Moonlight Falls (16 page)

“Scarlet was determined to work through the nightmares. Face them head on, show the black figures in her subconscious that she was not afraid of them. Once she succeeded, they would disappear and forever stop taunting her. No psychologist on earth could have assisted her with that. For Scarlet, her war with the demons had to be fought battle by battle, and only by her and her alone.” Suma finished her tea. I offered to make some more. But she didn’t want any more tea.

What she wanted was Jack.

I poured a shot into her teacup.

She downed it in one swift pull.

The psychic teetotaler meets the barfly.

“I’m not being entirely truthful,” she confessed, grabbing hold of the bottleneck, helping herself to another shot. “Scarlet did seek out help. Not good help, but something to help her cope all the same.” I asked her to tell me about it.

“I caught her in the bathroom one night at the church. I walked into a stall. She was snorting the stuff right off the toilet tank through a rolled-up dollar bill.”

“Snorting,” I said like a question.

“It was a brown powder.”

“Heroin,” I said, without raising my voice. “You’re sure you saw her snorting heroin?”

“Like I said, it was a powder and it was definitely brown.”

My stomach cramped up.

At that point a brick could have slammed me upside the head and it would not have shocked me more than I already was.

I thought, if Scarlet was snorting heroin—if this woman was telling the truth—then it was becoming plainly obvious that I had no clue who the real Scarlet Montana was. I relied on my somewhat damaged gray matter to produce a vivid image and pictured my sometime lover leaning over a toilet tank, her lush red hair veiling her face while she sucked brown shit up into her nostrils using a rolled-up dollar bill for a straw. Sitting there at the kitchen table I ran the image over and over again in my brain. But no matter how many times I played it, rewound it, paused it, I could not get used to it.

But then, I thought about something else: if it could be proven that she had been desperate enough to snort heroin, then it was yet another bit of evidence that would lend itself well to the suicide theory. Still, I was refusing to believe it.

I asked, “You any idea where she might have scored the drugs?”

She drank her shot. Again, just one swift pull. I offered her a third, but she declined.

“Sometimes there was a man who would show up after the meetings,” she said. “A funny looking man with white skin. Whiter than white skin. He would come pick her up and together they would drive off.”

The kitchen chair, I thought it slid out from under me.

I envisioned my secret Albino admirer.

I asked, “Did this man by any chance drive a big four-by-four S.U.V.—a Toyota Landcruiser maybe?”

Her cheeks were a bit flushed from the whiskey. They looked a lot healthier than when she had first walked into my kitchen from out of the rain.

“A Landcrusier like all the soccer moms drive,” she said. “Definitely.”

I bit my lip, stood up.

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

She stood. Together we headed for the front door.

“Nothing. Only that it makes me very sad that Scarlet is gone.”

“Don’t you believe that she is still alive?” I asked. “Walking around in another’s body?”

She grinned out of the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, that’s just the stuff we like to believe on Monday nights. The Psychic Fair might be good for the soul, but it doesn’t make you immortal, Mr. Divine. Nor does it pay the bills. It’s simply a salve, not a remedy.” A sweet smile. “Like a glass of whiskey on a rainy spring night.”

“I guess Scarlet could be the proof of that,” I said.

I asked her if she’d like me to drive her home. Or at least allow me to call her a cab.

She said she preferred to walk in the rain. Something about cleansing the mind. I didn’t argue.

But before she walked out, I stopped her long enough to ask her one more thing.

“Why are you so convinced that Scarlet killed herself?”

“Because she was very sweet and she would never hurt anybody,” she explained. “But she was very, very sad.”

“It could be that someone wanted her dead,” I said.

“Why on earth would anyone want to hurt her?”

In my mind I saw Jake Montana; I saw Mitch Cain; I saw the black shadows that stabbed her, night after night. Maybe they had their reasons for killing her. Because Scarlet might have known something and was about to use it against them. It would have been motivation enough. It was a motivation stronger than any I could have harbored.

