Murder by Moonlight Read online

  “Poor, poor, pitiful you,” she says. “Come on, then. They won’t bitch if we’re quick about it.”

  She leads the way toward a Buick that’s now being lit up with two racks of portable halogens like you see highway road crews use at night. When we come to the ribbon, she pulls it up for me. I step under. I wonder why she’s being so nice to me. So accommodating. Especially when I’ve been going out of my way to make her department look bad. Maybe it’s the result of shock. Post-traumatic stress. I’ve seen it happen before. Your whole outlook changes when you witness violent death, or the spattered results of it. Anything that seems important before is suddenly meaningless.

  We come up on the car. I can see in through the windshield. There’s a body that appears to have been thrown back against the driver’s seat, hands down flat at the sides. Darleen says something I don’t quite catch to the two forensic experts who are working the backseat, where most of the spatter will have occurred. They’re standing in the lot, baby-blue hospital booties covering their shoes, their back ends visible. But their torsos and hair-netted heads are inside the car.

  I walk slowly around to the side of the vehicle. When I look through the driver’s-side window I can see Bowman’s face. He’s wearing that God-awful gaping-wide-open mouth and eye expression all headshot victims wear. Especially suicides. There’s no white vapor coming from his mouth like there is on us living people on a cold day like this. In the front, his gray hair is perfectly groomed. From behind, it’s mussed.

  I bend at the waist so that I can see into the open back door and get a look at his remains, especially his head. Most of the cranial vault is missing. Nine-mm Smith and Wesson packs a messy punch at point-blank range, which is precisely why I chose to use a no-mess, easy-clean-up .22-caliber during my own little unpleasantness way back when.

  I grew up with death, and I’ve stood face to face with my own death on several occasions, but you never get used to headshots.

  I turn away.

  “This what you want, sugar?” Officer Darleen says.

  She produces a single sheet of 8½ x 11 inch, standard, white copy paper. Same stuff your see in all the world’s offices. Her hands are covered with green latex gloves and she’s holding the letter up for me to read. I understand completely. My prints would contaminate the evidence.

  I read the note.

  I hope you understand why I’m doing this. It’s been coming for a long time. I admit to hiring Dr. Jim O’Connor to back up my story about Christopher Parker killing his father and trying to kill his mother. When Joan Parker admitted to her son being responsible, I felt my heart break. You wouldn’t know what I’m talking about unless you were there to see her. Her head, her face, the blood, the bed, the bedroom. She was awake through it all, even though her face was crushed, her right eye gone and skull collapsed. I did what I did because I thought that I could not be wrong when she openly blamed her son, even if she then later recanted. Her initial reaction could not have been wrong. She is an honorable woman. I paid Jim O’Connor five thousand dollars from my own checking account to back up my argument and my decision to arrest Christopher for the crimes. The prosecution is not aware of this bribe and should not be held accountable. Tell my wife I loved her and I’m sorry.

  Then he signed it. But not in his handwriting. Like the rest of the note, the signature was typed on a computer. Times New Roman font.

  I read the note again. It says the same thing. Pretty detailed for a suicide note. Pretty dramatic, too. “Tell my wife I loved her and I’m sorry” would have been plenty. “Loved.” As in the past tense. Even that might have been a lot to get out for a long-divorced cop bent on ending it all. Maybe paying O’Connor for his testimony might be illegal and desperate, but is it still reason enough for a suicide? Who the hell knows? Maybe Bowman had been fighting off depression for a while. Maybe it was his last five grand. Who knows why people kill themselves. It’s just like Darleen says: it’s all a big mystery. Even for me—a guy who’s been to the blackest place on earth and somehow survived it. One thing is for sure, Bowman couldn’t have been in his right mind when he started writing checks to O’Connor, and he was simply out of his mind when he shot himself. If he shot himself.

  I thank Darleen for her help with the suicide note. She, in turn, hands it back to the forensics people. Before we leave the scene, I take one more good look into the Buick’s back seat.

  “What do you think?” I pose to the forensics people. “Anything out of place?”

