Blood Moon

by Ed Gorman

  "So he went bankrupt?"

  She nodded. "That and some trouble."

  Which is what I had been looking for in the newspaper stacks—the trouble Stan Brindle had gotten into.

  "Drugs," she said.

  "Selling them, you mean?"

  She shook her head, looking old-lady elegant as she did so.

  "Not selling them. But letting drug dealers use his farm to store their drugs and have some of their meetings. Cousin of his from Davenport, I believe, he was the one actually running the drugs."

  "They got caught?"

  "Yes, they did."

  "Did Brindle go to prison?"

  She frowned. "He made it as far as county jail. He was in there two nights and he hanged himself with a belt he wasn't supposed to have. It was pretty sad. I knew Stan ever since he'd been a little boy. He was a big dreamer, and sometimes he could be a braggart, but he wasn't really a bad boy. Not really. In fact, he was pretty much straight until he met Reverend Roberts."

  "The same Reverend Roberts who's in town now?"

  She smirked. "The one and only. After he started getting into so much financial trouble, Stan and his wife decided that they needed to start going to church again. You know how people do when they're desperate. 'I don't want to hear a peep out of you, God, unless I get in trouble.' That sort of attitude. Well, anyway, they started going to church there and then they started socializing with the reverend and his wife. And the reverend started spending a lot of his spare time out at the farm, hunting and things like that. That was what he said, anyway. But what really happened was that he started having an affair with Stan's wife, who was one of those very pretty, shy little women who always wound up getting dominated by their men. Rachael, her name was. Anyway, one night things got so bad—apparently he'd caught them in bed—that Stan went over to the reverend's house with a shotgun. Took a couple of shots, too, but missed. Law got called in and everybody in town pretty much knew what happened and Rachael moved away, went back to Springfield, Illinois, which was where she was from originally. It was after that that Stan got caught up in the drug thing with his cousin from Davenport."

  "But you say that the reverend used to spend a lot of time at the farm?"

  She nodded. "A lot."

  If that was the case, the good reverend would know a good place to bury bodies he needed to get rid of, bodies belonging to young girls he'd molested while filming them performing illegal sex acts. Then, for the first time, I thought of Mike Peary's letter to Nora, in which Mike detailed how several girls who'd visited New Hope had later been murdered. Traveling around the countryside and killing young girls would be no trouble for a man who was already traveling anyway.

  She looked at her watch. "Oh, heck."

  "What?"

  "I wanted to be home in time to watch Oprah. She's the only one of those talk-show people I can stand. She seems genuinely sincere." She looked out the gray window at the dripping rain. "But I'll never make it in time."

  "Tell me where you live. I'll give you a ride."

  "But don't you want to go back to your newspaper stacks?"

  "Thanks to you, I won't need to. You told me everything."

  She beamed. "Well, it's nice to know that somebody finds me useful at my age."

  6

  "You lucked out, Robert," my FBI buddy said on the phone ten minutes after I left the library.

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. Brooklyn, 1956."

  "All right."

  "Guy was into disemboweling women, but he got so bloody doing it he was afraid somebody'd spot him with blood all over his clothes. Killed four women that way."

  "And then?"

  "Then he decided that, rather than kill them in parks or alleys as he'd been doing, he'd knock them out, put them in his car trunk, and take them back to his garage."

  "All right."

  "First of all, he became a much more efficient butcher. He started using a power saw. And second of all, he bought himself a butcher's rubber apron and gloves, and he started disposing of the bodies by chopping them up in pieces and burying them all over his neighborhood. There was only one problem."

  "Oh?"

  "Dogs. He was all right in the winter, burying the meat in the snow, but when he buried it under plain dirt—the neighborhood dogs found it."

  "Wow."

  "But, to answer your question, there are forty-three cases where the killer suddenly changed body-disposal patterns."

  "How often did burying them show up?"

  "In twenty-six of the forty-three."

  "So it's a popular method."

  "It's popular until they get caught."

  "Thanks, I appreciate it."

  "Just send me a new Mercedes."

  "Thanks."

  7

  He didn't want the man at the pet store getting suspicious, so he bought most of the puppies in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City.

  Look funny, a guy coming in once a month or so and buying himself a puppy. Month in, month out that way.

  But today there wasn't time.

  Had to buy it right here in town.

  Ran into the pet store out of the rain; ran out ten minutes later with a plump, cuddly three-month-old Scottie puppy. Black it was, and cute as a button.

  Thing yipped all the way out of town, all the way out to its ultimate destination.

  He didn't do this because he hated puppies or because he was sadistic.

  No, he just thought that he owed it to those little friends of his.

  They pretty much had the same menu all the time. They'd certainly appreciate a change of pace every once in a while.

  That's why he bought the puppies.

  He'd tried cats once but they weren't plump enough if they were still in the pet store.

  If there was time, he'd probably go out in the woods and do a little hunting.

  Boy, he could bag some things that would really make those little friends of his excited and happy.

  Very happy.

