Dark of the Moon

by Parrish, PJ

  “Is this Kincaid?” someone said. It sounded like a white man.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “You need to take another look at Earl Mulcahey’s ‘accident’.”

  “What?”

  “I think Earl was murdered.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Never mind. Just check on it.” The phone went dead.

  Louis turned and hollered down the steps for Bessie. She came around the corner, her eyes wide. She had been listening on the extension.

  “Bessie, did that man tell you who he was?”

  “No, he didn’t,” she said. “What you gonna do, Louis?”

  “I’m not sure.” He rubbed a hand over his face. What the hell was that all about? He sighed tiredly and looked down at her. “I’ve got to go into work for a while, Bessie.”

  “Louis, you’re so tired. Can’t it wait?”

  But he was gone, closing his door behind him. He was dressed and on the road in ten minutes. As he drove back to the station, his mind was trying to reassemble the facts about the Mulcahey case. It was all there in the file, and maybe he had just missed something. But then again, maybe the call was just a prank. He kept seeing Ethel’s wan face in his mind. In any case, he owed it to the Mulcaheys to at least have one last look.

  The station was deserted, except for Larry who was at his usual dispatcher post. Larry looked up as Louis walked past, but buried his face back in the Hustler without a word.

  Louis retrieved the Mulcahey file, grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to his desk, switching on the small lamp. He put on his reading glasses and hunched over the file, trying to concentrate. The Chipmunks sang out from the radio on Larry’s desk.

  He spread it all out on the desk, the various reports and photos of Earl’s body and the surrounding woods. He went to the ballistics report first.

  It said Earl had been killed with a .30-.30 rifle bullet, but without the bullet Louis knew it was just a guess. A hundred other shells had been found around the site, but few of that caliber. Louis sifted through the other reports. The fiber and fingerprint results were not back, but the cast of the tire tracks found near the body were. They had been made by a wide radial tire with crisp new tread. Car tires, not truck or four-wheel-drive tires, as Louis would have expected.

  “Hey, Kincaid, what you doing here?” Larry called out.

  “Just checking on something.”

  “Fuckin’ New Year’s Eve, and I’m sitting here on my ass waiting for the drunks to let loose,” Larry said, as he turned the pages of the magazine. “I hate being on nights.”

  Louis turned his attention to the photos of the body. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was useless; he was too tired, and there was probably nothing to see anyway.

  Larry let out a low whistle. “Man, look at that beauty.”

  “No thanks. I gave up skin magazines in high school,” Louis said without looking up.

  “It’s a gun, asshole,” Larry said, holding out the page.

  “Didn’t know they advertised in porno magazines.”

  “Sure they do.” Larry was shaking his head in admiration of the ad. “Remington 700DBL. My friend Max has one of these. $600 bucks, Jee-sus. ’Course, the scope is extra. That’s a month’s pay for me.” Larry looked over, a sneer creeping across his face. “I don’t make the big bucks like you do.”

  Louis said nothing.

  “The old lady would shoot me if I spent that kind of money on a rifle.”

  Louis found himself reading the same words over and over, and he wished Larry would shut up.

  “You hunt, Kincaid?”

  “No, I hate the sight of blood.”

  Larry laughed. “I thought maybe you guys hunted coons.”

  Louis looked up slowly and leveled his gaze at Larry. “No, that’s something we leave up to you nice Southern boys.”

  Larry didn’t move, but Louis could see the veins bulge in his neck. He turned back to the file, to one close-up photograph of Earl’s head. The bullet wound was dead-on in the center of the forehead. If you were aiming at a man to kill him, you’d sure go for the center of the head. Louis frowned, staring at the photo. He reached for the ballistics report. There it was; the bullet had entered Earl’s head at a downward angle of twenty-five degrees.

  Damn. Louis took off his glasses. Earl hadn’t been shot by some hunter prowling around nearby. He had been shot from somewhere high above ground level. He had been shot from the deer hide.

