by Diane Capri
“I don’t like taking lives, even when they’re trying to take mine. But it always seems to happen.”
“One day when you least expect, your life will be taken too.”
“Sudden death. It’s something I have to live with.”
“Ain’t that truth,” Miller says. Then, tossing a thumb over his shoulder at the van and the body it contains. “Within the hour. I mean it, Moonlight. Or all bets are off.”
“Roger that, Detective,” I say.
He steps past me and begins making his way around the back of the house. Until I call out for him, stopping him. He turns.
“What is it?”
“What did you say to the twins back there inside the cruiser? Or you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
He nods, runs his right hand through his closely cropped, sandy blond hair.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“So what did you say then?”
“I asked them why they did it? Why the tried to ruin Roger’s life?”
“And what did they say?”
“They said it was fun.”
I flick away what’s left of my cigarette so that it lands on the gravel drive not far from the detective’s. “It was fun? That’s it?”
“Oh, and they also said he deserved it, for what he did to their mom thirty-seven some years ago.”
I picture a destroyed Ms. Beckett. Picture her crying all the way to the Albany Police Department in the back of some wormy smelling cruiser. My pulse picks up a little at the thought of she and Walls somehow coming together three decades ago.
“What did he do?”
“He slept with her while visiting her college in Boston for a reading. Got her pregnant. She was forced to give up the child.”
“Did she ever connect with the child later on?”
“Yup. But Roger never did. Rather, Roger has no idea who his own son is. But I have a feeling now might be the time for him to find out, once and for all.”
He stands there staring at me.
“Well don’t keep me in the dark, Miller.”
He tells me the name of Roger Walls long-lost son, and Erica and Vanessa Beckett’s older, half brother. And it all makes perfect sense.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
YOUNG PROFESSOR OATCZUK WILL probably be pleased to know that he is the proud offspring of one of the world’s most gifted writers. Or maybe he already knows. Maybe he’s known for a long time and that’s why he portends such a sentimental affinity to someone who didn’t seem all that nice to him. But it would explain why he wanted to work with Suzanne so badly, and why he refused to even consider working with another agent. If he’s known all along that Roger is his true father, he would want to make his dad proud. It would be a way for Oatczuk to be noticed, to be praised, to be a success in his daddy’s eyes, even if said daddy had no way of knowing the writing prof was his long-lost son.
I can only wonder if Oatczuk knew about his true connection to Erica and Vanessa. Has he known for some time that he is their half-brother? That they share the same mother? Or did Alice Beckett manage to keep the lid on the complicated family secret until very recently? As recently as today? As recently as this very hour?
If I have to guess, I would say the truth about Roger and his sisters has only now been revealed, while the truth about his biological father was revealed a long time I ago. Why he never confronted the bestseller with the truth, I’ll never know, but I can bet it has something to do with being his own man. After all, who really wants to be the kid of a superstar novelist like Roger Walls? Who wants to be buried in his wake? Who really needs the pressure of measuring up? Measuring up as both a writer and a man? A man’s man?
My spell is broken by the sound of shouting.
“Give that back you son of a philandering bastard!” barks Roger Walls. He’s chasing Georgie Phillips halfway across the lawn towards the van. Georgie has a bottle of Jack Daniels gripped in his hand by its neck.
“Don’t just stand there, Moon!” the pathologist screams. “Help me!”
I run, jump in between them, praying that Roger doesn’t mow me down like a Sherman tank and a dandelion.
“What’s going on?” I ask, grabbing hold of Roger’s thick right arm, trying to hold him back with both my hands.
“That thief has stolen my whiskey!” Roger shouts.
Georgie stands by the van, panting, the bottle of whiskey still held tightly in his hand.
“Listen Moon,” he says, “our literary friend here is suffering from loose lips. He’s babbling on about my little secret arrangement at the AMC morgue. Before he got too far, I made like a rabbit and stole his drink right out from under him. I knew he’d give chase if so provoked.”
“And here we are, asshole. Now give it back.”
“Boys, boys,” I say. “No one calls the other an asshole.” Me, turning back to Roger, looking him in the eyes. “Roger apologize to Georgie.”
Roger just stands there, panting.
I turn to Georgie, while holding back Roger.
“Georgie, hand him back his booze.”
Georgie does it. Roger uncaps it, takes a deep drink.
“That’s more like it. Sorry I called you an asshole, Doc. But getting in between a man and his booze is a dangerous business.”
“There’s another reason I took that bottle, Roger,” Georgie says. “I love your books, man. I’m a real fan. And you know how many diseased livers I’ve examined in my life by men who would have lived another twenty productive years if they just decided to slow down a little? I just want the big guy here to keep on living and to write the great books I know he’s got in him.”
Roger stands there in shock, the bottle gripped in his hands.
“Georgie,” he says, “that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.” Lifting the bottle of Jack, he stares into it. For split second I think he’s about to toss it to the pavement. But instead, he takes another sip, and passes it on to me. “Have a shot, Moonlight. You look like you just lost your best friend.”
