Moonlight Falls (18 page)

“Crime desk,” Lyons answered.

I said, “I’ve got it. Smoking gun and all.”

“Where are you?” he whispered.

“Stormville Med,” I said. “And what I’ve got from Tox tells me that Scarlet Montana was drugged, then cut up inside her own bed, no evidence of a break-in.”

Lyons exhaled.

“The can of worms has been officially cracked.”

“The can of worms runneth over.”

“I’ll get started on the story now.”

I told him about Miner, about his willingness to testify.

Then I gave him the phone number to the old toxicologist’s office.

He said he already had it stored in his smart phone.

“How soon can we meet?”

“Tonight,” he said. “Nine o’clock sharp. But first I’ve got to make the evening deadline with another story about a convict breach at Green Haven.”

“I need to get to you sooner,” I said. “Scarlet is scheduled for a cremation in a few hours. I need to save her body of evidence.”

“I’ll contact the S.P.’s office immediately after I get Dr. Miner’s statement. Believe me, they’ll want nothing more than to put a halt to the cremation.”

I pulled a ballpoint from what used to be an ashtray full of crushed cigarette butts.

I said, “Okay. Nine o’clock it is. The usual venue?”

“Get there early, in case airport security is a bitch.”

I scribbled the number 9 on the palm of my left hand, stuffed the pen back into the now ashless tray.

“I’ll make it,” I said, cutting the connection.

42

WHAT ALL THIS MEANT, of course, was that my intended Russian restaurant visit up in Woodstock would have to be put on hold.

For now it was more important to work on
how
Scarlet died rather than
why
.

As for the Albino man, my built-in shit detector told me he had much more to do with the
why
than the
how
.

Like most detectives I had two cameras packed away in an oversized, custom made, padlocked metal strongbox that I stored inside the trunk of the Mercedes. The first, a 35 mm Minolta with color film that provided day and date imprints, plus a digital camera that I now used in place of the obsolete Polaroid.

Also packed away in the same box, a small black field bag containing scissors, wire cutters, tweezers, pliers, syringes, plastic bags, pen-light flashlights, a bottle of Luminaire and a few other assorted necessities that included fine-haired brushes and magnetic powders for lifting latent fingerprints. Equipment that would have aided my detecting during my first trip to the house had Cain not been supervising.

The Beatles once more cranking from the speakers, I drove out of the hospital parking lot, crossed over New Scotland, headed east along Madison until I came to the white marble-paneled Catskill Plaza. where I pulled over, ran into the Charter One Bank located on the complex’s first floor, deposited the rest of Jake’s cash advance. When I got back in the car I hooked a left onto Eagle, drove past City Hall and the white marble court building to New York Route 9 northbound, in the direction of the Montana household.

Now was the time to get back inside Scarlet’s bedroom, to match the scrapings on her wrists with those on the bedposts.

If there were bedposts.

There were other things that needed to be done.

I wanted to pick up any samples that might be stuck to the carpet. These included tiny hair fibers, threads, anything that might appear foreign and/or out of the ordinary.

Anything that might have come from Jake, not from me!

I also wanted to get a better look at the blood spatter patterns, spray the room with Luminaire in order to get a visual on any leftover blood that proved untraceable to the human eye. I had to gather up as much evidence as I could that would corroborate Miner’s tox findings. The more the better.

Scarlet was to be autopsied in six and a half hours. That is, unless the D.A. stepped in to stop it.

I wasn’t about to count on anything.

“She’s not a girl who misses much …
sang John Lennon while I cruised up Crumitie along the northern edge of the city, where the concrete and blacktop jungle ended and the suburban sprawl began. I looked over my left shoulder at the St. Pious parking lot and the big brick church, attached school and gymnasium that loomed in the center of it.

My boy was in there.

In the center of my brain, I saw him sitting inside one of the painted cement block classrooms. I saw his face, his closely cropped hair and smooth cheeks. I saw him smiling, laughing, going about his day without me. The vision, as always, was way too real.

So that when my attention was diverted by the sound of sirens, I was none too disappointed.

One glance into the rear view revealed at least three fire engines bearing down on my back end.

Without thinking, I pulled over onto the shoulder, allowed them to pass.

Sirens blaring, flashers flashing, they blew by me in a New York millisecond.

I found myself breathing deep, forehead resting on the steering column. There was the rain falling against the windshield and the swoosh-and-click rhythm the wiper blades made as they swiped the windshield.

I’m not sure why exactly, but I suddenly fell into a fit of exhaustion.