  “Shit, I was up there. Why didn’t I see it?” Louis whispered. He knew why. He had been too busy worrying about the bones and too eager to get back to them to argue with Dodie about Earl Mulcahey.

  Someone had to have climbed up to lie in wait, as if stalking an animal, and then deliberately aimed at Earl’s head. But why? Who wanted to kill Earl Mulcahey? The guy was a family man, a town saint, for chrissakes, if you believed what everyone said.

  Louis grabbed a piece of blank paper and a pen. He wrote angle on the page. The problem, he realized, was that he had been going at this from the wrong angle. He had assumed the shooter was on the ground when he was in the trees. And he was assuming everything he had heard about Earl Mulcahey was true.

  Everyone had secrets to hide, and often you had to search below the positives on the surface to find the ugly, buried negatives. The negative…that’s where the motive was. That was one of the first things he had been taught back at the academy.

  He felt a little embarrassed for having shelved this case too soon. He should have caught some of this.

  Louis wrote Earl Mulcahey at the top of the page. Then he wrote a list: family problems, business problems, money problems, enemies. By all testaments. Earl had none of these. Louis glanced over at the file. There was a handwritten note attached to the front, in Dodie’s chicken-scratch scrawl: Ethel needs autopsy report.

  Louis set the pencil down and let out a tired sigh, thinking of Ethel’s teary face and that portrait of the smiling Mulcaheys in her living room.

  He picked up the pencil again and wrote, insurance $$$. And then three more words: Why? Why? Why?

  “Craa-zy…crazy for feeling so lonely…” Patsy Cline was warbling from the Blazer’s radio.

  “That’s what I must be—plumb crazy for letting you drag me out here,” the sheriff said, glancing over at Louis as he drove.

  “I needed you to see this,” Louis said.

  They arrived at the site where Earl Mulcahey’s body had been found. Louis got out of the Blazer first, pulling a four-foot piece of cardboard and an orange hunter’s vest from the back of the Blazer. He draped the vest over the cardboard and propped it against the truck. Then he grabbed a long leather case and started off across the field, leading Dodie to the deer hide.

  Dodie looked up at it. “You’re not expecting me to climb up there, are you?” he asked.

  Louis grinned. “Need a boost?”

  “Hell no.” Dodie grabbed a branch and hoisted himself up onto the boards nailed to the trunk. With a few more grunts and groans, the sheriff made it to the platform, dropping against the plywood floor. Louis scaled it quickly and knelt beside him. He pulled the rifle from the case.

  “Kincaid, what’s the point of all this?”

  Louis handed him the rifle. “Aim at the truck.”

  The sheriff took the rifle and aimed it. “I can’t see the truck. I can only see that stupid piece of cardboard.”

  “Why can’t you see the truck?”

  “‘Cause it’s the same damn color as the ground.”

  “But you can see the orange vest clearly?”

  The sheriff picked up the rifle and looked through the scope. “Yeah, I can see the orange vest. What I still can’t see is your point, Kincaid.”

  “Whoever shot Earl was up here. And he could see that orange vest down there as clearly as you can.” Louis told him about the bullet-entry angle. “It was no stray hunter’s bullet that hit Earl in the center of his skull. It was a c
arefully aimed bullet, shot from a scoped rifle by a very good shooter.” Louis sat back on the platform. “Earl was murdered. Sheriff.”

  Dodie peered through the scope awhile longer, then lowered it. When he took the rifle away from his eye, his face was ashen.

  “I got a call last night,” Louis said. “Someone called to tell me Earl’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  Dodie shivered slightly as a cool breeze cut through the trees. Louis gazed at his rugged face, waiting for a reply. For a long time, the chirping of the birds remained the only sound. Finally Dodie spoke. “Why would anyone murder Earl?”

  “Money.”

  “Money?”

  “You said Earl had a lot of life insurance. I checked. He had over a million in life insurance. Double for an accident.”

  Dodie whistled. “But, Ethel…no way.”

  Louis sighed. “I know. I had the same thought. What about the son, Leverette?”

  “Kincaid, I don’t like this one bit.”

