by Chuck Hogan
"He's a cop buff."
"I know. They found all these true crime paperbacks in his house, and forensics shows on tape. Criminal genius of the armchair variety. Until Hess offered him straight out'Hey, let me exclude you: volunteer a DNA sample.' That's when the guy started to stumble, started shutting down. Knew enough about DNA to want nothing to do with it, I guess. He refused outright. So Hess went prob cause, subpoenaed a cheek swabwhich they gotand now it's a wait for the results."
Maddox rubbed his raw knuckles. "He's locked up?"
"No need. Not until the DNA comes back. Guy's not exactly a flight risk, right? He's being tailed twenty-four/seven, see if he cracks."
"So this is going to go on for a while."
"Actually, not so. A colleague in my office says Hess called in a chit at the lab in Sudbury. He's gotten somebody to cut through the backlog for him, push him to the top of the list. Apparently, Hess doesn't like this Ripsbaugh. Either that or he wants out of Black Falls even faster than you do."
"Hess," said Maddox. A look of disdain.
"'Leo the Lion,' they call him. King of the Jungle."
"There was somebody else from the DA's office at the station."
Cullen shrugged. "Probably a clerk helping to write up affidavits, that's all. No one knows you, or about you. How you want it, right?"
"How it has to be. How it is."
"Fine line, my friend. A dangerous game."
"You want dangerous? With Pinty gone, I'm all alone in town now. Unprotected."
"So go to Hess. Come out to him. What's the harm?"
"Not how it's done."
Cullen dismissed that. "You just don't like him."
Maddox sat forward. "If something does happen to me, anything, an accident, if I die choking on my food, you fall on the town like the U.S. Marines." Maddox waited for Cullen to agree to that, then sat back again. "Ripsbaugh have a lawyer yet?"
"Hess actually advised him to get one after the DNA swab."
"And?"
"Ripsbaugh said only guilty people need lawyers."
Maddox shook his head. "Jesus."
"Comical, how wrong he's going. Getting away with murder looks so easy on TV. Motive and opportunitysure, that's all circumstantial. But not blood evidence. And this isn't mere DNA, mind you. Actual blood."
"No latents?"
"Guy watches TV, are you kidding? Children pocketing bubble gum at the corner store wear gloves now. CSS found traces of talcum at the witch's house, so they're thinking latex."
Maddox shook his head grimly.
Cullen went on. "As to Hess. You want to 'don't ask, don't tell' him? Maybe that's okay for now. But. You cannot withhold evidentiary material or mislead him in any way. We're already walking the tightrope with this. Don't cost the county money. That's the golden rule."
Maddox nodded. That satisfied both their pro forma obligations.
A pretty nurse with a thin, well-bred nose poked her head in, smiling at Maddox. "You can go back in now."
Cullen thought how they must love Maddox here. Heart-on-his-sleeve moody, devoted to a dying old man, and all nicked and banged up himself. Like a teddy bear tossed from a moving car.
Two doors down the curved hallway, they entered the warm, white hospital room. Cullen had met Pinty only once, six months ago, at the start of all this, and the man whose hand he shook then resembled not at all the sleeping ghost he visited now. His lips were slack around the tube in his mouth, flesh sagging off his proud jaw. The large headboard looked like an uncarved headstone, and Maddox, standing at the foot of the bed, an early mourner. The old man's hairpiece, Cullen guessed, was in a plastic bag inside the nightstand drawer. No such thing as dignity in death. Not that Cullen ever saw.
Maddox said, looking down at the old man, "Blood clots broke loose from his legs. Lodged in his brain and possibly his heart. He had a series of small strokes, but they won't know the damage until he regains consciousness. 'Until and unless,' they say."
"You blame the stress?"
"I do."
Cullen dropped into the padded chair that flattened out into Maddox's night bed. A yellow plastic tray held his uneaten lunch. Maddox must have told them he was family. That was his cover here.
"I could get those guys right this minute if I wanted," Maddox said. "Multiple counts of harassment, excessive use of force, abuse of power. All sorts of bullshit they could worm their way around in court with lawyers stalling and all that. No. When I get them, they're going to know they've been gotten." He looked down at the old man. "I'll cut them so deep, everything's going to come pouring out."
Maddox was vengeful now. Triple the motivation.
Cullen chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Just one more question, then."
Maddox didn't look up. "What's that?"
"Where the hell is Sinclair?"
30
TRACY
DONNY SAT NEXT TO HER in her old Ford pickup. He was quiet most of the way, but not silent, not morose. More anxious than anything. She guessed that it was his having just left Pinty for the first time. If anything happened to Pinty while he was gone, it would be like his mother all over again.
The week's groceries she had bought for her mother as an excuse for this midday excursion to Rainfield knocked around in plastic bags behind the seat. They passed a slumping barn with a faded HAY FOR SALE sign leaning against a decaying tractor set out as yard art. Back in Black Falls, they picked up the Cold River running along Main. Across the street from the mailbox reading RIPSBAUGH was a state police cruiser.
