Moonlight Falls (34 page)

“I’ll manage,” I said.

“Want a painkiller?”

“I’ll tough it out for now.”

He pulled back out of the station and together we barreled our way towards Stormville along Route 5. In the meantime I called Miner’s office. Naturally he wasn’t there. But aside from Lola, he was the only one I could call, tell him where I was going, where I would be in case I didn’t make it out alive. I left him a detailed message, including Joy’s address.

Next I dialed Brendan Lyons’ cell phone.

It rang for a quite a while before he picked up.

“Lyons,” he said in a sleepy voice.

“Guess who?”

A pause. Maybe he confused me for a dream.

“I heard you could be dead,” he said.

“I’m like that pink bunny. I keep on going and going.”

“Tell me where I can meet you,” he said, voice perked up a bit. “We still have time to get this story out.”

Fucking reporters
.

“Irrefutable evidence,” I said. “I finally have it. Enough to prove me innocent of murder.”

“Tell me where to meet you.”

“I’ll get to that,” I said. “But this isn’t going to be about the original article. Instead I want you to witness something.”

“Witness what?”

“Another murder.”

First he cleared his throat. Then he said, “Whose murder?”

“Doesn’t matter who. Just get your ass out of bed, get some clothes on.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Just know that the evidence I’ve collected will point to you as an accessory for taking a kickback from Cain,” I said. “So don’t fuck me over by going to the cops.”

“I’m no accessory to any—”

“Cut the bullshit, Lyons,” I said. “I know you set me up. You and Cain. I saw your face at the airport, remember? How much did Cain pay you to stab me in the back?”

He said nothing.

I said, “Get a pen. Write this down.”

I gave him Joy’s address without mentioning the dead kid’s name.

“Anything else I need to know, Divine?”

“Bring a photographer,” I said before terminating the call.

83

AS SOON AS THE phone call was over, Mitch Cain pulled the phone away from Brendan Lyons’ ear.

“Where is Divine planning on meeting you?” he asked.

Lyons looked up groggily from the metal chair to which he had been bound with a full roll of duct tape. His face was swelled from the pistol whipping Cain had unleashed upon it. His eyes black and blued, lips fat and punctured, a front tooth knocked out leaving only a jagged root.

Lyons was down—way the fuck down. But not out.

“Fuck you,” he answered in defiance of his new partner in crime—a partner who now wished to eliminate him.

In fact, in all his panic, Cain wanted to eliminate them all—the Woodstock Russians, Joy, Lyons, Robb, Divine … anyone who might potentially point a finger at him, I.D. him as an accessory to an illegal body-parts-for-cash operation. Even Lynn would have to go. Sooner than later.

Bam!
… or so went the 9 mm when it was once more slapped across the reporter’s forehead.

Lyons, grunting, throwing back his bell-ringing head.

“Okay, okay. I get it,” he mumbled

“Where is Divine meeting you?” Cain repeated.

“Joy’s town house. New Scotland Woods.”

Cain took a step back, nodded. The meeting place, it made perfect sense to him.

“Sorry to have to end it this way,” he said, as he pressed the pistol barrel against the reporter’s forehead. But instead of pulling the trigger, he yanked the weapon away. “Wait,” he added. “I think I have a better idea.”

Pulling a Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket, Cain started on cutting Lyons loose from the chair.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, Mr. Reporter,” he said. “One more job awaits you.”

84

JOY LIVED, OR HAD lived, in one of those just-add-water, prefab condominium complexes that had been hewn out a large section of second growth woods just two miles outside the Stormville city limits. One of those white, vinyl-sided units set inside a complex of one or two-hundred identical condo units that overwhelmed the newcomer with repetitious confusion.

Or was it disorientation?

George and I pulled onto Woodside Drive, straining our eyes, stretching our necks trying to follow the numbered sequence mounted to every identical mailbox along the way. In the end we didn’t have much trouble finding the place. Not with the four-door Ford Explorer parked maybe thirty feet down from Joy’s place.

