Full Moon Bloody Moon

by Lee Driver

  Checking his watch, he locked the room and returned to the kitchen to make Josie something to eat.

  By the time Padre reached J.D.’s townhouse, the light drizzle had just started to let up and the sun was making a bold attempt to burn through the overcast skies. He watched a woman hurry out of the car in front of him and cross the street to the same townhouse. She was carrying a black bag and all kinds of thoughts started running through Padre’s head. Mainly, did a guilty J.D. attempt to commit suicide?

  Padre hurried out of his car and reached the front door just as J.D. opened it.

  “This way,” J.D. told them. He made quick introductions as he led them through a living room with a vaulted ceiling, down a hall, through the compact kitchen and out the back door.

  The gray-haired, agile woman with the black bag was Doctor Dorothy Abrams, a veterinarian. Square-framed glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck.

  “I found him when I came home. Scared the hell out of me. You’ll see why.” J.D. led them through the patio, around to the back of the two-car garage. There, cowering under the burnt orange spirea was Max. His fur was matted, body shaking.

  “Oh, my poor Max,” Doctor Abrams gasped.

  “Wait, I need an evidence bag,” Padre said.

  “I have some,” Doctor Abrams replied.

  “Lisa bought Max from Doc Abrams,” J.D. explained. “When I found him I thought he might respond better to her. I didn’t want to approach him and risk contaminating any evidence he might have on him. He might have scratched the killer.”

  “That’s good.” Padre studied the lolling head of the Doberman, the vacant eyes, the ragged breathing.

  “And I wanted Doc Abrams here in case he had something serious wrong with him.”

  She opened her case, pulled out brown paper evidence bags and handed them to Padre, then slipped into latex gloves. Staying close to the ground she made a move toward the shivering dog.

  “Hey, Max. Sweetie. Grandma DoDo’s here and everything is going to be fine.” Getting up close, she held her arm out but he didn’t sniff her. “I’m only going to check you out, Max. Can you stay still for me?” The Doberman didn’t seem to acknowledge her presence.

  Doc Abrams said, “He’s got glassy eyes, seems disoriented.” Cautiously, she touched his jaw. “It’s okay. Let me check your gums, Sweetie.” She patted his head, got up closer, felt his body tremble. “He’s in shock. Gums are pale, he’s weak. J.D., I need you to go get some honey or karo syrup and warm water. I’m going to give him some benadryl.” She gave a cursory glance toward Padre. “Sergeant, he’ll be still for you if you want to bag his paws. I’ll scrape them when I get him back to the clinic.” She filled a hypodermic and gave Max an injection. “I’m going to have to keep him a couple days. We need to get an I.V. in him.”

  Padre bent down and helped band the bags on the Doberman’s paws. “Aren’t Dobermans supposed to be great guard dogs?”

  “I trained Max myself,” she replied stroking the dogs trembling body. “He would sooner rip a guy’s head off than let any harm come to Lisa.”

  “What could do this?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Stun gun? Mega dose of electricity?”

  Her hand paused over the dog’s chest. “I don’t think so. This dog has literally been scared to death.”

  CHAPTER 7

  October 9, 6:05 p.m.

  Dagger slipped another coin into the vending machine and pressed a button. A can clanged through the chute and rolled down to the receptacle. He peered toward the door at the end of the hall as he retrieved his Pepsi. It was a little after six o’clock, three hours since the changing of the crews. There was something eerie about being in the bowels of Headquarters. Hallways branched like a maze, leading toward the garage, a storage room for archived files, and a supply room.

  He tried to visualize in his mind how someone could gain access to the scanner and leave without anyone seeing him. Even if an outsider gained access through the garage, he still wouldn’t get past the scanner. Had to be Riley. But wouldn’t someone have recognized a fellow cop who had retired? Wouldn’t they have said, “Hey, Louie, how’s the retirement going?” Or jokingly say, “I hear you’re having the life of Riley.”

