by Chuck Hogan
"You're that sure."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. You think another thirty days?"
"I hope." He sat back, extending his arm over the top of the booth. "Don't think I'm enjoying myself here."
Cullen looked him over again. Maddox smelled confident, a big change from when they started. "What about you? They'll want to know I asked."
Maddox soured the way Kyle did when Cullen made a show of touring the mowed lawn before paying out his allowance. His arm came back off the booth, his shoulders tight again. Tired of being checked up on all the time. "How am I, you mean?"
"How are you, I mean."
"How do I seem?"
"Tired. Frustrated. Impatient."
"That's about right," Maddox said, and then he was out of the booth, moving with surprising speed to the door.
14
VAL
HER DOORBELL NEVER RANG, but when it did, on this particular afternoon, the door opened back fifteen years.
"Donny," said Valerie Ripsbaugh, seeing him in the doorway with the haze of late-day heat behind him. She recognized him instantly, but not because he hadn't changed. There was more of him now, and in all the right places. As though the skinny boy she knew in high school had been ingested by this man.
With fifteen years rushing up on her, she looked down at herself. Red plaid pajama pants with a hole in the knee, flat-soled flip-flops, and a loose cranberry jersey. What he must have been thinking as he compared the Valerie Sinclair of yesteryear to the Val Ripsbaugh of today. She looked away, wishing he would too.
"Val," he said. "How have you been?"
Most people, she didn't care. She had let herself go a long time ago. But Donny Maddox, he was the one mirror she could not pass. In him she felt a sort of death. Though they had only been academic rivals, never boyfriend and girlfriend, Donny more than any other person had defined Val's high school years.
"If you're looking for Kane," she said, "he's gone." She glanced over at the fenced-in septic service garage adjacent to their yard, the reason why all the window fans in her house faced out.
"No," he said, "I came to talk to you."
Only then did it occur to her that something might have happened to Kane. She always thought of her husband as vulnerable to nothing and no one except her. "Is it Kane? Is everything okay?"
"Ohyes." He reached up for his cap as though he had forgotten he was wearing the team uniform. Seeing him dressed as a local cop was so wrong. "Everything's fine."
Her reaction did not go quite as far as disappointmentshe wasn't that callousbut it was something like readiness, a borderline eagerness, which was close enough. I could sell the house. I could start over. I could be free.
Donny had kept himself in shape. He had found balance in his life. A few years earlier he would have seen a slimmer Val Ripsbaugh. Always up and down with her. If she wasn't dieting, she was bingeing; if she wasn't exercising, she was sleeping twelve hours a day. She could never get any traction in the middle ground. Yet she never recognized this compulsive behavior for what it was until she was out of one rut and into another.
Donny said, "It's about your brother."
Val nodded, fighting that sinking feeling she got whenever Dill's name came up. "What's he done now?"
"Nothing. That I know of. He's just missing. We usually see him around the center of town, at least up on his porch. But no one has recently."
If Donny was coming inside, she'd have to stash the wineglass in the sink, cap the open jug on the kitchen counter. "He wouldn't come here. If that's what you're asking."
"No, no. Just if you've seen him, or heard anything from him."
"The police need to know where their sex offenders are."
Donny shrugged, allowing that that was the extent of it.
She stepped back, her hand still on the doorknob. "I can't believe it, Donny. I can't believe you're a a cop."
"I know."
"I can't believe you came back. You got out. You had a free ride to college. You were gone. On my scholarship."
She forced a smile to leaven her bitterness, but it didn't work.
In the year of their graduation from Cold River Regional High School, one full scholarship had been offered to the Black Falls senior with the highest cumulative grade point average. Because her tax-cheat father wouldn't open himself up to the scrutiny of a financial aid application, this blind scholarship had been her one and only hope. Val led the class academically until their final semester, when she was edged out by Donny, by exactly one-tenth of one percentage point. Just like that, her art career dreams went up in smoke.
"I heard about your mother," she said. "Sounded like it was awful at the end. I was very sorry. I always liked her." The Sinclairs and the Maddoxes had lived on the same street, Val having moved to Black Falls when she was seven. Single-parent kids, both of themVal with her crooked father, Donny with his troubled motherand Val used to fantasize about their parents marrying and Mrs. Maddox becoming her mother and protector. Even into high school, she was always on her best behavior around Donny's mom, on the off chance that, even if she couldn't find a way to fall in love with Val's father, maybe she would fall in love with Val. Maybe enough to want her as her own daughter. "But why have you stayed?"
"Just to sell her house and get her things settled." He smiled a smile that had no meaning behind it. "I'm kind of stuck here until then."
"You've got nothing else out there waiting for you? Where have you been all this time? What've you been doing? We heard rumors."
"Rumors?"
"Town talk, you know. After the way you left. All the promises you made, then broke. Me, I was laughing. I hope I would have had the guts to screw off like you did."
"What rumors?"