  A woman working the front passenger-side seat lifts her head, giving me a sideways glance over her shoulder. “Looks like a suicide to me,” she says with a smile. “We’ll have his piece checked for prints in the lab. We’ll have the car scrubbed and vacuumed. But so far, it looks like what it’s supposed to look like.”

  “A damn shame,” Darleen adds behind me. “That’s what it is, sugar. A damned, crying shame.”

  I pull back, stand up straight. “A damned, crying shame,” I repeat, recalling the moment the .22-caliber pistol went off beside my own head. “I could not agree more.”

  It’s full dark by the time I leave the Bethlehem police station. I have every intention of heading back into the city. But something tells me to make a return visit to 36 Brockley Drive.

  The street’s dark. Other than the occasional light that hangs from a telephone pole, there are no street lamps. The houses are lit up, though. All of their windows reflect the interior lights of the living, shiny happy families. Some of the homes are still decked out with Christmas lights three weeks after the holiday. I’d bet the mortgage they will stay that way until Easter. Brilliant displays of reds, greens, yellows, and whites that make a common split-level ramshackle joint look like the cutest little gingerbread house you ever did see. Some people have giant plastic Santa Clauses standing out on the lawn. Some have teams of reindeer. One homeowner has even ventured so far as to attach a team of reindeer and a sled to the roof of the house. Almost looks real.

  The Parker house is a bleak reflection of the living homes that surround it. Black and ugly, it bears no luminescence of any kind. The woods located directly behind it give the place a darkness so deep and richly black that you can almost reach out and touch it.

  But then, who the hell would want to?

  Unlike on my last visit, I don’t see the necessity of hiding my less-than-conventional ride. I simply park in the driveway, kill the engine. For a while, I just sit there and stare, trying to put some of the puzzle pieces together.

  Jonathan Parker’s question of that afternoon echoes loudly in my head.

  Do I think Chris killed his father and tried to kill his mother?

  Christ, I keep seeing visions of a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler pulling up to the house in the dead of night, the occupant killing the engine, making his way up the drive, reaching into the flowerpot for the key, sticking the key into the lock, quietly opening the front door, slipping inside, closing the door behind him, entering the code into the alarm keypad, disengaging it.

  I see the kid tiptoeing through the vestibule, through the kitchen, down into the den and to the garage door. During the long drive from Rochester, he would have decided on using an axe to kill his parents. He would know precisely where to find the axe inside his father’s well-organized garage. The fireman’s axe would be hanging on the wall in between the rake and the electric Weed Eater.

  Without emotion, without tears or anxiety, he would pull the axe down off the wall, grip it in his frail hands. It’s while he’s standing there that something dawns on him. What he’s about to do will make a tremendous mess. He’s an Eagle Scout. Maybe he’s been hunting with his troop. Hunting for food. Hunting for survival. Maybe he knows all about the mess that spilled blood can make. Maybe he’s even contemplated the spatter mess that can result from an axe wound. Which is why he makes his way farther into the garage where he locates an apron and gloves his mother uses when she works in her garden. It’s a little small for him, but he’s skinny and i
t’s not so small it won’t catch the spatter.

  The apron and the axe in hand, he makes his way around his father’s parked Taurus until he once more comes to the garage door. Before stepping back through the door, he spots the secondary keypad for the household alarm. The idea to shatter it enters his head then. If he shatters it, he creates the illusion of someone other than himself having broken and entered the house, maybe with the intent to burglarize it. What would be even better, he thinks, would be to head down into the basement and smash the alarm enunciator panel also. It’s a nice touch. A detailed touch. Something that a dizzy college kid would never think of doing.

  Problem is, he can’t go around banging things quite yet. His parents are sleeping. And for sure they’ll awaken if they hear all that banging. They might even call the cops. Better to do what he came here to do first, then take care of the details.

