Moonlight Falls (A Dick Moonlight PI Series Book 1) Read online

  In my heart, I knew there had to be another reason behind it all—something she’d never shared with me that maybe only she knew, or perhaps just she and Jake knew. And if that were indeed the case—that Scarlet and Jake shared some horrible secret that caused her to take her own life—then by all means they had taken it with them to their separate graves.

  Finally, a funeral was held for Mitch Cain.

  The department also refused to offer him the standard twenty-one-gun sendoff. Not even Lynn showed up for the event, making his farewell a fairly frigid one. Frigid air: something that might come in handy where he was headed.

  One thing I did notice, however, during one of my flybys in the Mercedes funeral coach, was that a FOR SALE sign had gone up outside the Cain house. Obviously, Lynn was making definite plans with her newfound widowhood. Which prompted me to place a call.

  She picked up the phone the same time my son picked up on a separate extension.

  “It’s okay, babe,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay, Mom,” he replied before clumsily hanging up.

  “Hello?”

  First I ID’ed myself, then I dispensed with the pleasantries, asking her if she would consider granting me at least half-custody to our son.

  “Now might be a good time for me to share responsibilities,” I said.

  I can’t say why, but when I said it, I thought my entire insides were going to spill out onto the floor. Maybe my anxiety had something to do with the chance I was taking by calling her. I knew that she would probably say no. I realized that with Mitch gone, his pension denied and the house up for sale (the proceeds of which were almost surely going to be seized by both state and federal agencies) that the only thing she had to hold onto was her work as a nurse and our boy.

  Still, it was worth the shot.

  Initially, she said nothing. She just sort of inhaled and exhaled. For a beat or two it was as if she no longer possessed the strength necessary to make words. Maybe she didn’t.

  Imagine my surprise when she told me she admired Scarlet for what she had done. Admired her courage, her guts. How she managed to extend the ultimate fuck off to them all. How she could not have scripted it better herself even if she were a Hollywood writer.

  “As much as I despised Scarlet Montana for what she did to me, to you, to Mitchell, to my family,” she confessed, “I was only too glad to help. . . in my own small way.”

  Of course, that’s when the realization sank in.

  In my mind, I shouted You gave Scarlet the curare! Scarlet let you in on what she was planning and you gave her the curare and the speed. You’re a nurse! You’d have the access inside the E.R. You hated her because she was sleeping with your second husband after having slept with your first husband.

  I shouted it out in my head instead of over the phone because I really did not want to know the truth. If my instincts were right on and

  Lynn had indeed assisted in Scarlet’s self-demise, then I could not begin to face the reality of it all. We had a son together, after all. Lynn, no matter who she was or what she had become, would always be his mother. I would prefer to think of her as someone who would not assist in a killing, even if that killing did turn out to be a suicide.

  I was relieved when, after a few weighted silent beats, she proceeded to say something else. But then it didn’t have anything to do with the curare or the speed. It had everything to do with our son. In no uncertain terms, she was transferring half-custody to me. She was heading out to Los Angeles for a while. She’d already arranged for a position at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. For the time being, she wanted me to look after our son. Upon arrival in the City of Angels, she would email me with her new telephone number. For now, I could expect the proper papers to be drawn up by her lawyer and delivered to me for signature as soon as they were completed. As for the boy, he would be dropped off on the following Monday morning. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be gone. She had a lot of soul searching to do; a lot of patients to heal. But until she made it back to the east coast, the boy would remain with me full time.

  “And please,” she added, “keep your guns locked up.”

  Any questions?

  None whatsoever.

  I hung up before she had a chance to take it all back.

  78

  One calm, cool night I did something completely out of character for me: I fell asleep early. The rain that had been falling on Albany for almost three weeks straight had shifted out to sea a few days earlier. Now the late May nights were warm, breezy and dry. Summer was coming.

  I can’t tell you how long I’d been asleep, but when the phone rang, I was startled awake. For a fleeting few seconds, I didn’t know where I was, nor did I know the time.

  I answered the phone.

  I didn’t recognize the voice right away, but when he identified himself as Reverend Roland Dubois, the Psychic Fair Master of Ceremonies, I no longer had to think about it.

  “I need to see you,” he said. “Get something off my chest.”

  “Now?” I asked, not at all sure I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “Please,” he said. “It’s important.”

  I hesitated for a beat, then I gave him my address. What else could I do? Avoid him like the bubonic plague for the rest of my days?

  When I hung up, it struck me as kind of funny that the good reverend needed me, of all people, to hear his confession.

  Twenty minutes later he stood before me in the kitchen of my home looking like an over-sized Jesus. When he sat down across from me at the table, I looked up at him, at his full gray goatee and equally gray locks. There was something about his brown eyes. Instead of appearing tight and cynical like they did during my visit to the Psychic Fair some weeks back, they seemed sad now, sedate almost. Judging by his solemn expression, I could tell that the reverend had been indeed holding onto something for a long, long time.