I said, “Maybe it’s true what they say about nice people finishing last.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I have this feeling that Scarlet Montana was never even in the race.”

She took my hand then. Without asking. She just took my hand in hers and, like the Reverend had done earlier, gave it the once over with wide open eyes.

I asked, “You see anything to dispute your fearless leader’s assessment?”

She bit down on her lip, let go of my hand.

“It’s late,” she said. “And all those scratches. It’s very difficult to see anything.”

“But you do see something,” I pressed.

This time when she smiled, it stuck.

I let Suma out. Or was it Natalie?

She turned, looked into my face with wide, moist eyes.

“Divine,” she said. “It’s such a pretty name.”

“It’s just a name,” I said.

She wished me inner peace.

I told her all I wanted was a good night’s sleep.

“One day, Mr. Divine,” she whispered, “we’ll have all the sleep we ever wished for.”

37

SEATED ON THE EDGE of his bed inside his empty bedroom. Jake focused his eyes on the door that led out into the hall. In his right hand he gripped a .38 Smith & Wesson service revolver. Turning the barrel so that it aimed up and directly at his face, he opened his mouth and slowly took the barrel in.

The gunmetal tasted acrid and metallic against his tongue and teeth.

It was cold.

The pointy sight scratched the roof of his mouth. For a fleeting moment, he thought he might gag.

When he thumbed back the hammer, he closed his eyes, waited for the peaceful darkness to overtake him.

What’s dying like?
he silently asked himself.
Must be like turning the lights off in a windowless room. Must be like going to sleep.

Sleep. Peaceful, endless sleep. It’s all he wanted.

Sliding the pistol barrel back out of his mouth he coughed violently, painfully, before thumbing the hammer back into place.

“But not yet,” he spoke aloud.

38

NOT LONG AFTER SHE was gone, I washed down another codeine with a glass of water. Then I went back outside and parked the Mercedes in the garage. My dad might be dead and gone, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he watched over me like a hawk—especially when I was using his things. Afterwards, I went back into the house and locked up. When I saw that two new messages had been recorded on the answering machine, I immediately thought of Lola.

Maybe she was on her way over. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.

I tapped the PLAY button, listened for a voice.

A beautiful voice.

Instead I got only the sound of man’s breathing, then a shuffling noise followed by a quick hang-up.

As for the second call? Same deal.

Since my father’s thirty-year-old phone was not blessed with modern caller I.D., I deleted the non-messages then punched *69 into the handset.

When the operator gave me the number I quickly jotted it down and then dialed. I got a recorded message: “You have reached The Russo, Woodstock’s only traditional Russian restaurant,” said the man in a distinctive Russian-accented voice. Then he proceeded to recite the establishment’s hours.

I hung up and opened the cabinet that contained my Catskill Region phone book. I looked up The Russo in the yellow pages, found an address for the place on Main in Woodstock’s quaint hippy-filled downtown business area. Definitely a storefront joint.

I copied the address onto a Post-a-Note, slid it into my wallet. Then I slid into bed, laid myself down beside my old friend insomnia.

- - -

I finally gave up on the idea of sleep sometime around pre-dawn.

From on my back in bed, I stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling, and I heard the rain coming down outside. I swear every raindrop was calling out my name.

My head, it was growing tighter, the evil spirits pressing themselves against the backs of my eyeballs.

I knew I had to crawl out of the bed, get the old body moving, distract myself.

Downstairs I made the coffee and wondered why I wasn’t nearly as awake on my feet as I was on my back. I listened to the spatter the raindrops made against the kitchen windows when the wind blew hard. I wondered if it would ever stop raining in Stormville.

A few minutes later, I decided to call Lyons, leave him an update on his voice mail. I told the crime reporter I was working the case but that I’d still need more time before I could draw up some definite conclusions. Then I mentioned the cremation scheduled for that afternoon. But I also told him that if we met later that evening, I’d more than likely have his answers along with the supporting paperwork.

With that done, I poured another coffee and opened the front door to see if the paper had come yet.