  “Sheriff, it’s the oldest motive in the world.”

  Dodie said nothing. He just sat there, staring at the orange vest off in the distance.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a couple days. Sheriff, ever since the call,” Louis said. “I went back and rechecked the files, all the interviews. Earl went hunting most Sundays, always in one of three spots. Leverette was here for Earl’s birthday, even bought him a new gun case. It was only natural Earl would want to take it out for a test run. Do you think it was hard to figure out where he’d go…and then bang, and you’re a rich man.”

  “Hard to believe a man could sit up here, staring down the scope of a high-powered rifle and lie in wait for his own father.” Dodie paused. “But the money… Ethel gets it. Or did you check that, too?”

  “She gets half a million, the son gets a quarter, the daughter a quarter. We’ve dusted everything here for prints. Let’s see what comes up.” When Dodie didn’t say anything, Louis added, “I think you’d better put a stop to the insurance payment, until we’re sure.”

  Dodie nodded and gazed out over the woods. Louis started to pack the rifle back in its case.

  “Kincaid.”

  “Yeah?”

  Dodie didn’t turn around. “Good work.”

  “Just doing the job,” Louis said.

  Dodie continued to stare out at the pine trees, focusing on the orange vest. “Well, I guess we reopen the case,” he said. “Earl’s dead, but he deserves that much.”

  Louis hesitated, then zipped up the rifle case. “Sheriff, so does that man in the grave,” he said quietly.

  Dodie turned. “Don’t start on that, Kincaid.”

  Louis shook his head in frustration. “You’re willing to reopen one case but you won’t reopen the other. Why? Is it because Earl was white?”

  “Don’t insult me, Kincaid. This ain’t no racial thing here,” Dodie said.

  Louis sighed. “Then what is it. Sheriff? Is it because everybody here knew and liked Earl Mulcahey, and the other man was unknown and forgotten for twenty years?”

  Dodie uncrossed his legs, trying to get comfortable on the small platform. “Look, Kincaid, the cases are just different, that’s all. There’s a…point to finding out who killed Earl. I don’t see anything coming out of digging up that other poor bastard’s past, except maybe hurt.” He shook his head. “I’m telling you for the last time, Kincaid, let it go.”

  Dodie’s voice was firm but calm. The cold breeze picked up, making Louis pull up his collar. “Look, Sheriff,” he said. “Just give me a little bit of time to look into some things. The memorial service isn’t for two weeks yet. And Kelly will be out of town—”

  Dodie’s eyes hardened. “I ain’t goin’ behind Walt’s back on this.” He stood up. “And I don’t want you going behind mine.”

  Without another word, the sheriff started back down the ladder. When he reached the bottom, he looked up.

  “You got that, Kincaid?” he said.

  Louis looked down at him. “Yeah, I got it,” he said. He watched Dodie trudge off toward the Blazer. Damn, he had taken a gamble and lost. He had bet on his instinct that there was something not quite right between Dodie and Kelly, something he could use as a wedge to urge Dodie over to his side.

  He had hoped, too, that the fragile bond that he had sensed forming between himself and Dodie was more than something born of his beer-clouded imagination that night in the bar. But Dodie could not be his ally. He knew that now. Sam Dodie was like Black Pool itself—or any little Southern town. Accepting on the surface, but closed up tighter than a fist when an outsider really tried to get inside.

  Picking up the rifle case, Louis started down the ladder. If he intended to keep going on the bones case, he would need help. And whoever it was had to be an outsider, just like him.

  The sheriff dropped Louis back off at the courthouse. Louis stowed the rifle in the trunk of his Mustang and was about to go into the station when he saw Abby and Grace across the street, standing outside J.C. Penney.

  They seemed to be arguing. Abby was waving her hands and Grace kept shaking her head. Finally Grace stalked off to a silver Monte Carlo parked at the curb. She waited a few seconds, but when Abby didn’t get in, Grace started the car and drove off.