  Padre hadn’t talked much about the homicide. Whenever there was a case involving a fellow cop, Padre kept quiet, as if a close family member had died. But basically it was family, to him. He had told Dagger about the condition of the victim’s dog and how he had a staff member researching the case history of Officer Cambridge. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Lisa hadn’t been a cop long enough to make that many enemies. Dagger hadn’t pressured him.

  The door at the end of the hall opened and Padre waved him over. “All clear.” Padre led him past an empty desk. “This is where the clerk used to sit.” Then he showed him the wall by the door. He pressed START on a keypad, then inserted his index finger into a slot no bigger than a change return. A green light flickered and a buzzer sounded.

  As they passed through the doorway, Padre explained, “Guess these biometrics are a new fad. They are going to start to install them in cars. No longer need a key. Thieves won’t be able to steal your car. They are even thinking of putting the chips on credit cards.”

  “Skizzy would have fun with that. Big Brother is always watching.”

  “Got that right.”

  The Evidence Room contained movable shelving units reaching up to a twelve-foot-tall ceiling. It resembled an old time library with shelves built into the walls and a rollaway ladder. File boxes sat side by side on the shelves.

  Padre pointed to the numbers written on the boxes. “Everything is in numerical order by case number so you aren’t going to find all the weapons in one spot.” He looked Dagger over as if sizing him up. “Where’s all your gear?”

  Dagger patted the pockets of his vest. “Got everything I need right here.”

  With a shake of his head Padre left him and went to stand guard.

  Skizzy checked the clock above the door of his pawn shop. His bulging eyes shifted back and forth as if he were mentally clicking off the seconds.

  “I don’t think it’s against the law to close early. Right?” Sara studied Dagger’s friend. His gray hair was short in spots, as if he had ripped out sections in a paranoid frenzy. The rest was long and worn mostly in a ponytail.

  “Law?” He jerked his head toward her. “Laws are the government’s way of keeping us in line, taking away our freedoms.” His gaze snapped back to the clock, then his wristwatch. “My watch is forty-five seconds off. I missed forty-five seconds somewhere, probably abducted. But I was able to free myself. This time.” He splayed open the blinds on the small pane of window in the door and peered outside. “Maybe not next time.” The blinds snapped shut. “Gotta be on your guard.”

  Sara winced as Skizzy worked his way down the door frame, bolting all seven locks then slamming the steel brace across the door. She didn’t know why he bothered. He’ll have to undo them all when she leaves.

  “Dagger said six-fifteen,” she reminded him.

  “Let’s get a move on then.”

  He led her through the curtained doorway to his back room where he pressed a button on the bookcase. It slid open and they made their way down the steep staircase to the paneled basement. Fluorescent bulbs overhead brightened the makeshift bomb shelter with its shelves of bottled water and canned goods.

  Three monitors on the table glowed, surrounded by a multitude of immobile Micks. Sara eagerly sat down and picked up one of the bugs, set it in the palm of her hand.

  “These are a masterpiece. You are brilliant.”

  “Why, thank you, little lady.” He flitted around the room like a drone bee from the filing cabinet to a shelf and back to the table. “But Dagger is really the brains behind it.”

  “Testing.” Dagger’s voice came over the speaker. “Anyone there?”

  The monitors came alive showing three different views of the evidence room at hea
dquarters. Skizzy punched a few buttons and four views appeared on screen.

  “Loud and clear,” Skizzy reported.

  Dagger tapped his ear piece. He was standing on a ladder in front of one of the Micks he had placed on a narrow ledge above the shelving.

  “What keeps it from falling?” Sara asked.

  “Magnet,” Skizzy replied. “Dagger has it right on top of a nail head.”

  “Make sure this one catches the entrance,” Dagger said. “I want you to be able to get a full length view.”

  “Then you’re going to have to move it further back. And unless Mick is outside of the room across from the scanner, it ain’t gonna pick up squat.”

  “Can’t do that. There isn’t anything to attach it to except the wall. And someone will knock it down in no time.”

