Whoever she wants to talk to so badly might actually want to know where she is.”

  “The sentiment is nice, Detective, but a little late. I sedated the patient just before we brought her up. If she’s lucky, she’ll sleep through until morning. At that time, I hope she’ll be alert enough to give me her medical history, but if not, I intend to administer a battery of pulmonary function tests, so I know exactly what I’m dealing with here.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Luca said. “Uh, did she happen to mention her name?”

  Madani considered him with a surprised expression. “You have a prisoner under arrest and you don’t know her name? Good God!”

  Luca went on the defensive. “I got a call that my sister had been taken down by a hit-and-run driver. I didn’t take time to find out the driver’s name.”

  The doctor shook his head. “She wasn’t in any condition to tell us, and by the way,” he said, “even though you don’t seem particularly interested in her injuries, you should know that she’s bruised badly on her left side. Whatever broke her rib caused it to puncture her lung, compounding all her other problems.” He stared Luca down. “I assume, being an officer of the law, you are not going to let this slide.”

  Luca squirmed, conflicted as to what would be a proper response. Before he could decide, the doctor shook his head in disgust and walked away.

  Chapter 4

  . . .

  Luca finally gave up the ghost trying to sleep in the tiny little chair in Della’s ICU room. At two a.m., thinking he could use a hot shower to wash off the stink that had accumulated on him over the past two days, he headed home.

  Once there, instead of jumping under a spray of hot water, he downed an icy cold beer, stripped, set his alarm for six, and fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.

  When the alarm went off, he considered shooting it with his gun, then remembered he had a ton of shit on his mental to-do list before he went back to the hospital: talk to his folks on their daily Skype call; get IT to run a search on someone named Sunny, who his sister wanted to thank for helping her; discuss how to handle the Boyson situation with his partner; verify that the team investigating the hit-and-run had all their ducks in a row; make sure the DA was going to file every related charge imaginable against the hit-and-run driver at the arraignment; and find out something more about said hit-and-run driver, whatever the hell her name was.

  The hospital staff called her Ms. Doe, like she deserved the same kind of respect Della did.

  As he mentally ticked off his last to-do item, Luca got an itchy sensation inside him. After five years as a violent crimes detective, he recognized it well enough to know he’d better damned well pay attention to it. He added one more item on his to-do list: check with the lab about the vehicle paint match-up.

  Something was wrong with the scenario he’d laid out in his head about this case.

  He just had to figure out what.

  First thing he did was call the hospital. After that, he shaved, then jumped in the shower, scrubbing extra hard to get the BO stink off of him. He hated wearing the same clothes for two days straight. Once dressed, he popped two Jimmy Dean sausage-and-egg breakfast sandwiches into the microwave. While they heated, he logged on to Skype. His parents came up at the same time the dinger went off on the microwave. He ate while he talked to them.

  His mother was crying. “Della’s okay, Ma,” he said, hoping to ease her worries. “She came out of the coma early last night. They’ve run every test known to man and God and she’s fine.”

  “What about the concussion, Luca?” asked his father.

  “She remembers some of what happened, but not all of it. A good Samaritan stopped to help, and she remembers her. It’s some woman named Sunny.”

  “We should come home,” Elena said.

  “There’s no need, Ma. Maria is coming down as soon as she finishes her last final. Between the two of us, we’ll have her covered. She’ll be up and moving around today.”

  “But you said yesterday, her leg is injured,” Matteo said.

  “She apparently fell on a bottle, or pieces of a bottle that was already broken. They extracted the glass from her leg, cleaned it, and sewed it closed. No tendons or ligaments involved. It went in deep, but the doc who stitched her up said she’ll be good as new in a month or so, though she may need some physical therapy.”

  “Grazie a dio,” Elena murmured.

  “What about the woman who hit her?” Matteo demanded. “She’s in jail, yes?”

&
nbsp; Luca squirmed in his chair. “Not exactly.”

  “Why not?” his father bellowed.

  “Look, Pop, it’s complicated. The arresting cop got rough with her and she’s in the hospital.”

  “Serves her right,” Matteo said, nodding with satisfaction.

  “Matteo Amorosi!” cried Elena, punching her husband’s arm. “Do not wish ill on anyone! You know that will come back to haunt you.”

  Luca decided not to fill them in completely on the hit-and-runner’s condition. “I haven’t talked to the team investigating yet, but it’s a pretty straightforward case, so I don’t” —that internal itchiness swarmed through him again like a herd of angry cockroaches— “expect any complications.”

