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The afternoon was filled with cop and trooper cruisers speeding up and down the highway, rooftop flashers lit up, engines revving. I wondered if I’d left my cell phone on for too long, and they’d been able to make out my general position as opposed to a precise one. It was like one of my movies. Here I was fighting for my life, and the world never seemed so alive, even if I did feel like I was about to die or, at the very least, lose my foot.
Resisting the urge to power the phone back up to call Lana and Susan, tell them I was coming for them, I instead began to wonder if I’d made a mistake by not allowing Walt to take me all the way into the city. Then I could have hidden somewhere in the mostly abandoned north side industrial section. From there it would have been a short walk back to Orchard Grove. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight when I had him drop me off in the woods. Maybe gangrene had set in after all, and the fever that went with it was cooking my brain.
When darkness finally fell, I stepped out of the woods, made my way to the soft shoulder, set the shotgun out flat in the grass behind me so that it was hidden from view. Then I did something I’d never done before in my life. I started thumbing for a ride. I knew I was taking one hell of a chance by attracting a cop, but at this point, it was a chance I was willing to take. If a cop or a trooper did pull up, I’d have no choice but to retrieve my shotgun and point the business end at him, tell him to scram or else.
My physical troubles were worse than I first thought.
My foot was bleeding, bad. The throbbing was almost unbearable, my fever growing worse. All I wanted to do was get to the Cattivo house, extract Lana’s and Susan’s confession for their complicity in this whole mess, and it would all be over. I’d turn myself in to Miller who would get me to a hospital.
It took some time while the cars and trucks sped past, the drivers not giving me a second look, most of them not noticing me at all in the dark and what with me wearing dark blue overalls. Until finally, a passing truck slowed down, pulled over. Over my shoulder I saw the red taillights illuminate as the pickup came to a stop along the shoulder. Limping the few feet to it, I recognized it as an old Ford F150, color dark blue, just like my overalls. Something from out of the late 1970s maybe.
The guy driving it leaned over the seat, rolled down the window. He was young. Maybe thirty or so. He had a head full of thick blond hair that was partially covered by a skull cap that was more like a stocking cap since a good portion of it hung down against his back. Like the kind of hat a Rastafarian would wear during all seasons, hot and cold. Or a committed stoner. He also sported a blond mustache and an equally blond beard. He wore a thin leather jacket over a denim button-down shirt, the tails hanging out of the blue jeans.
“Hop in, dude,” he said, smiling. Like picking up a total stranger trying to thumb a ride on a hot summer’s night was the most fun you could have with your pants on. “Ain’t you heard? There’s some crazy killer out there. You shouldn’t be walking all alone like that.”
I climbed in, as carefully as I could. When I set the heel on my bad foot on the floor, I flinched from the pain.
“Ouch, dude,” he said, his gaze focused on the foot, which was illuminated by a dull floorboard lamp. “I hope the other guy is worse.”
“Cut it on some glass a while back,” I said. “Stitches haven’t completely healed.”
I don’t know why I felt compelled to lie. But I did it anyway.
“Feet can be like really tough ass healers,” he said in his pseudo-West LA stoner twang. “Hey man, don’t forget the seatbelt. Safety first and it’s the law.”
I went to grab the shoulder harness part of the belt. But since this was an old truck, there was only the waist belt. I put the belt on, tightened it around my mid-section.
The driver looked out the window onto on-coming traffic. Then, reaching out the open window with his left arm, proceeded to make an official left-turn hand signal. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he threw the automatic, column-mounted tranny into drive, and pulled out. After we’d been driving for a minute or two, he asked me where I was headed.
“Albany,” I told him. It dawned on me then that for a stoner, the truck cab didn’t smell at all like he’d been burning pot inside it. I grew pot in my backyard, sold it to several stoners, all of whom loved nothing more than getting baked in their cars and trucks.
“I can take you all the way,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.” He held out his right hand. “By the way, I’m CP.”
I took the hand in mine. His grip was tight.
“CP,” I said. “What’s that?”
“Short for the real thing,” he said. “Letters are just easier.”
“Hi CP,” I said, “I’m Jim Summers.”
I thanked him for the ride then, and as I sat back against the old bench-style seat, I felt the tight bounce of the suspension, and wondered if my luck was changing, or if it even had a right to change. Maybe I was going to find a way out of this train wreck after all.
“You mind if I pop in a CD?” CP said as the lights of the city became visible on the western horizon.
“People still listen to CDs?” I said. “I thought millennials all listened to Sirius radio.”
“I’m all about the retro, dude,” he said.
When he suddenly reached under the seat with his free hand, he gave my heart a start. I thought he might come back out with a gun. Or a knife maybe. You had to be crazy to hitchhike these days. Even crazier to pick a hitchhiker up. CP said it himself. There was a killer out there on the loose.
But he didn’t produce a weapon. Instead he held a plastic CD case in his right hand while still gripping the wheel of the truck with his left. He set the case onto the empty seat between us, opened it one handed, pulled a CD out that had the words, “The Best of the Clash” printed on it. He slid the CD into a player that had been mounted under the dash as an afterthought. Before the first song came on, he forwarded the CD to a song he wished to hear more than any other.
As I listened to the ascending tom-tom buildup, I began to recognize the song. The drum roll finished in a crash of cymbals and an explosion of guitar and bass. “Breaking rocks in the hot sun,” sang the gravelly voice of the late great Joe Strummer. “I fought the law and the law won... I fought the law and the law won.”
CP sang along, slapping his fist to the catchy beat.
“Interesting choice of music,” I said. My gut started speaking to me. Whispering, poking, prodding. My whole body tightened up, like something more was going on here than just an innocent stoner going out of his way to give me much needed ride into the city. Part of me wanted to slam him on the side of the head with my fist, then jump out of the truck. But my gut screamed at me to keep my eyes open, my mouth shut, and my hands and one good foot ready for anything. The important thing was that he was taking me into the city. Once I was within a reasonable distance from Orchard Grove, I could jump out at a stoplight and simply disappear into some non-descript cookie-cutter housing development. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only plan I had seeing as I was no longer in possession of the shotgun.
I no longer had the means to blow him away should push come to violent shove.
Minutes later we entered onto the north/south Hudson Riverside arterial that would take us into the North Albany suburbs. The Clash sang “I Fought the Law” non-stop. As soon as the song finished, CP would hit the repeat button, taking the tune from the top, like he was trying to pound it into my head.
“You must really like this song, CP,” I said after a while.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me and my coworkers listen to it all the time. It’s kind of like our adopted anthem.”
Coworkers...
He shot me a look over his shoulder, along with a wink of his eye.
“What’s your line of work?” I said. “You don’t mind my asking.”
He cocked his head while turning onto an exit ramp that hooked up with the road that would connect us directly with Orchard Grove after about a mile. That’s when he reached into his jean jacket, pulled out a small leather wallet-like object. He flipped it open, revealing a badge.
“I serve and protect,” he said, as he pulled off the white wig and skull cap, along with the white mustache and beard, revealing a trim black mustache and goatee. “Surprise! Surprise!” he said in his best imitation Gomer Pyle.
“CP,” I swallowed. “Carl... Pressman.”
My heart went still inside my sternum.
“And you, motherfucker,” he added, “you killed my partner, John Cattivo.”
58.
