Moonlight Falls Read online

  I remember Cain dressed all in black—black sweater, black jeans and sneakers, gray eyes covered in narrow sunglasses. And me, dressed the same way. I remember our having to sit on low swivel chairs because you couldn’t possibly stand. We said not a single word while the big mustached Jake announced that throughout the op, all he expected of us was to stand back along the staked-out perimeter and “Observe, observe, observe!”

  Our target that early evening was a well-known drug dealer. A young man by the name of Cox, who was wanted on a three-hundred grand bench warrant for failure to appear in County Court. Seems he failed to answer to charges for the sale and possession of high-grade heroin and numerous automatic assault weapons, including an entire case of 7.62mm Soviet-made A.K.M.s.

  We learned that the Albany P.D., along with the F.B.I., had been looking for Cox for more than three months, but with zero luck. That is until Cox’s girlfriend, Rachel— a small, wiry, Ivory Soap-skinned kid of seventeen came forward with information about an upcoming deal. From what we were told, the kid had stood before the monstrous Montana, her right cheek recently black-and-blue from a swift Cox left hook, petite size-two body trembling. She wanted to do the right thing from now on. Or so she insisted. She wanted to get away from Cox, change her life for the better. She wanted to become a “good kid.”

  Of course, Jake applauded the kid’s decision to turn her life around before it was too late. But first, he needed her help.

  The drugs-for-guns deal was to go down in the broad daylight of early evening inside the subsidized apartment complex. Jake would need Rachel to maintain her role as the ever-loyal girlfriend and lure Cox out into the open, whereupon undercover police would then seize him and his home.

  Her nervous consent given, the bait was set.

  Two days later Mitch and I were standing beside the white van while a dozen plainclothes cops assumed strategic positions all along the brick and concrete complex. We waited anxiously, our eyes peeled on a narrow two-story unit that was flanked on both sides by identical units, each with their own narrow driveway out front. Parked in the middle of our driveway was Cox’s black Mercury Grand Prix.

  Whispered orders were issued over micro headsets.

  Time crawled by.

  Hurry up and wait!

  Until finally Cox’s front door opened and out stepped Rachel.

  “I got a positive on the bait and the target,” the wiry Mitch Cain spoke into his headset. The tenacious new J.D. already taking the initiative.

  Rachel seemed to be crying while Cox, a six foot, dark-skinned man of about twenty, followed her. He was dressed in baggy Tommy Hilfiger blue jeans that hung low on his hips, baggy boxer shorts puffed out around his waist. His long black hair was braided, his chest bared to reveal a washboard stomach and what looked to be a 9mm Glock tucked inside the waistband of his jeans.

  He was swinging his arms in the air, shouting, “What’s the problem now, girl?”

  But it was only when the crying Rachel got into the front passenger side seat of the Grand Prix that I got a solid grip on her M.O. Not only was she attempting to convince Cox of her anger, she was luring the armed drug dealer into his car.

  A big brave move for such a small person.

  While one radio voice observed that a visual had been made on the suspect, a second voice insisted that the rest of us “stand by.”

  First came a very abrupt “Now!” shouted over the radio.

  Then, with Jake leading the frontal charge, four officers converged on the car—two on the left flank, two more on the right. All five of them faced both the suspect and Rachel. With service weapons drawn, beads planted squarely on Cox’s head, the officers screamed their demands for him to “Show your hands; step out and away from the car!”

  But within the time it took to issue the order, Cox had already removed the Glock from his pants, raised the barrel up high. That’s when the call came over the radio: the suspect had “taken away the initiative.”

  Gunshots rang out.

  The windshield exploded.

  Cox’s driver’s side door opened.

  Jake, along with the four cops, dropped down to their knees— combat position. Still armed and apparently unhurt, the suspect managed to throw himself over the trunk of the car where he started across the drive. But he didn’t cover twenty feet when Jake caught him in his sights, discharging his weapon. The single 9mm Smith and Wesson round dropped the bail-jumping dealer dead on the spot.

  Then another tragedy struck.

  As soon as the police proceeded to raid the apartment building, Jake peered into the Grand Prix to check on the condition of his star witness. It didn’t take but a second or two to see that she had taken a bullet to the face. Just a well-placed shot that could only have come from head on—from where Jake stood during the apprehension. You couldn’t help but see it in his face. Jake’s face screamed guilt.

  You knew right away that her death rested on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. Didn’t matter who truly was to blame or not to blame. My department superior was assigning himself with the responsibility.

  I stood back by the white van, feeling numbed from adrenalin still pumping through my veins. Jake approached the passenger side of the car. He slowly opened the door, very gently reached inside, ran his hand over the young girl’s wide-open eyes. With his thick hand he gently closed her eyelids.

  If it was possible to feel a violent silence, I felt it that morning.

  I can’t tell you for certain, but I’m pretty sure Jake had to be crying when he made his way over to Cox, where the criminal was lying face-down on the grass, and emptied two more rounds into his back.