"Kind of creepy," Tracy said, "having them in town. A little like an occupation." She watched the whip-antennaed cruiser shrinking in her rearview mirror. "They've been following him everywhere. The one time I saw them, heading up toward the highway department garage, it was like a little parade."
"How's he handling it?"
"He was driving straight along like he wasn't even aware. Maybe he isn't."
They passed the Falls Diner and the Gas-Gulp-'N-Go, the crumbling mill houses coming into view.
Tracy said, "I heard they found a sex video of his wife and Mr. Frond."
The phrase "sex video" roused him a bit. "No," he said, sitting up, watching Number 8 Road go past. "They were just love letters. High schooltype stuff. But with drawings."
"Drawings?"
"She was a good artist in school. Still is, by the look of it."
"Dirty stuff?"
"Or erotic, depending on your point of view."
"Dirty," she said, hoping to cheer him up. "Drawings make more sense to me, anyway." She had imagined an Internet-type video of an older, ponytailed guy and a heavy woman doing it. Ick. "In drawings you can make yourself thinner."
They passed another state police cruiser parked outside the police station and didn't talk again until she pulled into Pinty's white-stone driveway, behind Donny's patrol car. "Thanks," he said. "For the ride, for bringing me my stuff, for everything."
"Wish I could stay with you. But I have to get back, finish up for the day."
He took his leather toiletry bag, the one she had packed for him. How strange it had felt, being inside his house alone. Walking room to room, poking around his bathroom things. He said, "I'm heading in to work soon, anyway."
She touched the cut just under his sideburn, now healed to a nick. "Good luck there."
He nodded. "I don't even know if I can still call myself a policeman here without Pinty to back me up."
"Please be careful."
He kissed her once, lightly, and she pulled him closer for a real one, kissing him longer and better. She rubbed his arm. "I know how much Pinty meant to you," she said, then realized she had spoken in the past tense. "Means to you, sorry."
"He's made fools out of doctors before," said Donny. "He'll be home again."
Tracy smiled and nodded, admiring his stubborn faith though she did not share it. "I know he's all you have."
31
HESS
PALPABLE E
XCITEMENT among the uniforms, the duty troopers all extra-alert and garrulous, gobbling up oxygen inside the station; the hunting party anticipating the kill.
What Hess would remember most about this sour-smelling place was the sheer amount of crank mags stored up in the break room. A mountain of the stuff, had to be a record for a force this tiny. One time he'd had the occasion to visit a firehouse in a midsized town that was using an anatomically correct female mannequin for training exercises as well as other, less official pursuits. That squad was eventually disbanded and reassigned after word got out that they had invited a local stripper to dance on the fire pole during a shift change. Not that Hess had any moral objections to this stuff, but good Christ, there was a time and, more to the point, a place.
Maddox entered the break room looking to store his nylon lunch sack in the fridge. He seemed a little pale to Hess, maybe from worry, like he had lost some weight in the days he had taken off to sit with his friend in the hospital.
Bucky Pail came in on Maddox's heels, grinning like his shirt was on fire and he liked the burn. Until he saw Hess, whose presence was a bucket of cold water. The action on his face flattened out, all that Maddox saw when he turned.
Pail still had the scrape bloom on his cheek, like he had gotten grazed with a boot tread. Maddox's abrasions were far less worse than Hess had been led to believe, and in a strange way it reassured him to know that Maddox hadn't gotten his ass kicked by these hillbillies.
"Some police department," said Hess. "I'm almost sorry to leave it. Almost."
Maddox ignored Hess, looking at Pail. Waiting.
When Hess didn't make any move to exit the room, Pail's grin got hot. "Later," he said to Maddox, with lots of tongue on the L, then turned and went out.
"Five against one," Hess said to Maddox. "You did all right for yourself. Seems like it's not over yet."
"Not by a long shot," said Maddox.
"You timed your return right. We're just about to arrest your highway department man for murder."
A trooper ducked in, hooking his thumb back toward the hall. "DiBenedicto's on the line."
"Here we go," announced Hess, rolling his shoulders as he went into the hallway.
Joe Bryson, Hess's training partner who had come from the Mitchum barracks to watch him mop up this case, closed the door inside the old chief 's office. Hess punched the button on the telephone. "Jimmy D., you're on speaker. How we look?"
"Leo," came Jimmy DiBenedicto's voice, "we have exact matches in eight combinations"
"Gimme the odds first, Jimbo. The stats that I love. This guy is one in how many hundreds of millions?"
"I haven't had a chance to do the math yet, Leo. But two of the matches are extremely rare, so it's a lock. Listenwho else you got there?"
"Couple of good people, Jimmy." Hess shifted balance, looking at Bryson, the county attorney in short sleeves, Fogarty, and the other guy from CSS. He reasserted himself. "Everybody who should be here is here, Jimmy. It's fine. Go ahead."
"Leo," came the filtered voice. "Maybe you want to pick up."