Sure, I was screwed. Totally, absolutely screwed. But I also had a choice. I could either sit there and allow him to take me into custody. Or I could go after him claw and fist. Disable him, then jump out of the truck, make a run for it. Or maybe run wasn’t the right word for it. Hobble, limp, crawl, was more like it.
I was just about to choose the latter when he returned the badge to his pocket and drew his service weapon, shifting it into his left hand so he could more easily point the barrel at me while he steered with his right.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Make my fucking day, Forrester. Try and jump me with that rotten stinky foot of yours. I’d love the excuse to blow a hole in you so wide I could drive my pickup through it. And trust me, ain’t no one in the APD gonna care if you bleed to death. Doesn’t matter if Cattivo was an ugly prick. Now it’s personal.”
Joe Strummer sang, “...Killed my baby and I feel so sad, I guess my race is run...”
Maybe that’s what I should have done from the get-go. As soon as I realized that Lana and Susan had double-crossed me, I should have grabbed one of Cattivo’s guns and shot them both on the spot. But then, where would that have gotten me but a free ticket to the state death chamber? At least, as things stood right now, I had a shot at redemption and revenge, no matter how slight.
I glanced into the eternal darkness of Carl’s pistol barrel.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“I’m a cop. I’ve been tracking you all day. I finally caught up with Miller just after you ran off. Then I followed you in that dump truck. I saw you head into the woods, but you didn’t disappear entirely. I was able to keep an eye on you through the trees with a pair of binoculars.”
That explains why no other cops or troopers picked me up... They were tracking me all along by way of Carl...
“You could have come after me.”
“It’s easy to run and hide in the woods, even for a cripple like you. Ain’t you ever read Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel? I didn’t want to risk losing you. I’m a patient man, so I simply waited until you came back out.”
I recalled Miller smiling and waving at me in that motel parking lot. He knew I was riding into an ambush, never mind the state trooper roadblock I’d just busted through.
“What if I’d never hidden myself in the woods,” I said. “What if I came all the way back to Orchard Grove in that dump truck?”
“I’m one hell of a cop fortunately,” Carl said. “When it comes to tracking down killers like you, I’m prepared for any eventuality. It’s what separates the men from the boys.”
“Nailing your partner’s wife behind his back separate you from the boys too?”
He laughed, but it was a bitter, scornful laugh. And he further backed it up by removing his hand from the wheel and backhanding me with it.
“None of your business, Forrester,” he scolded.
“My apologies,” I said, feeling the sting in my check and nose, hearing the bells ring in my head. Then, “Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” he said.
“Why?” I ran my fingers under my nostrils and upper lip, checking for fresh blood.
“Payback,” he said.
“Payback,” I repeated.
“Yup,” he said. “Rotten apple like you has gotta pay for his sins.”
Then, shifting his pistol back into his right hand, he swung it against the crown of my head and...
59.
When I came to, I found myself still seated in the pickup. It wasn’t parked in my driveway next door, but in Lana’s driveway instead. Something strange was happening at the front door to the single-story ranch house. A queue of neighborhood kids extended from the open door out onto the concrete landing, down the two steps, and out onto the asphalt walk. From where I sat in the passenger seat, now faking my unconsciousness, I spotted Lana standing in the doorway of the pleasantly illuminated home. From what I could also make out, she was handing out cookies from off a silver platter to the children who were scarfing them down as fast as they could get their hands on them. She was wearing an apron over a pink and baby blue dress, and her hair surrounded her face beautifully. It was as if overnight she’d become a happy domestic Holly Homemaker.
“Now there’s a brave woman for you,” Carl mumbled to himself. “Her husband isn’t even cold yet and all she can think about is giving out cookies to the children of Orchard Grove.”
“You’re kidding me, right, Carl?” I wanted to say, but I didn’t want him to know that I was awake.
Something wasn’t right about the situation. Something other than the obvious. As an Albany cop, Carl should have been carting me to the APD and promptly booking me for two counts of murder. At the very least, it was his duty to call the bust in to Detective Miller who would have handled it from there.
But he was doing none of the above.
No official arrest was made. No Miranda’s issues. No calling the bust in to his fellow officers.
Nothing.
Instead he gave me a pistol whipping and then drove me straight to the Cattivo house where, no doubt, the women were expecting him. Maybe they were also expecting me. My guess is that they all had something in store for me. What exactly that something was, I had no idea. But my gut was telling me to open the door and try to get away. That whatever it was Carl and company wanted from me, it wasn’t going to be the least bit pleasant. But then, I was also aware that I’d never have another chance to contract a confession from Lana. A confession that I could record with my cell phone app and forward to Miller. In order to make it happen, I’d have to stand my ground and hang in there, regardless of the potential shit storm that awaited me inside that house.
I felt Carl’s eyes shifting their focus back toward me. In turn, I closed my eyes back up.
Reaching out with his gun, he poked me in the ribs with it. I felt the sharp jab, but pretended to be dead to the world.
“Still out,” he mumbled to himself. “Just as well.”
He opened the truck door, got out, closed it behind him. Lifting the lids on my eyes, I watched him walk on past the dozen or so neighborhood kids, hop up the couple of steps to the landing, where he greeted Lana, kissing her on the mouth, like lovers do.
When the two disappeared, I unzipped the overalls, reached into my pants pocket, pulled out my cell phone, turned it back on. The battery charge indicated only fifteen percent, which meant I had maybe thirty minutes of power left at most. One eye on the front door, the other down at the digital screen, I thumbed onto Recent Calls. When I spotted Miller’s phone number, I selected the Send Text Message option. A blank message screen appeared for me. For a brief second I considered sending him a text that detailed the precise location of my whereabouts and how I came to be here. But then something told me, not now. That I needed to confront Lana and Susan first before I involved the cops. Otherwise, my one chance for extracting the confession would be destroyed.
What I did manage to do, however, was proceed to applications, one of which was a voice recorder. I waited for Carl to show himself at the door again, and then I pressed Record, praying that the phone battery would last long enough for Lana to say what I wanted her to say.
Carl was making his way back out of the house when I shoved the cell phone back into my jeans pocket, the voice recorder still running, and zipped the overalls back up.
When he opened the passenger side door, he stuck his gun in my face.
“Well good morning, Carl,” I said. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Get out,” he said. “In the house. Now.”
“You mean like in there? Isn’t my wife, or soon to be ex-wife, in there?”
“So to speak,” he said. “But sadly, she won’t be seeing you or anyone else for a long time.” He grabbed me by the collar. “Let’s go, asshole.”
He yanked me out of the truck so that I went down onto the driveway on my face. He grabbed me once more, yanking me up with his sheer brute strength. I had no choice but to balance awkwardly on my bad foot, sending a wave of searing pain throughout the swelled, bleeding flesh, and up and down my leg. I screamed, scaring the kids. But that didn’t stop Carl. He pressed the pistol barrel against my spine and pushed me forward. Through the waves of pain, I tried to make sense of what he was talking about with regard to Susan. Why wouldn’t she be seeing me or anyone else for a long time?
As we approached the startled kids who were gathered at the door with the cookies in their hands and chocolate all over their lips, he said, “Party’s over, kids. It’s late. Get back home before your folks wonder where you are.” He was hiding the gun for obvious reasons. For a second, I thought about shouting out to the children that the man behind me had a loaded gun pointed at my back. Maybe that would have diffused the situation, but it also would have wrecked my plan.
