Crimes by Moonlight

Then the urgency retreated, and I was back on my footstool, the tea at my elbow barely cooled. I took my mother’s Galway shawl down from the top shelf of the bedroom closet and ran my fingers over the soft lambs’ wool, woven centuries ago in an intricate Celtic knot pattern. I placed the shawl on the bed and unfolded its protective wings, revealing my O’Conor scroll. How do the names and dates get written? I know only that they are there. A name. A birth date. And after the awareness, a death date. I opened to the name of the hulking redhead. Casey Rheingold was seven generations down, through Rory’s daughter Jane. His birth date was written some fifty-odd years before, with today’s date newly added in the ancient, ornate script. His final line had been written, but I was not at ease with the reason for it. Something about Casey Rheingold’s death felt wrong, lighting the spark of my human curiosity. Banshees have no such attribute.

I wrapped the shawl around my shoulders, grabbed my bulky canvas tote filled with the odds and ends of a freelance writer’s trade, and ran down to the cabstand on Second Avenue. The cabdriver, an African wearing a Yankees baseball cap, had pasted a sign on the glass partition boasting that his family village was only twenty kilometers from the village where President Obama’s father was born.

I asked him to take Seventy-second Street through Central Park to the west side of Manhattan.

Then we rode north along Broadway. I peered toward the Hudson River at each intersection, looking for a sign. At Eighty-third Street, I could see the swirling lights of a half-dozen vehicles scattered in mid-street. After paying the cabbie, I walked to the splendid art deco building at the core of all the excitement.

I stuck my freelance press pass under the nose of the uniformed cop guarding access to the building entrance, which was cordoned with yellow tape. He waved me off, a movement that seriously jeopardized the seams of his dark blue shirt.

“DCPI briefing in a few. No info until then.” And he turned his expansive back, stifling any further word from me.

Reporters who regularly work the crime beat milled around complaining loudly that the deputy commissioner of public information’s office was notoriously late to any and all on-scene interviews.

I was looking for a way to sneak past the yellow tape when I saw the old woman from the roof, sitting in a folding chair next to the latticework facade of the building. A policewoman was leaning against the wall but stood straight when she saw me walk over. I bent over the old woman, pulled a bottle of water out of my tote, and gushed, “Have they given you anything to eat or drink? We can’t have you dehydrating. Please take this.”

The old lady’s rheumy eyes widened, then blinked. My heart nearly stopped beating, that’s how taken aback I was by my own impudence, but then she handed me the ragged gardening gloves she’d been holding, took the bottle, and twisted the cap.

“Thank you, my dear. As you can imagine, it’s been quite a time.” She turned to the policewoman. “This thoughtful young lady is one of our newer neighbors. Some people I’ve known for forty years have brushed right past me, without a word.”

The policewoman made a clucking noise at such a lack of ma

She recapped the bottle and leaned back in her chair.

“Did you ever meet Mr. Rheingold? Top floor, full terrace? He was a blustery, winter kind of man. In all the years he lived here, the few times he broke his silence, it was with a snarl or a roar. Not the nicest of neighbors, but at least he didn’t come home stumbling drunk like 5D or beat his wife like 3F. All the same, now he’s dead.”

“He had a wife? How terrible for her.”

“A wife of sorts. She flits in and out of the building, covered in jewelry and wearing one flashy outfit after the other. Where does she go, in her revolving-door life? Clara from the sixth floor said she once saw Linda Rheingold get into a snazzy yellow car waiting at the hydrant around the corner. The driver was a young man. A very young man.”

She gave me a knowing nod. Abruptly, the events on the roof overtook her.

“I heard the shot. Big, loud bang. I thought it was the maintenance crew. You know how noisy they are when they clean or fix things.”

I nodded vigorously.

“I tell you, when I saw Mr. Rheingold push through the roof door, clutching his chest, blood everywhere, my first though was that the missus and her young man decided to hurry him along his path to heaven. Not that it’s likely he’ll wind up there.”

She reopened the water bottle and took a quick nip.

“Fell right at my feet. It was too late to help him. He said something, sounded like Cladder, you know, ladder with a C in front. Like that. Then his eyes glazed, just like my second husband’s eyes, down at the veterans’ hospital on Twenty-fourth Street.”

I watched as her whole being rolled back to her second husband’s death, be it last week or decades ago.

She shook off the memory.

“I told the police to look for the young man Linda footsied around with. I bet his name is Cladder or something like it.”

Not Cladder. Claddagh! The old Claddagh village in Galway City. Casey Rheingold’s dying word was co

I leaned on the back of the old lady’s chair, hoisted myself up, and offered to go to the corner store to buy her something to eat.

“You’re a good girl, but I’m too excited to be hungry. When the excitement dies down, stop by to see me.” She stretched out her right hand. “Mildred Stresky, apartment 2D.”

I shook her hand with a warm two-handed clasp designed to cover my evasive answer. “I’m Ry

A police siren was coming ever closer. I saw the print reporters and film crews gathering. Perhaps DCPI had finally sent a spokesman. I stepped away from Mrs. Stresky and, morphing from caring neighbor to freelance journalist, I joined the crowd bunched around a makeshift podium. A dark-haired, middle-aged man, wearing black horn-rimmed eyeglasses, stood at the podium and held out his hands to quiet us. He clearly a

“Responding to a 911 call at 18:20 hours, that’s 6:20 p.m., two patrol officers assigned to the Twentieth Precinct found the body of Casey Rheingold, aged fifty-two. Mr. Rheingold was a senior partner in the law firm of Stoddard and Weiss. He expired on the roof of the building where he lived.”

Captain Mumbles pointed in the general direction of the address plate above the entryway.

“FDNY emergency medical technicians pronounced him dead at the scene, probably from a gunshot wound to the chest. Mr. Rheingold’s body has been removed to the office of the medical examiner.”

A voice from the crowd intruded.

“So, it’s murder, right, Captain? Oh, yeah, and could you spell your last name for us?”

“We expect the medical examiner to declare this death a homicide and are investigating accordingly. My name is Morales. M-O-R-A-L-E-S.”

For nearly three centuries on two continents, I keened for thousands of O’Conor deaths caused by old age or illness. The Famine, accidents, and some wild and bloody fights took their toll as well. This war or that war piled the numbers higher. Still, I always knew the reason.

Many’s the time my mother, Roisin, Banshee Queen of Co

But I’m my father’s child as well. After each awareness, I would savor the intimation, be it hospital bed or battlefield, which helped me to let the O’Conor rest in peace.

Not once in thousands of deaths over hundreds of years, have I suspected murder. How can I close the banshee scroll, knowing that Casey Rheingold’s death was not a result of the natural order of things?