  His mother worried her lower lip. “Promise you’ll let us know immediately if we need to come home, Luca.”

  “I will, Ma. Talk to you again tomorrow, okay? I’ll take my laptop over to the hospital so you can see for yourself that Della is okay.”

  They signed off. Luca shut down his Mac and cleared away his breakfast wrappers. He grabbed his keys and headed out, detouring through Starbucks drive-thru on his way to the vehicle impound lot.

  Once there, he walked around the hit-and-runner’s vehicle three times, looking for some sign that she’d hit his sister’s bike. The Durango was an older model, probably a 2004, but it was in pristine condition. Not a scratch or blemish or dent on it anywhere. He went inside to the crime lab. “How did the paint match-up come out?” he asked the tech.

  Clancy Halloran looked up from his microscope. “Got it identified, but you’re not going to like the results.”

  The itch inside him blossomed, made him think about the time he’d had chicken pox as a kid. “Why not?”

  “The Durango has Patriot Blue Pearl paint. The car you’re looking for is a 2010 Honda Pilot in Bali Blue Pearl.”

  “You have got to be freaking kidding me!” Luca’s inner itch began to itch, warning him that Clancy’s response would not be what he wanted to hear.

  “There’s about a point-zero-zero-one percent chance it analyzed wrong.”

  “Let me have the key. I want a look inside.”

  Clancy handed it over, but held on to it for a moment before he released it. “I heard Boyson worked this woman over pretty good, Luca. What’re you gonna do about it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Luca admitted. He left the lab and went back out to the lot. He pulled on latex gloves and unlocked the vehicle.

  Methodically, he searched every nook and cranny. Her purse had been discarded on the front floorboard, which pissed him off. He knew Clancy wasn’t in charge of the vehicle interior, but who the hell had let that slide. He opened the leather bag. Inside were a hair brush, a paperback, an EpiPen, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, and a wallet, which he extracted. The little slots held one VISA and one MasterCard, a debit card, a Barnes and Noble member card, a Safeway Club Card, her library card, a Macy’s card, an insurance card, and finally, her driver’s license. Her name was Sunshine Fyfe. She also had seventy-six dollars and eight-five cents in her wallet and pictures of two cute little kids.

  The name made her sound like a pretentious hippy. She was twenty-eight, five-four, weighed one-twenty-seven, had brown hair and green eyes, was an organ donor, and had no vision restrictions. He pulled out his phone and dialed Records. “Hey, Sissy,” he said.

  “Luca, you handsome devil,” Sissy Rose said in her gravelly smoker’s voice. “When you gonna come see me again?” She’d long given up the cancer sticks, but her fifty-year-old throat had never recovered.

  “Sometime soon,” he promised.

  “Don’t forget my truffles, big boy.”

  “Like I would,” he said, grinning even though she couldn’t see him. He could get her slammed for sexual harassment, but the former nun talked to everyone the same way, and no one had reported her yet. “Hey, Sis, I need you to do a DMV check for me.” He rattled off the number from Fyfe’s CDL.

  “You want to hold or call me back?”

  “I’ll hold.”

  “Wow, that was fast,” Sis said. After several uh-huhs and one okay, she said, “This woman doesn’t even have a parking ticket on her driving history, Luca. Why are you looking at her?”

  Most Records clerks didn’t have Sissy’s curiosity. “They pulled her in on a four-eighty.”

  “The hit-and-run on your sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good luck with that,” Sis retorted. “I ran a CHC on her while I was at it. That’s squeaky clean, too.”

  Running the criminal history check saved him having to ask for it, but he was starting to think maybe he should take some Benadryl for his itchy guts. “Thanks, Sis.”

  He disconnected and dialed his partner. “Hey, Trey, where are you?” After a one-word response, Luca said, “I’ll meet you there in fifteen.”

  He went back to his examination of Sunshine Fyfe’s vehicle. Under the front passenger seat, accessible from the back seat, he found a child’s toy. The little Hot Wheels car looked like it had been well-loved. In the pocket on the back of the other seat, he found two story books, written for toddler-aged kids, probably, as they had a lot of pictures and few words. Most disturbing though, were the two carseats fastened into the back seat.

  Luca was in danger of being consumed from the inside by the goddamned, persistent itch.