The kids dispersed, scattering like rabbits across the front lawn on their way back to their separate Orchard Grove homes. Opening the screen door, I limped into Lana’s house, while Carl closed both the screen and the wood door behind me, locking the deadbolt.
Lana was standing in the middle of the living room to the right, her arms crossed over her chest, her face pale and frowning. She no longer looked like Holly Homemaker, even if the house did smell like freshly baked cookies. Instead she looked like the anxious but angry as all hell mother of some little boy who’d run away from home the night before after being sent to bed without any supper.
“You’ve been quite the bad boy, Ethan,” she said, working up a sly smile. “So how does it feel to go from writing about killing people, to actually becoming a killer?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But maybe you can tell me.”
I felt the pistol barrel slap me upside the head, sending visions of stars across my eyeballs and a sharp, skull-piercing pain throughout my brain. For a brief moment, I lost my balance.
“Don’t talk until you’re asked to talk,” Carl said.
“Yes, you should listen to the police,” Lana said. “Right now, they’re the best friends you have in the world. What’s that tell you?”
“You tell me,” I said, my head ringing.
“It means you’re all alone. You haven’t got a soul on earth who loves you.”
She poured herself a glass of sparkling wine from a bottle that had been put on ice earlier inside an old silver bucket. She sipped it, and then set the glass back down onto the glass-topped coffee table.
“I just love apple wine, Ethan,” she said. “Did you know that my stepfather had plans to introduce his own brand of apple wines prior to his sad disappearance? He was going to name them Lana’s Lovely Apple Wines. Name them after me.”
“Has a nice ring to it,” I said. “Too bad all the trees got cut down.”
She pursed her lips. “Yes, sad isn’t it. But then my mom and I could never have run the farm without him. He was the workhorse and the apple master.” She picked the glass back up, sipped more wine. “But that’s neither here nor there. Now where were we? I believe we were discussing your many homicides over the past couple of days.”
The recording app on my phone... I could only hope it was picking up all our voices.
“Maybe we should talk about yours,” I said.
Carl jabbed me against the spine. Hard.
“Now, now,” Lana said, brushing back her long, blonde hair, her blue eyes glowing in the lamp light. “Killing an old man in a convenience store. Tsk. Tsk. How could you do something so deplorable, Ethan Forrester? And that job you did on Susan.” She shivered, like a cold breeze just passed through the living room. “Absolutely barbaric.”
My heart sank into my stomach. What the hell was she talking about? Then, out the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something else that was sitting on the coffee table behind the decanter. The Maxwell House Coffee I’d buried outside in the pot patch, the mud and dirt still partially caked to its sides, the plastic lid removed, and the cash all gone.
“Where did you get that?” I said, pointing at the can. “And where’s Susan? Where’s my wife?”
Carl poked me again, sending a shock up and down my spine. “Sorry about the can, Ethan, buddy. But you see, that pot garden you got out back is illegal as all hell, and part of your restitution is lining our pockets with a little petty travel cash.” I turned and was able to catch a glimpse of the mustached and goateed cop shooting a look at Lana. “Isn’t that right, baby?”
“You’re the apple of my eye, Carl,” she said. But she didn’t seem in the mood to converse with her dead husband’s partner. My gut spoke to me, told me she was using him as much as she used me. Then she said, “Obviously pot plants and money aren’t the only thing Ethan feels compelled to bury in the soil.” Stealing another sip of the apple wine. “He’s an absolute animal. Aren’t you, Ethan?” She smiled when she said it, approaching me with her right hand held out, her torso still wrapped in her flowered apron, her legs exposed, her feet in brown leather sandals, that heart-shaped tattoo and the blood that dripped from it drawing my attention more than her face.
She stopped just inches from me, ran her open hand softly across my stubbly face.
“You were such a delicious mistake,” she said, sighing. “I’m so sorry things turned out so badly for you. For Susan. You should never have allowed jealously and pride guide your emotions. And, by the way, you should curb that drinking of yours. It’s the whiskey that turns Doctor Jekyll into that frightening Mister Hyde.”
In my head, I ran through the events of the previous night. Getting drunk on Jack, grabbing hold of a French knife, carrying it with me to the Cattivo’s back deck. I saw myself opening her back sliding glass doors. That’s where the memories ended, however. But then I was reminded about the voice recorder on my phone. How it should have been picking up every word of this conversation, which thus far had produced nothing that could be construed as a confession on Lana’s part. Now was the time to coax her into telling the truth. For me. For Miller.
“You wanna know something, Lana?” I said, forcing a laugh. “I really had no idea you were setting me up to take the fall for John’s murder. I had no idea you and Susan were setting me up together, making me out to be the patsy. I believed you when you told me John was going to kill you over your affair with Lurch here.” Shooting another glance at Carl. “Speaking of Lurch, my guess is you’re fucking him over, same as me.”
He jabbed me with the pistol once more. But this time, I braced myself for it.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Forrester,” he barked. “What Lana and I have together is special. It’s real love, just like John Lennon used to sing. Isn’t that right baby?”
“Yes, Carl,” she said. “Terrible thing what happened to Mr. Lennon. Too many guns in the world, don’t you agree, Ethan? My life is full of guns and lovers.”
I looked into Lana’s face. “Tell me, how long have you and my wife been lovers?”
She glared at me with eyes that could melt diamonds.
“Long enough,” she said.
“Lana,” Carl said. “What’s he talking about? You and Susan were good friends. What’s he mean by lovers?”
“Shut up, Carl,” she said. Then, her eyes locked back on me. “Don’t look to me for an apology for what happened with Susan. From what she told me, you entered into a love affair with your work long before she even considered drifting. Your world is yourself, your typewriter, your pathetic movie scripts, and that bedroom window where you spent hours watching me sunbathe. You allowed your marriage to fall apart, and your home to be foreclosed upon. You had no love left for Susan or you would not have fallen hopelessly in love with me.”
I felt my chest tighten. She wasn’t saying what I wanted her to say. What I needed her to say. “I guess Susan did a great job of hiding her hatred of me. Even when she was making love to me. I can only assume that I’m not about to leave this house alive. So why not open up to me, Lana? Did you or did you not tell my wife to help you plan the murder of your husband, while laying the blame squarely on me? Or was the idea exclusively yours? Tell me, please. What have you got to lose?”
She drank some more apple wine, smiled. But she wouldn’t open up. She wouldn’t talk, as if she knew full well that I was recording this conversation. Even now... even after all that had happened over the past few days... she still looked as ravishing as ever. Her eyes were wet and deep and beautiful. But I knew that deep in her heart and soul, she was rotten to the core.
“Does it matter who came up with what plan, Ethan?” she said, after a time. “What matters is that he’s dead and that you have blood on your hands because of it. They’re all dead. Go outside to your secret garden, and see for yourself. Go see what you did before you ran away under the cover of darkness so early this morning.”
They’re all dead...
I wanted to scream because she wasn’t admitting the truth. She wasn’t talking. And why wasn’t Susan in the room? If they were all dead, did that mean they killed my wife? I felt sick to my stomach and my head was spinning. Still, I had to get her to talk. I had no choice but to explore another angle.
