First he inhaled a long silent breath. Then after an equally long exhale, he set himself down on the edge of the bed and started in with something I already knew. Christ, something everybody knew by now! That Scarlet was addicted to the heroin her husband’s body parts buyer provided for her free of charge.
Almost free of charge, I should say.
Next he told me something I didn’t know, but that I suspected all along. That the good Reverend too had been sleeping with her. Rather, sleeping with her as much as she would allow which, it turns out, wasn’t all that often.
“Mostly she wanted to talk,” he said. “In private; away from the group.”
“What about?” I asked, as that all-too-familiar pressure began building up behind my eyes.
“Her sadness,” he said. “You see, her depression … it wasn’t because her husband was just another whacko cop … if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not a cop anymore.”
“The depression was the result of something much more devastating.”
He got up from the bed, went over to the window, looked out onto the night.
Some years back, he continued, Scarlet got pregnant. It happened just a few years after Jake had accidentally shot and killed that young woman in the south end—the one who had been working with the Stormville police in order to apprehend her drug dealing boyfriend.
“If you recall,” the Reverend said, “Jake took the whole thing very badly.”
“I recall,” I said, picturing once again my first afternoon as a junior detective, seeing Jake empty his pistol into the dealer’s car.
He went on: According to Scarlet, Jake was nearly impossible to be with after that episode. He retreated into himself. The depression was all consuming. He hardly looked at her, hardly spoke with her. They had their moments however. Breakthrough moments, Scarlet called them.
“Is that when she got pregnant?” I asked. “During one of these breakthrough moments?”
He looked at me.
He said she carried the child well into the second trimester without telling a soul. She didn’t have a job and her social life was almost nonexistent. She never even visited the precinct, so the knowledge of her pregnancy was pretty hush-hush. In the meantime, Jake was getting worse. Staying away from the house more and more, drinking heavily. And when he did come home he was often filled with rage. Sometimes he took the rage out on Scarlet. As she grew deeper and deeper into her pregnancy, the drinking and rage escalated.
The Reverend turned back to the window.
“The way Scarlet told it to me,” he said, “it happened the night of Easter Sunday. Nearly ten years ago now. The two had taken a drive up to Lake George for a late afternoon dinner.”
He explained that Jake and Scarlet were having a nice time for a change. A breakthrough moment. Jake not thinking about the job; Scarlet not thinking about anything, just being with her husband while they drank and ate, she never once taking her left hand off her small belly, as if to protect it. It would have been a time she cherished, a real breakthrough in their marriage; a minute block of time when they were on the same page, appreciating one another in the same way they had when they first met. Or at least in a way they had before “the mishap,” as Jake referred to it.
But then something happened.
A family walked into the restaurant. Just an average family dressed up in their Easter Sunday best looking to celebrate the resurrection with a little steak and wine, just like everybody else. A small family, the Reverend said. Mom, dad, a teenage son and a teenage daughter. Unassuming, you might say. Were it not for the distinct resemblance the daughter had to Rachel, the blonde girl Jake killed.
“Scarlet caught him staring at the girl from across the table,” he went on, hands in his pants pockets, eyes beaming out the window. “She could see Jake’s eyes swell and fill with tears while he gazed upon this innocent teenaged kid.”
“Breakthrough moment quickly ended,” I supposed.
“Jake just got up, made his way over to the girl. Imagine this huge, strange, teary-eyed man approaching this young girl, her parents watching all of this as it transpires—him taking the girl’s hand in his, kissing it, telling her how God awful sorry he was. He tried to hug the girl, literally lifting her off her feet. When she screamed, the father went after him. Several waiters had to intervene before it was over.”
I pictured the scene in my mind: big Jake wrestling with this girl’s father while trying to apologize about a young life he accidentally took in the line of fire. But then I couldn’t imagine what was going through Scarlet’s mind at the time—what kind of panic. Rather, I could not relate.
“Well, the parents of the girl were just about ready to call the police when Montana pulled out his badge, told them he was the police. Then he simply left the restaurant without paying.”
The Reverend said that Scarlet did her best to explain what the commotion had been about. After a few minutes the family understood perfectly. In fact, they felt so bad for Jake and for Scarlet, they picked up their tab. For two Easter dinners barely touched.
“That night, Jake got terribly drunk. He paced the house carrying his service pistol, mumbling something about how screwed up the world really was. How men like him would never make a difference no matter how hard they tried. The whole business—the crime fighting business—was a losing battle, with more and more ground lost every day. Desperate drunken cop babble.
“Scarlet tried to console him. She asked him to stop, to go to bed, to sleep it off. In the morning, he’d feel better. But this just made him angrier. But she persisted, begged him to stop drinking. Because it just made him worse.
“And then she said it. She told him if he didn’t stop, she was going to leave him. She was going to leave him and he would never see the birth of his child. She said it over and over again until she was screaming at him.”
The good Reverend paused for a beat or two as though hesitant to reveal what happened next.
