The Killing Moon: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Eddie would never have bothered showing his face out here just to help. He knew something about this. Bucky said, "Walt here thinks he heard something in the Borderlands last night."

  "Not 'thinks,'" said Heavey. "It was a gunshot. The crack of a handgun. I heard it carry."

  Chock-hunk. Eddie said to Bucky, his mouth full, "That was Maddox."

  Just hearing the name changed the weather in Bucky's head from overcast to threatening. "What are you talking about?"

  "Hit a deer last night." Eddie examined the apple like it was a kill. Chock-hunk. Bucky hated watching his brother eat. "Had to put it down in the middle of the road."

  Bucky also hated these rare occasions when Eddie knew something Bucky did not. "What road?"

  "Edge Road. Out by the falls."

  Heavey was shaking his head. "I heard it in the woods behind my house."

  "Sound carries," said Bucky. "You said so yourself. You live on Edge."

  "At the other end from the falls. The shot I heard came from the woods."

  Clown Man wasn't going to budge. Why was Bucky wasting his time with this anyway? "Okay then, Walt. We'll be sure and follow up on it."

  "How so?"

  Bucky stopped. He cocked his head at him. "What's that, Walt?"

  Heavey backed down, just a little. Just enough. "I asked how so?"

  Bucky said, referring to brother Eddie, "Patrolman Pail here will swing by Edge Road after the parade."

  Eddie took another apple bite, chock-hunk. "No, I won't."

  Bucky said, "Enjoy the parade, Walt."

  Heavey turned, livid, and pushed out through the screen door to the front porch, starting away. Bucky imagined him doing so in big, floppy clown shoes.

  "Heavey on the rag again?" said Eddie.

  Bucky looked at him chewing. "Most people don't eat the stem, you know. They leave that last little bit."

  "Gives me something to chew on," he said, as Bucky started past him down the back hall. "Hey. I don't actually have to go out there to Heavey's, do I?"

  Bucky's focus was on Maddox now. "I don't give a fuck what you do."

  He banged out the rear door, slowing at the top of the back steps, finding the others gathered around Maddox's patrol car in the center of the dirt lot.

  Without looking, Bucky was aware of Maddox standing apart from them, and also aware that Maddox was aware of him. A reverse magnetism had developed between them.

  "What's this, now?" said Bucky, coming down off the steps.

  Mort Lees, who was third in seniority after Bucky and Eddie, straightened near the rear left passenger door. He and Eddie had run around together all through high school, Mort being the tougher of the two. "Buck, check this out. Deer rammed Maddox's unit."

  Bucky went around the patrol car. The door was pushed in good, but he didn't reach out and feel it like the rest. He wouldn't give Maddox the satisfaction.

  He looked over at the part-time rookie, and just by the way Maddox was standing thought he seemed more confident. Like Maddox was becoming one of the boys. Bucky felt camaraderie blooming here.

  He would not ask to hear Maddox's thrilling deer story. He didn't fall in love so easy. Instead he focused on the trunk of the spare patrol car behind Maddox, which was open. "What do you think you're doing?"

  Maddox had a box of road flares in his hands. "Moving my stuff into the extra car."

  Bucky shook his head nice and slow. "For emergencies only."

  Maddox stared like he didn't understand. "Mort took it when his windshield glass got that thread crack in the corner."

  "See, that's a safety issue there. Windshield. Yours is just bodywork, cosmetic. Bang out that dent if you want, but do it on your own time."

  The police department budget was a joke. Black Falls was a piss-poor town struggling to afford Bucky and Eddie full-time. No money existed for their uniforms beyond T-shirts and ball caps; no paid vacations for anyone; no overtime and no paid details. Bucky and Eddie were the only ones who rated health insurance coverage, which both of them had declined, opting to leave their contributions in their paychecks, their salaries measuring out to a measly $7.85 hourly wage.

  But there were other advantages to running a town. A smart cop could more than make up for the pay discrepancy on the side. That was where the real benefits of the job were: out on the fringe.

  The patrol cars were puttering '92 and '93 Fords. Bucky's had more than 140,000 miles. And since February they had been paying to gas up their own vehicles. They already bought their own weapons and ammo. And anything that broke inside the outmoded station was theirs to repair.

  But then Maddox swept back to town, and old man Pinty strong-armed his fellow selectmen, somehow finding enough money in the budget to hire on another thirty-six-hour-a-week cop with no qualifications whatsoever. Because Maddox was a legacy, because the man's father had been Pinty's partner once upon a time and, oh yeah, had been stupid enough to get himself killed in the line of duty in such a sleepy town as this.

  That Maddox was Pinty's special hire here was a little too obvious. Transparent, the old man trying to hold on to the police force, forgetting that he had retired ten years ago and that his time had long, long since passed.

  "Heavey heard Maddox's deer shot," Eddie announced to the others. "Dumb cluck thought the gun went off in his own backyard. Wants round-the-clock surveillance."

  Bart Stokes, the fourth cop, thinner and dumber than the rest, said, "Guy needs to buy himself a pair of long pants and some balls."

  Bucky asked, "Where's this deer now?"