“So why cart me back here?” I said, my voice raised a decibel so I could be sure the voice recorder app picked up my every word. “Why does this distinguished member of the Albany Police Force, Carl Pressman, have a gun pressed up against my spine? Why isn’t he taking me downtown for booking and processing according to the letter of the law? Why did he hit me over the head with his weapon? Why did he kidnap me?”
Bracing myself again, I waited for the jab. It came hard and swift, stealing my breath away.
“Your word against mine, Forrester. And surprise, surprise, guess who the police are gonna believe? Me or a cop killer? A murderer of helpless old men? A sick man who mutilates his wife and tries to make it look like Lana did it? You’re a mad man. A menace. That foot must be full of gangrene and it must have poisoned your blood stream, pal.”
My heart, what was left of it, sank even deeper.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I barked. “I haven’t laid a finger on my wife.”
“Tell that to a judge at your hearing,” Carl said. “That is you live long enough to have a hearing.”
My foot throbbed and I felt the weight of the cell phone in my pocket. Maybe Miller would call me now and I could quickly answer the phone. “Pressman’s gonna kill me!” I would scream. That would put a damper on whatever they had in store for me. Even though my plan to extract a confession was quickly going south, I tried to look on the bright side. My verbal sparring with Lana, and my equally verbal observations would have to count for something. So would Carl’s reaction to them. It would at the very least implicate him in Lana’s overall deception. My observations, Carl’s reaction, and the fact that Lana had demanded an up close and personal audience with me after her husband’s murder might be all I needed to prove that a conspiracy to kill John existed long before I asked him to demonstrate a classic cop suicide for me.
“We need a little something from you, Ethan,” Lana said, setting down her glass, then raising the same hand, once again caressing my cheek.
“Why should I give you anything?” I said bitterly.
She removed her hand from my face, took a step back.
“Because you don’t have a choice, now do you?”
“What exactly is it you want?”
“I need you to commit one final murder in your long string of murders.”
60.
“Carl,” she said, “would you be so kind as to escort Ethan to the gunroom where he will break into the cases, steal a weapon, load it, and attempt to shoot dead a helpless, grieving widow?” She giggled like this was all a child’s game to her.
“Sure thing, baby,” he obeyed.
Again, that pistol shoved against my spine. But suddenly, the pain didn’t matter. Because Lana finally said something that would without question, implicate her in a conspiracy to set me up for murder, and I had it recorded on my cell phone app. That is, my phone was still working.
“Baby,” I repeated with sarcasm, limping across the vestibule toward the room. “Hey Carl, looks like you’re the next contestant in Fuck ‘em and Kill ‘em by Lana Cattivo.”
“Shut up, cripple,” he said, jabbing my shoulder with his fisted free hand.
“Not very PC of you,” I said. “I’m telling Obama.”
Entering into the gunroom, I could see that it had been cleaned. No more brains, blood, and hair stained the slider window or the wall behind Cattivo’s desk.
“Now,” Carl said, open the closet, pull down a box of 9mm rounds. Got it?”
As ordered, I went to the closet, slid the wood door open. I found one of the boxes of bullets stacked on the closet shelf, and pulled one down.
“Set the box down on the desk,” Carl demanded.
I did it.
“What next, Carl?” I said, sensing for the first time that although the cop knew what he wanted to ultimately accomplish with me inside the gunroom, he wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. Here’s how I scripted it out in my mind: he would make it look like I fled the police out in the country, then managed to evade his highway surveillance of me while somehow making my way back to the city, and eventually to Orchard Grove where I broke into Lana’s house. I immediately made my way to the gunroom, smashed one of the cases, stole a weapon, loaded it, then used it to shoot Lana or Susan or Carl or all three of them. Attempted to shoot them, that is. But in order to make the plot viable, he’d have to stain everything with my prints, just like Lana managed to do less than forty-eight hours ago when she handed me the very .45 caliber bullet that would plow through her husband’s head.
Leaning my left hand on the desk to take some pressure off my right foot, I looked into Carl’s eyes. They were wide and slightly out of focus. His face was tight, his lips in deep frown position.
“What’s wrong, Carl?” I said. “You look confused. Confused and nervous.”
“Quiet, Hollywood,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “That’s what my partner used to call you, right? Hollywood? Well tell you what, Hollywood, stop leaning on that desk and put a foot through that glass on the case to the right.”
Bracing myself for more pain, I approached the case on the right.
“You mean this one?” I said. “You sure about that, Carl? The case housing the pistols? Or should I go for the gold and break open the case with the machine guns? If I were going to script a mass murder, I would go for the more-fire-power kind of scenario. But then, hey, that’s just me. Mister Hollywood. But this is your show, Carl. The Lana, Susan, and Carl murder show.”
“Shut your trap, Forrester!” He was shouting now. Losing control. Perhaps for the first time, he was beginning to realize the gravity of what Lana was asking him to do. Commit murder on her behalf. As a cop, it would go against his very nature, no matter how much he loved her, wanted her, needed her. I’d been in the same position just a short time ago. I was Lana’s slave.
“Tell me, Carl,” I said, tossing him a look over my shoulder. “Before I go ahead and start this thing, tell me something. Why are you doing this? You know what Lana’s all about. You’ve seen what she can do to people, men and women. She’s not exclusive to any one person. She fucks who she wants and then she fucks them over. She is a pathological case if ever there was one. How is it you don’t believe you’ll end up just as dead as I’m about to be? As dead as John is, and maybe even my wife? What have you got to gain by doing Lana’s dirty work? I mean, this can’t be out of respect for John. Even you’ve admitted how much you hated him. Is your obsession for her that bad?”
He blinked his eyes and cocked his head, almost like he didn’t quite understand the question. Or perhaps he understood it all right, but was deathly afraid of the answers. But then, if anyone understood his obsession, it was me. Keeping the gun poised on me, he turned in search of Lana, as if she would provide the correct dialogue for him. But she was standing out in the hall, her hands gripped into tight fists, her lips pressed together. Suddenly she didn’t look so beautiful. Now she just looked cheap and evil.
Carl turned back to me.
“So what if I did hate John,” he said. “He was still a brother. Now you have to pay for what you’ve done to him.”
“For what I was set up by Lana to do, Carl,” I said. “Let’s at least be honest and get it right. And of course, it’s not up to you to make me pay for anything, is it? It’s not your place any more than it’s God’s place. It’s entirely up to a court of law. You’re just following a script prepared for you by Lana. Or maybe you’re just convinced that you’re doing this for John. My guess is that, had John lived, he would have killed you. Killed you and Lana both for fucking each other behind his back... for breaking that secret code you cop partners share. Now why don’t we do the right thing and stop this nonsense before someone else dies? Why don’t we place a call to Miller?”
In my pocket I now had the voice recordings that would at the very least, get me off for the charge of murder in the first. Now was the time to bring in Miller. I had to at least try to convince Carl of that. An impossible task to be sure. But I had to at least try.
The hand that gripped the gun was growing unsteady. But Carl’s finger was still on the trigger. Out in the hall, Lana looked on pensively.
“Let’s get this over with, Carl,” she said. “Time is wasting.”
He said, “If I call Miller, Hollywood, and have you arrested, you might end up getting off. Me, I could never allow that. Not now. We’re in too deep.”
“Carl!” Lana barked. “Now!”
More voice recording evidence for Miller to listen to. If only I would live long enough to play it for him.
