Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri

ideas,” Jake posed to his colleague seated across the desk from him.
    “How was I to know that Divine wouldn’t follow the normal rules of engagement?”
    “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
    “I’m all ears, Mitchell.”
    “He was sleeping with your wife, Jake. Maybe there was a little more to their relationship than just a good fuck every now and then.”
    Jake’s big brown eyes went wide, face red and veiny.
    For a quick instant, Cain was certain his boss was about to leap over the desk, grab him by the neck.
    “Listen, Jake,” the Lieutenant jumped back in, “what I’m trying to say is, just maybe Divine’s relationship with your wife was far deeper than previously expected. Maybe he had some reason or reasons to be angry with her. Maybe they were fighting. Maybe their little clandestine partnership was turning into something hateful and even … violent.”
    “You suggesting we make our own independent investigator a suspect in the death of my wife?”
    Cain smoked.
    “What I’m saying is, we keep pushing for suicide. But if Divine keeps pushing for murder out of some weird newfound sense of rough justice, then we make him the murderer.”
    Nodding, Jake pursed his lips, turned towards the window.
    Jesus, we’re talking about the death my wife here …
    “That bullet frag in his head. It causes him to have lapses in memory from time to time,” Cain added. “It’s possible, in theory at least, that our boy Divine could have whacked Scarlet and not have the slightest memory of it. That combined with his intimate relationship with the deceased, would make him the perfect patsy.”
    Jake, watching the pigeons that perched on the ledge outside the window. In his own throbbing head he knew that he too had little memory of the previous night. Just a hazy recollection of too much Jack Daniels followed by a screaming match with his wife. A screaming match that led to something worse.
    “If we have to,” the Captain added, “you feel confident we can point the finger at Divine and I.A. and/or Prosecutor O’Connor would be satisfied?”
    “I’d say it’s our only hope. Because the alternative …” Cain raised up his hands, allowing his point to dangle.
    “Because the alternative is to expose everything we’ve worked for with our Russian friends from the north.”
    “That happens, Captain, we’re all no better off than Scarlet.”

25
    SOME THIRTY MINUTES LATER I was pulling into short-term parking at Stormville Airport. At the video-monitored entrance gate, I rolled down the funeral coach window, snatched the ticket from the narrow mouth of the automated ticket vendor and parked as close to the U.S. Air terminal as I could manage.
    I met up with Brendan Lyons inside the open bar on the second floor of the terminal, just a short walk from Gates B7 to B11. I recognized his face from the black-and-white portrait printed in the paper beside his byline. In person he was a tall, slim, somewhat balding man of about my age. He was wearing gray slacks and a black blazer over a pressed, olive-colored button-down.
    No tie.
    A black leather briefcase was set on the floor by his feet and set on the bar was the same morning edition of the Times Union newspaper that I had read earlier.
    He’d already started on a bottle of Miller by the time I walked in at five minutes after five. As we shook, I took a quick look over his shoulder at the wide expanse of tarmac that was plainly visible through the floor to ceiling plate glass wall. Outside, a bright yellow turbo-prop helicopter was warming up its rotors, the giant blades spinning mirage-like circles above and at the tail end of the sleek craft.
    While Brendan got the attention of the gray-haired woman tending bar, I sat myself down on one of the seven or so available stools. I didn’t mention the free, supposedly go-nowhere ticket and boarding pass. That was his business, his private arrangement with Miss Bea from the information booth.
    The lady asked for