  Maddox's eyes and mouth were tighter as he responded. "Off the side of the road. Ripsbaugh said he'd pick it up today."

  "Mmm," said Ullard, the fifth cop, the joker of the bunch, rubbing his chubby hands together. "Venison stew all week at the Ripsbaughs'."

  Stokes said, "Five bucks he mounts the head. Trophy of a retarded deer."

  Ullard said, "You'd mount a retarded deer for five bucks."

  Stokes reached out to push Ullard as the others laughed. All except Bucky. And Maddox.

  Bucky said, "Show and Tell's over. Maddox, you got some forms to fill out."

  "Forms?" he said.

  "Vehicle damage report. And discharge of a firearm. Tell you what, why don't you write me up a full report on the whole thing."

  Maddox checked this with the others. "Write you the report, Bucky?"

  "As your senior-ranking sergeant." Bucky didn't like the look he was getting, the attitude. "And for future reference, deer hunter? 'Bucky' is what friends call me. You can stick with 'Sarge.'"

  That woke up the others. Bucky was pretty much done waiting for Maddox to get bored of working his three-a-week, twelve-hour graveyard shifts all by his lonesome. Done waiting for him to sell his dead mother's house and move the hell out of Black Falls. If Maddox was entertaining any real-cop dreams and thinking he might catch on here full-time, then maybe he was stupider than Bucky knew.

  But no. Maddox was anything but stupid. That was the thing. Maddox was too smart, he was too sure, and he kept things inside. Most of all, he had a knack for being around when things happened. The sort of knack that could get a man into trouble.

  Bucky looked at the others. "The parade extravaganza ready?"

  Maddox was in the dark about that. No one had told him about the parade plans.

  "Ready, Bucky," said Stokes.

  The way Stokes accentuated the "Bucky" was exactly what Bucky wanted to hear. Rally these idiots, keep the station house lines drawn. Chase Maddox off the force, and then run this town exactly as he pleased, with no one trying to peek over his shoulder. Better careful than sorry.

  Bucky said, "Maddox, you're on parade duty. The rest of us? We got some marching to do."

  4

  HEAVEY

  GAYLE UNFOLDED HER OVERSIZED sunglasses and said to him, "Walter, please. We came for a parade."

  And she was right. Here he was snapping at his boys, taking it out on them. The parade was about to sta
rt, and why should he let the Pail brothers ruin the town holiday, such as it was?

  Because that pair of no-brains had laughed at him.

  Neanderthals. With their trademark Pail eyes peering out from deep inside their skulls, tramp eyes, Bucky with his oh-so-clever grin and Eddie with his toothy smile. Menaces. In any other town, those two would be pumping Walter Heavey's gas or mowing his lawn.

  Imagine if a protected species like a bald eagle or a spotted owl knew it was protected. Knew it could peck at your eyes and ears and turd on your face and there was not a damn thing you could do—because if you so much as raised a hand against it, into jail you would go. Now give that protected species loaded guns and powers of arrest.

  He reached for his sons' whiffled heads, Wallace, Walker, and Waldo, their orange fuzz bristling. If those Pails ever tried to humiliate Walter Heavey in front of his boys

  "The gall of that punk, Gayle. By God. Something's got to give."

  Her hand fell to her side, her charm bracelet and its three identical silver heads jangling as she communicated her aggravation with a sigh. "So let's move then, Walter."

  She lobbed this bomb at him every once in a while, but she was the one who could never part with the house, having sunk so much time and energy into decorating it to her liking. But he played his part. "Move where? Where else are we going to find a house as big as ours with as much acreage as we have for what we'd get in this market? At this tax rate? Take it from a man who knows," he said, thumbing his State Farm Insurance shirt.

  Gayle put her hand on his arm, the immediacy of her grip meant to silence him.

  A black ball cap and white jersey moving up the sidewalk. Dark sunglasses. A Black Falls cop coming their way.

  Walter Heavey felt his wife pulling the boys back from the sidewalk's edge. It just wasn't right. A family shouldn't be wary of their own police force.

  It was the new cop, Don Maddox. Maddox's hiring had been little more than a bad joke, indicative of the whole sorry state of affairs here in Black Falls. Maddox was about as qualified to be a law officer as Walter Heavey was. The POLICE jersey he wore, a pair of sunglasses: Was that all it took? If Heavey traded shirts with Maddox, would Maddox be able to draw up a whole-life policy? Would he be able to decode an actuarial table at a glance? Walter Heavey was his company's top performer in the region, remarkable when you factored in that State Farm didn't even offer insurance products in his home state. His region encompassed southwestern New Hampshire, southern Vermont, and eastern New York State, a customer base he had built up over the past fifteen years—fifteen years while Maddox was doing well, what, exactly?

  Maybe Maddox could put on surgical scrubs and take out Walter Heavey's appendix while he was at it.

  Pinty was the one who had helped him catch on part-time with the police—another head-scratcher. If Pinty and Maddox went back such a long way, why would Pinty drop a friend into that pit of vipers?

  "What now?" said Heavey, as Maddox came up. "You come for a chuckle too?"

