Death on Moshup's Rock

By Z Z Rawlins

A bizarre and ritualistic murder on Martha's Vineyard, the first since the English slaughtered the Indians, sends the remote and idyllic island into a panic during the crush of summer tourist season.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noir House, LLC
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988620303

Book preview

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Homecoming

Chapter 2: The Chief

Chapter 3: Death and Diamonds

Chapter 4: Fishing Is a Living, Sometimes

Chapter 5: The Cat’s Tongue

Chapter 6: Hail Mary

Chapter 7: I Love Funerals

Chapter 8: People Are Not That Complicated

Chapter 9: Fires

Chapter 10: The Finger

Chapter 11: The Drugs

Chapter 12: The Woods

Chapter 13: The Triangle

Chapter 14: Everything Perfect is Full of Flaws

Backstory: The Court Cases

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Death on Moshup’s Rock

Copyright © 2023 by Z. Z. Rawlins, Noir House, LLC.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

Editing by The Pro Book Editor

Interior and Cover Design by IAPS.rocks

Photography by Linda Zarro

eBook ISBN: 979-8-9886203-0-3

Audiobook ISBN: 979-8-9886203-1-0

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9886203-2-7

Hardcover ISBN: 979-8-9886203-3-4

Main category—Fiction / Mystery & Detective

Other category—Fiction / Thrillers / Crime

First Edition

Dedicated to my father, who is a bigger man than he knows.

Chapter 1

The Homecoming

T

he Islander pulled into Vineyard

Haven harbor at 8:45 p.m. With a few bumps against the huge wood pylons, she straightened herself with a back-and-forth of the motors before the gangway lowered, fastened to the ferry, and the Steamship Authority night crew hollered all clear. The metal port doors of the ferry swung heavily and latched. Parents dragging exhausted kids, college students in sweatpants, and Sunday-night turnover renters from the mainland filed down the plank quietly, too tired to break the evening’s silence.

Except Ray Cillo. He came tripping down the gangplank with an over-the-top guffaw, his arms around two girls in tiny shorts and USA T-shirts. The girls stumbled over their suitcases; some joke about Irish Setters Ray told ten minutes ago snowballed into hyperventilating hysterics. Ray had spotted them forty-five minutes earlier, boarding in Woods Hole, keyed in on their Scot-Brit-Irish-foreign accents, and extended a gentlemanly arm to the ship’s bar for rounds of Sutter Home mini bottles. We cruising, we boozing, said Ray. The redheads had giggled, the overture accepted, and the rest of the ferry ride became a captive stage for the yarn of Ray’s life—only child of struggling immigrants, Air Force pilot shot down in Iraq, decorated Boston homicide detective, torch-bearer for a cold-hearted woman he couldn’t stop loving—told with the tenderness and grit of an Emily Brontë novel. The girls sopped it up. They were coming to work a job scooping ice cream. The Vineyard looked like a fun place to spend the summer. Little had they expected the dynamic and entrancing Ray to welcome them to America and offer so much advice on life.

The trio reached the bottom of the gangway, Ray gave them both a squeeze. Giggling, the girls extricated Ray’s long arms and said to come by the ice cream place. He threw up his hands and asked where they were going, but they walked on, waving kisses goodbye. Ray smirked, thinking of another joke about American-style hospitality when a car horn started blaring.

Jesus Christ.

At the end of the pier, a white Volvo idled with Ray’s mother, Anne, behind the wheel. She leaned her fist into the horn again and waved furiously to get in the car. Ray let out a long sigh, opened the car door, and threw his bags in the back seat. It was a nice ferry ride, at least.

Who were those women? Do you know them? Anne snipped.

No, I just met them on the way over. You look gorgeous as always, Ma.

Anne shook her head, screwed up her red lips. She had on a leopard-print raincoat from Bamberger’s, circa 1980, her red hair bunned up under a turban. Diamond earrings, Foster Grant wraparounds, heavy perfume. The car jerked as she mashed the pedal, pursing her lips to hold back all the things her son had done wrong since he was too young to remember, or at least since the last time she had seen him.

What? I’ve not even been on this island for five minutes and you’re already upset. What did I do now?

You know, Ray, when are you gonna grow up? I keep waiting but it’s not happening.

What are you talking about? I met some decently dressed, attractive women with no visible diseases and ensured their native voyage to Martha’s Vineyard was as enjoyable as it could be. You know, if we all treated foreigners as nicely as I treated them, we would have fewer world wars. That’s a fact.

Oh yeah? Anne shook her head and smiled. Ray could bullshit like no other.

You see, girls like that, they’re looking for someone with experience…

Oh, you got that, Ray.

So I’m doing my civic duty as an American, and as a frequent visitor to the island, to provide them my very experienced perspective. How are you going to argue with that? Ray’s face started to crack as the bullshit got deeper.

What ever happened to that nice blonde girl you were dating? Her family had money.

