Moonlight Falls (15 page)

“They send over instructions for burial?” I asked, recalling my conversation with Cain that afternoon regarding the very same thing.

“This morning,” he said, stepping back into his office, rummaging through his file cabinet until he came out with a manila envelope. He pulled out a thin pile of papers, which he scanned. “Surprise, surprise,” he said. “Cremation.”

He handed me the requests.

Nothing fishy about them. Standard requests for burial, signed by both Jake and Scarlet Montana back in ‘97. I handed the papers back to George.

“They say how soon?”

“Word I got from Fitzgerald’s Funeral Home is tomorrow afternoon, four o’clock,” he said. “No calling hours, just the bonfire.”

“Jesus, George,” I said, my blood beginning to simmer. “When were you planning on letting me in on this little tidbit of information?”

He threw his hands up in the air like,
Oops!

“I’ve got less then twenty-four hours,” I thought out loud.

“What for?” George said.

“Before they torch our body of evidence.”

“Listen, as the M.E. I can have it postponed pending your investigation.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t want you getting in over your head until I have the definite proof I need to nail their asses for a cover-up.”

“They’re gonna destroy the evidence, Divine,” he pointed out. “That one cadaver just might be the most important proof you’re ever going to get—your body of evidence.”

“We have the law and procedure on our side,” I said. “You have the Polaroids and the floppy disks. Keep them locked up. Do the same with the Tox report once it arrives.” I nodded in the direction of Scarlet. “She gets incinerated, that stuff will become as precious as gold.”

George walked me out into the dark, empty corridor.

“One thing,” he said, eyes not focused on me, but on the concrete floor. “I collected seminal fluid during her internal.”

Of course, I knew exactly what he was getting at.

“She definitely slept with somebody within a few hours of her death.”

I hesitated.

“You gonna make slides of the samples?” I asked, a little under my breath. Actually, a lot under my breath.

He shook his head.

“Wasn’t enough material there to get a good read,” he said.

“Not enough?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, not enough,” he said, wide-eyed and convincing. “I decided just to toss the shit.”

He looked up, pursed his lips. I couldn’t decide if he was a good or bad liar.

“Why are you so willing to stick your neck out for me, George?” I asked.

“I like you,” he said. “But I also like the side of right. The law, it’s not always right.”

“You’re a dying breed, George.” I said. But as soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back.

“Nahhh, just dying,” he said. “From this point out, I follow my heart. ‘Sides, the money is good and I have to sock away all the bucks I can for my son, his wife and my granddaughter.”

“You already make good money.”

“Like I said, I go with my heart. Probably would do it even if you didn’t pay me. But like I said, no matter what you bring me in on, no matter what favor it is, the bitch has to be right, or I won’t play the game.”

“Thanks,” I said, gazing into his eyes.

He smiled.

But as I turned for the door, he stopped me.

“Your hands,” he said. “You want me to take a look at them?”

I felt my throat close up.

“I tripped and fell is all,” I said.

“Sure thing,” George said.

A strange guilt weighed heavily upon my shoulders as I trudged back down the corridor towards the freight elevator.

- - -

Stocky agent stands, paces the flowery room while staring at the carpeted floor.

“Let’s change the subject for minute,” he says. “Go back in time to October, 1999.”

Coming from a G-man, the mere mention of the month and year makes my skin crawl.

“What about it?” I ask.

“According to your testimony, that’s the night you had your … how do you refer to it? … . your accident.”

I reach up with my left hand, pull back my left earlobe, expose the button-sized scar.

“This what you want to see?”

“Take it easy, Divine. We’re just talking here.”

I feel my eyes do this crazy roll inside their sockets, as though triggered by a sudden jolt of electricity or pain. Almost automatically, I pull another cigarette from the pack, shove it in between tingling index and middle finger, fire it up.

“I don’t see the connection between my accident and Scarlet Montana’s death.”

The stocky agent steps back over to the table, sits back down.