Printed on the side panels of the S.U.V. in big red on white letters:
The Times Union
.

Could they be any more conspicuous?

“The reporter beat us here,” George pointed out, as he pulled the El Camino over to the side of the road, just a few parcels up from Joy’s postage-stamp front lawn.

As far as we could see, not a sign of life was showing itself outside fifty-two Woodside Drive. Nothing was stirring. Not even a goddamned rat like Cain. Were it not for the garage-mounted lamplight coming from the two identical condos that adjoined Joy’s on either side, the place would have been completely blacked out.

I told George to wait in the car while I checked around back. The back was just as black and dead as the front.

No Lyons, no photographer.

No nothing.

Back at the El Camino I suggested to George that maybe Lyons was still waiting inside the Suburban. I recall how the rain had all but stopped by then; how the air was moist and cold. Even for May.

The two of us took it slow and easy along the gradually declining road, both of us knowing full well that Cain could have set a sweet little trap for us. Thumbing the pistol safety off, I peered into the driver’s side window of the Ford.

The S.U.V. was empty.

I suspected then that it was quite possible, if not probable, that somehow Lyons had let himself into the condo. But then, how the hell would he have gotten in if he didn’t already have a key?

One thing was glaringly obvious: something wasn’t right.

I had to trust my instincts. Cain was planning something. Exactly what he was planning I would have no way of knowing until it decided to jump out and bite me in the face.

Like a viper in the grass.

George followed me around the garage to the wood-paneled front door.

Because I was the only one with a gun, he was careful to stay close. A foot or two away from me at most.

At first glance the door appeared to be undisturbed.

All quiet on the suburban front.

For a split second I thought about the doorbell.

With my pistol tucked into my pant waist, I pulled the ring of keys from my left hand pocket, started inserting them one at a time into the lockset. The first four out of a dozen keys, while sliding easily into the lock, did not turn the tumblers. That is, until I got to number five. Slipping the smooth metal key into the slot, I felt the mechanical release of the tumblers. Holding my breath I turned the knob clockwise, gently pushed the door open and I was in.

I looked over my shoulder at George. There was this look in his eyes that somehow I knew would be there. This look that said, this is an unhealthy place.

We stepped into the dark vestibule. Looking up, I could see the vague lighting that leaked in through an arched picture window mounted above the front door. The wall to my left was decorated with a giant poster. Some fully framed half-man, half-lizard kind of thing. A bright green devilish looking creature with a long devil tail that smiled at me with sharp, dog-like fangs and piercing red eyes that immediately reminded me of the newly deceased Albino man. The creature was holding a bottle of liquor in his left hand. Some kind of booze that was supposed to bring the devil out in you.

To my direct right, a staircase followed the perimeter of the exterior wall. From where I stood I could see that the stairs led to a second floor loft and some bedrooms beyond it. The wall to my right was covered in original artwork. Abstract modern stuff that looked a hell of a lot like the pieces Scarlet and Jake had displayed inside their house before it burned. Expensive art. Not the kind of thing a rookie cop would be buying on rookie pay.

No family photos, no snapshot of Joy with a girlfriend or boyfriend or with parents or siblings for that matter. It was like he hadn’t really lived there at all.

One before the other we tiptoed into the kitchen, just past a door that led out to the garage and another door that led to a bathroom.

My pulse was pounding in both temples, the pressure in the center of my head intense.

Fuck it,
I told myself. I called out for Lyons, but got no response.

Not from anywhere inside the house.

Nothing but silence and a buzzing hum that came from the motor on the white G.E. refrigerator.

We moved on a few more steps, me with the 9 mm raised at chest height.

The narrow kitchen ran almost the entire length of the first floor living space. At the very end of it was a sliding door that accessed a wood deck. The wet deck glistened in the little bit of light that shined onto it from the next door neighbor’s exterior spots. The same bit of light that leaked in through the plate glass doors and vaguely illuminated what at first looked like a crumpled bundle set on the kitchen floor—like a plastic Hefty bag.