You know what the secret is for rich women? They expect you to buy everything. Hand to God I never was so broke to keep one person happy. I was on my way to living in a cardboard box on the street. Nah, I’m back to dating cheap women with low expectations. And when I die, I’m leaving everything to you, my gorgeous madonna.

You know, if you’re not your father…

A very successful businessman, and quite handsome in his time, I am told.

Anne broke. She laughed and patted him on his leg.

Now, before we get home, I’ve got some news. I turned off the internet service. I wasn’t using it. You can turn it back on if you want, but I wasn’t using it.

Now, why would you do that? The internet is the single best source of free information in the world. It’s also cheaper than landlines for making phone calls.

I told you, I wasn’t using it.

Well, that’s great. No women, no internet. Next you’ll be telling me there’s no place to get a drink in this town. Oh wait, I forgot. There’s no place to get a drink in this town. How’s a grown man supposed to function?

Ray let out another long sigh. Going to live with his mother was jail, but worse. He used to throw the guys in the drunk tank for the night, maybe give them a little lullaby punch and say the door did it, but at least in the tank you were alone. No one asked you questions. No one passed judgment with just a look. In jail, there was no booze, no women, and no internet, but there was also no mother. Ray laughed to himself.

Ray, you’re here to get yourself together, right? You’re supposed to be taking it easy and, you know, figuring out how to get your job back.

Yeah, yeah. I will. It’s just for a while.

Anne went quiet. They drove down Main Street in Tisbury toward West Chop. The streetlights stopped about a mile out of town. After that, it was a dark road and a life without vices. Whatever joke Ray had told the redheads on the ferry, he couldn’t remember it now.

You dumbass, he thought. You had it all figured out. The political hopscotch through the police department had seemed like an easy game. Kiss the right ass, bend the rules when no one was watching, fake up a few confessions, and who cared? All in the line of duty. To protect and serve. So what if he broke a guy’s wrist to get a confession once? Deadbeat loser bound for life in prison dealing oxy by an elementary school deserved it. Ray’s partner in the room had said nothing, and then brought it up to save his own ass when the department crusaded for a kinder and gentler police force. Ray was in the crosshairs, a tough white guy with a big chip and a big mouth. Ray was told to take leave. To let the political winds blow.

That was June. After thoroughly stinking up his apartment, Ray put his minimal possessions and some beach clothes in a suitcase and decided to hide out on the island. His gut said he was tired. His ego said he was lonely, irritated, and in no mood to talk to anyone.

His mother turned the car off Main Street onto Juniper Lane, more of a long driveway with two other houses than a real road. In the dark, a porch light shone on the winterized two-story bungalow she and Ray’s father, Carl, bought back in the 1970s when island real estate was affordable and middle-class families from Boston bought summer places. It looked the same as it did in the 1970s, with some window dressing and new shingles that dated it to Hurricane Andrew. Before he died, Carl added a room above the garage so he could watch the Weather Channel and drink in private. Ray looked up at the window to his dad’s old hideout and claimed it as his own now.

It didn’t take long to unpack, plug in his devices, pull out the couch. It was a million years old, thin and flat as an army cot. It creaked under his weight, the only noise in the otherwise silent, dark room. Ray laid his head on a pillow, flat as a padded envelope, and closed his eyes, doing something he thought was breathing exercises to stop his racing mind.

There was no city din out the window. No women, no police work. Just conversations in his head he couldn’t stop, the endless replay of how he got it so wrong, how he was set up after years of getting the crap beat out of him for little more than a teacher’s salary plus pension. He twisted on his side to reach for his phone, and a pain shot through his back, an old injury from falling off a wall into a fence. He reached farther for the painkillers in his travel bag. At thirty-six he was starting to groan in the morning, get caffeine headaches, walk with a heavy shuffle. His thick, wavy hair was salt and pepper like his father’s, but too soon. He’d hoped his father would appreciate what it took to be a cop. His mother definitely had. She was a prize-fighter herself. Tough old bag.

Ray went to the kitchen to get a drink. Anne looked up at him with her iced tea.

My back is bothering me again. I gotta go to the doctor tomorrow. I need you to drive me.

Where’s the doctor?

Five corners, not that far. I gotta be there ten o’clock. And if you want me to, I’ll call up Comcast tomorrow about the internet. Maybe they can get someone out here, but it’s the holiday.

I’d appreciate it.

Anne sat across from him. The ice tinkled in her glass. She glowed under the kitchen light and stared at him for a long minute.

What happened, Ray? I thought you were doing okay. When’d you fall off the wagon?

Ray looked at her glass. His thoughts were noisy and empty. There was no clean way to explain anything.

It’s been a lot of things, Ma. I came out of the academy with big ideas, didn’t I? He laughed. I thought I was going to, you know, make the world right. The world seems against me. I think I’m depressed.

"Don’t you give me that psychology mumbo-jumbo. Are you starving? Are you out digging ditches? No! Your grandparents lived through a