Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1)

by Vincent Zandri

  “When do you think she made the fatal cut?” I asked.

  “At one point,” Miner went on, “the booze and drugs would have become too much for her. She would have been bleeding heavily by now, and she would have been growing weak despite the speed. I think it was then that she took one final massive dose of the speed/heroin combination, then drank down as much vodka as possible along with a dose of the curare.”

  “But the curare would have paralyzed her,” I told him, recalling our conversation inside his office of a few days ago.

  He said it would have taken more than a full minute for it to kick in. In her toxic condition, perhaps even longer. She ingested the curare, laid back down on her bed, then slashed her throat immediately after.

  “Unlike the heroin, speed, and alcohol,” he went on, “the curare laid heavily in the blood. It hadn’t circulated through the major organs—the liver, the kidneys. In order for this to happen, she would have had to ingest it after she cut her throat. Since that is a physical and practical impossibility, she must have taken the stuff only seconds before she cut her throat.”

  “That is unless Jake did it for her,” I said. “Or Cain.”

  He shook his head.

  “That was the whole point of the curare,” he said. “To make it look like Jake or Cain or the whole goddamned A.P.D. was there, doing these horrible, mutilating acts to her while she was still awake. But I doubt that any of them were there at all. From what I saw in Phillips’s report, the hesitation wounds were too precise, too consistent with self- stabbing.”

  “It was a suicide after all,” I said.

  “No one except God can know if she planned it this way, but in the end I believe she performed a brilliantly executed suicide that suggested homicide—a suicide that pointed directly to her husband and maybe even to Cain and their organ harvesting.”

  As for Joy, he explained, he wasn’t the good little cop he appeared to be either. “I called the academy up in Albany and they had no one by the name of Joy on record for the years 2005 or 2006. I did some further investigating. Fact is, the kid was dismissed under suspicious circumstances from Providence College’s pre-med program sometime during his senior year.”

  “Pre-med,” I said. “It’s not inconceivable that he would at least know how to cut a body. Rudimentarily speaking.”

  “In my own opinion he was the surgeon who performed the illegal harvesting operations on the dead bodies. Or most of the more recent dead bodies, anyway. He and the albino man you shot. They must have done it from the safe house in the hotel. And as for that condo, it wasn’t deeded in the kid’s name at all, but in Cain’s.”

  “And Scarlet exposed it all at the expense of her life,” I murmured.

  “If what you’ve revealed to me is true—that Scarlet hated her husband and probably hated Cain just as much—then her suicide might be considered her swan song; a way for her to enact an ironic revenge on the people who had been systematically ruining her life for a long, long time.”

  I slow-sipped my drink and ran it through my mind for minute, contemplating all the nightmares Scarlet had been having. The ones Suma had told me about. The dark demons and figures that appeared in her vivid dreams; the devils that would strap her down and cut her up night after night. By killing herself, Scarlet had recreated her nightmare in real life. Only this time, the demons were not dreamed. They were real people. They were Jake, Cain, and Joy.

  But then couldn’t she have found a better way to get back at them? Did she have to enact her revenge by taking her own life? It just didn’t make any sense. Or did it? After all, people do fucked-up things during fucked-up times.

  Looking up from the table, I saw my reflection in the picture window. I quickly turned away. I just couldn’t bear to look at myself knowing that I too had tried to take my own life. Not out of despair, but out of revenge.

  Pure revenge.

  “None of this still explains the disappearance of the blade,” I said. “It couldn’t have just disappeared like that. And wouldn’t there have been traces of heroin all over her bed sheets?”

  Miner shrugged. “My guess is that Jake found her in her cut-up condition, panicked, picked up the blade and got his bloody prints all over it. He probably cleaned the place up, disposed of any drugs he found lying around, the booze and the blade. Then, instead of following S.O.P., calling 911, he simply calls in his colleagues.” He sighed. “Naturally, I can’t be certain of anything, but the scenario seems logical enough to me for a head dick fearing reprisals from his own A.P.D. and the media.”

