The closer Cain led me to the driveway, the more I knew for certain that the object in question was a body, a person burned so black and beyond recognition that it was hard to tell if it had been a man or a woman. But with the light rain falling on the charred skin, it wasn’t hard to make out the steam that rose up off the body, out the head-to-foot opening in the unzippered body bag.
Having made it across the lawn, Cain and I stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the drive, over the burnt remains.
“Who found him?” I asked, kneeling now to get an even better look at the body. As expected it had affected all the classical attributes of a burn victim: black too-tight skin; mouth gaping wide open; arms raised overhead; fists clenched like a boxer in classical pugilist’s position.
Upon closer inspection, I saw that his left arm was raised noticeably higher than the other. It told me that the left hand had been his dominant. Standing there in the rain, I was a little surprised at myself for not having caught it before now.
“Firemen found him inside the kitchen just before the place flashed,” Cain said. “In the far end of the room where they also found what they believe to be exploded cans of accelerant.”
From down on one knee, I looked up at my former partner.
He was dressed in a black blazer and charcoal slacks. He was giving me this hard-as-hell stare that, with his short hair and tight face, made him look a little like Clint Eastwood. I got this tight feeling in my head. It told me he was waiting for an explanation. But it was he who should have been explaining.
Finally, he spoke up.
“There’s something I need to run by you, Dick,” he said, his voice low, tragic. “The exploded cans, they contained an unusual accelerant. Real old cans that would have come from an old funeral parlor. Embalming fluid. Stuff is full of alcohol I’m told. Burns like it too. That’s what the fire people told me.”
I stood up. When I breathed I couldn’t help but ingest some of the smoke and ash that tainted the heavy air.
I said, “When are you going to stop the head games?”
Cain, still stone-faced.
He said, “Please don’t get defensive. We have uncovered specific evidence that will link the arson and now the murder to someone who might have access to old cans of embalming fluid. That’s all I’m saying.”
Cain, playing with my head; bluffing; pretending to connect me with Scarlet’s death without actually coming out and saying it.
“I’m running an investigation,” I said. “Why would I want to destroy my own evidence by burning down the house?”
I turned, started back across the lawn towards the still burning home. As I walked, I pictured Cain pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket, firing it up with his Zippo.
I heard him say, “Your father was an embalmer. Maybe it’s possible there’re still some cans left lying around from his operation. Maybe the arsonist/murderer broke into your home, stole a couple. To make you look like the bad guy.”
I stopped, turned back around. Sure enough, the detective was smoking a fresh butt.
“Let’s call all this a pretty bad attempt at the S.P.D. trying to set me up.”
“Jeez, Dick,” he said with a pull on the smoke, “why in the world would I want to do something like that to my old partner? The very man whose own flesh and blood lives under my roof.”
Cain, low blowing.
Me, hands clenching into fists.
“Because I’m getting close to finding out who killed Scarlet,” I said. “It’s why you changed your story from the suicide you so badly wanted, to murder. It’s why you killed Jake and burnt down his house. You and your little buddy, Nicky Joy.”
He released a hit of smoke in the rain.
He said, “Personally, Dick. I take serious offense to such an allegation.”
I stepped back, lowered my hands. I knew full well the disaster that awaited me should I haul off and wallop him in the nose.
He added, “Remember, you were sleeping with Scarlet.”
“Yeah, I slept with her,” I admitted. “But that was a long time ago. And it doesn’t prove a thing.”
“Not long enough, lover boy,” he said. “Remember, you were the last one to be with her before she checked out.”
Me, picturing Jake coming through the downstairs kitchen door on that Sunday night. Now he was dead. And along with it, my prime suspect; my entire reason for excluding myself as a possible suspect.
Blue smoke oozed through the narrow gaps in Cain’s teeth.
“I wonder what Scarlet’s autopsy truly revealed?” he said. “I wonder what the internal showed? Maybe some seminal fluid? Tell me, Divine, did you use a condom, or did you fuck au naturel?”
In all the years I had known and worked side by side with Senior Detective Mitchell Cain, I had never before been witness to the man who stood before me, just beyond the flames of a burning crime scene. This man was a perfect stranger, a man who had something to hide; a man who was willing to betray the brotherhood of cops because of it; a man who, in my mind anyway, might be willing to kill over it.
I turned back towards the Montana house. By now, it had nearly burned itself out, the building reduced to a pile of charred embers.
I might have stood there in the rain and ash, fought with the strange new Cain till the sun went down. We still had a sun, that is. There simply was no point. With Jake gone, Cain was the new man in charge. He had the power of the entire S.P.D. behind him and, if I didn’t know any better, I.A. in his pocket. If he wanted to set me up, he was going to do it, with or without proof of my intimate involvement with Scarlet.
Welcome to my new world order.
I moved on towards the police barricades.
My old partner shouted, “If I were you, Divine, I’d think about getting myself a lawyer.”
I picked up my pace.
“A very good lawyer. Because I believe you’re gonna need one pretty damn quick.”
