Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1)

by Vincent Zandri

  “State your case, please, Mr. O’Connor.”

  My head pounded from the tension; my wrists and ankles nearly bleeding from yanking and pulling on the shackles and cuffs.

  “In the weeks ahead, we will make evident beyond the shadow of a doubt that A.P.D. Detective Richard Moonlight deliberately and intentionally set out to murder Scarlet Montana, after which he murdered her surviving husband.”

  Stanley shot up. “Objection, Your Honor!” he shouted. “Might I remind the prosecutor that the law defines the defendant as innocent until proven guilty. Mr. O’Connor seems intent on passing sentence on my client even before the bench has granted a hearing with the grand jury. And might I add that Mr. Moonlight is presently accused of one offense, not two.”

  “Very well, Mr. Rose, we’ll strike that from the record,” Hughes announced for the court stenographer. “Your objection is duly sustained.” He tapped something on the keys of his own laptop computer which was set to his right-hand side. “However I am going to allow Mr. O’Connor the opportunity to state his evidence.”

  Stanley, the gunslinger, sat down.

  O’Connor stepped over to his table where he was handed a stack of eight-by-ten color glossies from one of his young women. Once more he approached the bench, handing the photos to the judge. Having slipped on a pair of reading glasses, Hughes began shuffling through them. When he was finished, he handed the photos back to O’Connor.

  “Of course, Mr. Prosecutor, you will make these pictures available to the defense by two o’clock this afternoon,” he instructed.

  “Naturally, Your Honor,” he agreed. “Per the order of discovery.”

  Hughes sat back hard in his swivel chair, removed his glasses. “You realize, Mr. O’Connor, Mr. Rose, that I have no choice but to accept most of your evidence as factual. I am talking about the defendant’s cut up palms, also his prints and the blood spatter patterns discovered on the scene. Also, I’m referring to the footprints found in the backyard of the Montana home and the so-called oil bottle. However, I’m curious as to the inclusion of the beer bottle. What am I supposed to make of it?”

  “We believe the bottle to contain Mr. Moonlight’s DNA as well as latent fingerprints,” O’Connor explained, “sufficiently placing him at the scene of the crime on the night of May fifth.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, where is the actual bottle, Mr. O’Connor?”

  The prosecutor went tight-faced. He cleared his throat. “We seem to have lost track of it, sir.”

  Stanley shot up again. “Your Honor, beer bottles and prints may indeed point to my client having been present at Ms. Montana’s house before she died. They were friends. Mr. Moonlight often performed massage therapy on her for which he received financial remuneration—”

  “—And apparently quite a bit more,” O’Connor blurted out to the courtroom that exploded in laughter.

  But when Hughes slapped the gavel, the room went silent.

  “Please continue, Mr. Rose,” an annoyed Judge ordered.

  Stanley brought a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “It’s not at all unusual for a massage therapist who makes house calls to leave something as insignificant as an oil bottle behind. Nor does it suggest that my client had anything whatsoever to do with Ms. Montana’s death.

  And may we respectfully remind the prosecution that photographs of beer bottles do not qualify as viable evidence.”

  “Overruled, Mr. Rose,” Hughes said. “It will be your job to prove that none of these items, photographed or not, point to murder. May I also remind you that the wounded palms look especially intriguing, convincing me that deviation from the bond process will be the way to go after all.”

  My skull wasn’t just pounding, it was splitting open.

  “Your Honor, might I remind the court that my client suffers from an inoperable physiological condition. A .22 caliber bullet is lodged in the center of his brain, directly beside his cerebral cortex and thalamus, causing on occasion an inability for rational thought.”

  Stanley, the Moonlight family lawyer, exploiting my condition, maybe knowing that – in the end – he’d own my house.

  “He looks fine to me, sir,” Hughes said, not without a slight smile. “I am told he is well enough to play cop, and anybody well enough to play cop is also well enough to pose himself as a substantial flight risk.”