  First he inhaled a long silent breath. Then after an equally long exhale, he started in with something I already knew. Christ, something everybody knew by now. That Scarlet was addicted to the heroin her husband’s body parts buyer provided for her free of charge. Almost free of charge, I should say silence was Scarlet’s currency. The need for her to turn her back on her husband’s illegal activities.

  Next he told me something I didn’t know, but that I might have suspected all along. That the good reverend had been in love with her too. Although they never slept together, he would often visit her in the night when she was most alone and very lonely.

  “Mostly she wanted to talk,” he said. “In private; away from the group.”

  “What about?” I asked as that all-too-familiar pressure began building up behind my eyes.

  “Her sadness,” he replied. “You see, her depression. . . it wasn’t because her husband was just another whacked-out cop. . . if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not a cop anymore.”

  “The depression was the result of something much more devastating.”

  He got up from the table, went over to the window above the sink, and looked out onto the night.

  Some years back, he continued, Scarlet got pregnant. It happened just a few years after Jake had accidentally shot and killed that young woman in the south end—the one who had been working with the Albany police in order to apprehend her drug-dealing boyfriend.

  “If you recall,” the reverend said, “Jake took the whole thing very badly.”

  “I recall,” I said, picturing once again my first afternoon as a junior detective, seeing Jake empty his pistol into the dealer’s car.

  He went on. According to Scarlet, Jake refused to speak of the episode. He retreated into himself along with the bitter memory. At times, his depression was all-consuming. For days and even weeks, he’d hardly look at Scarlet, hardly speak or interact with her in any way. What started out as a union between two people who needed one another as protectors, suddenly broke down.


  “They did have their moments, however,” the reverend added. “Breakthrough moments. Or so Scarlet referred to them.”

  “Is that when she got pregnant?” I asked. “During one of these breakthrough moments?”

  He said she’d carried the child well into the second trimester without telling a soul. She didn’t have a job and her social life was almost nonexistent. She never even visited the precinct, so the knowledge of her pregnancy was pretty hush-hush. In the meantime, Jake was getting worse. Staying away from the house more and more, drinking heavily. And when he did come home he was often filled with rage. Sometimes he took the rage out on Scarlet. As she grew deeper into her pregnancy, the drinking and the rage escalated.

  The reverend stared out the picture window onto the darkness and a set of silent chimes that hung by the eave.

  “The way Scarlet told it to me,” he said, “it happened the night of Easter Sunday, nearly ten years ago now. The two had taken a drive up to Saratoga for a late afternoon dinner.”

  He explained that Jake and Scarlet were having a nice time for a change. A breakthrough moment. Jake not thinking about the past; Scarlet not thinking about anything, just being with her husband while they drank and ate, never once taking her left hand off her small belly, as if to protect it. It would have been a time she cherished, a real breakthrough in their marriage; just a tiny block of time when they were on the same page, protecting and needing one another in the same way they had when they first met.

  But then something happened.

  A family walked into the restaurant. Just an average family dressed up in their Easter Sunday best looking to celebrate the resurrection with a little steak and wine, just like everybody else. A small family, the reverend said. Mom, dad, a teenaged son, and a teenaged daughter. Unassuming, you might say. Were it not for the distinct resemblance the daughter had to Rachel, the blonde girl Jake killed.

  “Scarlet caught him staring at the girl from across the table,” Reverend Dubois went on, hands stuffed in his pants pockets. “She could see Jake’s eyes swell and fill with tears while he gazed upon this innocent teenaged kid.”

  “Breakthrough moment quickly ended,” I supposed.

  “Jake just got up and made his way over to the girl. Imagine this huge, strange, teary-eyed man approaching this young girl, her parents watching all of this as it transpires—him taking the girl’s hand in his, kissing it, telling her how God-awful sorry he was. He tried to hug the girl, literally lifting her off her feet. When she screamed, the father went after him. Several waiters had to intervene before it was over.”

  I pictured the scene in my mind: big Jake wrestling with this girl’s father while trying to apologize about a young life accidentally snuffed out in the line of fire. But then, I couldn’t imagine what had to be going through Scarlet’s mind at the time—what kind of panic.

  “Well, the parents of the girl were just about ready to call the police when Montana pulled out his badge, told them he was the police. Then he simply left the restaurant without paying.

  “Scarlet did her best to explain what the commotion had been about. After a few minutes, the family understood perfectly. They felt so badly for Jake and for Scarlet, they picked up the tab for two Easter dinners barely touched.

  “That night, Jake got terribly drunk. He paced the house carrying his service pistol, mumbling something about how screwed Albany really was. The whole business of Albany law was a house of cards built upon a foundation of lies and deceit. He was no better than the criminals they housed at Green Haven and Sing Sing. He was a criminal. He was a killer, a murderer. He was a traitor to the cause. He had made a separate peace with God by selling his soul to the devil.