  I nodded. “That would explain the more than one hour between the E.T.D. and my initial investigation of the crime scene. And now we have both Montana bodies in our possession.”

  “Thank Christ for that,” he said. “Further tests will be required. A full autopsy for Jake and another autopsy for Scarlet, just for starters. Not to mention an independent re-examination of that kid you pulled up out of the ground. Have you contacted the parents for permission to exhume?”

  I told him that I hadn’t; that I was counting on their support later on when tests showed positive for illegal organ harvesting. But Miner shook his head, telling me it was a mistake not having made contact with them—that at this point, he would call them as soon as we left Hope Lane, beg them for their understanding. We’d deal with the cemetery authority later.

  He also told me he’d been in contact with Stanley Rose. Turns out the Moonlight family lawyer was working on a reconvening of the grand jury and Judge Hughes. He also had a meeting with Prosecutor O’Connor that afternoon. If all went well, I would be acquitted of all charges pending the introduction of the new evidence and theory regarding Scarlet’s manner of death.

  “All that needs to happen now,” Miner said, “is for you to turn yourself in to the FBI. Backdoor only; no press passes.”

  I finished my drink, got up, and put back the bottle. It was getting low. Hopefully, I would be able to buy another soon. But what I was even more hopeful about was the condition of my big brother George. In my mind, I could only assume that the E.M.T.s had successfully transferred him to the hospital from Joy’s townhouse; that his wounds were not entirely serious.

  I went upstairs, changed my clothes, and put on a jacket. When I came back into the kitchen, Miner was standing by the back door.

  “You ready to tell the truth?” he asked, repacking the empty Bud bottle and pocketing his hanky.

  “Looks like Scarlet’s already done that for me,” I said, the tension behind my eyes now fading.

  I once more pictured Cain sitting on Joy’s kitchen counter; heard him reciting all those murders. For a while, I was beginning to believe him.

  As soon as we walked out the back door, Norman purposely dropped the bag and the bottle it contained onto the concrete landing. Then, painfully bending down, he picked the plastic baggy back up. The glass inside it had shattered.

  Turning to me, he asked, “Would you care to do the honors?”

  Taking the bag from him, I heaved it into the thick brush that adjoined my back property. With any luck, it would never be seen again.

  76

  Dr. Miner’s expert testimony. . . the three bodies of evidence which were placed back inside the A.M.C. morgue to await further examination by the state’s chief medical examiner. . . Cain’s Swiss bank account statement. . . the super-eight film of him entering and leaving The Russo restaurant. . . Lynn’s taped statement about Cain’s affair with Scarlet. . . Kevin Ryan’s postmortem video (along with his family’s consent). . . Stanley Rose’s renewed faith in my innocence: all of these things and more combined to make my second grand jury appearance last only an hour before Judge Hughes had no choice but to toss out the charge of Murder One in the case of Scarlet Montana.

  As for the prosecution, they had no choice but to drop their indictments. The bad news was that the Judge referred all further investigations of my apparent complicity in the illegal body parts operation to a team of FBI agents who were
present at the convening.

  At the conclusion of these proceedings, Hughes stood up, telling me I was free to go. When he brought the gavel down hard against the wood block, I thought my heart would explode through my chest. Stanley stood up, grabbed hold of my hand, and pulled me away from the table as if the judge might change his mind. He led me down the center aisle of the courtroom out onto the marble steps where a wave of reporters, journalists and TV crews converged upon me.

  “Mr. Moonlight, are you planning on bringing suit against New York State for malicious prosecution?”

  “Mr. Moonlight, if you did not kill Mrs. Montana, can you offer us a theory as to who did and why?”

  “Mr. Moonlight, where will you go now that you are a free man?”

  Stanley continued to pull me away from the courthouse, through the media gauntlet, microphones jabbing me in the face, against my mouth, cameras flashing in my eyes, hands clawing at my shirt and jacket.

