Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1)

by Vincent Zandri

  I felt a shove.

  Gazing over my right shoulder, I saw Brendan Lyons standing there. He was dressed in that same blue blazer and khaki pants combo he’d been wearing the night before when I met him at the airport bar. Gripped in his right hand was a reporter’s steno pad.

  We’d spoken on the phone just minutes before. There was a number 9 scribbled on the back of my hand to remind me of that night’s rendezvous. I knew he’d given me a good look before walking past, nudging my shoulder a little in the process.

  “‘Scuse me,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard above the roaring flames.

  For just a split second, I nearly acknowledged that I knew him, but then I caught myself.

  He turned his attention to Cain. “Care to make a statement, Detective?”

  Cain turned to face the reporter for a full two or three seconds before stating, “No comment.”

  “Sunday night the Chief’s wife apparently committed suicide in this home,” Lyons continued. “Perhaps the fire started all by itself as well.”

  Cain took a quick step forward. “I said no comment.”

  The cool reporter’s expression never wavered. Not happy, not sad. Just Even-Steven. Give away nothing, take away nothing. He began to turn away, but as he did, Cain reached out and took hold of his blazer sleeve.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “On second thought, I would care to make a statement.”

  Lyons did a one-eighty, cupping his left hand over the steno pad to keep the rain off. As if the dinner bell had been rung, five or six other reporters gathered at the feed trough alongside him.

  “I would like to go on record with the following,” Cain announced. “If it’s determined that the destruction by fire of the Montana home was the result of arson, then the responsible party will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We will also be investigating the possible connection between said arsonist and Scarlet Montana’s would-be murderer.”

  Cain was reversing his conclusion about the manner of Scarlet’s death—suicide to murder. Why he had chosen to do it now in public, I could only assume had everything to do with the fire.

  Something else was happening too.

  My old partner was pushing me out, effectively erasing my role as the independent investigator by calling Scarlet’s death a murder. Which meant that now he would have to come up with a viable suspect.

  The reporters pushed forward, shoving their way towards Cain with their handheld microphones and cameras.

  “Are you saying that Mrs. Montana did not commit suicide after all?” somebody shouted.

  “We’ve reached a new conclusion,” Cain said with all the stonefaced confidence of a politician.

  “Do you have any suspects, Detective Cain?” a man wearing a Fedora shouted. “And if not, do you have any viable leads?”

  “Do you have anyone in custody?” another woman shouted.

  “Can you confirm Chief Montana’s death?” Lyons abruptly interjected.

  The question was directed at Cain, but it pierced me like a dumdum bullet. It even quieted the other reporters.

  “Like I’ve told you before,” Cain said as he and Joy began plowing a path through the media people, “I have no further comment until more answers are made available to me by the arson and on-site emergency technicians. But let me say again, whoever is responsible for the heinous events of the past two days and nights will be severely dealt with.” As he passed me, he grabbed hold of my arm. “Let it not be said that the A.P.D. does not take care of its own.”

  Scarlet can attest to that, I wanted to say. And now so can Jake. . . God rest his sorry-ass soul.

  35

  It took a good deal of shoving and pushing, but soon enough Cain had pulled us through the crowd and standing just inside the off- limits perimeter established by a long semi-circular formation of police barricades and yellow crime scene ribbon.

  Outwardly, I wasn’t saying a goddamned word. But inside, I was screaming.

  You torched the place.

  You torched the place to destroy crucial evidence that could have been used against you. You torched the place with Jake inside it because maybe he was threatening to talk, to tell the whole truth about whatever it is you’re covering up. You destroyed the evidence and a key suspect who was at the same time a key witness, and then you changed your story once you put two and two together and discovered that I was about to prove Scarlet’s death a homicide.

  I wanted to spit those exact words in his face. But how could I? I had no definite proof of anything.

  Now with the Montana home burning to the ground, I wouldn’t have enough evidence left over to support a parking violation, much less a homicide. Just a very toxic tox report backed up with Miner’s testimony, my gut instinct and my growing suspicions about my old partner.

  All around us came the roar of the flames and the feel of the steady, ash-filled raindrops that pelted our heads and faces. There were the multi-colored police and fire truck lights and the tiny, indiscernible voices that spewed out of the two-way radios.

  Cain slapped me on the shoulder. “Follow me!” he shouted above all the noise. He began walking away from the burning home in the direction of the identical Colonial next door.

  I followed.

  Standing there, away from the crowd and the burning house, I saw something laid out along the driveway of the untouched home, not ten feet from where an EMT van was parked. The van was white with red block letters printed on the side. It was parked at the top of the drive beside a cop car and a fire department van that had pulled up onto the grass, its tires having dug two parallel swaths out of the moist lawn.

  The closer Cain led me to the driveway, the more I could see 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. The light rain falling on the charred body caused steam to rise up off the black skin.

  Jake.

  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 a body that had lost at least half its once bulky mass. 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 a pugilist’s position.

  Upon closer inspection, I saw that his right arm was raised noticeably higher than the other. It told me that the right hand had been his dominant.