  “He is well enough in relative terms,” Stanley said. “However, the stress of lockup carries with it the potential to create problems with the condition, increasing his risk of stroke and/or seizure for which the state will bear the ultimate responsibility.”

  “Save it for later, Mr. Rose. While Mr. Moonlight lives, I’ve got two dead people to think about, one of them my chief detective.”

  Hughes looked me directly in the eye, asked me if I understood the nature of the charges filed. I said I did. He asked me if I was aware of my constitutional rights as an accused offender.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “There will be no set bail,” Hughes went on, “as is consistent with capital cases in my court of law. I am ordering the defendant detained to Albany County Correctional Facility until a hearing with the grand jury.”

  The courtroom exploded in cheers and jeers. So much for the side of right.

  Then the judge set a date for a grand jury hearing. He slammed down the gavel and that was it.

  I watched Cain as he turned to me and smiled. Son of a bitch actually cracked a grin before he walked by me on his way out of the courtroom.

  Joy, on the other hand, approached me with a face so distraught you’d have thought he was the one facing a death sentence. He asked me to turn around and step out and away from the table. When I did, he grabbed hold of my jumper collar and asked me to walk. It was then, as we were moving past the judge’s bench, that he dropped something. I didn’t know what until I looked down.

  It was simply a pen. A Bic ballpoint.

  He ordered me to stop. I did. He went down to retrieve his pen. When he did, I felt the sensation in my foot. Something sliding inside my orange slipper. Something small, cold and hard.

  I said nothing about it.

  When we stepped out into the hall and began our march toward an awaiting county armored vehicle, I knew it must have had something to do with what Joy whispered in my ear: “Hotel Wellington. Room 6-57.”

  I made not a sound. I simply repeated the words and numbers over and over again in my head as I shuffled forward. Hotel Wellington, room 6-5-7. . . Hotel Wellington, room 6-5-7. . .

  Just what the significance room 6-5-7 carried I had no clue, only that it represented to me some kind of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. But then there was something else I managed to figure out: sometime between my arrest and arraignment, Officer Joy had made the conscious decision to piss on Cain’s parade.

  46

  The concrete-and-razor-wire Albany County Lockup was located across the river from Albany on what used to be a riverside crude oil processing plant. In order to get there, we had to cross over an eighty-foot high steel expansion bridge that supported four lanes of Interstate 90 traffic; two going east towards Boston; two going west to Buffalo.

  There were two county deputies escorting me to the jail in a black Chevy Suburban with tinted one-way glass. I guess the deception had been orchestrated in the interest of my safety. As a supposed cop-killer (or the killer of the head dick’s wife, anyway), there existed the very real possibility that someone—angry cop or no angry cop—might try and take a shot at me.

  Funny how they didn’t provide me with a Kevlar vest; funny how the Suburban contained no incarceration cage. Not to keep me in, but to keep would-be attackers out.

  I sat in the middle of the back seat with only a seatbelt securing me. The two deputies up front didn’t bother with theirs even though buckling up is the law. Being a deputy has its perks.

  The big blond-haired guy driving the Suburban must have been doing ninety when he hit the on-ramp for the bridge. Ev
erything in the vehicle shifted to the left, including me.

  “Jesus, Paulie,” said the second, smaller, dark-haired guy. “You’re gonna get us killed.”

  “You think I wanna die?” said Paulie. “Maybe we ought to burn one, Timmy? Calm me down a little.”

  Timmy made a nod over his left shoulder, to bring attention to me. “What about him?” he asked as if I were blind, deaf, and dumb.

  “What about him?” Paulie repeated as the entrance to the bridge loomed ahead. “He’s gonna fry soon enough. You think our burning one is gonna make a goddamned difference? ‘Sides, stupid fucker can’t remember a goddamned thing.”

  It’s not memory that’s the problem. . .

  Timmy paused to run his hands over his clean-shaven cheeks. I could tell he was thinking it over, coming to a definite decision. Then, as if I weren’t even there, the county law officer reached into his shirt pocket and produced a fat bomber of a joint. He flipped it into his mouth, lighting it with a transparent yellow Bic lighter.