“I see,” I said. “So that’s what this is all about. You’re in this thing too deep. Lana has you by the balls. I know too much and now, like Susan before me, I have to be eliminated. That’s how this works, right? Just remember, you’re just moments away from your own elimination, pal.”
His eyes blinked more rapidly now, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his thick neck.
“But you honestly don’t believe that you’re going to die do you, Carl?” I went on. “Maybe Lana has promised you something, haven’t you, Lana? Maybe she promised you a life of living together. You could sell the house, move out of town and live on John’s pension and insurance money. Because after all, there’s more than a million dollars there. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what she promised me before she revealed the plan to kill John by faking his suicide. Maybe you’d even retire early from the force, sweeten the deal by adding your pension to the mix. But all you’ve got to do is show your loyalty to Lana by getting rid of me first. You do that, you destroy the potential body of evidence that can prove, without a doubt, that Lana organized her husband’s murder.”
The sweat was pouring into his eyes, and he wiped his brow again with the back of his hand. His face was flushing redder and redder by the second.
“How many times I gotta tell you to shut up, Forrester?” he said. “How many fucking times?”
“Have it your way, Carl,” I said. “I’ll shut up. But since you’re going to kill me anyway, at least answer this. Are you really in love with Lana? Or is it just a case of lust? Think carefully now, because there really is a difference. But before you nail the coffin shut on yourself like I have, you not only have to ask yourself that very question. You need to be brutally honest about the answer.” I smiled. “Love or lust, Carl? Which is it? Love or lust?”
He thumbed back the pistol hammer.
“Break the fucking glass on the fucking case,” he said. “Do it now.”
“I’ll take that as lust,” I said. Then, turning back to the case that housed the pistols. “This case here, Carl?”
“Yeah, that one for Christ’s sakes,” he said, waving his gun with one hand and wiping a new layer of sweat form his brow with the other. “Hurry up about it already.”
Inhaling a second breath to quell the pain in my foot, I balanced myself on its heel, then raised up my good foot and kicked the glass in. It shattered while I shrieked in agony.
“Jesus,” I said, exhaling the breath. “You’d think a guy like Cattivo would have used safety glass to house his arsenal.”
“Grab hold of the automatic in front of your face,” he demanded. “The Smith and Wesson 9mm. Not the Colts.”
Reaching out, I took the Smith and Wesson off the case wall, held it in my hand.
“Looks like my theory is balls on accurate,” I said. “You want my prints on everything. You want to make it look like I worked my way back here to enact my revenge with one of John’s hand cannons. But you’re not actually going to allow me to load this pistol are you, Carl?” Then, locking my focus on Lana outside the door. “Is he?”
She peered down at her sandaled feet.
“This part I can’t watch,” she said. She turned, walked back into the living room and her apple wine.
“Way to go, Sherlock,” he said. “Can’t trust you with a loaded gun. Now stand back.” He cocked his gun, aimed for my chest. “You don’t need no stinkin’ bullets, Hollywood,” he said with a smile planted on his red face, and a droplet of sweat pouring down over his lips. “All you have to do is approach me in a threatening manner. I’m trained to recognize when my life is in danger, and I have the right to shoot you dead.”
That’s when I tossed the gun at his head.
61.
Call it dumb luck. But Carl was able to evade the gun by shifting his head at the very last millisecond. At the same time, he took two quick steps forward and triggered his automatic. The bullet grazed my left shoulder. I lunged at him, so that he reared back hard against the wall. Grabbing hold of his jacket, I held on while he pushed off the wall, propelling us both across the gunroom floor until we crashed into the case, the remainder of the still intact glass shattering. His gun fell out of his hand, hit the wood floor, slid, and came to stop by the open door.
He made a tight fist, punched my face, dropping me to my knees. He grabbed my left ear lobe, yanked on it so that I had no choice but to face upwards at him. He punched me again and again in the forehead, nose and mouth. Short sharp punches with a tight, hard fist that had the same effect as rapid-fire hammer blows. I felt my nose crack and my lower lip burst open, my head grow dizzy from a brain that was banging against the rigid sides of my skull. I knew I’d pass out if I didn’t get free of his grip. Do it now.
My clear vision was fading. But out the corner of my eye, I saw the gun on the floor. Rallying my strength, I raised up my right hand, set it on his bloody face, and scratched at his eyes, trying like hell to gouge the eyeballs out with my fingertips. He screamed and released me, bringing both his hands to his face. I lunged for Carl’s pistol, managing to grab hold of it with my outstretched right hand. But that’s when I felt something sharp impaled into my bad foot.
The force of the act didn’t register at first.
The pain that shot through my veins and nerves was so intense, so electric, so beyond anything I’d ever experienced, that all other sensory perception seemed to shut down entirely, like an overburdened power grid.
I dropped the pistol because I couldn’t bear its weight in my now weakened state. Looking down at my feet, I could see that Carl had jammed a six-inch piece of glass into the top of my sutured foot. The knife-like glass had penetrated the Velcro strap on my walking boot, along with my skin and flesh. After a brief beat, I was able to retain enough clarity to work up a thunderous scream while I kicked at his face with the boot heel on my good foot. His head reared back and he seemed on the verge of passing out while the back of his skull collided with his upper spine.
Sitting up, I did what I knew I had to do. I grabbed hold of the glass and yanked it out of my foot, then brought the blood-smeared triangular point down fast into Carl’s thigh.
He yelped like an injured dog, while once more I went for the gun. He turned himself around onto all fours, came at me with his mouth baring bloodied teeth. Aiming the barrel for that mouth, I pressed the trigger. There was an explosion and his head popped like a blood-filled water balloon slapped against a brick wall, his torso dropping dead weight onto my legs.
The gun was still gripped in my hand as it rested in my lap. I knew I should have been looking for Susan. What if she were still alive? Locked away somewhere in the house? In the basement maybe. But that was just false hope.
I knew she was dead.
They had been telling me she was dead all along, and that I was the one who killed her. I just had no recollection of the event. And if I had killed her, I had no reason in the world to live any longer. Carl’s piece was gripped in my hand and it was my turn to eat it. Opening my mouth, I raised the gun up, turned it upside down, and pressed the barrel against the roof of my mouth. Closing my eyes, I slipped my slipped my thumb into the trigger guard, just like John Cattivo taught me.
I was just about to depress the trigger when I heard the clatter of footsteps outside the gunroom door.
62.
Lana screamed.
I pulled the gun out of my mouth, once more rested it in my lap.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she said, more angry than afraid. “You were supposed to die. We couldn’t take the chance on you testifying. That’s what Carl told us. You had to be disposed of for good.”
From down on the floor, I readjusted the gun in my hand, wrapped my hand around the grip, pointed the barrel at Lana.
“Where’s Susan?”
“You know where Susan is.”
“No I don’t. Now where is she?”
“Far away from here. Let that be your first clue. You only have to go so far as your secret garden if you want a second clue. But then, you know all this don’t you? You’re the one who did it.”
My body felt like it was burning up. Drowning in fever.
“How can she be far away?” I insisted, pressing my thumb on the hammer, cocking it back into firing position. “I thought you two were in love? What does her disappearance have to do with my pot patch?”
“Figure it out for yourself, Ethan.”