  Didn’t matter that then-Lieutenant Montana was never accused or formally charged with any wrongdoing. Didn’t make any difference that he was instead commended for his actions under fire. But I swear that never once did I see him crack even a single smile from that day forward. It was as if, in the accidental shooting of that young girl, a large piece of his own life had died along with her. No amount of forced vacations or department shrinks could change the way he felt about what he’d done.

  No one would catch the wrath of his inner turmoil more than Scarlet. Or so I came to conclude not long after we began sleeping together. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I knew her very well. For as intimate as we got, I never really got inside her. Listen, getting to know her was like trying to dig a deep trench in the sand. No matter how deep you dug, the walls kept caving in on you.

  But what she did manage was to reveal little snippets here and there, little details of her life with Jake that provided me with at least a little insight. The fact that they had separate bedrooms in and of itself spoke volumes. But then there were also specific events that also revealed the hell Scarlet lived. Like the time she found Jake sitting in his own bedroom with the lights out, a shotgun laid out across his lap. It wasn’t the weapon itself that bothered her. It was the look on Jake’s face that made her heart stop. The wide-eyed, unblinking expression that shrieked of resolve. You see, I was no stranger to the expression myself, having become intimate with the resolve of the already dead during my own short madness. But I couldn’t help be reminded of the short poem she’d Scotch-taped to the top of a strongbox she kept on her nightstand:

  Could it be Madness - this?

  The world has many ways of fooling us and maybe if the soul is dispensable and love is a combination of chemicals and electric jolts, it doesn’t matter much.

  Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I might have wanted. But I can tell you this: love mattered a great deal to Scarlet Montana. I think it must have mattered to Jake too. Because if love hadn’t been important to them, they wouldn’t have fallen to pieces when it suddenly abandoned them. I can bet that, in all the years she was married to Jake, Scarlet never lodged a single complaint. Not about his long absences or the drinking or the violence.

  Not about Jake’s perpetually lifeless face.

  The same lifeless face that now,
like a .22 caliber hollow-point fragment, was hopelessly embedded inside my brain.

  9

  We arrived at the Montana colonial on Green Meadows Lane just a little after three a.m. Three cop cruisers were parked outside. There was also an E.M.S. “Emergency Response” ambulance backed up into the driveway, the light and sirens killed.

  A handful of uniformed cops paced the front lawn in what for the moment had become a kind of light mist. There were two who stood all by themselves, hands jammed inside trouser pockets. A couple of others were smoking cigarettes, kicking at the wet grass with the tips of their black shoes. They were whispering to one another, their eyes peeled on us.

  The brutal death of the chief’s wife must have seemed like one very surreal situation for them. Not the typical crime scene by any stretch of the imagination.

  Under normal circumstances, a carnival-like atmosphere almost always punctuated a crime scene, with bright lights and medical emergency people milling about. People giving orders or taking them while traipsing in and out of the residence, the doors to which are usually propped wide open like a barn even on the dreariest of spring nights.

  Usually, you see the rapid-fire flashes coming from the forensic cops and their digital cameras. You see the bright white glare of spotlighting that comes from the television news crews and their shoulder-mounted video units.

  You can also count on at least four or five newspaper reporters to shove hand-held recording devices in your face while, as a detective, you do your best to examine the dead and the crime scene that surrounds them. Do it without contaminating it.

  But as I exited the cruiser, I could tell right away that the Montana C.S. would prove different. Even the curious neighbors were staying away. Or at least having the good sense to keep their distance – -hiding under the cover of darkness and stormy weather. But stepping up the blacktopped drive, I couldn’t help but feel their eyes cutting into my back as each and every one of them looked out onto the action from behind their living room and bedroom curtains.

  I entered the residence behind Cain and Joy.

  To my left was a living room that was as familiar to me as the backs of my hands. There was a beige L-shaped couch covered in silk throw pillows. The floor was rich dark hardwood. On the opposite side of the room was a large walnut cabinet that contained a flat-screened plasma TV, a CD player, and a DVD player. Behind the cabinet, the wall was covered in original artwork. Big colorful modern pieces. Expensive pieces you would not expect to find inside a cop’s house. Not on cop scratch.

  Not even the chief’s.

  In the far corner of the room, opposite from where I stood inside the vestibule, was a wood and glass case, this one antique. Displayed inside were maybe two dozen mail-order dolls. Not the sort of doll you might catch a little girl playing dollhouse with, but expensive one-of-a-kind dolls. Living dolls. . . miniature porcelain sculptures with chiseled features and gowns made from expensive fabrics.

  From where I stood, I could make out the familiar limited- edition Barbie beside a doll that was supposed to mimic Madonna. Not far down the line another doll had been ordained with a gold tiara, a furry robe, and a gem-ornamented sepulcher. A Princess Diana memorial doll for certain. Displayed beside her, a baby blue statue of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother’s eyes just as lonely and still as those of the dolls that surrounded Her—as lonely and still as those of the auburn-haired woman who, until only a few hours before, had owned and cared for them like the children she never bore.

  That childless house spoke to me in the eyes and faces of all those lifeless dolls. It spoke to me in a way it never had before. Sure, it was not a happy place. But then, it was more than that too. As I stared into the living room where only few hours before a very alive Scarlet lay on her stomach on the floor, me kneeling over her, visions of the night shot through my brain like a video on fast forward.

