The Killing Moon: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Frankie, knowing he had been made, opened the door to the downstairs. The cat stink rose up at him as he started down, arguing with himself all the way. He remembered things Dill had said about the cops in town. He almost turned back upstairs. The cop was bellowing, "Open up, Sinclair!" It was kind of a Three Little Pigs moment. He had a forceful voice that threatened to blow the house down.

  At the first-floor landing, Frankie threw the lock and pulled back on the door—and the cop pushed right inside, backing Frankie hard against the handrail post at the bottom of the stairs.

  "Who the hell are you?" said the cop. He had been expecting Dill.

  "Frankie. Frankie Sculp."

  This cop wasn't one of the brothers, the ones with the cave eyes. "Sinclair," he said, gripping Frankie's shirt as he looked up the stairs. "Where is he?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know. He's not here?"

  "I thought—maybe you were him."

  "What are you doing here? How'd you get in? You break in?"

  "No." Frankie was fishing around inside the pocket of his cargo shorts for the key when, all of a sudden, the cop clamped a hand around Frankie's neck, gripping his forearm.

  Frankie stared, eyes bulging. He tried to gulp but the cop's hand choked it.

  "Slowly," said the cop.

  The guy was pissed. Frankie blinked a couple of times, pleadingly, in lieu of speech, until the cop let up on his throat and then his arm. Frankie brought out Dill's apartment key dangling at the end of a green sneaker lace.

  The cop yanked it out of his hand. "He gave you this?"

  Frankie swallowed hard, little tears popping out. He nodded.

  "I'm around this corner a lot," said the cop. "How come I don't see you going in and out?"

  Frankie shook his head. He shrugged.

  "How long you been here today?"

  "Dill lets me stay," Frankie said.

  "Overnight?"

  "Not usually."

  "But sometimes. I want to know about recently."

  "The past few days."

  "Past few days. How many?"

  "A week. I been waiting for him."

  "You're saying you haven't seen Sinclair in a week."

  Frankie nodded.

  "How old are you, Frankie Sculp?"

  "Sixteen."

  "Where do you live?"

  "With the Ansons. Over on Mill."

  "Ansons? You a foster kid?"

  Frankie shrug-nodded, feeling like he had been made to admit something.

  "They know you're out here, where you are?"

  "They know I'm out."

  "At the apartment of a sex offender, they know that part of it?"

  "I guess, not really."

  Not that they would even care. The Ansons were a lot more interested in getting blitzed on their state stipend than feeding their foster kids.

  "What do you come here for?"

  "I just hang."

  "What's here for you? Sinclair is your "

  "He's my friend."

  "Your friend. That's great. You admire him? Want to be like him?"

  "I don't know."

  "How is it you 'hang'? What does that mean?"

  "You know. Video games and stuff. He teaches me magic tricks sometimes."

  "So what's he done now? Made himself disappear?"

  "I don't know."

  The cop was making a face, but it might have been the pet stink getting to him from the Zoo Lady's door. "Let's take a look upstairs."

  Frankie went up ahead of him. The floor of the left-right hallway at the top was crowded with magic stuff, stacks of books and video dubs, poster tubes.

  The cop looked both ways. "And you're sure he's not here now?"

  "Sure I'm sure."

  "But absolutely positive."

  Frankie nodded.

  "You two didn't have a quarrel recently, anything like that?"

  Frankie tried to find the meaning behind the question. "A quarrel?"

  "A spat. A fight, an argument. I'm not going to find him in bags or something, chopped up?"

  Frankie didn't answer that. This cop was crazy.

  "Okay," the cop said. "Come on."

  Frankie followed him down the right end of the hall, past the door to the balcony, turning left into the living room. The cop's eyes went from the scarlet velvet wallpaper to the ruby loveseat to the old costume trunk set out as a coffee table. The Xbox console was hooked up to a small TV, where two ultimate fighters were frozen in midkick. Magic equipment and props were stacked up high behind the bar to the left: a silver-curtained disappearing booth, a levitating board, a card-dealing cart, juggling pins, Houdini-style chains and padlocks. At the opposite doorway stood a winking circus strongman, a seven-foot plaster dummy wearing only a loincloth and a handlebar mustache, a magician's top hat on his chipped bald head.

  The cop continued, sticking his head in the bathroom, then entering the kitchen, keeping tabs on Frankie as he went. He eyed the old refrigerator and the huge ancient stove that doubled as a room heater in winter. The dirty dishes in the sink. "These dishes all yours?"

  "Some."

  "Some were left in there?"

  "I guess. Yeah."

  The cop whipped back the black theater curtain that dressed the pantry doorway, revealing Dill's computers, the multiple drives he had networked together, green "busy" lights winking. The screen saver showed fireworks exploding.

