Page 21 of Blood Moon

Beth didn’t interrupt to tell him that she’d made note of the store today when she was there.

“Carla gave Crissy a twenty-dollar bill, which she clearly remembered her slipping into the pocket of her hoodie. The hood was up. It wasn’t raining hard, but it was drizzling. Crissy left. Carla went to bed. She didn’t know that was the last time she would see her daughter.

“Because of an office staff meeting, Carla left for work early the next morning, assuming that Crissy was safely asleep in her room. Crissy was usually home from school by the time Carla came in from work. She wasn’t there. Carla called Crissy’s cell to see what was up. She heard the phone ringing inside the house and located it in Crissy’s bedroom.

“Apparently, the night before, Crissy had left her phone behind. But why hadn’t she taken it to school with her that morning? Feeling some alarm, Carla checked the kitchen. No new loaf of bread in the bread box, no carton of milk in the fridge.

“She called the boy next door, Billy Oliver. Crissy was eighteen and would have graduated high school the following May. He was two years younger and didn’t go to public school, but they were friends. He told Carla he’d seen Crissy leaving their house on foot and had gone outside to ask where she was off to. She told him she was running aquick errand and invited him along. Because of the weather, he declined and went back indoors. That was the last he’d seen or heard from her. She hadn’t been at school that day. That’s when Carla called the police.”

“And was given the run-around,” Beth said. “That’s a quote from herCrisis Pointinterview.”

He nodded somberly. “She was put through the normal drill. Had the two of them had a fight? Had she left the house angry, threatened to run away? Could she be with a boyfriend, or on a jaunt with girlfriends?

“Carla was adamant that an unexplained vanishing act would be out of character for her daughter. She was convincing. And as of then, it was the evening of the eighth. My partner and I were assigned to begin investigating it as a missing person’s case. We usually wait twenty-four hours before making it official, but Crissy had already been missing for almost that long.”

She noticed that his forehead furrowed, creating that dent between his eyebrows, as though it pained him to think about that even now.

“We were the first to question Billy Oliver. Then Tom Barker turned him over to another detective. He was questioned relentlessly and two days later was taken into custody.”

He said nothing more for a time, then turned to her. “When I began thinking about all this last night, I couldn’t remember what kind of weather we’d had the night of November seventh and into the wee hours of the eighth, so I looked it up. It was lousy. Overcast, foggy, heavy rain off and on. Typical coastal Louisiana weather.

“You asked why I didn’t consider the moon as beingsignificant. Why anybody didn’t. According to what I read last night, the eclipse here began at twoA.M.and lasted until six-thirty. Because of the cloud cover, nobody would have seen it, even if they were awake at that time.

“We’d had heavy rains that entire week, causing local flooding and necessitating evacuations. Two people down in Chauvin drowned when their car was swept away. Every law officer and first responder in the southern half of the state was stretched thin. In the midst of all that, Crissy went missing. No one was paying attention to a moon we hadn’t seen for a week and couldn’t see that night, either.”

He repositioned himself in his seat, stretching his legs out beneath the dashboard as far as they would go. “I didn’t even know for sure what a blood moon was. I’d heard the term, but I was thinking voodoo, end of the world predictions, folklore legends and rituals, werewolves. But it’s a real thing, right? An astronomical phenomenon?”

“Yes. Some lunar eclipses are referred to as blood moons when they’re actually not.”

“I got sleepy before I learned what defines one.”

“It’s a total lunar eclipse, not partial. Earth gets between the sun and afullmoon. That’s the distinction. It’s a specific alignment. Earth is perfectly positioned to cast an encompassing shadow onto a full moon.

“With Earth in the way, so to speak, sunlight isn’t projecting directly onto the moon. It’s being filtered through Earth’s atmosphere. That filtration is what causes the moon to appear orange or reddish in color. Thus the name.”

He took it all in, then said, “Son of a gun. Who knew?”

She smiled. “Well, ancient civilizations knew. They maynot have known what caused the phenomenon, but they attached spiritual or supernatural significance to a red moon. They were recorded and anticipated. They figured out that they occur every three and a half years and that there are two blood moons during the years they occur.”

“Interesting. The one in November of 2022 when Crissy disappeared was the second that year.”

“Right. The first was the night of May fifteenth–sixteenth, depending where on the globe you were.”

He nodded absently, thought on it a little longer, then said, “Okay, I now have a basic understanding of the astronomical properties. What I don’t get is how all that intersects with Crissy’s disappearance. Let’s recap. You don’t think Billy Oliver was the guilty party.”

“Do you?”

The question seemed to upset him. In any case, he didn’t answer. “Still recapping. You believe the actual perp is out there and will strike again during the next blood moon.”

“I have reason to believe that it’s a possibility.”

“How good a reason?”

“Good enough that you shouldn’t rule it out.”

“I’m not ruling it out.”

“Not yet,” she said, “but skepticism is written all over your face.”

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