  Behind his dark glasses, Maddox acted confused. "I heard you heard a shot last night."

  "I know, I know. You put down a deer in the road, that was the shot I heard. Only, it wasn't. The one I heard came from the Borderlands behind my house. The other direction."

  "You remember the time, by any chance?"

  "I do. It woke me up and I checked the alarm clock. Nine minutes after midnight."

  Maddox looked around as though concerned someone might overhear their conversation. The turnout for the parade wasn't amounting to much—a combination of hot July sun and general apathy. "The shot was all you heard?"

  "All I heard, that's right."

  "No voices, no yelling?"

  "Nothing. And I listened."

  "Well, the timing seems about right," said Maddox. "This deer, it came streaking out of the Borderlands, broadsided my patrol car headfirst. Going that fast, I figure something must have spooked it."

  This took a moment to settle in: Maddox believed him.

  Maddox noticed the three boys looking up from behind their mother's shielding hips. He bent down closer to their level. "Hey, there, guys. You ready for the parade?"

  The boys crowded closer as though trying to climb back inside their mother.

  Maddox straightened, his smile bearing a trace of regret. "Anyway, enjoy the day, folks," he said.

  Heavey said, "You're going to check into it?"

  "I'll take a ride out on the fire road, I guess. Beyond that, I don't know."

  "What about the shoe prints?"

  That stopped Maddox from leaving, brought him back. "What shoe prints?"

  "They didn't tell you?"

  "I work just three overnights a week, Mr. Heavey. They don't give me a whole lotta help on the shift change."

  Heavey told him briefly about the woman in black. He liked the concern he saw on Maddox's face. Liked it very much.

  "Those shoe impressions still there?" said Maddox.

  "Some, sure."

  "Think you can keep your boys from trampling them? I could stop by at the beginning of my shift tonight, before it gets dark."

  Heavey was speechless. A Black Falls cop actually listening to him. Willing to act.

  Parade music started up, a prerecorded band march. Maddox glanced around again, leaving Heavey with the distinct impression that Maddox did not want to be seen talking to him. All to the better.

  "Just you, then," Heavey said. "I don't want any of those others on my property."

  5

  PINTY

  THEY SAY RIVERS USUALLY divide towns, but not Black Falls. The town had grown up around an east-west crook in the south-flowing Cold River, forming a natural crease between the low farmlands to the south and the foothills rising in the north. The town got its name from a pair of waterfalls just up the river, the site of a massacre—so bloody the water was said to run black—of Pequoigs in 1676, at the height of the Indian Wars. The town was not officially incorporated until 1755, the criteria being a population financially capable of building its own Congregational church and supporting its own Congregational minister. A state law in 1831 separating church from state prompted the construction of a new town meeting site, a white clapboard building renovated in the mid-1960s, now resembling a side-by-side two-family house, the town offices on one side and the police station on the other.

  That building, symmetrical beneath a round attic window like an always open, always staring eye, stood at the head of the T-shaped intersection of Main and Mill. Main Street represented the top bar of the T, accompanying Cold River in either direction. Number 8 Road, the fragment of an old Hartford-to-Montpelier mail route, shot northward from the western bar, narrowing as it snaked into the hills above town.

  Mill Road ran south, being the trunk of the T, first as a low iron bridge spanning the summer-swift Cold River, then as a paved road hooking around the old Falls Paper Incorporated pulp mill, rotting on its river stilts.

  About half of Black Falls' 1,758 residents were clustered in the town center, in the old mill houses crowded along Main and Mill, crumbling brick tenements and company-built three-deckers with sagging roofs and slumping porches. The shuttering of the paper mill almost twenty years ago was largely to blame for the town's current state of affairs. Black Falls had evolved from a trading post town in the eighteenth century to a farming town in the nineteenth century to a mill town in the twentieth. But even its proudest citizen had to admit that the twenty-first held little promise. The town wasn't dying so much as it was disappearing. No supermarket. No traffic lights. No ATM. Mobile telephone reception was one bar at best, broadcast television reception almost nil, and the wait for cable television was currently twenty-five years and counting. As "globalization" evidently required paying customers, the modern world appeared willing to leave the town behind.

  The town was hurting, financially, geographically, every which way. The community as a whole was depressed beyond simple economics. It was in the grip of a spiritual malais
e from which there seemed no relief. The Mitchum County Chamber of Commerce guide referred to Black Falls as "once historic," and Pinty didn't even know what that meant, though the wording somehow seemed right.

  Stavros Pintopolumanos leaned forward on his cane, the silver English grip familiar and smooth to his hand. With the bridge and the Cold River at his back, he looked across at what he considered to be the current source of the town's ills. To Pinty, everything started and finished with the police department, the institution which had employed him most of his life and which he had helmed at the time of his retirement almost ten years before. He looked at the big flag atop the pole in front, its colors vibrant even when furrowed on a windless day. As a source of inspiration and a symbol of hope, it buoyed him. He had lived in the same small town all his life, with the notable exception of three years of service in the Korean War, and whenever he laid eyes on the flag hung properly and high, he felt a breeze lift his heart.