“I get to decide the questions, remember?”

“I’m a cop, remember?”

“Okay, I get it,” he says. “But what I want to know is, what drives a man to suicide?”

“What drives anybody to suicide?”

“Bankruptcy, clinical depression, terminal disease … bad fucking marriage.”

In my head, I picture my wife … the way I used to picture her to the point of obsession: fucking Mitch Cain. That one vision is what drove me over the edge, caused me to place the barrel of that .22 to my temple, pull the trigger. It was the answer they were searching for—the parallel they were trying to make between me and Scarlet Montana. The failed marriage leading to suicide. I might have acknowledged the connection, even offered him up a little credit where credit was due. But then all this was personal. That in mind, I wasn’t about to give them shit.

I breathe in and out, try my best to keep head and heart even keel.

I tell him, “If Scarlet committed suicide, I’m sure she had her reasons.”

“Just like you had your reasons.”

“Yeah, just like that.”

Stocky agent throws a look at his partner standing in the corner like, Can you believe this guy?

The agent sits back in his chair, lets out a breath.

He says, “Let me ask one more thing. Guess for me the odds of a man shooting himself in the head—point blank—and surviving?”

I smoke and think for a bit, as if it’s necessary.

“Ten million to one. Maybe a billion to one.”

“More like a one-hundred billion to one if you were to ask me,” stocky agent exclaimed. “Fucking no-way impossible scenario.”

I stamp out the cigarette, exhale a waft of gray-blue smoke.

“So what’s your point?”

“What’s the likelihood of a woman cutting the shit out of herself, not to mention her own neck, then disposing of the weapon after the deed?”

I laugh. I can’t help myself. “Impossible,” I say. “But weirder things have happened. Am I right?”

“Just take a look in the mirror, Divine,” Stocky agent giggles. “Take a real good look at the king of fucked-up weird.”

34

BY THE TIME HE arrived home, Jake Montana could hardly stand up.

The bourbon that swam inside his brain was toxic, poisoning. But it was also heaven on earth. No way was he going to face that house on his own. No way was he going to look into the face of death and not have his best friend Jack Daniels to watch his back.

Trudging up the stairs, he felt the weight of the universe pressing down upon gargantuan size forty-eight shoulders. Heart beat not in his chest, but in the back of his throat. If this had been an old
Twilight Zone
rerun, the camera, as though being projected out of Jake’s own eyes, would have followed his every step up the staircase, pulse pounding like a bass drum for the entire viewing audience to hear. When finally he got to the top of the staircase, the thump-thump-thumping would reach dramatic, if not chaotic, crescendo. Until an arm reached out, opened the bedroom door. When the light came on the audience would see a blood-stained bed and wall; a strip of yellow “Crime Scene” ribbon surrounding it.

Stepping into the room, Jake swallowed something hard and bitter.

He felt nauseas. But not sick.

He slinked his way into the room with all the enthusiasm of a condemned murderer stepping into a gas chamber. He approached the chest of drawers, opened the top drawer, reached into the underwear, pulled out a matching black bra and thong underwear. Closing the drawer, he then opened the adjoining drawer, pulled out a simple black sweater. Behind him was Scarlet’s closet. He moved over to it, picked out a black skirt and to go with it, a pair of black leather slip-ons.

“She’ll look pretty in this,” he whispered to himself.

Bringing the clothes up to his face, he breathed in his now-departed wife’s scent.

For only the second time in what felt like forever felt his eyes welling up; he felt the tears running down his cheeks.

He found himself staring at the bed and in his mind, he replayed the violence that must have occurred there. His imagination sped into overdrive. He saw himself with a knife in his hand. He saw the murder not as it happened, but as it
might
have happened. He knew what he was capable of, especially when he was drunk. Scarlet knew what he was capable of.

“My Christ in heaven,” he sobbed. “Please don’t let it be true.”

35

I SAW THE SHADOW of a figure standing in the driveway, even before I made the right turn onto Hope Lane.