Hess cocked his head. Eyeing the phone from a different angle. "No, Jimmy, I'm sure I don't want to pick up. You said you had an exact match on the autorads."
"I carried this thing across the hall myself, Leo. It's one to one. Only not with the swab you submitted. It's a rad out of the convicted felon database."
"The CODIS?"
Hess did pick up the handset then. Like the world's lightest dumbbell.
Hess did not hang up after the conversation. He snapped the handset in half instead. He stood there a moment with the cracked plastic and exposed wire in his hands, then dispatched Bryson to bring him Pail and Maddox.
They appeared before his desk. Maddox saw the busted phone on the blotter and knew immediately that something was up.
Hess made them wait, burning off a little more anger at their expense, making them suffer for his aggravation. This ass-crack town, this fucking bitch of a case. And these two banged-up playground cops. What did I do to deserve this?
"This missing sex offender," said Hess.
Now Maddox looked confused. Pail said, "Scarecrow?"
Hess scowled at this room he was going to be stuck in a little while longer. "I need to know everything about him there is to know."
PART III
SCARECROW
32
HESS
BRYSON WAS ONLY a few weeks out of uniform, but Hess had detected a change in him since the DNA rads came back. Used to be Bryson would ape Hess. Hess would turn around with his arms crossed and find Bryson standing there, arms crossed. Hess would walk in chewing one of the spearmint toothpicks he kept in the ashtray of his car, and a day or two later Bryson would be switching a pick from one corner of his mouth to the other like it was something he'd been doing all his life. Bryson had started working out more, Hess noticed, and shaping his hair flatter on top, and talking about church. Like Hess's boys, Bryson was learning by imitation, paying out respect in the form of flattery.
But now, ever since the DNA flop, Hess noticed Bryson standing back from him a bit. Tossing out questions where before he was content to listen and let Hess speak. Pointing out things to the CSS guys without routing it through Hess first.
Hess wasn't overly sensitive, but he was observant; that was what made him, working out of the smallest barracks with the least resources at hand, the trooper with the highest clearance rate of any other DU investigator statewide. Getting this understudy heat from Bryson was the capper on a bad stretch of slow-motion progress. Hess needed to turn this ship around, and fast. Not just for his batting average but for himself. Someday his boys were going to look at their dad and see not a Superman but a guy who was simply doing his best. He could accept that from his boys, but not from Bryson, not just yet.
CSS wouldn't allow the windows to be opened as they went about their glove-and-bag dissection of the sex offender's crib. What struck Hess most about Sinclair's black-curtained place were the contents of the guy's kitchen cabinets: Devil Dogs, Beefaroni, snack-pack puddings, Kool-Aid mix, and boxes and boxes of cereal, from Apple Jacks to Quisp. The ultimate pantry as imagined by a ten-year-old boy.
Hess was encouraged by the black wig they had found hanging scalplike on Sinclair's bedpost. It was human hair, more expensive than an acrylic wig and much more realistic in wear and feel. CSS had recovered eleven different hair follicles from inside Frond's bathroom, stairs, and second-floor hallway, all black, all of similar length, but varying in ethnicity: two Caucasian, two Negroid, and seven Mongoloid or Asian. Turned out, Hess learned, that dozens of different donorsincluding cadaversare used to make one human-hair wig.
So, no match on the hair, but the dots were there to connect. Sinclair's credit card showed he had laid out eight bills for a new wig in March, this one an inch longer than the one found hanging on his bedthe length matching the hairs recovered from Frond's.
The wig was good and the blood was better, but what Hess needed now was to establish some before-murder connection between Sinclair and Frond. Not for motive. Motive can cloud a case as much as clarify it, especially in court. Defense attorneys can have a field day with motive. Hess himself had a legally compelling motive to do away with a dozen people who had wronged him over the years. In order to feed the DA a solid conviction, he needed to link Sinclair to Frond in life, not just in death.
To that end, Hess was pulling books from Sinclair's collection on the occult. Working the Magician and the Witch angle. It had potential, considering the missing athame. He was in the side hallway flipping through a book of voodoo recipes when a CSS criminalist entered the kitchen with Maddox in tow.
Turned out Maddoxsurprise, surprisehad been inside Sinclair's place before. They were taking him through again to ascertain what surfaces he had touchedhe claimed noneor what if anything appeared missing or moved.
Bottom line: Something about Maddox rubbed Hess the wrong way. Something about him Hess did not l
ike. Did not like or did not trust. Beyond the sense that the feeling was quite mutual. It was there in the way Maddox watched the criminalists and computer techs going about their work. Nothing in his interest said "part-time cop." There was no outsider awe, only compulsive vigilance.
In other words, he did not strike Hess as a man blown back into this town by circumstance. More like a man with a knack for moving with the eye of a storm.
Hess let them finishwaited until they asked him about the empty docking station wired to Sinclair's PC, the camera to which also appeared to be missingbefore catching up with him outside on the chipped sidewalk near the CSS van.