  Louis watched Abby, who stood there with a deep frown clouding her face. He leaned against the car, crossing his arms. He needed to talk to her. And no matter how much he denied it to himself, he wanted to talk to her. At the very least, he owed her an explanation for not showing at the lake. He cut across the street, dodging a car. She looked up to see him coming and turned quickly to head the other way.

  “Abby, wait—”

  She kept going until he caught up and grabbed her arm. When she turned around to face him, her eyes were so solemn he at first didn’t know what to say. He had expected anger, not the wounded look she was giving him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally, “for not meeting you at the lake.”

  “If you didn’t want to come, you should have said so,” she said.

  He hesitated. It would only hurt her feelings more if he told her that he hadn’t wanted to go. “You ran out so quickly, I didn’t have time to say anything,” he said. “Besides, right after you left, I got called back to the station on business.”

  She was wearing some kind of short fur jacket that set off her red hair. Her green eyes peered up at him from under wispy bangs, dubious but then trustful. He tried not to smile. God, she was so guileless. So very…young. He had a vision of her walking on campus at rowdy University of Florida, a lamb among the fraternity-house wolves, and wondered why in the hell a man like Max Lillihouse let his beautiful daughter out of the house, let alone out of state.

  “Really, it’s the truth,” he said. Now he did smile.

  She didn’t smile back. Instead, she glanced around the street. “Can we go somewhere?” she said.

  He was taken aback. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Just to talk. There’s this coffee place way out on Highway 12. No one would see us there.”

  Louis suppressed a sigh. This was getting sticky, and he had to put an end to it before she got any more ideas than she already had. “Okay, coffee,’ he said, “at McDonald’s.”

  “But everyone will see us there.”

  He steered her toward the Mustang. “That’s exactly the idea.”

  In a few minutes, they were sitting in his Mustang in the McDonald’s parking lot. The car was filled with the scent of lilac perfume and steaming coffee.

  “This is so romantic,” Abby said with a smirk, stirring her coffee.

  Louis let himself laugh. “I have to stay near the radio. I’m still on duty.” He debated whether to use her remark as an entree into a talk about no romance, but it seemed too brisk and he didn’t want this to be preachy. His impression was that Abby was the type of young woman who took everything to heart, be it her father’s boorish drinking or a rejected kiss.

  She rescued him. “How’s
the case going?” she asked.

  “It’s been officially closed,” he said, looking at her over his cup. He paused. “Although I don’t think it should be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I still have some leads I should follow. And because I think the dead man deserves…I don’t know, justice of some kind.”

  She was looking at him thoughtfully. She seemed to have brightened up some after that argument with her mother. “So you have some clues?”

  Louis thought about the medallion in his jacket pocket. He reached for it and handed it to her. She cupped the necklace, still wrapped in plastic, in her small hand. “It’s heavy. Is this the necklace you found with the bones? I read about it in the newspaper.”

  Louis nodded.

  She looked at it for a moment longer then handed it back. “I heard Daddy talking on the phone the other night. He was saying that dragging all that stuff up now wouldn’t do anyone any good.”

  “What do you think?”

  She looked troubled. “I don’t know. He’s probably right. Daddy is usually right…about most things.”

  There was something in her voice that made him feel a little sad. Abby Lillihouse was probably a lot smarter than he was ready to give her credit for. But growing up in a place like Black Pool, steeped in Old South traditions, and wrapped in the cocoon of wealth provided by her doting daddy, there wasn’t much chance she could learn to really think for herself. No amount of university sociology classes could change that.

  “I mean, Daddy is right about one thing,” Abby said. “It was in the past. Things have changed. We’ve come a long way.”

  “Abby,” Louis said gently, “if things have changed so much, why did you want to take me out to some coffeehouse in the middle of nowhere?”

  She looked at him then brought up her cup to drink. Her hair formed a curtain, hiding her face from his sight. The smell of lilacs was everywhere in the car. For a brief moment, he found himself wishing they were somewhere else, far away from Black Pool. He found himself remembering what her lips tasted like.

  The abrupt crackle of the radio chased the thought away.

  “Louis? Louis, you out there? This is Mike.”