Moonlight Weeps: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller Book 8) Page 6

  He pours a good amount of sugar into his coffee, then slowly and thoughtfully stirs it with his aluminum spoon. I pour a dash of milk into mine, stir it quickly and unthoughtfully.

  “Kid was with her in his bedroom all by their lonesome this past Friday night. There was a house party going on. Unchaperoned by your current employer, Dr. Schroder.”

  “How do you know he was alone with the girl?”

  “Witnesses,” he says, once more stirring his coffee. “Lots of them.”

  “All of them eighteen and under, I suppose.”

  “And drunk and high, too. We were able to nail Doc Schroder as he pulled into his driveway at two in the morning. Plus, we got him for endangering the welfare of a group of minors and for illegally serving alcoholic beverages. You ask me, you’ll be driving him for a long time. That is, he doesn’t do time.”

  He stops stirring, takes a careful sip, sets the mug back down in the same exact spot it was before he lifted it up. I take a sip of mine. It tastes like rust mixed with old milk. I set it back down knowing I won’t be drinking any more of it. In my head, I’m wondering why Doc Schroder has failed to mention the charges of reckless endangerment and serving alcohol to minors. I guess he figures a third DWI is bad enough and letting me in on anything else is TMI.

  “Not very reliable witnesses,” I say, after a beat. “Those kids I mean.”

  “Reliable enough. Besides, Stephen sunk himself by taking pictures of Amanda with his cell phone.”

  “You have the cell phone?”

  “We do now.”

  “The pictures still on there?”

  “Stored in the phone’s gallery.”

  “Same pictures he posted on Facebook?”

  He takes another sip of his coffee. Sets the mug back down.

  “Fuck Facebook,” he says with more acid in his voice than in the coffee. “Kids got enough against them as it is these days. Now they gotta compete with the pressures of social media bullying by the likes of a spoiled rich kid whose surgeon daddy thinks he’s above the law.”

  “The pictures in question,” I say. “They are what caused Amanda to kill herself?”

  He nods.

  “You’ve seen them?” I press.

  “Not on Facebook,” he says. “They were quickly removed by its spam and porn filter.”

  “But apparently not fast enough.”

  He shakes his head.

  “No,” he says. “Not fast enough.”

  “They find any of the boy’s DNA inside Amanda?”

  “Autopsy proved a clean slate. Evidence of Latex, however.”

  “Condoms might lead a jury to believe sex between them was consensual. You know, ‘Hold on a minute, honey, while I put on a rubber.’ And now you’re going to try and nail young Schroder for murder? You don’t have a chance in hell.”

  “Not murder since a suicide is a suicide. But, the DA says for sure we can get him on rape charges, condom use or no condom use, plus kidnapping charges, a number of sex-related offenses . . .”

  Instead of completing his sentence, his voice trails off.

  “I sense you’re not finished with your list of charges,” I suggest.

  “The DA tells me it’s possible we can nail Stephen with a count of reckless murder.”

  “Reckless murder,” I say like a question. “You making that up?”

  “What it means is that by posting naked pictures of Amanda on Facebook, Stephen Schroder may very well have recklessly engaged in conduct that created a grave risk of death for Amanda Bates.”

  “You think you can make something like that stick?”

  He wraps his strong, blue-veined hands around the coffee mug, kind of like he’s wrapping them around Schroder’s neck. Both Schroder’s necks.

  “I’m going to try my damnedest.”

  I sit back, look him in the eye.

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s something personal going on here between you and the Schroders?”

  “Never mind,” he insists.

  We sit in silence for a weighted moment. Until I slide out of the booth, stand.

  “What was this?” I say. “Why you telling me this stuff?”

  “You’re working for Schroder. Thought you’d like to know. You called me first, remember?”

  He’s right. I did place a call to him inquiring about Stephen. Sometimes my short term memory isn’t the most reliable.

  “Actually, I’ve been shit canned.”