As though heeding my enemy’s advice, I ran like hell.
44
FIRING UP ANOTHER MARLBORO Light off the burning end of the one just smoked, Mitch Cain stepped up to his subordinate, Officer Joy.
“Keep a close watch on Divine,” he said. “The sooner we put him down for this thing, the sooner we bottle this entire affair up.”
Joy pulled off his granny glasses, wiped the lenses free of the ash-tainted rainwater. With shaking, if not trembling hands, he more or less shoved them back onto his face and around his ears.
“What are you going to do now, Mitch?”
“I’m going to talk with Lyons.”
“About what?”
“You ever see The Godfather, Nicky?”
“Yeah, sure. Who hasn’t?”
Cain smiled, raised up his left hand, gently scratched at the underside of his chin with the tips of his middle and index fingers—a la Vito Corleone.
Sticking out his jaw, he said in his best imitation Brando, “I’m gonna offer the reporter a deal he can’t refuse.”
45
WITH THE BLACK PLUME of smoke hovering over the scene, everything was covered with soot and little gray shred of weightless ash. I took it double-time across the Montana lawn, careful not to trip over the fire hoses. I ran past the firemen, past the uniformed cops and hurdled the yellow barricades set up along the perimeter.
I pushed through the crowd that stood out on the street and made my way to the Mercedes. Falling into the driver’s seat, I tried hard to ignore Cain’s threats. Because for now, anyway, that’s all they were.
Threats; head games.
I concentrated only on regaining my balance, pulling my shit together while I pulled out my keys, fired the black monster back up.
Back home, I downed yet another anti-inflammatory, poured a glass of whiskey, set it down onto the kitchen table. Cordless phone in hand, I dialed Lola’s private line at the university neuro clinic.
Mid-afternoon, Tuesday.
I knew she’d be tucked away inside her lab
oratory. True enough, she answered after only two rings.
I said, “It’s me. There’s been some complications.”
“The fire,” she said, “it’s been all over the news.”
“Jake is dead. They killed him too.”
“Who’s ‘they,’ Richard?”
“Cain,” I said. “Maybe Nicky Joy.”
“You don’t know that. You have no proof.”
“I can feel it,” I said.
She exhaled some of her frustration.
“I saw you and your old partner on the television,” she went on. “In the background not far from the burning house.”
I brought the whiskey glass to my lips, took a quick sip, felt the warm liquid against the back of my parched throat. Almost immediately, it relieved some of the pressure in my head.
“He’s dropped the suicide theory. Now he wants murder.”
She said, “That’s what you wanted.”
“Yes,” I said. “But no.”
I stopped right there. How the hell could I explain it?
Lola was right. I had been trying to disprove the suicide theory while at the same time proving homicide made to look like suicide. At the same time, I was trying to avoid a homicide that would point to me as a suspect.
“Richard, you there?”
Me, snapped out of my trance.
“I’m here,” I said, picturing Lola sitting in front of her computer in her black jeans and t-shirt, long black hair draping her face.
She said, “You’re not making any sense.”
I looked into my whiskey glass, saw just a hint of my reflection—my distorted face and bald scalp. The pressure inside my head was expanding again. A very specific pressure isolated in the center of my brain that spiderwebbed its way out to the surrounding lobes, scratched at the underside of my skull with its claws.
I breathed, told her that Cain was going to set me up.
She told me I should not be alone. Not in my condition.
“Be here now,” I said.
46
I PUNCHED IN THE number for Stormville Medical, Pathology Unit.
Robb was taking longer than usual to answer. Or maybe it just seemed that way under the circumstances.
When he picked up I told him, “Cain changed his mind. Before we had the chance to do it for him.”
“Suicide to homicide,” Robb correctly surmised.
“Is Scarlet’s body still there?” I said, freshening my whiskey, downing a quick jolt before posing the question of questions.
“On ice. But not for long. Fitzgerald’s people called. They’re coming for the body in an hour.”
I looked at the clock on the stove. Two-thirty.
Fitzgerald. The largest mortician in Stormville. The very outfit that bought out my old man not long before a bad heart cut his retirement short.
I asked, “Who gave the order?”
“Montana, I assumed,” he said. “They have her slated for the standard send-off, instead of cremation.”
Jesus, I thought. He doesn’t know. How could the M.E. for Stormville not know about the Chief of Police’s murder?
“Jake’s dead,” I said. “He went up in flames along with his house about an hour ago.”
Nothing on the line but dead air.
I asked Robb if he was still there.
“Looks like I’d better get over to Green Meadows,” he said.
“I think it’s pretty obvious they don’t want you there. Or you would have been called in before now.”
In my head, I saw George standing inside a windowless four-walled room, some Ralph Von Williams playing on the stereo. Total isolation. The way he liked it.
I asked him if he had a copy of Miner’s tox report. He said he didn’t but that he could get one easily enough just by taking a walk over to the labs. I told him what the report revealed about the drugs, about the Curare.
“Cain’s right,” he said. “Murder.”