  He went back and looked in the glove box and found all the vehicle maintenance records neatly put away in a small manila envelope. Sunshine Fyfe’s car registration and insurance verification were also there. In the center console, he found a small box of tissues and a container of wet wipes, along with some snack packs of crackers, a tiny LED flashlight, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Finally, he checked the cargo space.

  She’d either been going somewhere, or just returning. He opened the small wheeled suitcase and sifted through the contents. Make-up bag, bathroom bag, clothes, lingerie, another paperback. Just getting back, he decided, judging from the small plastic bag containing several pairs of white cotton panties and a blouse. She seemed like a neat freak, the car being spotless both inside and out, her suitcase packed so economically she could even fit her laptop inside.

  He closed the suitcase and zipped it, then locked the vehicle and returned the keys to Clancy.

  “Hey, Luca,” the crime tech called after him. “Bust Boyson’s balls good.”

  Luca gave him a nod and a wave and left the lab. If what he was thinking was what had really happened after the hit-and-run, he wouldn’t need to bust anyone balls. The Department would do it all on their own.

  When he got to Chester’s Café, which was open only for breakfast and lunch seven days a week, catering big time to Fremont’s finest, Luca slid into the booth next to his partner. On the opposite of the table sat Brant Crawford, Boyson’s patrol partner. Luca gave Trey a look that could only be interpreted as, What the fuck?

  Trey shrugged and said, “Brant came to me, buddy. This case is about your sister, so I asked him to join us.”

  Luca studied the guy across from him. Crawford was only a couple of years younger, but today he looked so haggard, it aged him a decade. “What if Boyson comes in?”

  Crawford said, “He called in sick today. I think that piece of shit knows he’s in for it good this time. He’s probably making his getaway plans.”

  Luca took the comment seriously. Over the years, the Department hadn’t been able to make any charges stick because everyone Boyson had allegedly assaulted was scared to death of him. The twenty-year patrol veteran was big, mean, and volatile. No one even liked to partner with him, which made Luca wonder how Crawford had pulled that duty. He put his elbows on the table, looked around the dining room, then asked, “You working for Internal Affairs, Brant?”

  Crawford’s expression did not change. The guy would be killer at poker.

  The waitress came to take their order. Trey asked for a plate of donuts, mix ’em up, in addition to the three coffees.

  “Wh
at I saw Boyson do to that woman is a felony offense,” Crawford said, “and I am not telling you this lightly. If he’s convicted, he goes to prison, and you both know what happens to cops in prison.”

  Luca and Trey nodded, their expressions grim. “Tell us what went down,” Trey said.

  Crawford’s teeth did a lot of grinding and his jaw visibly flexed for almost a minute before he spoke. “After she gets out of the vehicle, he about rips her arms off cuffing her, then he slams her face-first into the vehicle and proceeds to pat her down. And I don’t mean in a polite way.”

  The waitress put down three coffees and the donuts. “Gimme a holler if you want refills,” she said with a wink, and headed back to the counter.

  Crawford made sure she was out of hearing distance before he continued. “When Boyson pats her down, it’s not like he’s looking for weapons. He touches her everywhere, and I mean everywhere a woman doesn’t like to be touched by a guy she doesn’t know from jack shit.”

  Luca shared a look with Trey, whose angry expression had to mirror his own.

  “She begs him to stop, but he gets rougher, poking and squeezing.” Crawford picked up his coffee cup, his hands so shaky the hot brew spilled over the side. He didn’t even seem to notice as he got the cup to his mouth and took a long sip. “When he’s done inflicting those indignities on her, he spins her around and shoves her back against the vehicle so hard, I think the glass in the window is going to crack. By then, she’s crying. He starts Mirandizing her. When he’s done, he asks her several times if she wishes to speak to him, but she’s so out of it, I don’t think she even hears him. He slams her against the vehicle again and all the time he’s haranguing her, he’s got his hand on her chest, squeezing her breasts. Finally he says, ‘What the fuck do you have to say for yourself, little girl?’”

  Crawford dropped his head into his hands. “She is either the gustiest woman I have ever run across or the stupidest.” He looked up at them. “She says, ‘What the fuck did you stop me for, little man?’ with the emphasis on little. He raises his fist and I know he’s going to bash her face in but good, so I intervene, say I’ll put her in the unit. I grab her arm, trying to give her some support, and the prick trips her. She’s face-first on the pavement before I know it.”