  “Firemen found him inside the kitchen just after the place flashed,” Cain said. “In the far end of the room where they also found what they believe to be exploded containers 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. Finally, he spoke up.

  “There’s something I need to run by you, Dick,” he said, voice low and tragic. “The exploded containers, they contained an unusual accelerant. . . Embalming fluid. . . Stuff is full of ethanol and alcohol, I’m told. Burns like it too. That’s what the fire boys told me.”

  I stood up, breathing in some of the smoke and ash-tainted air. I knew exactly where Cain was going with his “embalming fluid” crap— the connection, rather, the insinuation he was trying to establish. Because who better to know the highly flammable qualities of embalming fluid than me?

  “When are you going to stop the head games?” I demanded.

  Cain remained stone-faced. “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 was playing dodgeball with my head; bluffing; pretending to connect me with Scarlet’s death without actually coming out and saying it.

  “I was running an independent investigation,” I said. “Why would I have destroyed my own evidence by
burning down the house?”

  He never said a word—never had to say a word. My old partner simply smiled.

  That was it, then. I was out on my ass whether I liked it or not. The stakes had changed.

  Crime scene all gone. More like, investigation all gone. It meant that now the fingers of Albany justice were about to point at me as a suspect.

  I turned and started back across the lawn towards the still burning home. As I walked, I pictured Cain pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket and firing it up with his Zippo.

  “Your father was an embalmer,” I heard him say. “Maybe it’s possible there’re still some cans of embalming fluid left lying around from his operation. Maybe the arsonist-slash-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 sucking on a fresh butt.

  “Let’s call all this a pretty bad attempt at the A.P.D. trying to set me up,” I growled.

  “Jeeze, 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, scraped hands clenched 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.”

  He released a hit of smoke in the rain. “Personally, Dick, I take serious offense to such an allegation.”

  I stepped back, lowering my hands. I knew full well the disaster that awaited me should I haul off and wallop him in the mouth.

  “Remember,” he added, “you were the last one to be with Scarlet the night she died. I’ve got evidence of your presence at the scene—a beer bottle, a message therapist’s oil bottle. I’ve even got your DNA. You massaged Scarlet, then you fucked her, and then, caught up in some jealous lover’s rage, you killed her.”

  I pictured Jake coming through the 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 mused. “I wonder what the internal showed. Maybe some seminal fluid? Tell me, Moonlight, 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 toward 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, fighting with Cain till the sun went down. If 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 A.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 toward the police barricades.

  “Your life is circling the drain, Moonlight!” my old partner shouted. “If I were you, 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.

  36

  With the black plume of smoke hovering over the scene, everything was covered with soot and little gray shards 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 funeral coach. 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 pulling my shit together while I pulled out my keys and fired up the black monster.

  Back home, I downed yet another anti-inflammatory and, right or wrong, I poured a glass of whiskey, setting it down on the kitchen table. I could think of only one more thing to do (again, right or wrong). I had to talk to Lola. Just the sound of her voice would calm me down. Maybe our relationship was sexless, but she was the closest thing I had to a best friend. Cordless phone in hand, I dialed her private line at the State University in Albany.

  Mid-afternoon, Tuesday. I knew she’d be tucked away inside her office. True enough, she answered after only two rings.

  “It’s me,” I said. “There’s been some complications.”

  “The fire,” she supplied, “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 know that to be true? You have the proof?”

  “I can feel it.”

  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, and 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.”

  “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 prove that a homicide had been made to look like a suicide, but at the same time, I was trying to avoid a homicide that would point to me as a suspect.

  “Richard, you there?”

  I snapped out of my trance; trying my hardest to think straight, logically, cognitively discerning right from all wrong.

  “I’m here,” I said, picturing Lola sitting in front of her computer in her black jeans and t-shirt, long black hair draping over her face. Working on a paper for publication in a medical journal the likes of Psychology Today.

  “You’re not making any sense,” she said.

  I looked into my whiskey glass and 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 spider-webbed its way out to the surrounding lobes, scratching at the underside of my skull with its claws.

  I breathed and told her that Cain was going to set me up. She told me I should not be alone. Not in my condition.

  37

  I punched in the number for Albany Medical Pathology Unit.

  Phillips 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,” George correctly surmised.

  “Is Scarlet’s body still there?” I asked, freshening my whiskey and 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 funeral home in Albany. The very outfit that bought Dad out not long before the cancer cut his retirement short.

  “Who gave the order?” I inquired.

  “Montana, I assume,” he replied. “I guess he must have changed his mind bec
ause they have her slated for the standard send-off instead of cremation.”

  Jesus, I thought. He doesn’t know.

  “Jake’s dead,” I told him. “He went up in flames along with his house about an hour ago.”

  Nothing on the line but dead air. I asked George if he was still there. He said he was.

  In my head, I saw him standing inside a windowless four-walled room, some Vaughn 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, little brother,” he said. “Murder.”

  “In the first degree.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “A favor. 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 a local Quincy. Your word carries some weight around this town. 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 now that Jake’s dead? 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.”