A sole silhouette standing beside the house.

Here’s what I did: I cut the engine on the funeral coach, killed the lights, rolled quietly to a stop.

I got out of the car, Browning in hand, cut across the wet lawn to the slate steps that paralleled most of the split-level’s front facade. Making my way down to the drive, I glanced over my right shoulder with the expectation of finding a blue Toyota Landcruiser parked out front.

But I couldn’t see a thing.

No Landcruiser anyway.

Pressing my shoulder up against the corner of the house, I took a deep breath and exhaled. Then, with pistol aimed directly ahead, I stepped out of the shadows.

I shouted, “Down on the ground.”

“Please don’t shoot,” came the unexpected plea of a woman. “Please, please, I just came here to talk.”

The motion sensitive spotlight mounted to the stone wall above the garage had picked up our movement. It was now brightly illuminated.

She was one of the Psychic Fair women. The short one with the long gray hair and fifty extra pounds of beads wrapped around her neck. She was dressed in a long flowery skirt and a matching blouse, all of which were soaked with rainwater.

I pulled up my pistol, returned it to my shoulder holster, safety on.

“Good way to get yourself killed,” I said, my heart rate only now beginning to slow. “But what am I saying? You people are immortal.”

I sensed her trying to work up a smile. But it didn’t seem to take.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I thought that if I talked to you, face to face, I could somehow get it off my chest.”

“Get what off your chest?”

“Why Scarlet murdered herself.”

36

WE WERE SITTING AT the kitchen table, she sipping a cup of Lipton tea, me slow sipping a glass of Jack. She’d dried herself with a towel in the bathroom off the kitchen. The way her long gray hair draped her puffy pale face made her look quite sad. Her psychic name was Suma, but her real name was Natalie. So she explained.

“I knew if I said anything when you showed up at our meeting, I would have been in big trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Just … trouble. Maybe tossed from the group.”

“I get the feeling your master is anything but a live-and-let-live kind of hippie.”

She tried to smile. But again it was useless.

She said, “Yes, the master Reverend is controlling. But he is not the reason why I am here.”

“Why
are
you here?” I asked, taking another taste of the whiskey.

She sipped her tea, sat back in her chair.

“She had no family, you know,” Suma-slash-Natalie said. “Scarlet Montana. She had no family. For the past twelve months, we had been her family. She liked to tell us that.”

I thought about it. I was well aware that Scarlet’s parents had died when she was young; that she had no siblings. But in my heart, I knew Suma was not referring to that kind of immediate family.

“She was learning a lot about herself,” the pleasant but shy woman continued. “About her inner self. Her dreams were becoming more and more vivid, more luminous, full of flying and astral images. But then, that was also her problem.”

I asked her to be more specific.

“While she never spoke up about it to the class, I knew that she was being plagued by nightmares.”

I poured some more whiskey. She said, “You see, Mr. Divine, for some people it can take an entire lifetime to reach the point that Scarlet reached in just one year. The point where one becomes so in touch with their subconscious soul, that they can actually control their dreams.”

“I guess I haven’t reached that point,” I said.

“That’s because you’ve never tried. But for some people, the separation of the soul from its body is the pinnacle of the mystical pyramid.” She paused for a beat, gazing into her tea. “Of course, that kind of power carries with it some risks.”

“What risks?”

“As heavenly as the vivid dream state can be, so too can it turn hellish.”

“Scarlet’s dreams weren’t heavenly, I take it.”

“While they would start out beautifully and wonderfully, they would almost always regress into a nightmare in which several shadow-like figures would appear. The way she told it to me, these figures would carry her paralyzed body away to an unknown place. They would strap her down, slice her open. She would experience this dream night after night. It would be so vivid, so real, it was like she was living her own death over and over again.”

I sat back, tried to imagine what it would be like having to survive that kind of nightmare, night after night. Evil, demon-like figures pinning me down, cutting me up.

“As far as you know, she never tried to seek out professional help?”