  Scarlet lying naked on the bed, blowing smoke rings up to the ceiling. . .

  Scarlet crying real tears only moments after coming to a screaming climax. . .

  Scarlet sitting up in her bed, a smile on her face while her husband slammed the door off the kitchen . . .

  Scarlet frowning, jade-green eyes a million miles away. . .

  Scarlet laughing while I jumped out of bed, trying desperately to get into my clothes. . .

  Crazy moments; insane memories.

  Maybe this wasn’t the first time I had entered the Montana castle. I only had to pretend that it was.

  Cain and I climbed the stairs up to the second floor.

  Once at the top, he stopped and turned. Slate-gray eyes cut into my own dark brown ones. Behind him, a bathroom. To his left, the second-floor hall and the four bedrooms that shot off of it, including Scarlet’s.

  From where I stood I could see that the bedroom was well lit.

  My cut-up hands buried deep in my pockets, I said, “Why you so sure this is a suicide?”

  Cain ran the fingers on his right hand over the stubbly hairs on his chin.

  “No forcible entry,” he said.

  Fair enough, I thought. But the response might have been scripted.

  I took a step forward inside that narrow second-floor corridor. Out of the corner of my right eye, I made out Scarlet’s bare feet where they rested on the edge of the queen-sized bed. They looked like mannequin feet to me—pale, plastic, dead still. For the first time since my rude awakening in the middle of the night, the reality of Scarlet’s death lodged itself like a brick inside my stomach. These were not the same feet that had rubbed passionately up against me just a few hours ago. These appeared to be the feet of a stranger.

  A dead nobody.

  I felt my hands in my pockets. I would have to reveal them eventually. I would have to pull them out of their hiding places.

  “Let me ask you something, Mitch,” I said. “Is it more accurate to say that no forcible entry has been found, or that no forcible entry has been found jet?”

  He bit his bottom lip.

  “Whole house has been searched and searched again,” he responded, eyes half on me, half on the open door leading into Scarlet’s room. “By all means, check for yourself.”

  So what if no forcible entry was found?

  Was it possible for me to have lifted a key from Scarlet’s bedroom during the course of one of our “massages?”

  Of course it was. She wanted to give me a key on more than one occasion. But I’d always refuse on the grounds that this was Jake’s home, too. But was it possible that she had somehow slipped me a key and I might not remember having taken it?

  I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t.

  The point is this: no forcible entry could mean suicide and it could just as easily mean homicide. Not only homicide committed by me. But also by Jake.

  I asked, “How about an E.T.D.?”

  Cain quickly shoved the sleeve up on his damp blue blazer, gave his wristwatch a sideways glance.

  He said, “One o’clock. Give or take.”

  I’d made it home by one o’clock. I had gone to bed by then. Was it possible that I might have walked in my sleep during that time, made my way back to Scarlet’s, snuck my way upstairs, killed her, then snuck my way back out and back to bed?

  No choice but to ignore stupid questions like that.

  “I’m ready for the body, Mitch,” I said.

  Cain turned, stepped into the bedroom and came back out.

  “Okay,” he said.

  The adrenaline began to pump as soon as I walked into that room.

  Maybe it was the shocking sight of the body, the destruction to the chest and neck, the blood, the still wide-open eyes, the disheveled hair. Or maybe it was the sight of that bedroom window. The same window I climbed out of earlier, my sneakers in my hands. It went through my mind that somebody could have already checked for footprints outside in the soft grass.

  Thank God for the rain, I thought. Maybe the heavy rain would erode the prints.

  But then again, I reminded myse
lf, that other than sleeping with Scarlet, I hadn’t done anything wrong. At least, other than the wounds on my hands, there was nothing to suggest I had anything at all to do with her death.

  Why, then, was I so nervous?

  I’ll tell you why I was nervous.

  Because if my fellow officers—not to mention Jake and Cain— found out I was sleeping with Scarlet, they could then implicate me in her death. That is, the suicide turned out to be a homicide. Didn’t matter if I had murdered anybody or not. It was the accusation of murder that would make me appear evil in the public eye, that is, once the media got a hold of the story.

  That was my overriding problem—avoiding a false accusation.

  In any case, there was a game and it needed to be played.

  “Whadaya waiting for, partner?” Mitch asked. “Do what you think you have to do, and then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I sucked a deep breath of dead air and approached my secret lover.

  10

  My immediate priority was to focus, prioritize my examination, even if I was more or less putting on a show. Cain wasn’t about to allow me a proper comprehensive C.S.I. like the forensics boys might get if he were to follow S.O.P. Not with the private deal Jake forced me into. Christ, I’m not sure I wanted to do one. The stuff I needed to pick up on—the stuff that would lead either to a conclusion of suicide or murder- -would have to be relegated to the naked eye. As far as they were concerned, I had to make it look like I was going through the proper motions. As far as I was concerned, I had to make sure that any homicidal evidence I uncovered did not lead directly to me.

  The second goal was to extinguish any torches I still carried for Scarlet; ignore any potential outward signs of anxiety that might give away my personal involvement with the deceased.