Moonlight Falls Read online

  “I didn’t think it was used anymore,” I said.

  “It’s very rare,” he agreed. “Or rarely used, anyway. Forty-five years in the business and never once have I come across it in a potential homicide until now.” He explained that curare was only lethal when injected directly into the bloodstream, but not when ingested orally, in which case it only caused a temporary total paralysis.

  “Edgar Allen Poe suggested the use of curare in his story, ‘The Premature Burial,’“ he said with a quick over-the-shoulder glance to the bookshelf behind him. “The story examines the then very real possibility of being buried alive. Poe was petrified of it. With curare you are unable to talk, blink your eyes or move your lips. You can hardly breathe. Yet the mind remains razor sharp, fully cognizant. That was Poe’s real fear: being fully conscious of your hopeless, suffocating situation underground.”

  Miner also revealed that the Nazis had a nasty habit of administering a combination of curare and mescaline on select Jews and Poles in Dachau during their savage wartime mind-control experiments.

  “The drug works quickly,” he went on. “But then the paralyzing effects can disappear just as fast, depending upon the dosage. So too will all traces of the drug.” He shifted his gaze from the tox report to me. “Ten years ago, I never would have found it.”

  “The miracle of technology,” I said. But what I really thought was this: it didn’t take a brain surgeon or even a toxicologist with forty- five years experience under his lab coat to make a clear determination on how Scarlet had been murdered.

  “Somebody fed her the stuff,” I added. “Then proceeded to cut her up in a way that would make it look like a psychotic suicide.”

  “As in self-mutilation,” Miner said. “Which is, of course, more believable than if the cuts had been nice and neatly executed.”

  “The last desperate act of a desperate housewife. That’s the theme the killer was after.”

  Considering this new development, I had to ask myself how possible was it that I would have access, much less the means, to acquire a poison like curare? The answer, of course, was impossible. But then what about Jake? Could he find a way to get the stuff? As the top Albany cop, I knew it was very possible. Standing inside that musty old office, I was beginning to feel my sternum loosen up. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, I was beginning to believe that I had absolutely nothing to do with Scarlet’s death. Sure, there were the scratches on my hands, but that’s all they were.

  Scratches.

  “At this point,” Miner continued, “I’m beginning to think her heart may have given out even before her throat was cut. But then, here’s where things get even more interesting, Richard my boy.” Once more, he stared down at the graph. “She also had ingested enough opiate and speed to jumpstart a Mack truck.”

  “Speed, as in amphetamines,” I mused. “Opiate, as in heroin, smack, shit.”

  He sat back heavily in his chair. I pictured Suma letting me in on Scarlet’s nasty drug habit.

  “Shit,” he said. “Precisely.”

  “What do you make of all this?” I asked.

  “My take is that the sadistic bastard who did this wanted her completely messed up on one hand— “

  “Drunk and paralyzed,” I interjected.

  “—but on quite another hand, he wanted her fully awake, fully cognizant.” He paused for a quick breath and a painful wince. “You see what I’m getting at here, Richard?”

  I shook my head.

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that the killer wanted to keep her fully immobile, but also fully conscious while he cut her up.”

  The silence in the dark room suddenly seemed thicker than the dust that coated the furniture.

  Until I raised the billion dollar question: “Am I to conclude, Dr. Miner, that in your professional opinion, Scarlet could not possibly have killed herself by slicing her own neck?”

  “The only thing she could have managed in her state, Detective Moonlight, was to die.”

  I sat up straight. The arteries in my head were throbbing.

  “You be willing to act as an expert witness in a court of law, old friend?”

  Miner made a cross over his heart with his right hand.

  “So help me die,” he said. “Not that I’m gonna need any.”

  A beat later, Miner had to excuse himself before hobbling to the bathroom down the hall outside his office. I used the break as an excuse to pull the thick volume of Poe off his bookshelf. Sitting back down I thumbed through the collected works until I came to the story I was looking for: “The Premature Burial.”

  Alone, inside that dimly lit room, I began to read.

  What I learned is that curare could indeed be a very helpful tool for the person who wanted to fake their own death. It could also prove instrumental for the creep who required his victim to become completely incapacitated while remaining fully awake, fully aware. Even if said victim was about to be murdered in the most brutal of ways.

  In the tale, Poe recounts the true story of the wife of a prominent Baltimore congressman who one day in the mid-1850’s, without warning, was stricken with a “sudden and unaccountable illness.” Her doctors, not having the skills necessary to resuscitate, pronounced her dead.

  According to Poe, “her face assumed the usual pinch and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lusterless. There was no warmth. Pulsation ceased.”

  The supposedly dead woman was placed inside the family vault where she remained for three years until it was opened once again. It was then that the widowed husband got the shock of his life. Instead of discovering the decayed body of his wife inside her casket, he found her still clothed bones set beside the tomb’s door. Having become fully awake, the woman had somehow managed to escape her casket. At some point during her ordeal, she even managed to light an oil lamp. What she could not manage, however, was to gain anyone’s attention before she must have surely starved to death inside that lonely black tomb.

  While Poe made no mention of murder or a murderer, it was obvious that the woman had been drugged with a chemical that, while giving away nothing about how or who might have been responsible for administering the mechanism of death, made her appear very dead. Maybe the guilty party had been the woman’s politician husband, or maybe it was the woman herself. In any case, the point here was not whodunit, but whatdunit.

  Miner came back in. I got up and replaced the volume back onto the shelf where it belonged.

  “Pretty scary stuff,” he commented.

  “If you’re still hanging around when I go, promise me you’ll make certain there’s no gas left in the tank,” I said.