The sleepy sensation poured over me like a cloudburst, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I felt dizzy, the fingers on my right hand trembling with pins and needles. I needed to sit down. But then, I was already sitting.

All went black even before I closed my eyes.

Scarlet lies on her side. Other than the thin gold necklace that dangles against her white breasts, she is naked. She is smiling, about to break out into a bitter laugh … I see myself reaching for her; reaching for her neck …

My eyes opened.

Maybe I was taking on too much with this case. Maybe I should have just signed off on Jake’s request. There was a .22 caliber frag in the center of my head, nestled snug up against the cerebral cortex. I knew by now that a whole lot of stress could force the bullet to move.

Still, I was alive.

Scarlet wasn’t.

As the sirens faded into the suburban distance, I rubbed my face with my open hands, forced the blood up to the surface of the skin. I felt the blood pour back into my fingertips. Gripping the column-mounted transmission stick with my right hand, I threw the heavy funeral coach back into drive, pulled back out onto the road. At the same time I raised my left hand, felt the button-sized entry wound scar behind my ear.

“Happiness is a warm gun,”
the assassinated Beatle wailed,
“Bang, bang; shoot, shoot.”

- - -

There was nothing left.

Correction … what was left of the two-story Colonial was completely engulfed in flames and, along with it, any hope for further answers (forensic or otherwise) from Scarlet’s second floor bedroom.

A major, all consuming conflagration.

Waco redux. Even in the steady rain.

Beautiful, really, if you’re into pyrotechnics.

Orange-red flames rising, roaring out of the holes punched into the roof by the firefighters with their pickaxes, boiling through the blown out windows. I must have parked a good one-hundred-fifty feet away from the inferno. But the heat was so intense, the radiation it generated slapped me in the face the moment I stepped out of the car.

The heat did not let up there.

It grew more and more intense as Cain emerged from out of the crowd of gawkers. With the plastic covered Nicky Joy at his side, he stopped me in my tracks.

“Crime scene all gone,” he said. Then, realizing what he said and how he said it, he shook his head in obvious disgust.

Joy just stood there, granny glasses streaked with rainwater, transparent rain gear sprinkled with black ash.

Together the three of us moved on towards the onlookers and on-the-spot television reporters standing beside their mobile broadcasting vans. Even the firemen who were dressed in full black protective gear—masks and oxygen tanks strapped to their backs—could only come so close to the fire without getting charred. The only visible option for the crews at this stage of the battle was to fix their hoses on the heavy flames, keep them from spreading to the homes located on either side of the Montana estate.

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, a reporter’s steno pad.

Covering his eyes, Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses.

I knew he’d given me a good look before simply walking past, nudging my shoulder a little in the process.

“‘Scuse me,” he said, voice 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 my one-time sidekick: Detective Mitch 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 turning. But as he did, Cain reached out, took hold of his blazer sleeve.

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

Lyons did a one-eighty, cupped his left hand over the steno pad to keep the rain out. As if the dinner bell had been rung, five or six other newspaper and T.V. reporters gathered at the feed trough alongside the
Times Union
reporter. Because after all, one of Stormville’s top detectives was about to make a statement.

“I would like to go on record with the following,” he announced. “If it is determined that the destruction by fire of the Montana home was the result of an arsonist’s act, 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.”

My pulse ceased. Or so I thought.

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.

The reporters pushed forward, shoved their way towards Cain with their hand-held 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 stone-faced 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 dum-dum 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 S.P.D. does not take care of its own.”

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

43

IT TOOK A GOOD deal of shoving and pushing. But soon enough Cain had us through the crowd and standing just inside the off-limits perimeter established by a long semicircular formation of police barricades.

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, discovered I was about to prove Scarlet was murdered.

I wanted to spit those exact words in his face.

But how could I? I had no proof of anything.

And 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 suicide. Just a very toxic tox report backed up with Dr. Miner’s testimony, my gut instinct, and my growing suspicion of my old partner and my son’s stepfather, Mitch Cain.

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 multicolored police and fire truck flashers and the tinny indiscernible voices that spewed out of the two-way radios.

Cain slapped me on the shoulder.

“Follow me,” he shouted above 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 E.M.T. van was parked. The van was white with red block letters printed on the side. It was parked at the top of the drive besides 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 knew for certain 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. But with the light rain falling on the charred skin, it wasn’t hard to make out the steam that rose up off the body, out the head-to-foot opening in the unzippered body bag.