Moonlight Falls Read Online Free

bear the weight of the world. “Something like ten percent leave notes. That’s all.”
    I swallowed my breath hoping that somehow it would slow my heart, relieve me of the incessant vibration that was growing louder and louder, like an orchestra warming up inside my brain.
    In my mind, it dawned on me that maybe Scarlet had finally left him. That her walking out on him, once and for all, might be the reason behind all this. In my mind I saw my easy lover with suitcase in hand, closing the back door behind her, stepping out into the night …
    I said, “She’ll contact you. Just give her a little time to get her head together.”
    Jake grunted, like he’d been stabbed in the stomach.
    He said, “At this point contact would be a miracle.”
    I turned to him.
    “What’s happened?”
    “She’s dead,” he said. “And that’s all.”
    Off in the near distance a streak of lightning followed by a slow, rolling thunder.
    Me, picturing the light going on in Scarlet’s bedroom not seconds after I’d bolted the scene.
    Had Jake seen me standing outside on the back lawn in the rain?
    I repeated, “Tell me what happened.”
    He told me to say nothing more. “Not a fucking word.”
    Up front, Joy put the car in drive. As he pulled away from the curb, I crossed one hand over the other and for the first time felt the tacky, sticky, bloody residue that covered my palms and the underside of my fingers.

4
    THE TEN MINUTE RIDE from my uptown home past the Stormville Airport and the brightly lit concrete walls of Green Haven Prison to the downtown precinct felt as though it lasted an entire hour—a day. The whole time I was rubbing my palms together as if to erase the thin layer of dried blood that covered them.
    Holy Christ, where did blood come from?
    Had something happened in the night that I could not recall?
    I felt dizzy, so lightheaded I had to take slow, deep breaths. Do it without Jake being the wiser.
    When Joy pulled up in front of the South Pearl Street precinct, not thirty feet away from the old stone and glass monstrosity that I once referred to as my home away from home, I thought for sure I would break out in tears.
    The big Captain turned to me.
    He said, “Consider yourself back on the clock. I want you to assist Cain and S.I.U. with this investigation. For the record, you’ll report directly to Cain. You’ll take his lead, corroborate Scarlet’s suicide. When it’s all over and your report is filed, I want you to forget that any of this ever happened. Which shouldn’t be too difficult for you.”
    Memory is not exactly the problem, I wanted to say.
    Instead I pictured Scarlet’s face. Even in her death the S.O.B. was still dismissing her, not even giving her the benefit of a proper investigation. He was supposed to be her husband; her life and death partner.
    I looked into his round brown eyes. I couldn’t help but recall the incident that resulted in my forced leave of absence from the cops. Not my attempted suicide, but the incident that occurred not long after my “recovery”—when after passing out on an eight-man drug stakeout, I suddenly regained consciousness only to order the raid of the wrong house. Imagine, if you will, eight cops barging into a cozy suburban home during the late night, drawing service side-arms, handcuffing a husband and wife and two teenaged daughters suspected of growing marijuana plants in their backyard when, in fact, they were harvesting elderberry bushes. Imagine the seven-figure false arrest lawsuit that followed.
    “Since when do you ask me in on something this important?” I said. “I’ve been relegated to the nobodies that nobody will miss, remember? That is, when I’m working at all. Scarlet is a somebody. You should know that better than anyone.”
    “She committed suicide, Divine,” he said. “She’s my wife. I want the case shut before it’s even opened. That’s why you’re here.”
    But what if it’s not suicide? I wanted to ask him.
    In the