I take hold of the bottle and steal a drink. I’d pass the bottle to Georgie, but he’s already rolling a joint and both his hands are occupied. I can’t say everything is back to normal. Not by a long shot, but I can tell the worst of this train wreck is over. Now all that has to be done is to return Sissy to the morgue. Which is what I convey to Georgie in detail.
“Then we’d better get a move on,” he says, inhaling a major hit of his medicinal weed.
“Mind if I get a hit of that?” Roger says.
“Inside the van,” I insist. “You’re going to need it after the news I’m about to lay on you.”
“News,” Roger says, climbing into the van’s shotgun seat. “What news?”
“You’re going to be a daddy, Roger.”
Georgie turns over the engine and together, the three of us along with one dead body begin making our way back to Albany.
EPILOGUE
WE SIT AROUND THE table in the 677 Prime steakhouse like one big happy family. Me, Roger Walls, and his lost-but-now-found son, Gregor Oatczuk. A fourth person chooses to stand while he raises up a glass of champagne to make a toast.
“Here’s to my newest powerhouse authors,” states literary agent William Craig Williams. “Congratulations on your present successes and your good fortune to come.”
“Yeah, yeah, Willy,” Roger laughs, taking a drink of beer from the open bottle of Bud set before him. “Like you won’t hesitate to drop one of us if we stop moving units. Sit your ass down before you embarrass us. And order more of those jumbo shrimp.”
Williams sits down and pours more champagne all around. He’s smiling and pretending to be good humored despite Roger’s assessment of literary disloyalty. But the agent has reason to celebrate. He’s not only succeeded at acquiring Roger a new three-book deal with one of the biggest houses in the land, he was also able to secure a tidy mid-six figure sum for an advance. He also sold Oat
czuk’s, a.k.a. Ian Brando’s, most recent opus Dancing with the Dead, for an equal sum. He even sold Moonlight Falls for a nice advance that will keep me in food and beer for a year or more.
I feel kind of like a star being included in the company of real writers. Makes me feel kind of special. But I’m not about to give up my day job. Turns out private detecting is not only a way to make some money, it’s also a way to come up with a plot for the new book I’m now contracted to write as the follow-up to Moonlight Falls.
Who’d ever have guessed: Richard “Dick” Moonlight. Captain Head-case and author.
“Tell me, Gregor,” I say, after a time, “why did you decide to send you manuscript to Suzanne Bonchance under a pen name?”
He sips some champagne, sets the glass down, runs his hand over his trim black beard. A beard that now makes him look a lot like his father.
“I knew that she wouldn’t like it simply because she didn’t like any of the other books I’d sent her. She was clouded by poor judgment. I knew I had a good book and I wanted her to see not the name Oatczuk, but something hip and fresh. Turns out she really liked the story.”
“A little too much,” Roger adds. “She stole it. Thus began her downfall and the long and lurid tale that would climax with her death in the kitchen of my former Chatham home. A tale that you no doubt will be writing sooner than later, am I right Moonlight?”
“Do you have a title yet, Richard?” begs William.
“I’m thinking Moonlight Sonata,” I say.
“Has a good ring to it if I don’t say so myself,” Roger says, drinking down the rest of his beer, then holding up his hand to grab the waiter’s attention.
The talk and back-talk goes on like that for a while, everyone getting drunker, the mood getting lighter, William Craig Williams growing more enthusiastic about selling our movie and foreign rights. We talk about world tours, reviews in People Magazine, and about Moonlight Falls being a great vehicle for Clooney or Pitt. Williams makes real and mental notes and after a time, I simply tune out and fade away into the back of my own mind. Is this it? Is this what it’s all about? The literary life?
After a while I stand and excuse myself from the table.
“I need to make a phone call,” I say, and head back across the dining room to the restaurant’s front door. Stepping outside into the warm, moonlit night, I pull a cigarette from the pack inside my leather coat, and fire it up. I retrieve my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dial my son in Los Angeles. I wait for the connection while I listen to the rings over the sound of my pulse beating in my temples. When the connection is made, I hear the machine click on.
“You’ve reached the home of Lynn and Harrison Harder, please leave a message at the tone and have yourself a great day.”
I wait for the beep and when it comes I am left only with silence and nothing to say. I draw a complete blank. Me, the new author. The man of words. I can’t even work up a simple hello or I love you for my son. Instead I thumb End and stuff the phone back into my coat pocket.
When did Lynn drop Bear’s last name for her own maiden name? She never consulted me about it. But then, I suppose she considers herself much more of a father to our son than I am. But she has no idea how much I miss the little guy and what I wouldn’t do to get him back. Maybe now that I have a new writing job to go with my day job, I can afford to bring him back to Albany for a while.
I smoke and gaze through the windows into the restaurant.
I see my table and the men who occupy it, minus myself. Roger is holding court. He’s got a napkin draped over his head and he’s holding the champagne bottle by its neck. His son Gregor is laughing hysterically as is William Craig Williams and quite a few admirers who occupy the surrounding tables.
Roger Walls, local celebrity author. I found him and found out a lot more about myself in the process.