  "You ever use this?" asked the cop.

  "Sometimes," said Frankie. "He lets me."

  The cop didn't touch it, stepping back out and walking along the other hallway, past the bookcase into Dill's front bedroom. He waded through the clothes and other junk strewn on the floor around the unmade bed. He turned his head to read the name on a credit card next to the tin of shoe polish on top of the bureau, but didn't pick it up. The closet door was ajar and he opened it the rest of the way with his hiking shoe, and Frankie realized that this cop didn't want to touch anything with his hands. Something bad was going on.

  The cop leaned close to the headboard, eyeing a black wig hanging from the post. "What's this?"

  "His makeup and things. He keeps all sorts. Theatrical makeup."

  "You've been sleeping here?"

  Frankie shook his head. "The sofa out there. Where the TV is."

  The cop backed him into the hall, finishing his circuit of the place, returning to the door at the top of the stairs. He got up in Frankie's face there. "You're saying you have no idea where he is. None whatsoever."

  "No," Frankie said.

  "If he was going somewhere, a trip or something, he would have told you?"

  "A trip?"

  "Would he have told you?"

  "Yeah. He would have."

  "And there's no sign of him having packed anything?"

  "Packed? No."

  "No signs of any struggle you might have straightened up."

  "A struggle?"

  "Chairs knocked over. Things broken. Like that."

  Frankie shook his head.

  The cop thought it over. "You seen a pager in here?"

  "A pager?"

  "A pager." The cop pulled one out of his back pocket, showed it to Frankie. A nice one, almost like a phone, with a screen for text messaging. "Like this?"

  Frankie thought that was weird, but shook his head.

  As the cop put away his pager, the ashtray caught his eye. A glass-bowled one on a gold stand that Dill said a theater usher had given him once. Its vermillion sand was studded with Dill's cigarette butts. The cop said, "You smoke these hand-rolled things too?"

  "No."

  "Know anybody else who does?"

  "Just Dill."

  The cop took a better look at Frankie then. Studying his eyes. Frankie looked away.

  The cop said, "What do you smoke, then?"

  "Smoke?" Frankie said. He shook his head.

  "You got a cold or something? Your nose."

  "Yeah. I think I do."

  "Maybe it
's a case of scurvy. Not getting enough vitamin C. You look like a kid who just walked off a pirate ship."

  "What do you want from me?"

  "I want you to listen up. Sinclair is twice your age, all right? You know his story?"

  Frankie shook his head.

  "You want to?"

  Frankie shook his head harder.

  "The way he got into trouble was giving kids magic lessons. What do you do for him here? What do you bring him?"

  "I told you, we hang—"

  "You think I can't look at you and just tell? And just know? It's in your skin, Frankie Sculp, it's in your eyes. That yellow bleached shit you call hair. Turn around. Smell the wall."

  Frankie did, bumping up against it as the cop frisked him.

  "You think of yourself as a dealer, huh? Real big-time, right? Sinclair your drug buddy?" The cop's hands picked his pockets. "If I find a needle you don't warn me about, I'm going to drive it into the back of your skull."

  Frankie wasn't holding. It was a habit of his to stash his stash rather than walk it around. Right then it was under the top hat on the plaster strongman's head.

  The cop turned him back around and got in his face. "I don't know what you're looking for here. If it's love or friendship or a father figure I don't even know if you know. But get this. Whatever you're looking for, Dill Sinclair isn't it. I can guarantee you that. Find a new friend, and stop peddling this shit before it starts peddling you." He smacked him in the chest for emphasis. "If it hasn't already."

  Frankie felt that same old icy shiver up his back. This cop pushing him around, making decisions for him, everyone making decisions for him, social workers, counselors, guardians. Strangers telling him what's best, deciding his life for him as they shuttled him from family to family, from school to school. And look at how great it had all turned out for him. Here he was stuck in Black Falls, Massachusetts. The asshole of the earth.

  In fourteen months he would turn eighteen and age out of the foster-care system. Then he would be free.

  "You cops are out to get him," Frankie said.

  The cop cocked his head. "I'm looking for him. Is that the same thing?"

  "He's going to get you. That's what he said." It was stupid to betray Dill's confidence like this, but Frankie couldn't help it. He had nothing else to throw back at this cop except his own empty hurt, wanting to scare somebody else for a change. "He knows a way, he said. All the cops. He's going to turn this shit-fucking town upside down."

  He waited for the shove, the slap, the knee. Instead he got a hard stare, and strange words of caution. "That's something you should maybe keep to yourself, don't you think?"

  Frankie stared. This cop didn't believe him? Or was this something else entirely? "Am I getting the key back?"

  "All you're getting is a pass out of here, right now, and that means never come back. I want that understood. I want you crystal clear on that."

