The Killing Moon: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Maddox checked the monitor. It showed the home page for a fantasy football site.

  "See?" said Anson. "Everything's cool."

  Maddox reached for the warm mouse, dragging the cursor over the BACK button and clicking. The previous page visited showed a naked guy shackled up in leather restraints on an S&M rack, curse words and racial epithets scrawled over his chest in purple lipstick, his left nipple about to be burned with the lit tip of a cigarillo by a chubby she-male wearing a Nazi helmet, infantry boots, and a monocle.

  "Look, I was just killing a little time—"

  Anson ducked as the lightbulb shattered against the wall behind his head, glass tinkling to the floor.

  Next to the PC was an open two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew Pitch Black grape soda. Maddox pressed buttons to open the CD trays and made ready to empty the contents of the bottle into them.

  Anson threw out both hands from his crouch. "Jesus, man, what the fuck?"

  "Carlo and Nick, where are they?"

  "I'd know, man? How can you keep track?"

  "That's supposed to be your damn job." Maddox splashed soda across the room, fizzing like black acid on Anson's shirt. He dribbled a little into the computer.

  "You wouldn't. You can't!"

  "Say it loud again," said Maddox. "How you don't know where they are. Maybe they didn't hear you."

  A bang like a loose door snapping shut. Maddox carried the bottle of soda across the room and hauled down one of the shades, rod and all, from the window.

  Two boys were racing away across the backyard into the old orchard.

  Maddox looked back at Anson, shrinking against the wall. Maddox moved fast to the desk, glugging soda into the CD slots while Anson covered his head and groaned. "I'll be back for you," said Maddox, rushing past him, cutting down the hall to the living room, past the kid at the TV to a back door leading to a short flight of rickety stairs outside.

  Maddox ran fast and angry. The kids had a head start, but the two burnouts hadn't seen anything like exercise in months. They looked back and saw him coming and veered off into what remained of the apple orchard. Never even occurred to them to split up. Running lockstep, they cut between trees and across lanes, unable to shake Maddox's pursuit. Seeing he was about to catch them, they slowed.

  Maddox did not. He tackled both at full speed, throwing them hard to the dirt and spoiled fruit and scavenging ants.

  Both teens had the same choppy home haircut. Maddox got his knees into their spines.

  "Why are you running?"

  "Because," said one.

  "Because?"

  "Of Frankie," said the other.

  They were trying to look up at him, but Maddox was kneeling on their backs, forcing their faces into the ground. "What because of Frankie?"

  "He said cops were looking for him. Were looking to do him."

  Paranoid tweaker. "Where is he now?"

  "Hiding, I guess."

  "Who brings in the meth?" said Maddox. "Him to you or you to him?"

  One teen remained silent. The other said, "What?"

  Maddox grabbed their home haircuts and mashed their faces into the dirt. Not a good day to cross him. He asked again.

  "Him," said one.

  "Him to us," said the other, spitting dirt.

  Maddox said, "And you deal to Anson back there?"

  One tried to rise up in protest. "That douche bag?"

  "He steals," said the other. "Took half our stash. To protect us, he said. Otherwise he'd turn us in."

  Maddox said, "Where does Wanda figure in to all this?"

  Blinking. Swallowing. "Wanda who?"

  Again, Maddox ground their mouths into the dirt and ants. "You're teenagers, lying's supposed to be a talent."

  They coughed up truth. They'd seen her around, but the hospital was the first time they'd met her. She'd introduced herself as a friend of Frankie's. That was all they knew.

  Maddox floated Bucky's name but neither of them so much as blinked.

  "I'm asking again. Where is Frankie now?"

  "We don't know."

  "We might, though," said the other one.

  His partner winced at that.

  To the talker, Maddox said, "Out with it."

  "We followed him this one time."

  "We were just curious," said his partner.

  "You wanted to take him down!" said the talker.

  "Show me," said Maddox, standing, pulling them to their feet.

  * * *

  MADDOX BUZZED THE office door first, because it was closest to the driveway. DR. GARY BOLT, VETERINARIAN, read the sign. A window sticker said, HILL'S SCIENCE DIET SOLD HERE. He gave the button two quick pushes but didn't wait, the office dark, just like the house attached to it.

  It was late, the sun gone now, summer light straggling in the western sky. He left the kids in the back of his patrol car and followed the rock path to the front door of the house. The bell was an old one you twisted like a key, but it did not ring. He knocked. While he waited he heard a muffled thump inside like someone tripping, then the sound of something dropping to the floor and rolling away.