  “Then we’ll have to settle for seeing his face and his hand. Best we can do.”

  Dagger stood in the doorway, waving his hands at the camera.

  “Yeah, yeah, we see you. Now where is the next one going?”

  “Camera two,” Dagger said as he pulled out his remote and pressed a button. Another Mick was moving across the top of a cabinet, which was bolted to the wall. “If they ever decide to remove these cabinets, we are going to be in big trouble.”

  “Only if they can trace it,” Skizzy said.

  Sara asked, “Can they?”

  “If they are smarter than us.” Dagger’s waving hands could be seen in the second screen. In less than fifteen minutes he had placed four Micks which easily monitored the majority of the room. He didn’t want too many in case he had to come back and quickly remove them.

  “You know, we should put one in every politician’s office. Maybe the Oval Office.” Skizzy chuckled and started to do what he did best—talk to himself. “We’ll get them. Catch them in their lies and deceit. The FBI, CIA. Keep tabs on them like they keep tabs on us.”

  Sara slowly shifted her gaze from the screen to Skizzy. His pupils seemed dilated, eyes wide, like a mad scientist mulling over the results of an experiment. She felt sorry for him sitting there in a stained tee shirt and camouflage pants, mumbling to himself as if he had spent half his life in a prison camp and was just let out into the real world.

  “It’s probably a government man used the scanner, testing out some government invention to duplicate our fingerprints.”

  Dagger’s unshaven face and intense eyes glared on the monitor. “What the hell are you mumbling about, Skizzy?”

  “Government boys. They are the ones probably found a way to duplicate our prints.”

  Dagger lifted his gaze toward the ceiling in disbelief at another one of his friend’s conspiracy theories.

  Sara watched Skizzy start to rock back and forth, mumbling, his hands still playing with the keyboard.

  “They had something like that in a movie,” she offered. “In Demolition Man they had a retina scanner. Wesley Snipe’s character plucked the eye out of a dead guy and used it to gain clearance through the scanner.”

  Dagger turned back to the monitor, his eyebrows inching upward. “What?”

  Skizzy finally stopped rocking and stared at her. He then said something that sounded incredulous coming from him. “Girl, you are watching way too much television.”

  CHAPTER 8

  October 9, 8:05 p.m.

  Padre turned away from the window and contemplated his umteenth cup of coffee. Lately, coffee seemed to be his only choice of sustenance. He dropped down in a chair behind the table and peered through the glass at the autopsy room.

  Next to telling relatives about their deceased loved ones, he detested witnessing autopsies. Padre knew it was necessary in determining cause of death but in all his years as a cop, he still considered it to be the ultimate violation of the human body. This was where reality set in. We were an elaborate network of bones and tissue and wholly dependent upon air, water, and food, not to mention the heart which pumps the nutrients to all parts of the body. Then one day someone flips the switch leaving nothing but an empty shell.

  Padre sipped his coffee and found his gaze drifting back to Lisa’s body. He remembered seeing her often in the gym. She could kick box the shit out of any of the guys on the force and out-bench press half of them. J.D. had been her trainer. They had even been on the cover of one of the weight training magazines.

  Padre looked up when Luther entered. The little guy was wiping beads of perspiration from his dark skin. He took a seat across from Padre. Luther had once attended mortician school. But dressing the deceased when working part time at a local mortuary only brought questions to his mind. Why did this person die so young? What was the true cause of death? It always took him longer to apply makeup to camouflage injuries because Luther would be assessing the wound, wondering what type of weapon had been used.

  It was Leon Steinholz, the seventy-year-old owner of the mortuary who had noticed Luther’s inquisitive nature. He was the one who pointed out Luther’s true passion. Leon, with his cue ball head and pointed features, had taken Luther to Al’s Deli for matzo ball soup. Luther thought he was going to be fired for taking twice as long as the other students in preparing bodies. Instead, Leon had an offer that would change Luther’s life.