It hadn’t.

But from where I stood I looked out onto the thick pines and oaks that separated my front lawn from Hope Lane. The rain was coming down steadily, collecting and running like a small river to the catch basin located at the south-east corner of the property.

I brought the cup to my lips. Once more I saw Scarlet’s face.

I saw the living face first and the dead face second.

Two entirely different people.

I was suddenly reminded of an old saying that was enscribed into a plaque that hung on the wall above my desk at the S.P.D.

“Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.”

I knew that if Scarlet was to delight in helping me at all, even in death, then she would do her best to lead me directly to her killer.

39

BY NINE O’CLOCK I’D jogged three miles in the rain, put in a full free-weight workout and three, three-minute rounds on the heavy bag inside my basement gym. Once showered, I treated myself to a pair of clean Levis.

With the Browning strapped to my chest, and the Beatle’s “White Album” spinning in the C.D. player, I drove the funeral coach across town to the chrome and tinted glass Stormville Medical Arts Center—a modern complex that occupied about four square downtown blocks. Having driven in through the entrance gates, I motored all the way to the far west end of the facility, past the morgue entrance, past the physical plant, to a series of three old four-storied buildings made up of brick facades and French paned windows. Turn of the twentieth century, Ivy League style buildings that long ago served as the original Stormville Medical Hospital, but that now were barely large enough to accommodate the labs.

I pulled into the broad parking lot that separated the old facility from the new and parked in a space that, according to a pole-mounted sign, was “Reserved for Dr. Norman Miner.”

I was no stranger to Toxicology, which meant I knew full well that Miner didn’t give a rat’s ass about his reserved parking space. So riddled was he with gout, that it pained him to even touch the gas and brake pedals of his old Volvo sedan with the tips of his swelled toes.

I entered the main building and breathed in the old familiar odor—a strange, intense mixture of chemicals, disinfectants and waste that emanated from the many lab animals confined to their stacked metal cages stored in the basement. So much for modern ventilation. But then, if you worked long enough in a place like this, I imagined your nasal passages got used to it.

Upstairs, I stood inside the open doors of the first of three tox labs. It was the usual scene. Dozens of men and women standing around an equal amount of free-standing marble islands with nearly every square inch of counter filled with beakers, clear pots, test tubes, Bunsen burners and laptop computers. Technicians and scientists so engrossed in their work, not a single one of them bothered to look up at me.

Stepping back out into the corridor, I nearly ran over him.

Dr. Norman Miner.

He was a short, squat, curly haired man who had served as the resident head of S.M.A.C.’s tox division ever since it had a tox division. The same man who had been best friends with my father which, in my mind, made him family.

I peered into his glass-blue eyes and grinned.

“You know why I’m here, old timer,” I said in my best imitation tough guy dick. “Whaddaya got for me?”

Miner raised his right hand, quick-slapped my butt.

He said, “Not here, dummy. We’ll address your emergency behind closed doors.”

It’s true, Norman was old. Even by retirement standards.

I watched him as he walked the narrow third floor corridor, a half dozen steps ahead of me. Waddled is more like it, with his terribly bowed, nearly stunted legs. He was a short man who had been a good two to three inches taller a good two to three decades ago.

Before age and gravity betrayed him.

Once inside his office, he took his place behind a mammoth wood desk, sat down hard in a leather swivel chair, released a very relieved breath. The place was as musty as it was cramped. It gave you the feeling that this one room had been left untouched for decades; that as the years passed, the hospital had simply built around it and the man who called it his home away from home.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves covered the walls with what I guessed were about a thousand volumes. So many books and magazines that not a single space of shelf went unused.

Miner ran sausage fingers over his weathered face, then ran them through his full head of stark white locks. I could tell by his stiff tight lips that he was in real pain. The deep set of crow’s feet carved into the corners of his eyes proved it. As soon as he got hold of his breath and his equilibrium, he asked me how I was holding up, as if the state of my health were foremost on his mind. And to a man like Norman Miner, it was.