  His cold gray eyes light up.

  “But then he rehired me a little while ago upon hearing about his son’s arrest,” I add.

  Miller nods, runs his two right fingers over his left hand wedding finger where I’m certain a gold band once occupied it.

  “How long you been divorced?” I ask.

  “Not divorced. Widowed. Just before I joined the APD from the Troy cops.”

  “I’m sorry. How did she die?”

  “She died on the operating table.”

  I feel myself shaking my head.

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that, Nick. Truly.”

  “It was three years ago. She suffered a brain aneurysm. The emergency surgery to repair it didn’t go so well.”

  I nod again. And then something goes click inside me. Like when a light suddenly goes on in a pitch dark room.

  “Jesus,” I say. “Schroder. Schroder was the surgeon. That’s why you wanted to have coffee. To figure out a way to let me in on the connection between your wife and Schroder.”

  I immediately recall the words the drunk Stephen was shouting as the cops dragged his sad ass down the marble steps of The Albany Academy for Boys. Words having to do with his being blamed for the woman his father killed. The woman who was married to one of the APD’s finest.

  The detective slides out of the booth, reaches into his pocket, tosses a five spot down onto the table. He picks up his now empty coffee cup, sets it on top of the Abe Lincoln’s face.

  “There’s more to it than just letting you know about how my wife died.”

  “What is it?”

  “In the course of your investigations under the employ of Schroder, whatever they might be, I’d very much appreciate an exclusive heads up should anything arise regarding the case I’m building against the kid.”

  I look him in the eyes. Eyes made of steel more than flesh and blood.

  “You have my word. Even if you didn’t buy me bacon and eggs.”

  “Let’s go,” he says. “I’ll give you a ride back to that weird-ass hearse of yours.”

  Chapter 18

  On the way out of the diner, I spot a newspaper carol that’s thunder-bolted to the cracked concrete sidewalk. It’s a special afternoon edition of The Times Union Newspaper. I reach into my jeans pocket for a couple of quarters, but come up short. Doesn’t matter, it’s the front page I’m interested in anyway.

  Bending at the waist, I see the photo of a tall, distinguished looking man standing beside a long brown casket covered in flowers. On one side of him stands a woman who has a white kerchief pressed against her lips. It’s New York State Senator Bates and his grieving wife. The headline reads: SENATOR BATES STRUGGLES WITH DAUGHTER’S SUICIDE.

  I stare at the black suited, salt and pepper-haired man, and I can almost feel his pain. No one should have to bury their kid. Looking closer I try and get a quick read of the story, but Miller is waving for me to catch up. All I manage to catch is the story teaser. “Amanda Bates was purportedly alone with the son of a prominent local surgeon when he snapped pictures of her in the nude and posted them on Facebook. According to local authorities, the shame of the pictures was too much for Amanda to bear.”

  I catch something else, too, in the story. Rather, not the story itself, but in the photo. A man standing behind the Senator, just to the left of him.

  It’s Doctor Schroder.

  Chapter 19

  Once more planted in the backseat of the cruiser, I mull over the photo of Schroder standing behind Senator Bates at this morn
ing’s funeral. He must have had someone else give him a lift to the Albany Rural Cemetery. Maybe his kid did the driving. But then that would have been stupid. Stephen is currently under investigation not only for rape but for having more or less assisted Amanda in her suicide. Or what did Miller call it?

  Reckless murder.

  Why not have me drive him to the funeral? I was still in his employ at the time. My guess is, he didn’t want me to know about his decision to attend the funeral. For all I know, he hired a cab. Even so, it must have taken some steel balls for him to work up the nerve to attend that funeral.

  “Detective Miller,” I say.

  He turns, shoots me a look over his left shoulder.

  “Schroder and Senator Bates,” I say. “They friends?”

  He turns back to the road.

  “It’s certainly possible. They belong to the same clubs, same old boy network. Kids attend the same school. Or used to, anyway. Why?”