“Maybe I should just shoot you now and be finished with you forever.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me,” Lana said, working up the kind of smile she would assume when handing out cookies to the neighborhood children. “You’re much too in love with me for that. Every man and woman I’ve been with since I was twelve years old has been hopelessly in love with me and they have all paid the ultimate price. You’re a slave and once a slave, always a slave, Ethan. Now put the gun down and we can talk this through and then get the hell out of town. We still have a shot at being together. What do you say? Let’s just pack our bags and make our way south to Mexico. We go now, no one will ever catch us.”
I looked into her blue eyes.
“I lust you,” I said.
“Excuse me?” she said. “What’s that mean?”
“I lust you... I hate you.”
I waited until her smile faded entirely from her sweet face before I pulled the trigger.
63.
She dropped like a stone. Lana landed hard onto her chest and face. She began to convulse and tremble like there was something trying to escape her dead body besides her soul.
Maybe it was the devil who was trying to escape, if you believe in that kind of thing. Or maybe it was just her badness. Her evil core. Whatever it was, I could only look at her until her muscles stopped moving and she exhaled a final poisoned breath.
64.
I ran.
Didn’t matter that my foot was bleeding out or throbbing with blasts of sharp pain. At this point, I felt like gangrene had settled in for good, infecting my blood, infecting my mind. I didn’t care. I just needed to get to that pot patch. Susan wasn’t anywhere to be found. Lana said that I had done something bad to her and that my first clue was the pot patch. Carl also said I’d done something horrible and that I had to pay for it. The convenience store clerk said that I killed them all. But I had no recollection of doing anything bad.
No memory whatsoever.
I shoved Carl’s automatic, barrel first, into my pant waist, and exited the house onto the back deck. From there I made my way through the fence gate. My heart raced, my foot pulsated in bursts of agony and blood. My entire body was on fire. As I made my way in the darkness down the narrow alley created by the parallel fence exteriors, I began to make out the sound of sirens. Without a shred of doubt in my mind, I knew it had to be Miller and his men coming after me. He’d already called me once before and I hadn’t answered. He must have known that eventually, Carl would pick me up and arrest me. But it didn’t go down exactly as planned. Carl wanted to pick me up all right, but didn’t want me arrested. He only wanted me dead so he and Lana could live together forever.
What it all meant was that I had only a minute or two to check on the patch, to prove to myself that Lana was lying... that I had nothing to do with Susan’s disappearance. Once I did that, I would get the hell out of Orchard Grove. When I was a safe enough distance, I would send Miller the sound recording I’d made of Lana and Carl as they tried to kill me. It wouldn’t prove that I had nothing to do with John’s fake suicide, but it would shift most of the guilt to Lana. We’d all share in the guilt even if most of us were dead, or fast on our way to getting there.
I came around the fence to the small patch of woods, and in the moonlight I made out the spot where the coffee can had been extracted from the earth. I also made out something else. Another area beside it that had recently, as in mere hours ago, been disturbed so that the ground was no longer covered in dead leaves and varieties of vegetation. The area I speak of could not have been more than a couple of feet by a couple of feet, and it rose up out of the ground like a miniature burial mound.
All life seemed to drain out of my body then. What replaced it was inevitability. The ice cold realization that perhaps Lana and Carl had been telling the truth after all, and that my memory had indeed failed me, either because of the whiskey or simply a form of selective memory that can only be achieved after an event so violent and disturbing, the conscious brain can’t possibly process it.
I no longer felt the pain in my foot, no longer cared it if was leaking an oil slick of blood. I only needed to know what exactly had been buried inside that mound. Hobbling through the brush and onto the patch, I dropped to my knees like a penitent man. I brushed away the dirt and dug with my hands until I felt a cold, round, semi soft object. Like a pumpkin covered in a sticky liquid. When I brought my fingers to my face, I smelled the unmistakable iron-like aroma of blood.
I put my hands back on the pumpkin and felt something soft, lush, and gentle.
Hair.
Tears began to fill my eyes, the pressure building behind my eyeballs as I dug around the hair, until I uncovered a small portion of face and a single eye. I dug in my pocket for my car keys and the small LED laser light attached to the keychain, and I shined the light on the face and saw that the hair was dark. Brunette. I shot onto my backside, because I knew now what I was looking at without having to see it in its entirety.
“Oh my sweet Jesus,” I said, the first of the tears streaming down my face. “Sweet Jesus in heaven.”
I shifted onto my knees and brushed more of the dirt away and I could see that the head had been severed at the neck. Shifting myself, I vomited onto the loose dirt and fell back onto my side. I recalled the previous night when I’d gone to Lana’s home armed with a sharp French knife. I saw myself standing outside on the Cattivo back deck, the knife gripped in my hand while I listened to the sounds of Lana and Susan making love in the bedroom at the other end of the ranch home. In my head I saw myself going to the sliding glass doors, saw my hand taking hold of the opener, saw myself sliding the door open...
But that’s all I recall.
All I recall, that is, until I woke up in my bed, my hands covered in blood from the small cuts on my palms and fingers. Or so I could only assume. Had I actually made my way into the Cattivo house, crossed over the dining room and the kitchen, and entered into the master bedroom and killed Susan after catching her making love to Lana? My Lana? Our Lana? Had I been filled with a jealous rage not only at seeing the two of them together in bed, but knowing they’d been plotting against me all along to take the fall for John’s murder? Were there two sides to my personality? The movie maker artist and the cold maniacal killer? I was all too familiar with the artist, but I’d never been introduced formally to the maniac until now. Until last night.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” I repeated as I pulled myself up onto my knees, then up onto my feet. “I killed Susan. I... killed... Susan.”
...Or did I? I’d been drinking Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels makes me crazy, violent. It makes me black out...
As the tears fell, dripping off my chin and onto the raw earth, I did my best to cover up the shallow grave with dirt and dead leaves. Then, returning to my feet, awkwardly and out of balance, I began to make my way back through the brush, and around the fence perimeter to the Cattivo driveway.
65.
Carl’s truck was still parked in the driveway where he left it earlier, the keys still inserted in the column-mounted ignition. Opening the door, I shoved myself inside, turned the key, fired the engine up. For a beat or two, I stared out the windshield onto my new neighbor’s home-sweet-home, until I shifted my gaze onto my own home only a few feet away. They were the kind of neighborhood homes that would be a dream for a young couple just starting their new life together. I was there once myself. Me and Susan.
Unzipping the blood and mud stained overalls, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the mobile phone. I saw that it still had power even if the battery life indicator was now in the red. Once I got to my studio in the city, I’d charge it back up. But for now, I also saw that the voice recorder app was still operating. Thumbing Stop, I then hit play just to make certain I’d succeeded at recording everything that went down inside the Cattivo house of horrors since I’d arrived there less than a half hour ago.
“Well good morning, Carl. How long have I been asleep?”
“Get out. In the house.”
I hit stop, then went to texts. There was a new text from Miller and also several unanswered calls from him.
“Where are you, Ethan?” the text said. “You can’t run. Let me come for you.”
“Carl is dead,” I texted in response. “So are Lana and Susan. They are all dead.”
I hit Send and waited for a reply. It came within seconds.
“I must bring you in. You know that. Stay where you are.”
“Not yet.”