  Heading through the garage door, he closes it gently behind him. Then he heads back into the kitchen, where he locates two plastic grocery bags. He carries the bags with him into the vestibule, where he pauses, facing the stairs. His parents aren’t light sleepers, but they don’t sleep like the dead, either. Not yet, anyway. So Chris is smart enough to remove his socks and shoes, set them at the bottom of the stairs. He also removes his pants and his shirt, folds them, sets them neatly on top of the shoes. He puts on the apron, ties it. Then he steps into the bags, ties each one tight. Next he slips the gardening gloves on, opening and closing his hands to make sure he’ll be able to maintain a good grip on the axe handle. He does not bother to mask his face. Wearing only the apron, the plastic bags, the gloves, and his underwear, Chris climbs the staircase as lightly as his six-foot frame will allow.

  When he comes to the bedroom, he sees only the silhouettes of his mother and father’s sleeping bodies. But unlike an intruding stranger filled with self-doubt, these are silhouettes he will recognize, dark shapes he will be as familiar with as his own reflected image.

  Christopher oozes with confidence. But he also bleeds rage.

  His father is sleeping under the covers on his side, facing away from his wife. Facing his son. Behind him, his mother faces her husband, sleeping on her right side. The room is dark, but there’s a moon out tonight and it provides enough light for him to see his targets.

  He lifts the axe with both his hands.

  In his mind, he’s viewing his father’s exposed head as nothing more than a log to be axed in the woods. Utilizing all his Eagle Scout training, he puts his hand-eye coordination skills to the test. Careful to let the axe do all the work, he brings it down swiftly, feeling the sensation of the thick blade hitting home, sinking into the bone, flesh, and brain matter.

  The strike is surprisingly quiet, the natural muffling qualities of the flesh working for him. The blade entering the bone-covered flesh is oddly satisfying. It is replete with a textural quality, like cracking an egg against the rim of a skillet.

  His father doesn’t make a move, but he does issue a moan. Then comes a surprise: the axe is not releasing itself easily. The Eagle Scout must set his left foot against the edge of the mattress in order to obtain the leverage necessary to pull the heavy axe head out and strike again. Which he manages to do.

  He strikes his father’s head at least three separate times, until all he notices coming from the man is a slight gurgling sound. The elapsed time since he entered the room up until now is no more than forty-five seconds, but there’s already enough blood for it to be pooling in the bed and running off the mattress onto the carpeted floor.

  Christopher knows that it is possible his mother is awake by now, petrified and catatonic with raw fear at the nightmare she is living. Chris doesn’t know quite how to feel about her being awake. It’s another one of those things he didn’t anticipate on the ride from Rochester to the home. But just as precise as he was in the attack on his father, he now raises up the bloodied axe blade, brings it down hard and accurately onto his mother’s head and face. Like her husband, she will not react to the strikes. She will not struggle, even when the blade splits her right eyeball in two, even as it splits her skull, exposing her brain. She will remain so still that by the time her son completes the third and final blow, he will assume she is dead. Just like his father.

  As the blood of his mother and father spills out onto the floor, Chris turns, drops the fireman’s axe. Careful not to step in any of the blood that has pooled at his feet, he exits the bedroom, makes his way down the stairs. Removing the plastic bags from his feet, he then removes the blood-spattered gloves and apron. He carefully places the gloves and plastic bags into the apron, folds it in on itself, bloody side first, and sets it on the floor by the door. Casually, he redresses himself.

  After putting his shoes back on, he recalls the alarm pad in the garage. Making his way back into the garage, he finds one of his old Little League baseball bats and uses it to crush the pad. Heading back inside, he takes the stairs down into the basement, does a job on the alarm enunciator panel with the same bat.

  Back upstairs there’s still more work to do. Knowing that it’s important to make it look like the perp entered the house through the garage, he retrieves a sharp carving knife from the kitchen and heads with it back to the garage through the den, makes his way outside, and cuts the screen on the garage window. Inside the garage, he makes certain the window is unlocked. Then, grabbing his dad’s old stepladder off the garage wall, he makes his way out back, leans the ladder against the side of the house, climbs the ladder, and cuts the telephone line. Something he knows he should have done before he killed his parents, but no time for regrets now.