  Mortuary school was a two-year course. Luther’s parents couldn’t afford the type of education required for a career in forensics. It was Leon who paid for Luther’s schooling.

  “This was a toughie,” Luther said, popping open a can of Diet Pepsi.

  “Always tough when it’s a cop.”

  “And when the victim is young.” Luther rested his glasses on the table and opened the case folder. He had pointed out to Padre during the autopsy the single deep cut-throat lesion which had severed Lisa’s carotid arteries. No multiple wounds, no sexual contact. There hadn’t even been any defense wounds on her hands.

  “Any idea what I’m going to tell the chief?” Padre asked. His question was met with silence.

  Padre had studied every inch of Lisa’s body with Luther. The M.E. had suggested waiting until tomorrow to see if any markings appeared. But for the present, they had been unable to see any bruising or rope burns to indicate how Lisa’s body ended up wedged in a forked limb twenty feet above the ground.

  CHAPTER 9

  October 9, 9:58 p.m.

  “So either you or Skizzy can record what’s happening?”

  Sara stared inquisitively at the monitor on Dagger’s desk where split screens showed what each of the Micks was viewing. “Can you both watch at the same time?”

  “We are now.” Dagger bent over Sara’s shoulder, inhaled a subtle trace of citrus from her hair, and punched a few keys. “Skizzy, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” the voice blared from the speakers. “Not much action.”

  “Neat,” Sara said, smiling. “Are they motion-activated?”

  “That girl’s getting too smart for us,” Skizzy said.

  “SMARTY SMARTY.” Einstein’s sturdy claws clamped onto the perch by Dagger’s desk.

  “Hey. You’re supposed to be asleep,” Dagger told the macaw. Turning back to the monitor, he told Skizzy, “Let me know in the morning if there’s anything worth watching.”

  “Will do.”

  Dagger switched off the computer and stretched. “Okay, Buddy.” He walked over to the grated door and rattled it. “In you go.”

  Einstein settled down on the perch and looked away from Dagger.

  “I think he’s looking for a bribe.” Sara opened the top desk drawer and withdrew a Brazil nut. Einstein riveted a beady eye at the treat as Sara pitched it to Dagger.

  “Look what I have, Einstein.” Dagger held the Brazil nut in his fingers.

  Einstein’s toes clamped and unclamped around the perch as if doing a little dance, not quite sure whether to stay put or go. Finally, he flew into the aviary and landed on the perch inside the doorway. He gingerly picked the nut out of Dagger’s hand.

  It was dark in the aviary. The lights were on a timer, an
d although there were blinds between the double panes on the skylights, they were closed only during thunderstorms.

  Dagger slid the doors shut. He clicked on the television set and stretched out on the couch, hoping the news had the latest information on the recent homicide.

  “How about some coffee?” Dagger yelled out. After a few seconds, he craned his neck to see Sara standing behind the couch, her eyes like narrow slits, arms crossed. He was sure if he peered over the back of the couch, he would see her bare toes tapping. Simon had warned Dagger before that he should appreciate Sara more, that Dagger sometimes treated her like a lap dog, fetching things for him without so much as a thank you in return. At first, Sara had bent over backwards to please him, fearful she might otherwise have no one to protect her. “Please,” he finally added.

  “That’s better.”

  He watched her leave, smiling at how much better his shirts looked on her. Although she rolled the sleeves up, the shirttails touched the backs of her knees. They looked great over her leggings. But what he loved most was grabbing the shirts after she wore them, inhaling her perfume or the smell of her hair, residues that clung to the fabric.

  “You are one sick puppy,” he whispered to himself just as the buzzer on the front gate pierced the air.

  Shutters on the pass-through behind the bar were pushed open and Sara peered out to make sure Dagger was answering the intercom.

  The faces of two men appeared on the monitor. The driver the dark sedan was scraggly, tie eschew, shirt wrinkled. His eyes were puffy and he was sipping on a cup through a plastic lid. The man next to him was younger, elbow propped on the door frame, fist pressed wearily to his chin.