“In the first degree.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“A favor,” I said. “Make that two favors.”
“I’m listening.”
“Hold onto Scarlet for as long as you can. Don’t allow Fitzgerald’s people or anyone else to pick up her cadaver. Tell them you’ve still got a couple of postmortem procedures to take care of now that cremation has been refused.”
“What if they elect to wait inside the lab while I perform these … ah … procedures?”
A legitimate question.
“Tell them that you’re backed up. That you won’t be able to get to her until tomorrow. You’re the M.E. Maybe you can’t go against an order from a top cop like Montana. But you have the right to at least attempt more tests on a possible murder victim. Fitzgerald’s people will just have to understand.”
“Yeah, but will Cain swallow it?”
“Cain’s finished playing his games,” I said. “You could nail his ass right now for deliberately breaking procedure; for not calling you in to make the E.T.D. on Jake.”
“And what about that second favor?”
“They deliver Jake to your doorstep, do not under any circumstances sign off on the body before it’s opened up and thoroughly autopsied. Just like you did to Scarlet.”
“Not gonna be easy with Cain staring me in the face.”
“No matter what he throws at you, you’ve got to hold the line.”
I thought about the Curare that Miner found in Scarlet’s blood. I wondered if it would be discovered in Jake’s blood too.
“Are we square on all this?”
“I don’t think I’ve been asked to play the strong silent type since Lam Son in ‘71,” he admitted.
“You can stand up to Cain. I have total faith.”
“Faith,” he said. “What’s that?”
“It’s about believing in something you cannot see, feel or prove.”
“Like the truth.”
“Something Cain doesn’t want you to see.”
47
I PICKED THE PHONE back up, dialed Norman Miner’s office.
No answer.
At his age, Miner was hit or miss. I suppose it wasn’t imperative that I talk with him right away. It was mostly for my own peace of mind; for his reaffirmation in backing me up in the case of Scarlet’s murder. Or to be more precise, the cover-up of her murder turned suicide turned murder-cum-the murder I might have blamed myself for had I not known what I now knew.
Get it?
Well, I’m not sure that I did. But sometimes you have to go on faith.
Especially in the light of new developments: Montana’s death; the arson of her home; Cain’s change in Scarlet’s manner of death, not to mention his threat to set me up as a prime suspect. Developments Miner was sure to discover by way of the local news while he soaked his aching feet.
Nothing but ringing coming from Miner’s office phone.
When his voicemail clicked on I decided not to leave a message. I didn’t know his home number. Miner didn’t believe in giving it out to anybody.
I hung up, hoping to Christ he still believed in me.
A minute later, I picked the phone back up, punched in the number for Stormville Medical Center, Pathology Unit.
Robb wasn’t answering.
Or maybe it just seemed that way considering I was once more under the gun.
But when he finally picked up, I told him right off, “Cain changed his mind. Before you and me could do it for him.”
My blood was boiling. I could feel it running, throbbing through my veins, as if my skin had somehow peeled itself back and away from my body.
Just breathing coming from the phone.
“George,” I said. “You there?”
“Divine,” he said. “Didn’t you just call me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m calling you.”
“No, what I mean is, you called me a couple of minutes ago with the exact same information—suicide to murder; keep Scarlet’s body in storage; hold off Fitz
gerald … Remember?”
I sat back, swallowed a hard breath.
“It’s not memory that’s the problem,” I said.
“Oh, that’s good, ‘cause for a second or so I thought you might be losing your mind.”
“What’s left of it,” I said, lowering the phone.
But Robb didn’t laugh.
My mind, it wasn’t always right.
I put the phone back up against my ear.
“I’ll call you back,” I said and hung up.
I sat there at the table with the rain having picked up against the roof and the kitchen windows. I poured a whiskey and wracked my aching brain.
What it all came down to was this:
Just what the hell was Mitch Cain hiding?
What was so important that he was willing to murder for it?
I lifted my head, looked out the kitchen window at the gray, rain-filled sky. I knew that in order to get at the real truth, I had to dig deeper. I had to start investigating the why on top of the how. I had to go back in time to some of the first jobs I’d done for Cain. Not as one of his full-time staff detectives, but as his “part-timer.”
It might not have been the correct place to begin digging. But at the moment, it was the only place I had.
I went upstairs into the master bedroom, dug two large boxes out of the closet, carried them one atop the other down to the kitchen table where I began skimming through them. As I’ve pointed out one-hundred times before, I’d been placed on disability not long after botching a raid on a suspected drug dealer. The job had been my first since returning to the force after a lengthy recovery. But after that and the lawsuit that followed, the department relegated me to the part-time projects Cain and/or Jake specifically brought me in on, not as an S.P.D. detective necessarily, but as an independent investigator or a detective’s assistant assigned to check and corroborate official police findings. In other words, so long as I did what they told me to do, following their leads from A to Z, there was no problem, no head condition to consider.
Starting at the box marked ‘00-’01, I glanced at my very first part-time assignment dated August 3, 2000 in blue ballpoint.
Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls Page 15