"Someone said you'd joined a band. Or that you were in banking or finance or something. Someone said they'd read somewhere that you'd founded one of those Internet companies and made a billion dollars."
He smiled and shook his head, relieved to change the subject. "No, nothing like that. Just bouncing around. What about you? You still draw?"
She huffed out a laugh at her long-ago artistic pretensions.
"What?" he said. "You were good."
"You know how they say that if you really want to make God laugh, tell him your plans? God had milk coming out of his nose every time I opened my mouth about art school."
Donny shook his head. "None of us are the people we hoped we would be. Probably nobody ever is. But you're happy, right?" He leaned back for a look at the house. "You have a home. A husband."
She flashed a quick, hard smile, preferable to flowing tears. She looked down at the thin wedding band cutting into her swollen finger. "So, I don't know where Dill is," she told him. "No idea."
"Okay," said Donny. "Hey, I'm sorry if I "
She shook her head, wanting very much not to say anything she would regret. "I was happy for you, Donny. Really, I was. Crushed for myself. I mean, a B-plus instead of an A-minus, and poof, your future plans are no more. But at least, with you getting away one dove got free, you know? If it couldn't be me. I justI didn't ever think you'd waste it. But now, fifteen years later, you're here again. It's a little hard for me to see. So don't take this the wrong way, Donny. Please don't take this the wrong way. But I really wish you had never come back."
After closing the door, she stood with her hands trembling in a prayer pose against her nose and lips, then went to refill her glass of wine.
15
BUCKY
THEY CAME UP Old Red Road in the rescue truck, Bucky and Eddie, the box siren whirring out of the roof over their heads. Eddie slowed when he saw Maddox's blues skimming the dark trees, and eased in around the corner.
Twenty bucks extra they were paid each month, the Black Falls Volunteer Fire and Rescue, to keep their town pagers handy night and day. Seven more bucks per call, per hour, on top of that. Because of the overlap in certification training, the police force and fire and resc
ue were one and the same, the off-duty cops available as on-call firefighters.
Except rookie Maddox. He had not, and as far as Bucky was concerned, would never be invited to join.
Beyond the patrol car, a mustard gold Subaru wagon sat steaming. It had punched straight into a broad tree trunk, its hood mashed like a broken fist. The impact had brought a heavy limb down on the roof, and gasoline from the fuel line was puddling into the road, streaked green with antifreeze.
The pumper truck came up behind them and Eddie hopped out, him and Mort taking the ice ladder down off its hooks in order to flip open the side compartments and pull out the medical cases. Bucky dropped out of the passenger-side door wearing old painter's pants and a ribbed tank shirt, grinding his cigarette butt into the dirt shoulder and spitting into the trees. He reached for a fire extinguisher and a red ax and walked to the car as the other two jogged past him.
Maddox was at the Subaru, trying to talk to the driver and passenger inside. He stepped back as they arrived. "I called the ambulance," he said.
Best-case scenarionighttime, no traffic tie-ups, drivers who didn't get lost more than onceit was a thirty-minute ambulance run from Rainfield into Black Falls. Leaving Bucky plenty of time.
He checked the hissing engine first, verifying that it was steam rising and not smoke. The windshield had shattered over the crumpled hood and the dash, so that when Bucky unclipped the small flashlight from his belt, its beam shone through an empty frame.
Both front air bags had deployed, hanging empty now, the driver and the passenger dusted in cornstarch from the bags, like mimes that had been in a car accident on their way to the circus. Oak leaves lay among the starch and chunks of glass.
The driver had flipped open the vanity mirror in his visor. His nose was busted, swollen and pulpy, but what bothered him was the glass. He was picking it out of his dusted skin with his fingertips, tenderly removing the shards and arranging them like a row of bloody diamonds on the dash over the radio.
Bucky knew his face but not his name. The passenger too. Wanda had pointed them out to him once. Foster kids, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. Bucky kept his beam on them so they couldn't make him out, just in case. Glass sparkled in their scalps. He beamed the driver's eyes and the kid's pupils were eight-balled.
"Damn," said the kid, wincing, but never stopping his digging. "Gotta clean it out. They still coming?"
"Who?" said Bucky.
"Them that's chasing us."
Pure paranoia. Bucky watched the kid pluck a large fragment out of his cheek, a layer or two deep inside the dermis, yet show no sign of pain. All this while the one in the passenger seat whimpered softly, mime tears streaking the powder on his cheeks from the corner of each eye.
Christ, thought Bucky. It was something to see firsthand. Everything they said about this stuff. Exactly as advertised. No shit.
He felt a surge of omnipotence that was difficult to contain. He pulled himself away, letting the others work as he backed off upwind from the fuel spill and sparked another Winston Gold.
Eddie and Stokes readied a c-collar and tried to get the driver to give up on the glass in his face. Ullard remained at the pumper, hanging on to the side mirror, still wearing sleep boxers and a zipped windbreaker, looking very happily shitfaced.