  “Don’t talk like that, son,” he said as he painfully slid himself back down into his chair as if the question had an answer. He sat as far back as the swivel spring would allow without him dropping onto his back.

  “Would you be willing to go public with your findings even before the trial begins?” I asked.

  He twirled his thumbs. I knew the action helped him to think.

  “How far in advance?”

  “Today,” I replied, with a downward glance at my wristwatch. “Scarlet’s body is scheduled for a four o’clock cremation. Phillips has already offered to stop it, but I want to prevent his direct involvement for as long as possible. I might be able to legitimately stop it if you—the toxicologist—go public now.”

  He nodded for a few seconds while staring down at his twirling thumbs. Then he perked up.

  “I have no real reason to withhold my information, if that’s what you want. But I warn you, my coming forward now may render my evidence inadmissible in court. Unless there’s an order for discovery that I’m not aware of.”

  “I’m not concerned with the future,” I told him. “All I want to do is invite an immediate public inquiry. I do that, I’ve not only won some kind of justice for Scarlet, but I also start smoking out the real killer or killers.”

  Sitting up in his chair,
Miner once more pulled the center drawer open. He pulled out a second manila folder. A duplicate for sure. He slammed the drawer closed, handing the package to me from across the desk.

  “You might find yourself talking to a crime reporter as early as this afternoon,” I said. “That is, if I can arrange it. This package doesn’t mean a whole lot unless you put yourself out there, offer up a testimony.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said, tired face showing hints of yet another wave of pain shooting through his body. “I’ll let the public in on the truth.”

  I felt the slight weight of the package resting against my right quadricep.

  “You do this,” I warned him, “you act of your own volition. If I.A. suspects you were coerced, they’ll crucify us both.”

  “Look, Richard,” he said, “In my professional opinion, somebody messed that woman up real bad. For whatever reason, I don’t know. That should be for the police to determine. But if the cops don’t want to get to the bottom of it, then I think it’s only right that we do it for them.”

  “No one should be allowed to get away with murder,” I growled. “Especially an honest-to-goodness decorated officer of the law.”

  32

  Tox report in hand, I made my swift retreat from Dr. Miner’s office.

  Outside the building, I jogged past the physical plant, past the massive concrete platform that supported the tall, ice-coated liquid oxygen tanks that misted in the gray sky and light rain.

  Once inside the funeral coach, I dialed the now-memorized number for Lyons.

  “Crime desk,” he answered.

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

  “Where are you?” “Albany Med. And what I’ve got from tox tells me that Scarlet was drugged, then cut up in her own bed, alive. No evidence of a break in.”

  Lyons exhaled. “Holy Christ,” he said. “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 Palm Pilot.

  “How soon can we meet?” I asked.

  “Tonight,” he said. “Nine o’clock sharp.”

  “I need to get to you sooner,” I told him. “Scarlet is scheduled for a cremation in a few hours. I need to save her body and I need for it to come from your end.”

  “I’ll contact O’Connor’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. “Okay. Nine o’clock it is. The usual venue?”

  “Be on time.”

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

  “I never run late,” I said, cutting the connection.

  33

  What all of this meant, of course, was that my intended Russian restaurant visit up in Saratoga 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 a padlocked metal strongbox that I stored inside the back of the funeral coach where once my dad might have stored a wreath. One was a 35mm Minolta with color film that provided day and date imprints, the other 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, penlight flashlights, a bottle of luminol and a few other assorted necessities, including 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 eight-track speakers, I drove out of the hospital parking lot. I crossed over New Scotland, headed east along Madison until I came to the white marble-paneled Empire State Plaza where I pulled over, ran into the Charter One Bank located on the complex’s first floor, and deposited the rest of Jake’s cash advance. When I got back in the car, I hooked a left onto Eagle, driving past City Hall on my way to New York Route 9 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 luminol 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— evidence independent of the evidence Albany forensics might have lifted on Sunday night.

  The more independent evidence, the better.

  When it was done, I might even consider the standard door-to- door interview process. Maybe if I got in the face of the surrounding neighbors I might coerce a statement or two confirming the sounds of violent arguing coming from the Montana household on Sunday night.

  Scarlet was to be cremated in six and a half hours. That is, unless Prosecutor O’Connor stepped in to stop it.

  I wasn’t about to count on anything other than performing the precise and careful C.S.I. that Cain would never have allowed when he first brought me onto the scene as the puppet independent investigator.

  “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 jungle ended and the suburban sprawl began. I looked over my left shoulder at the Saint Pious parking lot and the big brick church, attached school, and gymnasium that loomed in the center of it.

  Harrison was in there . . . my little bear.

  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 rearview revealed at least three fire engines bearing down on my ass end. Without thinking, I pulled over onto the shoulder, allowing them to pass. Sirens blaring, lights 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 of the wiper blades swiping 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 top of my head to the tips of my toes. 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 dam
aged hands, forcing 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 and pulled back out onto the road. At the same time, I raised my hand, feeling the button-sized entry wound scar behind my ear.

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

  34

  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.

  Orange-red flames rose and roared out of holes punched into the roof by the firefighters with their pickaxes, boiled through the blown-out windows. I must have parked a good one-hundred feet away from the inferno, but the heat was so intense it bitch-slapped me in the face the moment I stepped out the car.

  The heat didn’t let up there. It grew more and more intense as Cain emerged from out of the crowd of sightseers. 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 had said and how he’d said it, he shook his head in obvious disgust. Joy just stood there, granny glasses streaked with rainwater, transparent raingear 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 and 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 was a reporter’s steno pad.