“Listen, it worked,” he finally went on. “Jake stopped. He set his glass down on the kitchen table. He capped the bottle, went over to the sink, washed his face and dried it with a dishtowel. But instead of putting the dish towel down, he wrapped it around his right hand and with a smile plastered on his big face, proceeded to beat Scarlet until she was unconscious.”
I sat there, watched the big, gray-haired man turn away from the window, step back over to the bed.
“That night,” he whispered, “she lost the baby. Spontaneous abortion, I believe they call it. Miscarriage. It happened right in her bed. She was alone. Jake had already left the house. She delivered the baby all by herself in her bed. And no one ever knew about it, until she told me. Not even Jake asked about it. Not once did he bring the subject up again in the months to come. As if she had never carried his child in the first place.”
I stared down at my hands folded in my lap. They felt cold and sweaty. My head was reeling. I felt slightly nauseous. There was a bloody taste in my mouth.
“So you see, Mr. Divine,” the Reverend spoke, grave-faced and sullen, “Scarlet had a lot more to die for than just a bad husband. She had a final revenge to enact, a final showdown not only with her maker, but also with the one man who had destroyed her and her child. Why did she kill herself? In dying, she could somehow free herself of the pain while avenging her son’s murder. That’s the way I look at it anyway.”
“It was a boy?” I asked.
“She was going to call him James.”
I ran my hands through my hair, cleared my throat.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come forward when the investigation was still active?”
“Because I didn’t want to betray our secret,” he said. “I made a solemn promise to Scarlet that I would never tell anyone about the baby. Not even you.”
“You didn’t know me until she was dead.”
“But I did,” he said. “You see
, Scarlet used to talk a lot about you. She liked you, felt bad about your condition. But then, she admired the way you always laughed about it, made jokes about it. Jokes that made her laugh and made her sad at the same time. She felt something for you that she didn’t feel for us. When she slept with somebody like me, or Mitchell Cain, it was purely to get back at Jake. He didn’t even have to know about it. It was simply the act that made the difference for her. But you weren’t like that. She said you never sought her out. That she sought you out and that you were always there for her when she needed you.”
He swallowed a breath. I thought at any moment he might break down, along with me.
“She told me something once not long before she died that should put the whole thing into perspective for you.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“She said she never fucked you. That she only made love to you.”
“You had to tell me that, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you should know.”
He formed a smile, but I could tell he wasn’t the least bit happy or relieved. If I could have read his mind, I knew what it would have said: If only she could have made love to me, I could have saved her.
My God, if I could have read all their minds, dead or alive, they would have said the same thing. Cain, the Reverend, who knows who else … they all must have thought the same thing: If only she loved me, I could have made things right for her.
Here I was, the one man she might have loved. And I ran away from her, allowed her to die. If only I stayed by her side that Sunday night in May when Jake suddenly and unexpectedly came home. If only I didn’t run away like a coward. If only I stayed by her side, to defend her, to defend what we had together, then Scarlet might still be alive.
Without another word the Reverend turned, walked out of the bedroom, saw himself out the back door.
A few minutes later, I was lying back on the bed once more, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think about nothing, hoping (praying) for sleep.
Until sleep became an impossibility.
I went back down into the kitchen, took the last two drinks from the bottle of Jack and tossed it into the trash. I knew it was time to eat again, but I wasn’t the least bit hungry. Staring out the window onto the dark evening, it came to me. Christ, I wondered why it hadn’t dawned on me before. The leather bag I spontaneously lifted from her underwear drawer.
On the counter beside the stove I found the white tin. I opened it. Inside was the red leather pouch. I carried it over to the kitchen table, dumped the contents of the bag out onto the table top. There was a key, a thick lock of hair that was knotted in the center, and a hastily drawn diagram or map.
After looking at the stuff for a minute or two without drawing any conclusions, I replaced it back inside the pouch. I went back upstairs and got dressed. Down in the garage I grabbed a shovel that was hanging on the wall by a six-penny nail. I tossed it into the back of dad’s Mercedes. Then I got in, hit the garage door opener and backed out.
In just five minutes I would arrive at the place that once-upon-a-lifetime had been the Montana home.
93
I WENT AROUND BACK of a rectangular, concrete-walled hole that had provided the foundations of where a house once stood. A house now reduced to a blackened open basement filled with charred timbers and ruined furniture. That’s when it caught my eye. The rear patio, I mean. The small concrete patio butted up against the back lawn, directly below what had been a back porch overhang. The overhang had been located directly below Scarlet’s bedroom window. I must have slapped the palms of my hands against the concrete in effort to break my fall after having slipped off the overhang roof. In all my adrenaline-charged rush to get the hell out of there, I must have never noticed it until later—later when I could only assume that the scratches and abrasions on the palms of my hands must have had something to do with Scarlet’s brutal killing.