And another thing: there was this sweet smell in the air.

A smell I recognized.

A smell George must have recognized right off too.

I reached out with my left hand, ran it along the wall, found a light switch, flipped it on.

You could not miss him now, nor could you mistake him for a bag of garbage.

Laid out on the green tiled floor in the bright overhead lamplight, Brendan Lyons lay face down in a pool of his own blood.

85

I KNEW THEN THAT the newsman had made it here too fast, took the bullets meant for Joy, George and me. I didn’t know if it had been them who’d jimmied the door or if it had been Cain. But then what did it matter at that point? He was dead. So too was my witnesses and my newspaper story.

I cocked the pistol hammer. I wanted the mechanical noise to serve as a warning.

I knew Cain was there. Christ, I’d known he was there even before I saw the dark green Hefty bag bundle, even before I’d hit the light switch, even before I’d seen the jimmied door lock.

From that point on, everything seemed to move in this kind of slow, stuttered motion.

Like a DVD. when it’s slowed to a fraction of its normal speed.

Then came a quick
Pop!
just before George dropped down to his knees.

I tasted the salty blood on my lips and tongue. The blood coated my mouth at the precise moment George collapsed down flat onto his chest and face, the quick thump of Cain’s silenced pistol barely registering.

It was like a dream, it all happened so slow and quiet, but then fast and violent at the same time. While I definitely felt the quick slam against my head it was followed by the sensation of nothing at all. As the world shut down and numbness ensued, everything inside my head went black.

86

WHEN I REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS, I opened my eyes, saw one body at my feet. And a second to my direct left. The blood that covered the tile was so thick and rich it appeared more black than red. I could feel it soaking into my pant leg.

I tried propping myself up onto my elbow.

But it was then that I sensed a weight shift in my head and the pain settle in like two separate ice picks lodged directly behind my eyeballs. I sat up straight, felt my stomach constrict.

Everything came up on me.

“That’s it,” Cain offered. “Out with the bad.”

When I was through, I sucked a deep breath and used my left hand to push myself back up against the refrigerator. I tried to stand, but it was impossible.

The spirit was willing, but the brain was near dead.

I had to just sit there, knees tucked into my chest, head between my legs. Fucking Cain had cold-cocked me twice in the same place, in the same week, with the same goddamned gun.

He’d seated himself up on the counter beside the sink. In his right hand, a 9 mm Smith & Wesson service pistol identical to my own. Set beside him on the counter, what looked to be a black skullcap. He was dressed in a long black leather jacket, black pants and sneakers.

This much was certain: my fragile life must have been a testament to how much Cain needed me alive to take the rap. For everything.

In any case, sitting there on the floor, head splitting, stomach reeling, ribs busted up, I might have welcomed death. Maybe death offered me only blackness and nothingness. But it was also painless.

Cain fired up a cigarette, smiled.

“And now for the drawing room scene,” I whispered out the right side of my mouth, feeling the hurt in my chest and throat when I talked.

“You really have no idea about what’s going on, do you, old partner?” Cain asked, full of giggles and smiles. “You don’t have a clue about what comes next?”

“This is the part where you set me up for three more murders,” I said, the words coming out like they were ripping themselves away from the back of my throat.

He stared down at me with those slate-gray, hawk eyes.

“How can you be sure you
didn’t
kill them?” he posed. “Why do you assume I set you up?”

I tried to hold my head up, tried to stand again. But it was useless. My chin kept bobbing against my sternum.

He said, “Pull the clip on your piece. Smell the barrel.”

I swallowed a breath, peeled the automatic from my right hand, pointed the barrel up at my face, took a good whiff. It smelled freshly fired. I thumbed the clip, looked into it. Three rounds were missing. Then, looking down at my feet, I could easily make out three spent shell casings sitting in a blood puddle.

Something began to happen to my body then. Rather, to my head.