  “That’s a boy,” Paulie said with a big-ass grin. “Light the sucker up.”

  The bridge approached.

  A laptop computer had been installed in the center of the Suburban console directly below the two-way radio. The computer was turned off and the radio was so low you couldn’t hear the dispatcher’s voice at all. Maybe the guards didn’t care. Secured between the two bucket seats was a riot shotgun. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off of it while Timmy had a hard time making fire with his lighter.

  “Fuckin’ childproof lighters,” he complained.

  We were on the bridge now, heading directly over the river. Looking out the window, it seemed a long way down.

  “Let me try,” Paulie said, reaching across the console for the lighter.

  “I’ve got it, man,” Timmy insisted, thumbing the mechanism with a vengeance.

  “Let me,” Paulie insisted.

  The suburban began to swerve. Paulie tried to grab hold of the little lighter, but his partner insisted on doing it himself. Paulie wasn’t keeping his eyes on the road.

  When we crossed over into the far right lane, he wasn’t aware of it.

  I decided then that the time had come.

  Because I was sitting down, there was more than enough slack in my waist restraint for me to unbuckle my seatbelt.

  No one noticed. Not when I bent down, retrieved the key out of my slipper, and tucked it inside my mouth under my tongue. We were half way over the bridge when I reached up and over Paulie’s head with my cuffed hands, wrapped the chain restraint around his fat neck, and squeezed as hard as I could.

  It wasn’t like the movies at all.

  We didn’t swerve all over the road while a major struggle ensued inside the Chevy. There was no time for dramatics. The whole thing took no more than three seconds, tops.

  It was all a matter of my wrapping the restraint around the neck and squeezing and the wheel on the Suburban cutting all the way to the right and then the open-mouthed expression on Timmy’s gaunt face as we slammed into the concrete barrier . . .

  47

  Fully conscious, I lifted up my feet and kicked out the door window. Climbing out head first, I dropped down onto the concrete, managing to break the fall with my cuffed hands. All around me, cars and trucks were skidding to a halt, not to avoid the smashed Suburban, but to get a look at me.

  I didn’t give them a chance to get a good look.

  I hobbled over to the side of the bridge in my shackles and cuffs and climbed up onto the steel railing.

  “Don’t do it!” somebody shouted.

  I jumped.

  An eighty-foot drop, feet first into the Hudson.

  I gathered up my bearings and bobbed in the slight chop, fighting the weight and restriction of the chains, shackles, and cuffs. I pumped like a mad dog to keep my head above water. The fast current propelled me downriver. The key still tucked under my tongue, I tried to breathe without swallowing river water.

  I tried to glance over my right shoulder. There was too much distance between me and the bridge to make out the Suburban, much less the guards. Maybe they’d bought it in the collision. Maybe they went over the side of the bridge along with me. I wondered if they could swim.

  I had to get to the riverbank before I drowned in the current.

  To my direct right, the Port of Albany. A freighter was docked parallel with the port, beside a mooring with a big number 6 painted on its concrete base. To my direct left, the county lockup with its guard towers and searchlights beaming down upon chain-link and razor-wire fencing. I must have covered a half-mile or more in just a matter of a half a minute.

  The damp air smelled like rotten fish.

  I tried treading water, but the pull on my legs and feet was too strong. Gazing back at that freighter, I could see that it was getting smaller. The current was pulling me farther and farther away from the port, along with the stunted Albany skyline behind it. I couldn’t last forever in that chop. I had to make a run for the bank before my body was dragged further south, where the river opened up almost like an inland ocean.

  I was beginning to sense the onset of exhaustion. Was I about to undergo a seizure? If I passed out now, the chains and shackles would carry me to the bottom. I had to get myself to the riverbank now.

  Without the complete use of my arms, I propelled my body along like a seal, all the time trying to hold off the seizure as though I had any control over it at all. Finally, I made it to a large culvert that emptied out onto a patch of gravelly riverbank.