Maddox came up the road, Bucky speaking first to neutralize him. "Two drunk kids joyriding in a stolen car."
"Drunk?" said Maddox. "You see that kid pulling glass out of his face?"
"Saw a guy once in a car pinned under a fence, insisted he was still inside his own garage. Wondered how I got in."
"You see their eyes?"
Bucky talked smoke at him. "Yeah, I saw their eyes. What are you, a doctor? Snap some accident scene pictures and call in Ripsbaugh to mop up. Then take off."
But Maddox didn't leave right away. He lingered, looking kind of funny at Bucky, almost puzzled, like he was thinking something. Smelling something.
"The fuck are you doing?" said Bucky, his voice raised loud enough for the others to hear. He blew more smoke his way. "Are you fucking sniffing on me, you queer motherfuck? The fuck is your problem?"
Maddox stood steadfast in the dissipating haze, resetting himself. "I have a problem?"
"You do. I am your problem. Remember that."
A school-yard stare, but nothing more. Never anything more, thought Bucky, Maddox always holding himself back. The brain inside was always workingbut on what?
"Look at you here, pussyfooting around," said Bucky. "Fucking college boy playing cop. You know what I think? I think you ought to be real careful on these shit-shift overnights. Accidents do happen."
"That right?"
"That's fucking right. Like that deer that hit youyou just never know. You're out here all on your own. Long way from civilization. Think about who your lifeline is. Ain't no ambulance." Bucky peeled off a grin. "It's us. It's me. You think about that sometime."
Bucky flicked his cigarette butt at Maddox's boots and walked back to the wreck, where both boys were now out and being strapped to backboards. "Fucking homo," Bucky said to the others. He tossed a look back at Maddox and yelled, "Pictures, camera, snap-snap, let's go!" and stared him back to his patrol car.
"Fucking spook," said Bucky, turning back to the strapped-down boys at his feet. He kneeled and went through their pockets quickly, finding nothing, no IDs. He looked into their faces and would have said something, would have warned them against talking, but their eyes were so far gone with shock and dope that any threat would have been wasted.
He leaned into the car and studied the seat with his flashlight beam, then cracked open the glove and emptied the contents onto the floor. Two small plastic zippered envelopes slid out. Bucky reached in and pocketed them quick, making sure there weren't any more.
Maddox came up with the Polaroid as Bucky stepped back. Bucky watched him snap his pictures, making him feel his presence. Goading him into saying something, making a move. But Maddox worked silently until the ambulance arrived. Bucky caught up with one of the EMTs after they had loaded in the boys. He showed the guy his cop badge.
The EMT said, "It'll be Rainfield Good Samaritan."
"We found a bottle of vanilla schnapps in the backseat there," lied Bucky. "Pretty cut-and-dried."
"Vanilla?" snorted the EMT, not so long out of his teens himself. "Any flavor they don't make that mouthwash in?"
"Kids like their poison sweet. No IDs yet, but we'll track down the parents and phone in the particulars."
"You got it. Have a good one."
Bucky tucked his badge away. "I'll sure try."
16
RIPSBAUGH
RIPSBAUGH PULLED UP on the scene just as Stoddard's mechanic was driving off with the wreck. It looked bad but not fatal. The wound in the tree trunk oozed sap, but it too would survive, though with a good scar.
Maddox stood at his patrol car, arms folded, apart from the layabouts near the pumper and the rescue truck farther up the road. Ripsbaugh pulled around the road flares and angled in next to Maddox's car, silencing the engine and stepping out of the cab. He walked to the back of his truck, his untied bootlaces flicking at his heels.
"Late call," said Maddox, coming over.
Ripsbaugh dropped the rear door. "Usually is."
"Couple of kids, nothing too serious." Maddox glanced at the other cops. "Some glass in the road, along with the fuel."
Ripsbaugh dragged out an open sack of sawdust. He lugged it over and emptied it onto the gasoline spill, then hauled out two buckets of cat litter and shook them on top of that. The blade of his long-handled shovel scraped the pickup bed as he slid it out.
The gas-soaked gravel scooped up like cornmeal and he shoveled it back into the plastic buckets. He kept his head down, working steadily but without haste, as was his manner. He remembered the last car accident he had to clean upIbbits, the escaped prisonerand how Bucky had watched over him as though afraid Ripsbaugh would steal something from the burn
ed wreck. This time Bucky was relaxed, all of them loitering by the pumper, prolonging the accident call into an extra hour's pay.
Ripsbaugh pretended not to notice them, in the same way he generally pretended not to notice anyone, work being a cloak of invisibility he pulled over himself. Ullard was drunk as usual, nodding off against the front tire, and Stokes drew a laugh by kicking him over. Bucky took a drag off a stubby cigarette and, with his patented Pail grin, pretended to launch the lit butt at Ripsbaugh and the fuel-sodden sand.
The others snickered hard. Ripsbaugh continued scraping his shovel like he hadn't noticed.