I’m not sure what possessed me, but when I shined the flashlight into the hole I saw something I recognized. Funny how pristine it still seemed. Or maybe it just looked that way from where I was standing above ground, breathing in the wet, musty, charcoal smell. The baby blue porcelain statue of the Madonna—the Christ mother lying on her back, glazed eyes looking up at me, as if truly watching me, calling me to Her.
For a split second I saw Scarlet’s face in Her face and I felt my throat close up on itself. The whole thing was too eerie for words. Still, it took an almost superhuman effort to peel my eyes away.
Standing in the backyard, I pulled the leather pouch from my pocket, opened it, took out the diagram. I flashed the light upon it. It was obvious that the drawing mimicked the layout of the yard and the perimeter of the property. Judging from where I was standing, I calculated that if I took maybe twenty steps in the direction of the back property line, I would be standing upon—you guessed it—the spot marked X.
With shovel in one hand and flashlight in the other, I began walking out across the lawn, counting the steps as I went, until I came to twenty. I stuck the shovel into the soft, sandy ground, pressed the blade in with my foot. It took some time, with me neatly cutting away the wet sod, setting it aside and digging maybe five or six different holes before the soft earth gave way to something rigid. Not like a stone, but more like the metal box I expected.
Clearing the earth away I reached down, pulled the strongbox out with my hands, set it before me on the grass. As I stuck my fingers into the leather bag I realized how badly my now-healed hands were trembling. The trembling, soil-stained fingers rummaged inside the pouch for the key.
I pulled the key out of the bag, stared at the white moonlight that reflected off its smooth shiny surface.
Just a little silver key.
I slid it into the keyhole and twisted. The lid released. I opened it all the way and shined the flashlight inside. That’s when I saw it. Two items, actually. The first, a black videocassette that had been placed inside a plastic Ziploc bag; and the second, an unrecognizable bundle wrapped in cotton cloth.
I took the video out and immediately stuffed it into the right-hand pocket of my leather jacket. Then, placing the flashlight on the ground so that it shined on the tiny bundle, I began to unwrap it. Slowly, gently, I peeled away each gray cotton layer bit by bit until I came to a set of closed eyes. The littlest eyes you ever saw. Like doll’s eyes, only more fragile. My hands went from trembling to outright shaking as I peeled away another layer to reveal little feet and hands, the skin that covered them darkened the color of leather, but still supple to the touch, as if this baby had been born yesterday. There was a little mouth and nose and even a full head of strawberry blond hair, just like his mother. It was the strangest sensation, me just positioned there on my knees staring down at Scarlet’s baby, amazed at its mummified body, my tears distorting my vision.
I didn’t know what to see in this baby, this prematurely deceased James Montana.
Rather, I wasn’t sure if what I saw was a miracle nearly perfectly preserved in the sandy soil, or if I saw the pain Scarlet had borne for so long or the relief she surely now had in death. Maybe I saw all three. In any event, I knew there was only one thing to do. I wrapped James back up, placed him once more inside the lockbox, buried him for all eternity.
If anyone knew enough not to disturb the dead, it was me.
Not long after I filled in the rest of the holes and replaced the sod, a set of headlights pulled up out front. I killed the flashlight, gazed in their direction.
Lola’s Humvee.
She must have followed me here. I had no idea how much she might have witnessed, no idea how long she’d been out there watching me in the dark before she decided to pull up front. I guess it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was her presence.
I picked up the shovel, carried it back to the funeral coach, tossed it inside. Then I went over to where she parked herself along the curb.
When she rolled down the window I was struck at how beautif
ul she was with her long black hair, brown teardrop eyes and soft red lips. For a change, she wasn’t wearing her lab coat.
She whispered, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I smiled, wiped my eyes with my muddy hands.
I said, “There are some questions better left unanswered.”
She said, “Some questions are better left unposed.”
I got back in the Mercedes and followed her home.
- - -
… which I guess, pretty much brings me to where I am now.
I am seated at a long metal table inside a windowless interrogation room in the downtown, unmarked F.B.I. building, not two blocks from where State meets Broadway, down a ways from the old abandoned Hotel Wellington.
Just as they have been for more than three hours, the short stocky agent is seated next to me, while his tall thin partner stands in the far corner, witness to the exchange.
I put out my cigarette, sit back in my chair.
“Did you look at the video?”
“Yes,” I say. “It was me and Scarlet. No sex, just sleeping.”
“Sleeping,” he says. “That’s it?”
“Maybe there were other tapes. Maybe they were different. But all this tape showed was me sleeping. That’s it. That’s the big surprise.”
The two agents exchange glances. They’ve got that blank F.B.I. look going. I can’t tell whether they’re disgruntled or not. Feds are good at hiding their feelings. From what I’m told there’s an entire course on emotion suppression at Quantico.
“And you think that could be the reason why she slipped you the Ambien Mickey Finn—so she could film you sleeping?”
“You’d have to ask her,” I say. “That is, you want the real truth. But then, maybe it made her feel good just to have a collection of taped memories.”
Stocky agent just stares at me.
Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls Page 30