  Until finally, Stanley stopped.

  “Mr. Moonlight has no comment at this time as his ordeal has been a very trying one. For now, he wishes only to return home for a much deserved rest.”

  I spotted her at the bottom of the marble courthouse steps, out of the corner of my left eye. A woman dressed all in black, wearing a matching black hat and veil covering her face. She stood on the sidewalk, a little girl beside her pressed up against her leg, holding tightly to the hem of her short skirt as if for dear life.

  I was aware that Lyons had a wife and a little girl. My gut instinct told me these two people were them.

  When we reached the bottom of the courthouse steps, I stopped. Stanley nearly tore the sleeve off my jacket, he was so anxious to leave.

  “What are you doing, Moonlight?” he shouted above the collective roar of the reporters. “We have a car waiting for us.”

  I pulled myself from his grip and made my way toward the woman and her little girl.

  She raised her veil, exposing a young face swollen by sobs and sad brown eyes. Eyes that seemed like they would melt if so much as one more tear passed through them.

  I stepped closer to her. As I did so, the little girl pressed herself into her mother even tighter. The kid trembled.

  “Ask me anything,” I said, forcing my words not from my mouth and lips, but from the back of my throat.

  She offered me three words.

  “Did. . . he. . . suffer?”

  I exhaled a deep breath. “No,” I said. “He didn’t suffer.”

  I had no idea if he had suffered or not. I hadn’t been there when Cain shot him in the head. But then a detailed explanation of events wasn’t necessary. I’d already given her the answer she needed.

  First the woman nodded. Then she turned away from me. Her husband had double-crossed me. That wasn’t her fault.

  She took hold of her daughter’s hand, led her back down the sidewalk towards an awaiting taxi.

  77

  After more than a week of seclusion, the reporters seemed to have gotten the message and decided to stop hounding me. I wasn’t about to say a word to them. Not with the body parts investigation still pending. Stanley’s orders.

  One afternoon, the camera crews, photographers, and newspaper people simply packed up and drove away. I have to admit it though, I felt kind of bad about their splitting the scene. Kind of lonely. But then I imagined that in terms of current events, the news of my innocence in the Montana murder case was no longer fresh.

  Lola took to making me three squares a day and within a week, I put on some badly needed pounds. But that still didn’t mean I wouldn’t experience more seizures, more memory lapses, more bad decision making. Only time would tell.

  Lola and I shared dinner almost every evening. Sometimes she slept over. But all that swiftly ended. Why? Suffice it to say that with the crisis behind me, we had a little more time to focus on our friendship. Too much time, it turns out.

  Case and point: one night after dinner we both went up to my bed to lie down and watch a little television. We held hands like teenagers. She cuddled into me. We kissed. Her big brown eyes, soft brown hair, and tan skin made her look as sweet as she tasted. I kissed her neck, sensing her body growing warmer and warmer as I found her breasts, suckled her pert nipples, until I felt Lola’s hand gently massaging the smooth skin on my head and I felt her pushing me further and further down. When I came to that special place, I kissed her bare thighs and moved in time with her every motion as she opened up for me and, using both her hands, pulled my face into her.

  After she came with a near silent convulsion, I raised myself up onto my hands, brought my face up to hers and with her hand guiding me, I entered into her. I kissed her gently and I knew then that I loved her more than anything else in this world.

  So that was it, then: Lola and I had sex.

  We broke the barrier from which neither one of us would ever return. And I loved every precious minute of it.

  Would I ever learn?

  The next morning, Lola was sullen if not downright sad. The sadness left me feeling nervous and self-conscious.

  Our wonderful friendship was behind us.

  “Everything will change now,” she said in her soft voice, dark eyes tearing up. “You just wait and see, Moonlight.”

  I told her to take some time to think it all over. She did. That left me spending most of my days and nights alone.

