Moonlight Falls (13 page)

Sensing my presence, he about-faced, set down the spigot, then peeled off his latex gloves, tossed them into a blue medical waste bin.

“You’re late, Divine,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said, stepping further inside. “I got caught up in a psychic reading of sorts.”

We met in the center of the room, directly beside the body length table. We shook hands, a couple of battle-seasoned crime vets—Robb, having gained much of his experience with the dead in Viet Nam, more seasoned than me.

“So Detective Cain has requested that you solve their little suicide problem,” he grinned sympathetically.

I shot a tentative glance in the direction of Scarlet’s prone body.

I knew that the sight of her naked limbs and torso had no effect on a pathologist like George. For him, she was just another night’s work. But for me, she was still flesh and blood. Still a person. Despite the effort, I was having some real trouble referring to her as an “it.” Every time I glanced at her for more than a few seconds at a time, I felt a dull throbbing in the center of my head and in the back of my throat. There was the nagging pressure against the backs of my eyeballs, the buzzing in my brain.

Had I had anything to do with this? Anything at all?

I could only believe that I hadn’t; that on the other hand, Jake had everything to do with it, including motive, opportunity and means.

“Montana extended a personal invitation late last night,” I said.

“He wants this one bought and sold right away,” Robb correctly suggested. “Wants the transaction to go down his way, your name and
only
your name on the sales receipt. Avoid a full-blown internal investigation.”

“I
am
the internal investigation,” I clarified. “In the interest of preserving his wife’s memory.”

Robb grinned.

“He didn’t feed you that bullshit.”

“Directly to my bald-headed face.”

“The only thing Montana wants to save in a case like this is his own behind. And believe me, that’s a lot of real estate to save.”

I nodded in the direction of the body.

“Along with his freedom,” I said. “I.A. fingers point to him, things could get mighty ugly for Stormville’s finest cop.”

If I had to guesstimate, I would have put George’s age at around fifty-four or fifty-five, although he looked quite a bit older. If you didn’t know he was an M.D., you’d swear he was an aging rock’n roll musician. He was a small man with shoulder length salt-and- pepper hair parted in the middle, a navy blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead. That night he was wearing a white smock that buttoned down the front and hung short of his knees.

His sleeves rolled up around his elbows, he wore three silver chain bracelets on his right wrist. His earlobes supported one silver hoop apiece and on his feet, a pair of worn cowboy boots over which he sported a pair of tight fitting Levi’s jeans with a good-sized tear over the right knee cap.

He disappeared into the connecting back office.

A moment later he came back out carrying a neatly folded smock. On top of the smock was placed a pair of green shoe booties, a transparent plastic face shield, a pair of tan colored latex gloves and a green cap. He handed the pile to me, told me to get dressed. While I slipped into my hospital costume, he stepped over to the stereo system and proceeded to replace the existing C.D. with a sad, classical composition by Vaughan Williams entitled Symphony Numbers 3 and 4. Better known as the “Pastoral Symphonies.” The same soundtrack he always worked to. Take it from an insider.

He turned to me, just as the lush operatic voices began to fill the white-tiled room.

Through his narrow mask I saw him purse his lips as if to say,
Take a deep breath. I know this isn’t easy on you.

Fingering a Teflon scalpel off the tool tray, he brought the razor sharp tip to Scarlet’s already scarred sternum.

30

THE CARGO SHIP LOOMED over the two men like a mountain carved out of rusted steel panels and rivets. The ship bobbed alive in the wake of the Hudson River, rancid bilge spilling out of its pumps like steamy piss from an old war horse. The ship’s steel panels wrenched painfully with each up-and-down movement, its thick rope lines that tied it off to the concrete and macadam docks expanding and contracting.

Standing beside the far bow line on the very edge of the dock was a tall albino man dressed in black pants, leather driving jacket and black shoes. Hiding red-pink eyes were dark aviator style sunglasses. The Albino was Russian by decent. A ten year émigré via the failed Russo-Afghan war of the 1980s and ‘90s.