Tossing my cigarette to the macadam, I stamp it out. I begin making my way back to the front entrance. But I don’t get half way before something stops me. I turn and begin walking the opposite way, back toward the downtown and the colorful neon that lights up the juke joints and the dancehalls on lower Broadway, not far from my riverside loft where I live alone.
Pulling up the collar on my leather coat, I decide to walk away from it all to the sound of a heart that beats under a cover of brilliant moonlight.
THE END
About the Author
VINCENT ZANDRI IS THE No. 1 International Bestselling Amazon author of THE INNOCENT, GODCHILD, THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT FALLS, THE CONCRETE PEARL, MOONLIGHT RISES, SCREAM CATCHER, BLUE MOONLIGHT, MURDER BY MOONLIGHT, THE GUILTY, MOONLIGHT SONATA, CHASE, and more. He is also the author of the Amazon bestselling digital shorts, PATHOLOGICAL, TRUE STORIES and MOONLIGHT MAFIA. Harlan Coben has described THE INNOCENT (formerly As Catch Can) as “…gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting,” while the New York Post called it “Sensational … Masterful … Brilliant!” Zandri’s publishers include Delacorte, Dell, StoneHouse Ink, StoneGate Ink, and Thomas & Mercer. An MFA in Writing and graduate of Vermont College, Zandri’s work is translated into many languages including Dutch, Russian, and Japanese. An adventurer, foreign correspondent, and freelance photo-journalist for Living Ready, RT, Globalspec, as well as several other news agencies and publications, Zandri lives in New York. For more visit
www.vincentzandri.com
ALSO BY VINCENT ZANDRI
Permanence
The Innocent
Godchild
The Guilty
The Remains
Scream Catcher
The Concrete Pearl
Moonlight Falls (UNCUT EDITION)
Moonlight Mafia (A Dick Moonlight Short)
Moonlight Rises
Blue Moonlight
Murder by Moonlight
Full Moonlight (A Dick Moonlight Short)
TERMINUS
JOSHUA GRAHAM
Copyright ©,2013 Joshua Graham
All rights reserved.
First Edition published by Redhaven Books.
Cover Design by Go Bold Designs
http://www.coryclubb.com/
I’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to contact me through my website:
www.joshua-graham.com/contact
And while you’re there, please sign up for my occasional newsletter where you can receive updates, exclusive previews and content here:
http://joshua-graham.com/newsletter
For Katie, my angel and my good thing…
“Death—the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns...”
HAMLET (ACT III), William Shakespeare
PRELUDE
THREE SECONDS. THAT WAS ALL.
The man in the black leather jacket had looked down for just three seconds to read a text message on his phone. And in the interim, his five-year-old Houdini of a stepdaughter Chloe had unstrapped herself, climbed out of her car seat, and slipped out of sight—nowhere near the doorway of the office where he was to meet his contact.
Just three lousy seconds!
His mouth went dry.
He scanned the streets, sidewalk, between cars, to the left then right then a quick three-sixty. Despite the thorough sweep, which took all of two seconds, he didn’t see her.
“Chloe!”
She didn’t answer, but he spotted her. Way down the street, her auburn pigtails bouncing with each step.
“Chloe! Wait!” He slammed shut the back door of his Focus. Didn’t bother to lock it. Ran up the sidewalk—fast. But the little stinker was fixated on a black cat luring her across the imaginary border that separated the gentrified arts district of Carleton Village and the slums of East Brentwood.
The cat bolted around the corner at the sound of the man’s agitated shouts. Both hands outstretched, Chloe giggled and ran even faster.
“Kitty!”
He nearly tripped over an uneven seam in the sidewalk as he ran, his heart going faster than his feet.
A pair of SDPD squad cars with flashing red and blue beacons raced past Birch and came to a screeching halt somewhere around the corner of Lamont.
The little girl turned the same corner and vanished behind the red bricks of the apartment building. Straight onto Lamont.
“Stop, Chloe!” He’d gained but was still several steps behind.
The sound of a policeman shouting filled his head. Could things get any worse? He ran even harder.
It all happened within a matter of seconds.
Three lousy seconds.
That's what it took for him to round the corner and make out the figure fleeing the pimped-out Honda Civic that had crashed into a hydrant. The gunman shot at the cops, who now stood behind the open doors of their angled cars.
The man in the black leather jacket leapt at Chloe.
“Get down!”
Over his shout, the shouts of the police, the screams of frightened pedestrians, came a deafening pop! whose impact toppled him.
Chloe screamed.
A sudden chill overtook him as a crimson pool expanded around his face, now planted on the cold concrete sidewalk. He tried to speak, stretched his fingers towards Chloe. Felt nothing but the cold pumping though his entire body.
Life didn’t flash before his eyes.
He heard more gunshots.
The last thing he saw was Chloe lurching back, her pigtails flailing to the side. As though in slow motion, she was falling.
Falling...
He never saw her hit the ground.
CHAPTER ONE
AS A REAPER OF THE THIRD LEGION, Nikolai—Nick, as he preferred to be called these days—had attended to more human deaths over the last thousand years than he cared to. Countless lives and memories snuffed out like the wick of a candle. It had all become routine, meaningless.