  “Just curious. On the way out of the diner, I saw this afternoon’s edition of The Times Union. There’s a photo of Schroder standing behind Bates just before they set his daughter’s casket into the ground.”

  I see the detective nodding, slowly.

  “You understand now the arrogance of Schroder. Far as I’m concerned, he and his son are guilty as sin.”

  “In Amanda’s reckless murder?”

  “Amanda’s murder, and a whole lot more.”

  The death of his wife on the operating table comes to mind, but I decide not to press him further about it.

  Miller drops me back off at the prep school which is now as quiet as a church on Monday and just as deserted. I get back behind the wheel of my “weird ass” hearse and, for a brief moment, seriously consider driving past Lola’s Albany brownstone again. Then, I think about paying a quick visit to the Albany County Hall of Records to see if, in fact, a death certificate has been registered in her name. But as soon as I consider it, I kiboshed the idea. Maybe I’m afraid of what I might not find in the listings of the dead. On the other hand, maybe I’m just as afraid of what I will find there. Anyway, it’s late in the day, and the hall will be closed for the evening. Thank God for that.

  Firing up another smoke, I drive straight back to my loft. No diversions.

  Not even for the dead.

  Chapter 20

  I’m not inside the loft for more than a minute before I crack a beer and guzzle it, right inside the open door of the refrigerator. Elvis is sitting at the butcher block counter, nursing his own beer. He watches me drink in uncharacteristic silence. As I drain the beer, some of it running down my chin, I take notice of his having already showered and changed back into some tight black jeans and a black T-shirt that says “I’m with stupid” in white block letters. Above the word stupid is an arrow that points to himself.

  “Rough day at the office, honey?” he says in his Oklahoma drawl as I crush the now empty can in one hand and grab another cold beer with the other.

  “You could say that, Elvis,” I say, tossing the empty into the sink and cracking the tab on the new beer. I place it down on the butcher block and set myself on the empty bar stool beside the one Elvis occupies.

  “I’m a great singer, but I’m also a good listener,” he adds.

  I tell him about my meeting with Detective Miller, about how they’re going to bust the kid for rape, in the very least, and how it’s possible they can get him on something called reckless murder.

  “What’s reckless murder?” he asks, his big brown eyes popping wide like on one of those rubber dolls you squeeze in the stomach to make its head fill with air.

  Me, shrugging my shoulders. “I used to be a cop, and I’ve never heard of it before now. But, I guess it means if someone does something that directly causes another person to lose their life, even if you don’t even lay a hand on that person, you can be charged with reckless murder. Maybe.”

  “Sounds like Miller’s making it up.”

  “Miller and the DA. And they sort of are.”

  “And that would be because this is all a personal matter for Miller? Because of his dead wife? Because of what Doc Schroder did to her when he operated?”

  “Yup. This is all about revenge now.”

  “You still gonna work for Schroder? Thought you didn’t like him much.”

  “What can I say, Elvis? I need the damned green. And I not only don’t like them, I despise them.”

  “But you don’t like what’s going on even more.”

  I steal a swig of my fresh beer.

  “Exactly.”

  “Right and wrong,” he says. “You always choose the side of right.”

  “In this case, it’s two wrongs. Young Schroder was wrong for date raping that girl and then posting pictures of her on Facebook. Old man Schroder was wrong for having allowed those kids to party in his house with alcohol and to do so unsupervised, and then to have taken his car out late at night while drunk as a skunk himself.”

  “But . . .”

  “But I don’t think that gives Miller the right to pursue the Schroder boy for murder out of personal vengeance.”

  “So you are going back to work for Schroder?”

  “Yes, I’m going to work for him in so far as I’m going to get to the bottom of what happened in his house last Friday night and get paid doing it. I have no trouble with the kid going away for rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault if that is, in fact, what happened. But I do have trouble with him taking the rap for a murder he didn’t commit.”