Lieutenant Mitchell Cain stared into the sunglassed eyes of the strange looking man, pulled a smoke from the interior pocket of his own leather jacket, silently but nervously offering one up to the Russian Albino man.

Reaching out, Albino man slipped one out of the pack with pale index finger and thumb. He stuck the smoke between his lips, then patiently waited for Cain to light it.

Which the shaky handed cop promptly did.

Firing up his own cigarette, the Lieutenant looked one way down the mile-long dock, then the other. Seeing that they were not being watched, he cleared his throat.

“Sorry this had to happen,” he said. “But no one expected Scarlet Montana to die.”

The Russian smoked thoughtfully, until he exhaled a slow, long stream.

“I get this straight,” he says in Russian-accented English. “Jake Montana’s beautiful wife is dead, yes. Found in her own bed, cut up from throat to cunt, yes. And you people call it suicide, yes.”

“I assure you, Joseph, that’s all it is.”

“Nobody inflicts big focking pain on one’s own body. Focking impossible, is it not, yes?”

Cain, smoking.

“Does it really matter how she died? All that matters is that our operation is not compromised should a county prosecutor start sniffing around.”

Russian Albino took one last long drag of the smoke before pulling it from his mouth, tossing it into the narrow no-man’s land between dock and bobbing boat.

In his mind, Cain imagined the still lit smoke hitting the river water below.

“And investigation about to begin, yes?” “No … I mean yes.”

“Which will it be, Mr. Cain.”

“What I mean is, an investigation by a special independent investigator appointed by both me and Jake Montana has already begun. But …”

“But what?”

Cain, smiling.

“But I assure you, you will be more than pleased with said investigation’s outcome.”

Cain, smoking, smiling, winking.

Albino Russian not smiling.

“Very clear I understand, Mr. Cain. Control of the situation you have. Just like my old KGB, yes?”

Yeah, just like your KGB, Cain thought. What the hell?

“Nothing to worry about, Joseph.”

“Good, because if business together should be exposed, I should have to focking kill you, yes?”

Russian albino raised his right hand to his white head, made like a pistol with forefinger and thumb, brought the thumb down.

Now Cain was not smiling. Now his face looked like he’d just swallowed a hammer and sickle.

Still he tried to tough-guy laugh.

“Everything is fine,” he stressed. “Our operation will remain status quo. Capice?”

Behind the two men, the big ship bobbed, its steel panels stressing, straining, bilge pissing, the river stinking of dead fish and gasoline.

“Mr. Cain,” Albino Russian said with a nod. “One more question I have to pose.”

Tossing his now spent cigarette to the macadam covered dock, Cain pressed it out with the tip of his black cop shoe.

“What is it?” he said with a smoky exhale.

“Scarlet Montana,” Albino man went on. “You did not cut her up yourself, yes?”

Just then, a inland seagull landed on the dock’s edge, its dirty-white feathered wings beating out.

“I just told you, Joseph,” Cain nervously retorted. “It was a suicide.”

“Sure it was, yes?” Russian Albino mocked. “A focking suicide. And you are not a professional liar, Mr. Cain, yes?”

“Not that kind of a liar.”

“Cross your Holy Christ soul, Mr. Cain?”

Cain, fake laughing.

“Cross your heart,” he said, making a large imaginary X across his chest with his right hand. “It’s cross your heart. Not soul.”

“I see the bright light,” Albino Russian said as the seagull opened up its wings once more, lit out for the open air. “Cross your focking heart.”

Pushing past Cain, Russian Albino started making his way back towards the port parking lot and the blue Toyota Landcruiser parked there.

“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Cain,” he said. “No one knows about our little meeting, yes?”

“Yes, you rancid piece of white Russian horse cock,” Cain sighed under his breath.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cain? You have comment to say, yes?”