  "Fuck you."

  The cop shook his head. "No, man. No way. You want me to step on you. That's what you're used to. All you know is getting bounced around. And that's why I'm not going to do you that way. Why I'm not throwing you down these stairs right now. You think you're young enough to mess around with your life like this, like you're putting one over on the rest of the world? The world doesn't care, Frankie. The world welcomes statistics. But I'm not going to waste a speech on you. All you want is the back of someone's hand so you can go deeper into your sulk. You're leaving here now. And never coming back."

  "I have to get my stuff—"

  He started toward the living room, where his stash was, but the cop pushed him back against the wall, staring hard into his eyes like he knew.

  Out on the street, walking away fast, tears pressured Frankie's eyes but would not fall.

  Dill. Don't leave me alone in this town.

  He looked back at the corner building. He saw a man standing on the darkened balcony, and his mind stuttered a moment, telling him it was Dill.

  It wasn't. Just the cop. Watching Frankie go—but standing with his head turned. Utterly still and aware. As though listening to something.

  Frankie heard the sounds then, distant, way up in the hills.

  Sirens.

  21

  EDDIE

  IT WAS A STRANGE-LOOKING house that got stranger the longer Eddie Pail worked around it. The front was constructed out of thick timber while the high wall on one side and the low wall on the other were built with river stones like ostrich eggs set in mortar.

  Eddie had the long pole and was trying to break one of the top windows from the side lawn, but couldn't get enough force behind it. So he found some fist-sized rocks and started throwing. The third one cracked right through. He resumed with the pole, smashing out the rest of the glass, his hole venting black billows of smoke and wavy heat.

  The pumper truck was parked up on the lawn, its hose splashing the exterior, the heated stones hissing as water became steam. The house smoked and dripped like something cooking and melting at the same time.

  They yelled back and forth across the lawn, Mort and Stokes wrangling the water-plumped hose and aiming its stream into the high window. Smoke alarms squealed inside and occasionally there was a heat-crack of supporting timber, as fierce as a thunderclap of warning.

  With the hot night and the angry blaze and them suffering inside their bunkers and helmets, Eddie was earning his pay on this call, every cent. At one point the pumper ran dry and Mort and Ullard had to drive over to the fire pond on Sundown to reload. The nearest neighbors appeared with drinking water for them, looking up at the smoke in awe.

  The pumper returned but the vent did its job, just as training said it would. The smoke out of the upstairs window was starting to fade, the blaze dying out, and Bucky and Mort strapped on masks and tanks and went in through the front door with a hatchet and a pike pole. Eddie and Stokes kept the roof wet and cool, the smoke alarms crying even louder now that the air around the house had stopped whipping.

  They came out minutes later, jackets damp and pitchy. Bucky shrugged off his tank and pulled back his helmet, mask, and neck guard, squinting from the heat. He sat on the grass and shed his heavy yellow gloves and dug in the pockets underneath his bunkers, coming out with a cigarette and lighting it up with fish white hands. He smoked deeply, the oxygen mask outline drawn on his face in black sweat.

  "Ding-dong," said Bucky.

  "What's that?" said Eddie.

  "The witch is dead."

  Eddie looked at the stinking house. "This is Frond's place?"

  Ponytailed Frond with his socks and sandals. The photographer's vest he always wore, those empty little film loops.

  Bucky said, "There's some other weird shit in there."

  "Like what?"

  "Weird witch shit."

  Maddox appeared, standing beneath a crooked branch of the only tree in the yard. Bucky was right. Always watching them.

  "Was he in bed?" Eddie asked.

  "On the floor downstairs. Burned to a crisp."

  "On the floor?" Eddie pictured the guy curled up and burning. He shuddered. Frond was in his forties, an able guy. "Why hadn't he gotten out—"

  "How the hell would I know?" said Bucky.

  Bucky's tone reminded Eddie that Frond was the snitch who had reported Bucky and Mort's traffic-stop beating of Sinclair to the state police. He watched his brother smoking into the air, leaning back on the grass with one hand, then stubbing out his butt and getting to his feet.

  "Strap on Mort's tank," Bucky said to Eddie.

  "What for?" Eddie looked up at the still-smoking house. "There could still be some hot spots."

  "Just put on the damn tank."

  Eddie's lip curled, but he did as he was told. He got Mort's tank up onto his shoulders and was wiping out the sooty mask with his glove when Maddox moved in front of them, setting up between them and the ax-chopped door.

  "You can't go back inside," Maddox said.

  Bucky's shoulders fell, tired and piss
ed. "Maddox, get the fuck out of our way."

  Bucky started forward, his rubber boots splashing the oversoaked grass, but Maddox stood his ground. "You're just firefighters here. I'm the cop. Inside there is an unattended death."