  “Like Elvis in Jail House Rock. He was only defending himself when he punched that dude in the bar. Then they nail him for murder because he’s a rock ’n’ roller. It ain’t right.”

  “It’s only a movie, Elvis. This is real life.”

  “I been playing Elvis for so long, I’m not sure what’s real anymore. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the return of the King.”

  “Maybe you are,” I say, getting up, pulling out my cell phone.

  “So what happens next?”

  “It’s almost six and Schroder will be wanting to go home. First, you’re going to drive me to his office so I can settle things with him and my new assignment. Then, we’re going to pay a visit to a certain pathologist I know who can shed some light on Miller’s wife and why she died on the operating table.”

  He gets up. I toss him the keys to the black Beamer.

  “You gonna bring that beer with you?” he asks. “That’s illegal and wrong.”

  “There are some wrongs that don’t bother me.”

  “In that case, I’ll join you,” he says, going to the fridge and grabbing not one fresh beer, but two. “One for the money,” he sings, “two for the road.”

  Chapter 21

  The beer pressed between my thighs, I speed dial Dr. Georgie Phillips on my cell.

  He answers after three rings.

  “Moon!” barks the old Viet Nam vet turned pathologist.

  I’m picturing the tall, thin, long gray-haired medical doc working on a cadaver inside the basement morgue of the Albany Medical Center. Underneath his green scrubs, he’ll be wearing old Levi jeans, a T-shirt with all four faces of The Beatles in their hippy stage plastered on the front, and a pair of well-worn Tony Lama cowboy boots. He’ll also have a bomber of a brain bud spliff going in the ashtray and some Ralph Vaughn Williams going on the stereo. Blaring music as loud as he pleases is precisely why he chooses to work nights.

  “Back to the full-time grind, Georgie?” I ask.

  “Didn’t like semi-retirement. It’s like semi-living until you semi-die.”

  “Got a project for you, if you got the time.”

  “Always got the time to add to my grandkid’s college fund.”

  I give him the short version of who I’m presently working for. Then I tell him about Detective Miller and Miller’s wife.

  “Think you can find out the particulars on this one, Georgie?”

  “If she came through here on her way into the infinite unknown, then I’
ll find out what happened.”

  “How much time you need?”

  “You gonna still be up in three hours?”

  “It’s only six. I’ll just be getting started on tomorrow’s hangover.”

  I take a sip of my beer, set it back between my thighs.

  “Not like you to drink so much,” Georgie points out. “Everything okay?”

  “Georgie,” I say. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I spotted Lola.”

  Dead air on the phone until Georgie breaks it by saying, “She’s been dead for almost a year, Moon.”

  “She was walking into a coffee shop when I spotted her. It was her, Georgie. I swear it.”

  “Listen, Moon. Take it easy and be here at nine sharp.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Don’t be drunk,” he says, hanging up.

  I drink some more beer and tell Elvis to hang a right onto State Street and to pull over outside Schroder’s glass and metal building.

  “Wait for me here,” I say, downing the rest of the beer and tossing the empty onto the floor.

  “Schroder isn’t going to like that,” Elvis says, pointing to the beer can now sitting on the Beamer’s formerly clean floor.

  “The kid already spilled his beer on the seat earlier,” I say, opening the door and getting out. “Besides, there’s a lot about me Schroder isn’t going to like once I start poking my nose into his business.”

  Slamming the door closed, I approach the brain surgeon’s office.

  Chapter 22

  I don’t sit inside Dr. Schroder’s private office. I choose, instead, to stand. Moonlight the stubborn.

  The short, portly, balding Schroder sits behind a wood desk covered in so much paper it’s a wonder he doesn’t get lost inside it. His eyes are wide, practically poking through those narrow eyelid slits. The eyes are focused not on me but his mountain of paper. His clean-shaven face now blushed red, his little lips appearing purple like they’re not getting enough oxygen.

  “You look worried, Doc,” I say. “Like you just found out you only got three weeks to live.”