  I crawled up onto the bank, stuffed myself into the aluminum tube, and hid my body among the foul-smelling dead and bloated fish. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. My left arm felt numb. There were brilliant flashes of light coming from inside my brain. No choice but to surrender. I laid my head down atop the damp corrugated metal and, for better or worse, passed out.

  By the time I woke up, the afternoon was gone.

  I crawled out onto the bank and laid there in my orange jumper, soaking wet from head to toes, hands and feet still bound in shackles and cuffs.

  I spit out the key. Curling my legs into my chest, I reached down with my left hand and started unlocking. A few moments later, I was free.

  I dug a hole in the wet sand and tossed in the chains and cuffs. Then I filled the hole back in. I looked up at the sky. Thick gray-black clouds stared back at me.

  I judged the time to be about five o’clock, five-thirty. It was hard to tell. It was hard to believe that nobody had located me by now. The current had carried me a great distance from the bridge in a very short time.

  Just up ahead, a concrete dike wall was situated maybe ten feet above the shoreline. In the far distance to the north came the mechanical drone of a giant dock-mounted crane that was lifting and setting fifty-gallon-drum filled palettes into the docked freighter’s hold. With the quickly fading cloud-filtered daylight, I knew that the crane would soon be stopping, the workers who manned it heading home.

  Until that time, I would have to crawl back into the culvert and sit tight.

  It didn’t take long for full dark to settle in.

  I emerged from out of the culvert once more and made my way up the narrow stretch of riverbank towards the dike wall. The port crane had stopped, its mechanical drone giving way to the high-pitched straining and stressing of the freighter’s steel hull bobbing up and down in the river’s wake. Out beyond the docked freighter, I could make out the bright pier-mounted beacons of light shooting out across the wide river.

  That’s when I saw the barge coming from out of the north along with the current. A flat, brightly illuminated diving barge with maybe half a dozen men and women standing on it. From where I stood, I could make out two black, rubber-suited divers who were just then dropping into the black river, no doubt in search of a possibly drowned fugitive. I knew that when they eventually came up without my body, I would be considered alive and dangerous.

  Standing wet and cold on the riverbank, I f
elt very alone. Soon I heard a voice and the clap of footsteps coming towards me from the direction of the dike wall. When the narrow cone-shaped light began to strafe the beach, I knew that it had to be the police.

  I went down onto my stomach and crawled my way across the beach to the concrete wall. Stuffing my body between the wall and the beach, I tried to make myself invisible. Rather, tried to will myself invisible. Facing the river, I saw a bright white flashlight shine upon the very spot I had been standing just a couple of seconds before.

  The A.P.D., my former brothers and sisters in arms.

  Had they not announced themselves with their chest-mounted radios and flashlights, I’d already be back in custody. Instead, I held my breath, lying there perfectly still until the flashlight moved further south along the dike wall. When the light had all but disappeared, I got back on my feet and started jogging in the opposite direction towards the port and the longshoreman locker rooms.

  The time had come for a change in wardrobe.

  48

  I walked alongside a brick monster of a building that stretched the entire length of the main pier—a two-story warehouse with maybe thirty separate docking bays closed off by identical metal overhead doors. As a detective, I knew that the port office was located somewhere in the general vicinity. As anticipated, I found it located at the far north end of the structure.

  The solid metal door was padlocked. There was a chicken-wire- reinforced warehouse window that had been left slightly ajar. I pushed in the window, pulled myself up and stuffed my body in through the opening.

  I went down onto the wood plank floor hard. I didn’t waste a second of time. Picking myself up, I made my way through the front office to the back where the showers and locker rooms were located.

  The locker room was windowless, with only a large louver for ventilation. There was a bathroom and a gang shower. Out beyond that was a closed off area designated for the machine shop. Every available space was filled with metal lockers covered in graffiti and Scotch-taped Penthouse and Hustler nudes. The place reeked of worms and mold.