  Maddox moved to the side of the door. He kick-knocked with his hiking boot, the old training coming right back to him. He sized up the heavy door and figured he was as likely to dislocate a shoulder as he was to break it down. He backed off and started around the side of the house, under a picture window, looking for another way in.

  He heard a feeble tapping as he neared the bulkhead doors. A block of wood was jammed under the handles, and Maddox drew his revolver, kicking at the wood, once easy and then harder, popping it free and stepping back, waiting to see who came up.

  One door was pushed open, stretching out spiderwebs and shaking loose rust, revealing the arm and scared eyes of a man in his fifties.

  Dr. Bolt looked at Maddox's handgun and POLICE jersey as he climbed the stairs out of the basement. "Thank the good Lord."

  Maddox grabbed him, helping the older man onto the grass. He wore an undershirt and boxer shorts and a pair of old rain boots he must have found in the basement. He carried a mayonnaise jar under his arm with a few ounces of fluid swishing inside it. "Who's in the house?"

  Dr. Bolt made a grand gesture of defeat. "His name is Frankie. He locked me in the cellar."

  "Frankie Sculp?"

  "Yes."

  "What's he doing in there?"

  "What isn't he doing?" Dr. Bolt looked at his house as though it were a family member in jeopardy. "Just please get him out. He's paranoid, hallucinating. He sees people who aren't there. You can't talk to him."

  Maddox looked at the stone basement steps, revolver in hand. He thought about calling for backup. "Does he have a gun? Any guns in the house?"

  "No. He has a steak knife in the back pocket of his shorts. He thinks you are coming to kill him, the police. He said he hears SWAT teams in the air-conditioning ducts. I don't even have air-conditioning ducts."

  Maddox needed to talk to Frankie before anyone else could. "My patrol car is in your driveway. There's a radio under the dashboard. Give me five minutes, then use it. Tell them the situation and your address. The cellar door is locked?"

  "A chair wedged under the knob, I think."

  "What's in that jar?"

  Dr. Bolt held it low at his side. "My urine. I've been down there all day."

  Dogs started barking inside. Howling. Dr. Bolt looked stricken.

  "The kennel?" Maddox said.

  "In back."

  Maddox went down into the cool, dusty basement, two dim lights buzzing. He passed an old croquet set under the stairs and took the red-striped mallet, his revolver out in front of him as he climbed the old plank stairs. He gave the door at the top a test shove with his foot, then brought the mallet head down a few times against the ancient doorknob, which cracked apart. He stood the mallet in the corner and kicked open the door.

  The chair went crashing against the opposite wall. Maddox jumped out and swept both sides of the short ha
llway in a two-handed stance, grateful for the light from the basement.

  The house was a mess inside. No light switches worked. Broken glass crunched under his boots on the rug.

  With the dogs barking madly in the rear, his sweep was perfunctory, throwing open doors and checking rooms. He crossed into the adjoining office, clearing the front counter and the examining room, then moving through a door to the barking dogs in back.

  The room smelled of pet shampoo. Three occupants in eight large aluminum sleeping pens, all of them stomping and howling. Maddox zeroed in on a low, open-doored supply locker at the end of the row, and was making his way toward it when a clatter erupted behind him. He turned to metal pans tumbling off the top of a high cabinet and a figure springing from a narrow hiding space beside it.

  Frankie Sculp, knife in hand. Maddox had time and cause to shoot him but did not. Frankie, screaming incoherently, brought the knife blade down again and again in a slashing motion, cutting his own chest and legs through his T-shirt and shorts.

  Maddox holstered his revolver and lunged with both hands for the knife. He got Frankie's wrist and drove the kid back against the high metal cabinet, bringing more supplies crashing down on them. With one hand on the knife wrist and the other around Frankie's throat, Maddox spun and dropped him face-first to the floor.

  The knife popped free, twirling away along the gritty tile. Frankie was howling and bucking, not fighting Maddox, exactly, though the violence amounted to the same. Maddox bent both his wrists behind him, twisting and yanking up on his thumbs, putting a knee into his back and holding him there, letting him kick the floor and wail along with the dogs.

  Maddox yelled for Dr. Bolt and then tried to get Frankie's attention. The kid kept squirming, smearing some blood on the floor, but no fast-flowing pool. Incredible, how much heat was coming off him.

  "Is he hurt?" said Dr. Bolt, appearing in the interior doorway.

  "Not badly." Maddox looked around, trying to figure a way to immobilize the possessed teenager. "Handcuffs. I left mine in my car."

  Dr. Bolt looked on, the jar of urine still in his hand, its contents gently swaying. "I might have a pair," he said.