I said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

31

FOR A WHILE, THE autopsy proceeded uneventfully.

Having removed the lungs, trachea and esophagus en bloc, George weighed organ after organ, recording each and every detail of the procedure into a microphone clipped onto his safety glasses.

From the start I had been careful to keep my distance. Especially when he initiated the proceedings by swiping the blade down the center of her chest, following the exact path of the long hesitation scars Scarlet may or may not have produced all on her own.

After a time, however, I found myself taking a good look at her face.

Her open eyes were unusually sunken in. Concave even. I knew that the eyes of a dead person gradually flattened out, the same way a bicycle tire will lose its air over time. But then, from where I stood maybe four feet away from her face, it seemed as though the eyes no longer possessed any type of reflective sheen whatsoever. Even under the high-powered lamps.

I ran the tips of my latex-covered fingers over the eyelids, opening and closing them.

I noticed then that my fingers were trembling. Ever so gently. Taking a step back, I removed them from her face.

Maybe I was just tired and a little crazy. But I shook my head, spit out with a little nervous laughter.

I spotted George out of the corner of my eye. He had just completed an examination of her pelvis, using not only his fingers but a stainless steel instrument. What he collected from his search he placed inside a small plastic jar, which he then sealed tightly. After he set the jar down on the counter, he just stood there, staring me down.

He looked at me strangely.

He said, “Richard, can I ask you a personal question?”

I nodded.

“Were you still sleeping with her?”

My wide eyes must have shouted volumes.

“Sheeeeit,” is all he said.

32

IT WAS A DECISION prompted more out of desperation than thirst: stopping into the downtown corner gin mill, taking a seat at the end of the long bar, ordering a double bourbon.

Straight up, no chaser.

But by that point in the day immediately following his wife’s killing, Jake Montana needed a drink, needed it badly. But then, he also knew that by downing the drink, he was playing with fire. It may have been the devil bourbon that made him pass out last night. He’d had too much of it before he came home, only to find that his wife Scarlet wasn’t alone. If only he hadn’t had so much to drink, he might not have lost his temper when he saw that Scarlet’s bedroom window was wide open, that the room was lit up with candles, that it reeked of cigarette smoke and something much worse. Something sexy organic.

If he hadn’t been drinking all night, he might not have gone into a rage.

He might not have blacked out.

He might not have killed Scarlet.

Or did he?

Because there was always the possibility that he was placing too much pressure on himself, allowing his imagination to run away with itself. What was for certain was that he and Scarlet fought. They got into one another’s faces, she with a bedsheet pulled up over naked breasts, he with fists clenched. He called her a “whore.” She called him a “Mean rotten drunk.” A “baby killer.” And that’s when he lost it. That’s when he slapped her, knocked her down.

From that point on, he didn’t remember a thing other than waking up in his own bed some two hours later to a silence best described as deadly. With a throbbing head, he pulled off his blanket, made the short trek from his bedroom, out into the hall to Scarlet’s bedroom. He opened the door only to find that the bedside lamp was still on. The lamp, it was illuminating the cut-up body of his wife.

Everything came up on him then. He barely made it to the bathroom where he dropped to his knees, retched his guts.

After, when he was able to get back up to his feet, he prayed to God that what he witnessed inside Scarlet’s bedroom was just some nightmare that he had only now awoken from. But when he made his way back to her … when he saw the blood and the terrible gashes, slices and cuts, he knew that her death was reality. He knew that not only had it been possible that he killed her, he knew that he had almost certainly done the job.

But then, he had no memory it.

Taking a sip from the glass, he took a quick look around the dark, mostly empty bar. Just a wall length mirror, shelves and shelves of booze, a bald-headed bartender with a huge beer gut, his perpetually burning cigarette set in a tin ashtray on the bar. Seated in the corner opposite his own, an old gray-haired man dressed in a suit and tie, slow sipping what looked like ginger brandy.