  The ride wasn't all that long.

  Took the puppy from the backseat, still yipping of course, and carried him in the cardboard container straight down the hill and inside to where the trapdoor was beneath the empty rusty milk cans that still smelled sour from their long-ago milk.

  Took the puppy out of the cardboard box.

  Aw.

  He really was a cute little thing.

  Such a sweet face. And those big brown eyes. And that wet black nose.

  Knelt down, then, the puppy struggling in his grasp, and yanked the trapdoor open.

  The odor nearly knocked him backwards. Always did, right at first.

  But then he began inhaling deeply, purposely suffusing himself with it.

  God, he loved that smell. Once he got used to it.

  Puppy really started squirming, so he really had to belt him hard across the head and pull hard on his floppy black ear.

  "You be quiet. You be quiet now. You hear me?"

  Then he leaned over the square hole in the floor and peered down into the cold darkness below.

  They were down there, oh, yes they were down there, his friends with the red eyes and the fat gray bodies and the knife-sharp teeth that could rip a human body clean to the bone in just a few minutes.

  Well, maybe not an adult human body.

  He'd never actually pushed one of those down there.

  But the little girls, when he was done with them; the little girls he always pushed down there.

  And one night, he brought a flashlight along so he could see it, see the dozens of them swarming over the naked little body, rending and ripping and chewing and chittering until their mouths shone with blood and the smell of the kill was enough to make him come without even touching himself.

  Oh, yes; oh, yes.

  And when there wasn't a little girl to give to his red-eyed friends, well, that was when he bought them a nice new puppy.

  As now.

  "Bye-bye, little friend," he said.

  The p
uppy wrestled, protested, as if it well knew what was about to happen.

  "Nothing personal," he said.

  And dropped the sweet little thing through the deep dark opening in the dirt.

  There was a distant thwump when the puppy hit the far dark ground. And then there was a curious silence, as if the red-eyed things didn't know what to make of his gift.

  But then reason prevailed.

  And they knew very, very well what to make of his gift.

  And what to do with his gift.

  The puppy yipped and cried as they swarmed over him, and began the frenzied tearing, the frenzied ripping, the frenzied frantic separation of flesh from bone.

  And there he knelt, peering down into the darkness; watching, watching.

  8

  She came up from nowhere, just as I gave the door to my motel room a small push.

  I smelled her perfume before I heard her, the cold rain having started again, the six o'clock sky dark as night now.

  "I want to show you something," she said.

  I stepped back, letting her walk into the room ahead of me.

  She found a lamp, snapped it on, sending faint illumination throughout the shabby room.

  "God, this is really a depressing place."

  "That's what I was thinking," I said.

  "Too bad there isn't another motel in town."

  She looked as good as always, Joanna Lodge, starched white blouse, blue cardigan and trim jeans flattering her slender body, her tumbling golden hair drawn up into a loose chignon.

  I went over, grabbed a warm Diet Pepsi, filled two plastic glasses half full and then handed her one of them.

  She smiled. "I'm not sure I should thank you for this."

  "I'm a jet-setter," I said. "I live large."

  She looked around. "I really do feel sorry for anybody who would have to stay here for any length of time. Rooms really affect my moods."

  "Which chair do you want? The blue uncomfortable one or the red uncomfortable one?"

  "How about the blue uncomfortable one?"

  "It's yours."

  We spent a few minutes talking about her grief, or lack thereof. "I keep wanting to cry."

  "You will."

  "Maybe not. Maybe—well, I had been sort of psyching myself up for a divorce, anyway. I just couldn't deal with all the women he had. Maybe I just closed myself off to him. Permanently, I mean."

  "Possible, I suppose."

  "When I talked to his parents last night I really hurt their feelings."

  "Because of how you sounded?"

  She sat there in her blue uncomfortable chair sipping her warm Diet Pepsi. "I wanted to sound dutiful. You know, properly bereaved. I gave it a good try but I don't think I was very convincing. And I know I hurt them. They're very decent people. I always wondered if Sam hadn't been adopted. Emotionally, he was their total opposite."

  "You really think he was adopted?"

  She shook her head. "No, he looked very much like both of them. But in every other way, he was unlike them."

  "You said you had something you wanted to show me."

  She opened her purse, took one white number-ten envelope from it and then a manila envelope.

  "I didn't tell you this the other day because I wasn't sure about you. Sam had been acting very strange lately. Upset. Frightened, may be a better word. Jumpy when the phone rang; always looking out the window when he heard a car go by."

  "Do you know why?"

  "No. But last week, I followed him a couple of times."

  "Followed him where?"

  "To the old Brindle farm. I went there the morning after his death, too. Jane Avery stopped over earlier this afternoon and all but accused me of knowing something about his murder. She also said that she'd seen me drive out to the Brindle farm this morning."

  "Did you?" I said, knowing the answer because, like Jane, I'd seen her blue Toyota sedan go into the main barn on the Brindle farm.

  "Yes. I was trying to figure out why Sam kept going out there."