  All this accomplished, he knows the time has come to leave the scene. It will be daylight in a matter of an hour and he wants to be on the road by then, well on his way back to school.

  Back inside the house, he returns the stepladder, gathers up the bloodied apron, the baseball bat, the carving knife, the plastic bags, and the gloves, stuffs everything into a green plastic Hefty trash bag, which he carries with him back out the front door. Stuffing the bag into the back of the yellow Jeep, he drives away, heads for I-90 and, ultimately, Rochester. Somewhere along the way, he ditches the Hefty bag into a rest stop Dumpster. Maybe he even grabs a breakfast sandwich or a doughnut.

  ____

  The flashlight blinds me. I feel my heart jump into my mouth. I pull my piece, cock back the hammer. When the light is pulled away, a face replaces it.

  Okey.

  I roll down the window on the Caddy. “Jesus fucking Christ, Maxwell!”

  “You don’t have to use that kind of language, Mr. Moonlight.” The mechanical engineer’s voice is low, calm.

  For a split second, I think about pointing the pistol at his nose, squeezing the trigger. Instead, I thumb back the hammer, stuff the piece inside my holster. “Sorry. But you scared the living shit out of me.”

  “I caught sight of the hearse parked on the side of the road. I got curious,” Okey explains, the flashlight now shining on the pavement. “You must have heard about Christopher’s good fortune by now.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my heart still pumping. “He’s out on bond. Thanks to the good Brockley Drive community.”

  “And thanks to you. Or so I’m told.”

  “I’ve heard that before, too. Who led the campaign to come up with the bail money?”

  Even in the dark, I see his shiny, nicotine-stained smile beaming at me from under his wool hat. “Not me,” the mechanical engineer admits. But then he proudly proclaims, “But I did pitch in the final ten K. Just a couple of hours ago.”

  His admission gives me more than a little pause.

  “Maxwell,” I say, “wasn’t it you who helped nail Chris in the first place by having spotted his yellow Jeep parked outside the house?”

  “Yes sireee, I saw a yellow Jeep Wrangler parked outside the house on the morning of September 15th. Had a mud stain on the back.”

  “But you never got a plate.”

  “Never thought to get
a plate.”

  “When I spoke to you last, you seemed convinced Chris might have been his parents’ attacker.”

  “That’s until I learned that Bowman paid an expert to lie for him.”

  “Bowman is dead.”

  “Yup. Yet another surprise. You don’t commit suicide unless you’re feeling guilty about something big.”

  “You now think Chris is innocent.” A question.

  “I think a proper investigation needs to be conducted, Mr. Moonlight. I’ve known Chris a long time. I was his scoutmaster. Spent plenty of weekend nights by the campfire with him and other Bethlehem fathers like Doc Robinson in the middle of those woods behind the house. I can say this: he never once gave me the impression of someone who’d carry out a brutal murder, much less on his own parents with an axe. And this afternoon, when I learned about Bowman, his payoff, and suicide, well it seemed to me I might have been judging Chris too harshly, even if I did see what I thought was his Jeep in the driveway.”

  “OK, supposing the kid is innocent. You have any idea who might be able to do something like that? Someone who would also know where to find a key to the front door to the Parker home?”

  He shakes his head. “If I knew,” he says, “I wouldn’t be telling you. I’d be telling the Bethlehem police.”

  I start the hearse.

  “Nice seeing you again, Maxwell.” But what I really want to say is, You give me the fucking creeps. Maybe even more so than Chris Parker.

  “Feliz navidad,” he says, raising his thumb over his shoulder at the lit-up rooftop Santa sled. “Even if it is a little late.”

  “Vaya con Dios,” I say, and back out.

  I decide to call it a day.

  I head in the direction of home through the little town of Bethlehem. At night, the streets are deserted and street lamps shine bright beams down on the sidewalks. I head toward the Four Corners when I spot a lone woman walking briskly toward the coffee shop. When I pull up to the traffic light, I turn to get a better look. It’s then I see that the lone woman is Doc Robinson’s red-hot assistant, Erin.