by Chuck Hogan
Tracy's anger toward her was unreasonable and an utter waste of time, so she squashed it, channeling all her energies into one more kiss. "You call me," she told him.
Tracy's mother had the whistle in her hand when Tracy came around the side of the house. Her worry fell away. Where'd you go?
Nowhere. Tracy moved her hands casually. Why?
Her mother glanced back near the tree grovenot right at it, but in that general directionand Tracy reminded herself that her mother was deaf but not blind.
37
DR. BOLT
DR. GARY BOLT UNTANGLED himself from the seatbelt of his Honda Prelude and rushed up the walkway, past his closed-for-the-day veterinary practice to the front door of his adjoining house.
The door was locked. Dr. Bolt knocked. He knocked again, harder. He stepped back to check the picture window that fronted the living room. The heavy gold curtains were closed, swaying.
Dr. Bolt moved to the seam of the door, speaking into it. "Frankie."
The voice came hissing from inside. "Who's with you? Are they with you?"
Dr. Bolt checked the street for onlookers. Not because of Frankie's paranoia, but because of his own. Dr. Bolt had neighbors. He was an aging bachelor whispering through his own front door.
Dr. Bolt said, "Please, let me in."
"They've been trading off cars. Passing every seven or eight minutes."
"Frankie." Dr. Bolt remained heroically patient. He put on his doctor's voice. He employed reason. "You interrupted me with a patient. You said it was an emergency."
"They're coming after me. I know too much."
Prior to this week, Dr. Bolt had known almost nothing of Frankie Sculp, not even his name. Only that, every few days, the boy crossed the farm fields to Dr. Bolt's back kennel to retrieve the little packages left there by a young lady named Wanda. Yes, Dr. Bolt knew what was in those little packages. The same drugs Frankie had been snorting off the webbing between his thumb and forefinger every few hours since he had appeared on Dr. Bolt's doorstep six days ago, saying he was scared, in trouble, and had no place else to go.
At the time, Dr. Bolt could hardly contain his excitement, nor believe his extraordinary good fortune. For he was at his very best helping strays.
Now here he was, one week later, standing out on his own welcome mat, begging Frankie to let him in.
"Frankie," he said. "I am alone. Please. Open this door."
"I checked your phones. For bugs."
Dr. Bolt did not understand. "You're seeing bugs now?"
"Police bugs! Surveillance! I checked every appliance."
"Every appliance? How did you"
"And I opened up all the light switches and plug outlets. Anything near a power source. It's for your sake too."
Dr. Bolt closed his eyes, swooning a bit at the thought of the destruction awaiting him behind this door. "Frankie. This is known as clinical paranoia. You have not slept in a week"
"Here they come again!"
Dr. Bolt heard a tableit would be the high credenza, the one standing beneath the picture window, that had been his mother'sfall, and then glassyes, the frame holding his grandmother's engagement portrait, an antique, irreplaceablesmash and tinkle.
He whipped toward the street. A white sedan approached.
"Don't let them in, doc!" came Frankie's voice behind the window. "They'll kill you to get to me!"
The automobile rolled past, and Dr. Bolt recognized Mrs. Poulin leaning over the wheel. She brought her cockatoo in to get his wings clipped every three months. The bird's name was Hamilton. Mrs. Poulin waved.
Dr. Bolt stood there holding up his flat hand.
"What are you doing?" said Frankie. "Are you signaling them? You're signaling them!"
Dr. Bolt put down his shaking hand. Earlier in the day, one of his best customers, the kind of woman who could single-handedly keep his practice afloat for an entire year, who some in town unkindly referred to as the Zoo Lady, had asked him why he had left his stereo playing so loudly to an empty house.
And just now, Tracy Mithers, from the llama farm on Sam Lake, showed such concern for him as he threw together his bag and begged off in evident distress, pager in hand.
He was going to lose everything.
What Frankie did not knowand could not ever know, for it would only explode his already flaming paranoiawas that Dr. Bolt already had a legitimate reason to fear the Black Falls police. And by Black Falls police, he meant specifically Bucky Pail.
"Frankie. You paged me, do you remember? You said you needed me, you needed my help. I am here now. Let me come inside. Let me help you."
The curtain rippled again. He heard breathing on the other side of the door.
"Please," said Dr. Bolt.
The lock turned. The door was pulled open a few inches.
Frankie stood behind it, a steak knife in his hand, its tip bloodied.
His hunted eyes searched the street and yard, and then, settling on Dr. Bolt's kindly country-doctor face, the stress lines around them slackened. For a moment Frankie was just a teenager again, possessed of the neediness and confusion that marked his age.
He pulled the door open wider, and Dr. Bolt saw that Frankie had been using the knife tip to pick at the sores on his face.
"Help me," Frankie said.
He was an ugly boy, yet there was something beautiful in the pain of his ugliness, something angelic and touching. His vulnerability was exquisite. A mutt with a sad limp and a mangy coat. Wanting only to lay his head in the lap of an owner who would not mistreat him.