I thumbed Send once more, then turned the phone off, shoving it back into my pocket. Looking down at my foot, I could see the small puddle of blood pooling on the floor under the gas pedal. Setting my left foot on the brake, I shifted the truck into reverse. Backing out of the driveway, I could feel the sharp throb shooting in and out of my foot, and I could smell the rotting flesh, and feel the fever burning in my head. I had no choice but to suck it all up while I made one last drive through Orchard Grove back to my studio in the city. It would be one hell of a rough drive, but a drive I had no choice but to make.
I was all alone now.
The last slave of Lana Cattivo left alive.
The Present
I’m dying.
Serves me right I suppose. For now I sit at an old wood desk that’s positioned only a foot or two from the front door to my downtown writing studio. I see my pale, scruffy face framed inside the mirror that hangs on the wall by a sixpenny nail. My smartphone in hand, I have it hooked up to the charger I store here and which is plugged into the wall.
“That’s all there is to say, Miller,” I say, speaking into my smartphone voice recording app. “There’s nothing left to tell. Only questions remain, the major one being, what happened to Susan’s body?
“But then, I can only assume you’re probably at the Cattivo house as I speak. That you’ve seen the bodies of Lana and Carl Pressman lying on the gunroom floor. Have you located the rest of Susan’s remains? Have you located her head in the pot patch out back? Did you find the knife that killed her? Was it a French knife?
“I still have no recollection of doing something so brutal and unspeakable to her. How is it possible I could take a knife to her like that? Sure, I woke up with blood on my hands, but there was no garden dirt on me that I remember. Is it possible that I didn’t kill her? Is it possible that I dropped the knife onto the deck outside the sliding glass door, like I remember? That Lana heard the back sliding door open and close, and when she came outside to inspect, she saw the knife and was overcome with a sick idea? Maybe, in the end, she decided the only way you and the rest of the APD would truly believe I carefully planned her husband’s murder was by my leaving behind yet another body. The body of my wife. It would be a crime of passion. A murder committed by a man who was out of his mind with rage. By killing her in the most inhuman of ways, you wouldn’t find it very hard to believe that I was also capable of taking out Detective Cattivo.
“Even the placement of the head would not have been an indiscriminate move. John knew all about my pot patch and he’d threatened on more than one occasion to use it against me. He knew I was selling weed in order to make ends meet. I was about to lose my house after all. He was aware that financially, Susan and I weren’t making it. That in mind, Lana could have easily drugged Susan by slipping something into her drink, then cut off her head, burying it in the pot patch, all the time knowing full well that you would have no choice but to accuse me of the obscene crime. Add in the killing of the convenience store clerk and the run-in with the troopers down the road from that motel, and you’ve painted a picture of a crazed killer on the loose. A man who, in another life, achieved a degree of fame in Hollywood, but who’d fallen on times so hard, his brain snapped.
“I guess I can’t be entirely sure how it all went down, but that seems as good a theory as any. Anyway, where I’m going, I guess God will be the judge. Or the Devil. But promise me something, Miller. That when I’m finally gone and you recover the rest of Susan’s body, you will also make an attempt at searching for evidence that will exonerate me of her death. I can’t be sure of what you will find, if anything, but it might just be enough to let my soul off the hook. After all, eternity is a long time to fry.
“Sirens. I hear sirens, Miller. Is that you coming after me down here in the city? Are the sirens I’m hearing outside my door meant for me? Let me look. I don’t even need to get up out of the chair to crack the front door open a few inches.
“Okay, I see you now. I see you standing outside my building, protected by the opened door to your unmarked cruiser. I also see six or seven blue-and-whites parked diagonally in the middle of the road, their rooftop flashers igniting the black sky. I see cops armed to the teeth. It’s a perfect ending, set up exactly the way I’d script it.
“Wait, what was that? The call for me to come out with my hands in the air. You want me to exit the door, climb the three steps to the sidewalk, and surrender myself to the law. Then you’ll insist that I drop to my knees and lie down flat on my chest, face down on the hot summer-heated macadam, hands outstretched over my head.
“It’s all over for me... for us, Detective Miller. It’s all she wrote. Pun intended. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to pull out Carl’s 9mm, and release the clip. Pulling back the slide, I’m releasing the one-chambered bullet so that no bullets remain in the gun whatsoever. If only John Cattivo had checked his gun in the first place to see if it were loaded, none of this would have happened. But when you look at the empty gun in just a few short minutes, Miller, you’ll see proof positive that even if I am guilty of shooting Cattivo in the head, I’m not really a murderer.
“I’m standing now, Miller, heading outside. But I’m taking my phone with me so I can record for posterity what will be my final moments. I’m opening the door wide and looking up through the stairwell, I see you standing only a few feet from me out in the road. You’re bathed in flashing light, your hands gripping your sidearm. I’m heading up the stairs, the gun in my hand. I’m aiming the gun directly at you, Miller.
“Muzzle flashes. You’re shooting at me. Bullets... against flesh and bone... but I don’t feel them... I don’t feel... any pain... Detective Miller. No pain at all... I see only darkness...
“Nothing but eternal darkness...”
Albany Police Department
(Preliminary) Incident Report
Case No. 1324-08232015
Date: 08/23
Incident: Scriptwriter Ethan Forrester, 50, was shot and killed early this morning at approximately 1:30 AM outside his Swan Street writing studio by the author of this report who, at the time, was acting in a manner consistent with the conditions set forth by the “use of deadly force.”
Forrester’s death occurs on the heels of four related homicides, all of which transpired within the span of 48 hours and at the same location: 26 Orchard Grove in North Albany (see attached coroner’s report for specific ETD and manner of death for each).
The four homicides are as follows:
-Susan Forrester, 48, of 24 Orchard Grove in North Albany: death by asphyxia and decapitation.
-Lana Cattivo, 46, of 26 Orchard Grove: shot with 9mm caliber handgun to the face at close range.
-Albany Police Detective, John Cattivo, 41, of 26 Orchard Grove: gunshot wound to head with .45 caliber handgun. Note: wound might have been self-inflicted, although evidence also points to Forrester having pulled the trigger.
-Albany Police Sergeant, Carl Pressman, 35, of 45 Fairlawn Avenue: shot with 9mm handgun to the face at close range.
Case Summary: At this time, all evidence, both circumstantial and physical, indicates Ethan Forrester conspired with Lana Cattivo to murder Detective John Cattivo. Forrester’s testimony points to the fact that he asked Cattivo to demonstrate precisely how a cop “eats his piece” on behalf of research for a new movie script he was allegedly writing. While Cattivo agreed to the demonstration, he had no way of knowing that hours prior to the event, a live round had been placed in the magazine either by Forrester or Lana Cattivo. When cocked into the chamber, the single round created a “hot,” and therefore potentially deadly handgun.
Forrester had been conducting an affair with Lana Cattivo for an undocumented amount of time. Forrester’s wife, Susan, had also been conducting an affair with her simultaneously, even though both husband and wife were unaware of one another’s illicit activity until hours prior to John Cattivo’s death.
It might be interesting to note that a partial manuscript was discovered on the dining room table beside a manual typewriter in the Forrester home. The five pages describe an illicit affair between a next-door neighbor and the wife of a prominent banker. In the story, the two plot to kill the banker and collect not only his fortune but also his insurance payout. One can only wonder if fiction were reflecting reality in this manuscript as there is no question in my mind that Ethan Forrester conspired with Lana Cattivo in the fabricated suicide of her husband.