  “Scarlet tried to console him. She asked him to stop, to go to bed, to sleep it off. In the morning, he’d feel better. But this just made him angrier. Still she persisted, begged him to stop drinking. Because it just made him worse.

  “And then she said it. She told him if he didn’t stop, she was going to leave him. She was going to leave him and he would never see the birth of his child. She said it over and over again until she was screaming at him.”

  The good reverend paused for a beat, hesitant to reveal what happened next. Until he had no choice.

  “It worked,” he finally went on. “Jake stopped. He set down his glass on the kitchen table. He capped the bottle, went over to the sink, washed his face and dried it with a dishtowel. But instead of putting the dishtowel down, he wrapped it around his right hand and with a smile plastered on his face, proceeded to beat Scarlet until she was unconscious.”

  I sat there, watched the big, gray-haired man turn away from the window, locking his brown eyes with mine.

  “That night,” he whispered, “she lost the baby. Spontaneous termination, I believe they call it. Miscarriage. It happened right in her bed. She was alone. Jake had already left the house. No one ever knew about it, until she told me. Not even Jake asked about it. Not once did he bring the subject up again in the months to come. As if she had never carried his child in the first place.”

  I stared down at my hands folded in my lap. They felt cold and sweaty. My head was reeling. I felt slightly nauseated from the bitter taste of bile in my mouth.

  “So you see, Mr. Moonlight,” Dubois spoke, grave-faced and sullen, “Scarlet had a lot more to die for than just a bad husband. She had a final revenge to enact, a final showdown not only with her maker, but also with the one man who had destroyed her and her child. Why did she kill herself? In dying, she could somehow free herself of the pain while avenging her son’s murder. That might not be the truth, but that’s the truth I want to believe, anyway.”

  “It was a boy?” I asked.

  “She was going to call him James.”

  I ran my hands through my hair, cleared my throat.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come forward when the investigation was still active? Why not come forward when Cain originally arrested me for her murder?”

  “Because I was afraid and I didn’t want to betray our secret,” he said. “I made a solemn promise to Scarlet that I would never tell anyone about the baby. Not even you.”

  “You didn’t know me until she was dead.”

  “But I did,” he said. “You see, Scarlet used to talk a lot about you. She loved you. She felt bad about your condition. But then, she admired the way you always laughed about it, made jokes about it. Jokes that made her laugh and made her sad at the same time. She felt something for you that she didn’t feel for me.”

  “What about Cain?” I asked. “Did she feel anything for him? Did she. . . love him too?”

  He vigorously shook his head, like I wasn’t getting his point.

  “When she slept with Cain, it was purely to get back at Jake. He didn’t even have to know about it. It was simply the act that made the difference for her. But you weren’t like that. She said you never sought her out. That she sought you out and that you were always there for her when she needed you.”

  I watched him swallow a breath. I thought at any moment he might break down along with me.

  “She told me something once not long before she died that should put the whole thing into perspective for you.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “She said she never had sex with you. That she made love to you.”

  I groaned. “You had to tell me that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I thought you should know, even though God knows how I wished she would have made love to me.”

  He formed a smile, but I could tell he wasn’t the least bit happy or relieved. If I could have read his mind, I knew what it would have said: If only she could have loved me, I could have saved her.

  My God, if I could have read all their minds, dead or alive, they would have said the same thing. Cain, the reverend, who knows who else. . . they all must have thought the same thing: If only she loved me, I could have made things right for
her.

  I was the one man she had loved, and I ran away from her, allowed her to die. If only I had stayed by her side that Sunday night in May when Jake suddenly and unexpectedly came home. If only I hadn’t run away like a coward. If only I’d stayed to defend her, defend what we had together, then Scarlet might still be alive.

  Without another word, the reverend got up from the table and made his way to the door. But before leaving, he turned back to me.

  I couldn’t help but notice the squinty-eyed look of inquisitiveness on his long face.

  “Is this where it happened?” he asked. “At the kitchen table?”

  I felt my heart drop into my stomach.

  “Your suicide?” he added. “You tried to take your own life at this very table?” He said it like a question, but I was sure that he knew the truth without my confirming it.

  Had I ever spoken to the man about my suicide attempt? Never. Other than Lola, I tried never to speak about the details of that long ago spring day with anybody. Not even Scarlet. I guess the reverend had his psychic powers after all.

  He worked up a sad smile, like he sensed I was about to melt into the linoleum right before his eyes.

  “Pardon me if I never wish to see you again,” he said.

  “Permission granted,” I replied.

  He saw himself out the back door.

  A few minutes later, I was lying back on the bed once more, falling in and out of sleep, until an uninterrupted sleep—a sleep not plagued by demons—looked next to impossible.

  During one of the awake times, I was staring up at the dark ceiling. I had a clear vision of Scarlet’s Green Meadows home. I’m not sure if I had somehow dreamed of the place, but I sensed myself back inside her bedroom. I actually felt myself back in bed with Scarlet, her soft body pressed up beside my own, her bare feet rubbing up against my toes.