Dr. Bolt had always assumed that the predator-prey relationship came down to the simplicity of strength versus weakness. But it was so much more symbiotic than that. He saw it now as a negotiation of vulnerabilities. The very same vulnerability that made Dr. Bolt easy prey for a blackmailer like Bucky Pailspecifically, Dr. Bolt's affinity for the attentions of much younger menwas what compelled Dr. Bolt to exert his advantage over Frankie Sculp. In other words, the strong were just as vulnerable to the weak. There was no one without the other.
Inside, he found his living room dismantled. Completely destroyed. A shambles. What a damn fool he was. Much too old for these ups and downs.
But this was what a life without love did to you. It put you at risk. To the temptations of a mercurial teenager, and to a dark manipulator like Bucky Pail.
Dr. Bolt allowed the frail, weeping boy into his arms and helped him down the hallway to the bathroom, to dress his self-inflicted wounds.
38
CULLEN
CULLEN STOOD A COUPLE of careful feet away from his backyard swimming pool, still wearing his dress shirt and pants from the office. He maintained the pool from the beginning of June through the end of August, keeping it skimmed, pH-balanced, and algae-free for his wife and two sons and their daily summer guests, even though Cullen himself did not know how to swim. Witnessing the childhood drowning death of his older sister had left him with a pathological fear of immersion. Once every year or two, on a warm night and with his wife close at his side, he would sit at the edge of the shallow end for a few minutes and dip in his bare legs up to his shins, stirring the water he cleaned so diligently all season. His wife had grown up with a pool and thought it important that the boys not suffer for their father's phobia. So he had taken upon himself its care and feeding as a way of managing his fear, of localizing the source of his dread, trapping it here in his backyard, as one might take on the care and feeding of a chained dragon.
Why he had so much respect for Maddox, he supposed. Someone who could wade in over his head, swim around, touch bottom and resurface time and time again. Someone who could go under and hold his breath there for so long.
The crescent moon, silver as a scythe, grinned at him from the surface of the still and silent water. Cullen's sister's name had been Emily, and when she ran her hair had flown off her shoulders like golden wings. He had adored her.
A light came on in the second f
loor of the house. The shadow of his wife, whose name also happened to be Emily, passed the window of the upstairs bathroom. Rubbing in hand cream, getting ready for bed, her nightly routine.
Cullen stepped farther back from the edge, returning his attention to Maddox on the cordless. "You heard about the cadet class?"
Maddox said, "What?"
"A trainee class from New Braintree is being bused your way first thing in the morning. One hundred and something recruits for a field search of the state forest."
"The Borderlands?"
"I guess they had some K-9s indicate."
They were disconnected briefly, and a recording asked Maddox to please deposit seventy-five more cents.
Cullen said, "Where are you calling from?"
"A pay phone outside the gas station here." Tones sounded as Maddox's coins fell. "My point is, the guy's hitting on this cult stuff, which is bullshit. He's floundering. Desperate."
"See, Hess bet the house on the ditchdigger and his blood DNA, and lost. He thought he had a quick arrest to pad his clearance stats, told his sergeant it was a done deal, and now here he is, still working the same folder. Burning up manpower and money. Frankly, he got lucky with the sex offender angle, buying him a few more days. Because the DA won't be seen as soft on pedophiles. But he's got a very small window of time left to find Sinclair, and the sill's slamming down hard on his fingers."
"I think he's in deeper shit than he knows."
"You don't see Sinclair for this, but you're the only one. Hess is on the right track here. He's got blood, he's got haireven if it is wig hairhe's got treads from the brand of sneaker the suspect was known to wear. He's got fibers from the offender's apartment"
"He's got what?"
"Fibers matching a living room rug. As well as a few skin cells he likes for Sinclair, that he's still waiting on tests for. See? All your dancing around him is bullshit and counterproductive. Just come out to him. Our thing is dead and all but buried."
"No way. Not yet."
"If it's Sinclairand, plainly, it isthen we've already lost. The case is nothing. It was thin to begin with, relying on the word of a convicted sex offender. But a convicted sex offender who's also a killer? Find a DA in this country, in this world, who would bring that case."
"It's not over, Cullen."
"You don't want it to be over, and neither do I. And stubbornness is a good trait, and as a lawyer I respect it. But I like common sense too. I know you're tight with Chief Pinto-I-can-never-pronounce-the-name. You two obviously go way back."
"Pinty."
"He's a good man."
"Cullen. It's more than that."
"Nobody likes to lose. Everybody wants to be the hero. But when you're down five runs in the ninth, one swing of the bat won't win it for you. You play small ball, keep the inning alive."
A pause. "Okay."
Cullen frowned at the moon smiling at him from the water. "But you're still gonna get up there and take your swing."
"I'm finishing this job."
"We're in the shit enough as it is. If Sinclair is found to have benefited from a deal with the DA's office before committing a capital crime"
"Benefited how? The assault charges against Bucky Pail were a get-out-of-jail against his DUI."