Regarding the death of Herbert Wylie, 73, the convenience store owner/clerk in Nassau (Columbia County): My professional opinion on the matter (and this can be corroborated by the Nassau Sheriff’s Department), is that Forrester acted in self-defense when he issued a fatal blow to Wylie’s head with a shotgun stock. Therefore I have not listed the death amongst the homicides. I believe the security videocassette tape which was recovered inside a dumpster outside the convenience store will conclusively back this theory up.
Questions also remain about how and why exactly, Albany Police Sergeant Carl Pressman engaged Forrester in an altercation at the Cattivo household, which resulted in the police officer’s death by gunshot wound to the face (It should be noted for the record that Pressman’s body was discovered with $5,000 cash on his person. Cash that can be traced directly to Ethan Forrester). While it is my professional opinion that Forrester was acting purely in self-defense when he shot Pressman, I have included the latter’s name amongst the homicides because of his complicity in the overall plot to murder John Cattivo (see transcript of Forrester’s semi-audible mobile phone recording, also attached).
Based on the testimony of sources inside the APD, I am also convinced now that Pressman was also conducting an illicit affair with Lana Cattivo. Perhaps Pressman’s feelings for Lana combined with the knowledge of her sleeping with Forrester (and several others), provided the motive he needed for attacking the scriptwriter with lethal intent.
The question of how and why Susan Forrester died in a brutal beheading is naturally foremost on this detective’s mind. I wish I could report that in all my years as a police officer, I’ve never come across so gruesome a murder, but that would be inaccurate. During the five-year period between 1979-1984, I, as a young APD detective, was placed in charge of investigating a series of murders/beheadings, all of which occurred in the North Albany area. All the known victims of the so-called “North Albany Mauler” were men. However, they ranged in age from early teens to one man who was in his late forties and the principal at a now defunct public grammar school.
In August of 1984, Lana Strega, then 15, allegedly escaped the killer in an attack that took place down in the wooded area of the Albany Riverside Corning Preserve. I personally interviewed her at the South Pearl Street APD moments after she was rescued and taken into police custody. At the time, I noticed that she bore a unique tattoo on the ankle of her left leg. A heart that cried tears of blood.
I have not seen a tattoo like that printed on that part of a woman’s body, since August of ’84. Until now that is, when I examined the most recent crime scene at the 26 Orchard Grove Cattivo address (It should be noted that although Lana’s husband had been working for the APD for two months at the time of his death, I had yet to meet his wife in the flesh, much less take notice of her left ankle. Nor did I ever have opportunity to see that John Cattivo also possessed an identical crying heart tattoo on his left bicep, since department regs call for a long sleeve shirt and jacket for all detectives). That the deceased Lana Cattivo bore the identical crying heart tattoo on the same ankle, led me to immediately believe that after thirty years, I had finally found my killer.
What I find disturbing in retrospect, is that the North Albany Mauler had not only been in my presence back in ’84, but that I had her in custody. Only because she appeared to be a sweet young lady did I immediately discount any possibility whatsoever that she could be responsible for a dozen known gruesome murders and beheadings. In a word, she didn’t match the profile. I thought of her as the one victim who got away, and nothing more.
Having stumbled upon the North Albany Mauler quite by chance, I firmly believe Ethan Forrester had nothing at all to do with killing his wife, Susan, despite the fact that the weapon utilized in the killing, a common kitchen “French” knife, was later located inside the Forrester household and contained only Forrester’s bloody prints.
My opinion is that prior to Susan’s murder, Lana Cattivo broke into Forrester’s home, stole the knife, committed the murder, then returned the knife to its original location on the floor of Forrester’s dining room. It’s possible she avoided leaving her own prints on the weapon by covering her hands and fingers in latex gloves, although this fact has yet to be confirmed by forensics experts.
A note on motive: Police records show that back in 1979 and some years prior, Lana Cattivo, then Lana Strega, was the victim of repeated sexual assaults from her then stepfather, Alex Burns, who at the time, owned and operated the Burns Apple Orchard which is now the sight of the Orchard Grove residential complex. On October 1, 1979, a missing person’s report was filed by the Albany Police Department after Lana’s mother, Tina Strega, now deceased, reported that her husband had not been seen at home or anywhere else in the community for more than 48 hours. Something that was very odd for a man who ran an apple orchard and farm 24/7.
After a lengthy investigation for the whereabouts of Mr. Burns, nothing substantial turned up. It was during this time, however, that Lana revealed the truth about her relationship to the stepfather. Something that must have been very upsetting for Lana’s mother who was no doubt grieving the abandonment and/or loss of her husband.
In the course of my limited research for this incident report, I was surprised to find that the grounds in and around Orchard Grove had not been thoroughly searched by the APD or anyone else at the time of Burns’ disappearance back in 1979. But when my forensics team scoured Forrester’s backyard marijuana garden for the remains of Susan Forrester’s head, a convincing trail eventually led to the adjoining Cattivo property, ending at a single apple tree that apparently had survived from the old farm.
We were able to perform an excavation under this tree in a spot that had supported newly disturbed soil. What was revealed were not only the remains of Susan Forrester’s torso, but also the skeletal remains of Burns’ beheaded body, plus the partial remains of several as of yet unidentified victims.
These two bodies of evidence, and the manner in which they had been killed, taken together prove to this detective that, without a doubt, Lana Cattivo acted alone when she slaughtered Susan Forrester, just as she had acted alone, and no doubt out of a “justified” vengeance, when she killed her stepfather and eleven other Albany residents between 1979 and 1984.
It is my further opinion that in killing Susan Forrester with a knife belonging to Ethan Forrester, Lana Strega Cattivo was attempting to further implicate the writer in the murder of her husband John, while at the same time, making it appear that he acted alone.
But did he truly act alone?
It should be noted that John Cattivo’s two front teeth were broken off just prior to his receiving the fatal gunshot wound to the roof of the mouth. If he were demonstrating a suicide for Forrester, why would he shove the gun into his mouth so hard the barrel would break his teeth?
My view is that Forrester, acting out of panic, forced the pistol into Cattivo’s mouth, and assisted him in pulling the trigger.
May God save and rest all their souls.
This concludes my report on the matter of “Orchard Grove,” File No.1324-08232015.
Please note that no formal bench warrants or indictments are to be issued. The $5,000 cash collected at the crime scene will be issued to charity once released as evidence.
Chief Homicide Detective, Nick Miller, APD
8/23
Action Taken: Not Applicable. All suspects deceased (see above).
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Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for MOONLIGHT WEEPS, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than 130 novels and novellas, including THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT WEEPS, THE INNOCENT, and THE WOMAN WITH TWO FACES. Zandri's list of domestic publishers includes Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, Polis Books, Suspense Publishing, and Oceanview Publishing. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated into Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, and Polish. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and FOX news. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the "Best Books of 2014." Suspense Magazine also selected WHEN SHADOWS COME as one of the "Best Books of 2016". He was recently nominated for the 2019 Derringer Award for Best Novelette. A freelance photo-journalist and the host of the popular YouTube podcast, The Writer’s Life, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Writers Digest, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more. He lives in Albany, New York, and Florence, Italy. For more, go to www.vinzandri.com.
Vincent Zandri © copyright 2023
Any resemblance to real characters or events is purely coincidental.
Author Photo: Jessica Painter
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