  I took advantage of the time by running and lifting weights, sometimes twice a day. I made sure to regain my strength, even before I paid a visit to Dr. Lane, who removed the stitches from my left arm and checked over my beat-up ribs. While it wasn’t quite yet the time for a full checkup, she made sure to give me a thorough going-over about being more responsible for my health.

  “At least I’m not smoking,” I told her. But she didn’t find anything funny.

  While Kevin Ryan was reburied without legal reprisals from his still grieving parents, so too were the Montanas. Because of his involvement with the body parts operation, Jake was denied a pomp-and-ceremony funeral. In fact, most of his department stayed away from the proceedings entirely. Or so I’m told. I, too, did not attend the ceremony.

  The one person I did leave the house for was George. The E.M.T.s had indeed done their job and done it well.

  It turns out that he was well on the mend, his prognosis a good one. Although he had been knocked entirely unconscious by the close- range shot, the 9mm round had only wounded him (however severely) when it entered his chest and lodged itself somewhere up inside his right shoulder. Considering his already fragile medical condition, the state had immediately approved him for more pharmaceutical marijuana.

  I visited him inside his third-floor private room at the Albany Medical Center, having made sure to bring plenty of paperback mysteries and a surprise pint of Jack that I stuffed into the bottom of the paper bag. It was like going back thirty years, back when he worked for Harold Moonlight, George and I sneaking a couple of shots apiece when an attractive blond-haired nurse named Heidi wasn’t looking. But I knew that eventually, George would be offering her a swig or two, along with a nice, warm, cozy spot for her to rest her feet on his hospital bed. If I knew George like I thought I did, I knew he wasn’t about to waste even a single moment of his ninth life.

  He toked gently off a medical joint and tried to introduce us not long before I took my leave.

  “This man here is my little brother,” he said, a mild stoned drunkenness already settling into his bedridden skin and bones. “We used to be in the death trade together, but now we fight crime.”

  The young, well-endowed nurse gave me the once-over. She wore a low-cut nursing skirt that showed off plump thighs. I guessed her hair to be natural blonde. The way it was pinned up under her little white hat showed off the smooth skin on the back of her neck.

  “Which one are you?” she asked, not without a sly smile. “Batman or Robin?”

  “Superman,” I said, unable to resist the temptation.

  “That’s funny,” sh
e explained. “That’s what Twiggy said.”

  “Twiggy,” George repeated with a Cheshire Cat grin. “I think she likes me.”

  I looked at the attractive young nurse. I wanted to ask her if she knew my ex-wife, Lynn. But of course, she must have known her. Lynn was the big boss, after all. Still, I decided not to bring the subject up.

  As for the black market operation: like I said, it was still in the hands of the FBI. Aside from a phone call or two, I had yet to be called in for an interview or an interrogation or whatever was being planned. But then, I knew that it was only a matter of time until my name came up. Until then, I wasn’t even going to think about looking for work. But sooner or later it would become a necessity since I pretty much could discount any further employment with the A.P.D.

  If the massage therapy, physical training or private detecting didn’t work out, I could always ask the Fitzgeralds for a job, because once in the death trade, always in the death trade.

  The power was turned back on, the place cleaned up, my credit and cash accounts restored, the lien on 23 Hope Lane revoked. I still had bills to pay, including the thirty G’s I still owed Stanley from my divorce. Curiously, he hadn’t been bothering me about it. Nor had he mentioned the deed to the house. Not even the collection agencies were knocking down my door. What’s more, I hadn’t so much as received a bill for my more recent representation. But then I can’t say I was all that surprised. With all the attention Stanley was getting out of my case, including a possible book deal and a television appearance on 48 Hours, he would be rolling in the cash.

  There was still the matter of Scarlet’s death, which as far as the A.P.D’s newly reinstated S.I.U. was concerned, was officially being classified as a suicide, especially in the light of the grand jury’s decision. Truth be told, I still couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. There was something gnawing at me, like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I was convinced that there had to be more to her death—more than met the eye besides a woman who gave up her own life in order that she might trash a few others or kill off a few nightmarish demons.