"He got leniency for agreeing to assist this investigation, and you know that. On my recommendation. The five-year driver's license suspension was a slap on the wrist. We could have sent him to prison and let him file his suit from there. Anyway, you know it's a game of appearances, not actual facts. My boss needs to get elected again. Should she decide to run."
"Cullen, there's only one reason a forty-year-old lawyer goes back into the public sector as an assistant DA. You have political ambition yourself."
"What of it?"
"You need this as much as I do."
"I need to avoid embarrassments is what I need."
"You check on Sinclair's pager for me?"
Cullen sighed, which was another thing he caught himself doing more and more as he got older. "You're sure it hasn't turned up?"
"Not in the search of his place, I know that."
"It's still functioning, so far as we can tell." Cullen's hand found something in his pocket, a bottle cap, from the Bud Light he'd opened after getting home. He felt it in his palm, a tiny crown. "Still receiving pages, or able to. If it has a battery in it, and all that. What if they find it in the forest?"
"Christ."
"Those things save old messages? They can identify you through that?"
"Give me a little credit," said Maddox, "not to have signed off pages with my full name and birth date. I was always discreet. But the billing, I assume it goes right back to your office."
"Then the jig is up, and you flip over all your cards anyway."
"Sinclair still has the pager with him."
"Well, then, he's ignoring you. And why not? He's a killer, Maddox. Why does he want to hear from a cop?"
Silence expressed Maddox's dissent.
Cullen said, "Okay, fine, so how are you going forward from here?"
"Still trying to track down that kid who was inside Sinclair's place. And Wanda, I'm going to lean on her. I cooked up an excuse to go over to her house tomorrow. Enlisted Ripsbaugh's help with that one."
"The ditchdigger?" said Cullen, surprised. "You really do have it in for Hess, don't you."
Cullen stood there by the pool after he hung up, flipping the bottle cap in his hand. A water bug or some such insect swam across the moon crescent, rippling the black surface, and Cullen switched on the overnight filter, what he had come out here to do. The jets voided their air bubbles, the skimmers circulating water.
Maddox was turning crusader. Pulling the plug on him was going to be difficult, if not impossible. Cullen wondered how much further he could let this go.
39
MADDOX
THE MAN KNOWN AS "Bathrobe Bill" Tedmond said, "I don't know where Wanda is. She don't come and go regular. Don't keep hours. Phone rings and she's gone."
Wanda's father sat in a deep, itchy-looking armchair beside a tray table containing a gnawed pencil, an open wire-bound notebook listing expenses versus income, a smattering of bills and notices, and a once-white Slimline telephone stained smoker's-tooth yellow. The bathrobe was saddle brown terry cloth with a faux-silk shawl collar, and whenever Bill left the house, which was almost never, pants and slipper shoes underneath completed the ensemble. A window fan stirred hot air that fluttered the peeling green paper on the walls, sloughing off its backing glue like the lining of an ulcerated stomach. The laughing television had been placed in the center of the room, with everything else, Bathrobe Bill included, arranged around it.
No need for Maddox to hide his disappointment, Bathrobe Bill's eyes having yet to leave Live with Regis and Kelly. "When would you say you saw her last?"
"Time, I'm no good with. Yesterday, maybe. She sleeps a lot when she's here, and why not? Sleeping's free."
For sixteen years, Bill Tedmond drove long-haul: on the road for eight days, home for two. But his divorce from Wanda's mother triggered a decade-long depression, rendering him unable to work, though the state denied his disability claim. His rig remained parked outside under trees, its once-proud chrome caked with seasons of pollen and bird shit, plants and weeds growing out of the leaves composting on its roof. He was a recluse now, Black Falls' dirt-poor version of Howard Hughes, spending his days in front of a snowy television, keeping a careful tally of all the money he did not have.
"Well," said Maddox, moving this along, Bathrobe Bill like a black hole sucking up all health and ambition, "she mentioned you were having trouble with your plumbing."
"That's right enough. Hope she also mentioned I'd have even more trouble paying to fix it."
"I've got someone with me who will get things flowing again, no problem."
Bathrobe Bill nodded, still facing the TV. "I'll hang in here until you're done."
Maddox went t
o Ripsbaugh in the back hallway. Ripsbaugh wore a sweat-darkened T-shirt, overwashed shorts, and his usual boots with the peeling leather collars and worn-down toes. He sat before the "video diagnostics system" contraption Maddox had helped him wheel in. The unit's motor hummed as a mechanized spindle payed out red cable with a thinner silver wire spiraled around its length. The camera snake-fed into the open toilet in the corner of the bare bathroom, disappearing into a liver-colored puddle at the mouth of the bowl at a rate of about one inch per second. The procedure was eerily medical in appearance. A three-by-three screen on the console played the camera view creeping through a pipe of cloudy water glowing night-vision green, an odometer-like counter marking off the distance.