  "And did you?"

  "No. I mean, I walked around but I couldn't find anything. Nothing at all."

  "But you must have found something." I nodded to the two envelopes in her lap.

  "Oh, right. These."

  She got out of the blue uncomfortable chair and walked the envelopes over to me.

  I opened the manila envelope first and knocked out a piece of heavy, official paper from inside.

  "Craig Tolliver," I said.

  "Who?"

  "Craig Tolliver." The son that the rich man Tolliver had told me had "died," but was still alive and somewhere in town.

  "You never heard your husband mention him?"

  "No."

  "June 23, 1958," I said. "That's the birth date given here."

  "I wonder why my husband had that birth certificate."

  I set the birth certificate down and opened up the flap of the white number-ten envelope.

  Inside was a piece of letterhead from the First National Trust Bank—"Your Friend in Deed Since 1926"—that thanked Sam Lodge for renting a safe-deposit box. The letter went on to say that it was sure he'd find many of their other services to his liking, too.

  "He ever mention a safe-deposit box to you?"

  "Not this one. Where we do the rest of our banking, in Iowa City, we have a safe-deposit box there."

  "When can you get this opened?"

  "I called my attorney. He said that if I take in proper ID, along with this letter, the bank will probably let me open it up tomorrow."

  "You going to do that?"

  She nodded. "Maybe when I get it open, I'll find out who killed him." She smiled sadly. "Maybe by then I'll be able to cry."

  "You mind if I keep this birth certificate?"

  "That's fine."

  We were silent for a moment. She looked around the room. The rain pounded and bounced on the roof.

  "This room really does depress me," she said.

  I was the same way after my wife died, so I recognized the feeling, fleeing any room where my memories of her grew too painful. It could be any room at all, one I'd never even been in before. But when the memories overtook me, I had to get out.

  She was up, at the door.

  I walked over to her.

  "Thanks for bringing these over."

  She looked up at me. "Maybe I'll drive to Iowa City and go to a movie."

  She wanted my permission. "That sounds like a good idea. See something light."

  That was another thing I'd learned about mourning. Comedies can help you a lot.

  She stepped forward and gave me a hug—not because I was me, but because I was another warm sensate human animal, and she very badly needed contact with a like creature. It was a sisterly hug, and I gave her a brotherly one right back.

  After she left, taking her soft intelligent voice with her, there was just the thrumming sound of the rain.

  9

  The house where Tolliver was staying was three blocks east of my motel. The walk was good. My middle-aging body was in bad need of exercise. In the fresh, wet air you could smell the summer flowers struggling for birth in the damp, dark mud. You don't know what rich black soil is till you've held Iowa soil.

  Tolliver was staying in a stone Tudor that looked as if it might be more comfortable in Beverly Hills. Lights shone in the mullioned windows.

  He answered the door on the second knock. He wore a denim work shirt and a pair of chinos. He looked like a rich man trying hard to look ordinary.

  "You look kind of stressed out," he said.

  "I am."

  He stepped aside and let me walk through the vestibule and into the living room with its massive open fireplace and Edwardian antiques. G. K. Chesterton had probably sat in just such a room while he wrote his Father Brown stories.

  "Some sherry?"

  "No, thanks," I said.

  He pointed to a Morris sofa. "Why don't you sit down?"

  "I need to keep moving. But I wanted
you to see this."

  I handed him the manila envelope. He opened it up and took out the birth certificate, which he carried over to a lamp with a baroque shade.

  "Is it authentic?" I said.

  "From what I can see of it here, yes." He moved it around in the light under the shade. "Where did you get it?"

  "Sam Lodge's wife found it in their house."

  "Does she know how Lodge got it?"

  "No. But that's not too hard to figure out."

  "It isn't?"

  He brought the certificate back to me.

  "Lodge found this somehow and then started blackmailing your son. Eve McNally told me that her husband suddenly came into a lot of money. Joanna Lodge said the same thing about Sam."

  "So they figured out who Craig is."

  "Yes, and Craig returned the favor by killing Lodge."

  I didn't mention that he'd also kidnapped McNally's daughter.

  He looked at me with great weariness and sorrow. "We're getting close to him, aren't we?"

  "Very close."

  He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket. "We've got to stop him."

  "I know. And I plan to."

  He looked longingly at the birth certificate, the way a man would look at a baby picture of his son. "I've read a lot about genetics these past few years. I suppose he was always a monster—just born that way, you know? But I don't want to absolve myself of the part I played in it. I should have stopped him a long time ago." He made no effort to hide his tears. "He really is a monster, isn't he?"

  "I'm afraid he is."

  I glanced around the room. What a perfect night for a place such as this, and all the better if you had Jane Avery for company, make her some hot cocoa and put on one of the old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, foggy and mysterious London, but the fog and mystery of fiction, not the gore and grief of real murder.

  "I'll keep you posted," I said.

  The last thing he said was, "Do what you need to, Mr. Hokanson. Anything at all you need to."