  He returned from his bedroom with nickel-plated handcuffs and handed them to Maddox by the linking chain. Maddox clasped them around Frankie's wrists and stood, pulling Frankie to his feet, hooking an arm around his bent elbow and then pushing him, headfirst, through the vet's office and back into the adjoining house.

  Dr. Bolt righted a table lamp in the main room out front and screwed in a lightbulb, finding a bare wall socket to plug into.

  The interior of the room was demolished. Meticulous destruction: the bookshelves stripped bare, tables upended and their legs unscrewed, sofa cushions removed and unzipped and unstuffed, pictures and photographs taken from their frames, the ceiling fan pulled apart to its wires. An upright piano in the corner had been completely disassembled, frame, keyboard, strings, everything.

  Maddox set Frankie down on his side to get a look at his wounds. Sweat-drenched ribbons of T-shirt hung over the bloody streaks crisscrossing his chest. Subcutaneous but not life-threatening. Just enough to mark him for life.

  For his part, Frankie was feeling no pain. He sneered at the lamp, addressing the shining light. "See? Now they're going to bind my feet and throw me in the river like a puppy in a potato sack, and you just look the other way!"

  Maddox tried to find a telephone he could reassemble. He located the base and the speaker for the interior of the handset.

  "He cut the wire outside," said Dr. Bolt, slumping into an easy chair with no cushions, the jar in his lap. "I'm going to lose my practice."

  Maddox assessed the scene: a room in shambles, a bloody guy handcuffed on the floor muttering at an unshaded lamp bulb, and an older man in boxer shorts sitting with a jar of his own urine. "Want to tell me what's going on here, Doctor?"

  "I'm relieved." Dr. Bolt stared straight ahead. "I am actually relieved now. That it's over. Finally over."

  Frankie told the light, "You said you had to get them or else they were going to get you. You were going to show them all."

  Dr. Bolt said, "I'll hire a lawyer. A good one." He looked at Maddox across the destroyed room. "Why did I ever let it get this far?"

  Maddox said, "There's something you need to tell me, Doctor."

  "He knew I had iodine and iodine tincture for horses. He knew that already."

  Maddox took a step closer, starting to understand. "Do you keep a supply of pseudoephedrine here, Doctor?"

  "It's prescribed for canine incontinence. A Schedule Five controlled substance. He had me order the maximum legal amount every month from my supplier. He was blackmailing me, holding things over me. Yes, I faked point-of-sale documentation. I committed multiple frauds. Every gram of it went to him."

  "Doctor, I know who it is. All I need is to hear his name. From you."

  "This is going to be very bad for me. I need protection. Real protection. Protection from the police. He'll want to do away with me."

  Maddox said, "The best way I or anyone else can protect you from this person is to arrest him first. All you need to do is say his name, and this is over just like that. All over. You'll be safe. Just give me his name."

  44

  HESS

  HESS WAS HEADING HOME for the night and some well-earned downtime. He'd phoned ahead to his wife, who had already slipped the two boys some Benadryl and uncorked a bottle of red. He thought it was her when his Nextel lit up blue, his ring tone playing Rhythm Heritage's "Theme From S.W.A.T."

  Bryson instead. "You'll want to know this, Leo. Just took a call from Maddox on the local band. Requesting two units, one to the office of a veterinarian, and another for some backup for himself. Said he's making an arrest."

  "Arrest?" said Hess, squinting at the highway in front of him, the lane markers zipping past like white bullets. What now? "He hasn't got Sinclair, has he?"

  "No, not Sinclair. Something else. Wouldn't say over the radio."

  "And he wants us backing him up? Not his own? Who does this guy think he is?"

  "I was going to ask him myself, but then the DA called. Not her office. Lady DA herself."

  Hess felt a cool rush, like a slow pour of water over him. "Saying?"

  "Back up Maddox. Whatever he needs."

  Hess switched on his wigwags and grille blues and punched the gas, cutting across two lanes to the next exit. The thought bubble he had of Janine answering the front door in her black lace teddy was replaced by Maddox answering it in his junior league Black Falls police getup instead. Hess said into the phone, "I will be right fucking there."

  45

  MADDOX

  THE DRIVEWAY WAS UNMARKED and unnumbered, coming up on him quick in the darkness of Jag Hill. Maddox's patrol car raised a squall of dust, state police cruisers trailing him as Bucky Pail's house appeared around a bend in the driveway, a short ranch with twin carports on the left and junkyard vehicles extending around back.

  Maddox stopped, getting out with his flashlight. Bucky's house was dark. The troopers took their time putting on their Mountie hats.

  The front door wore a pair of antlers. Maddox knocked and waited. He wanted to feel a certain level of satisfaction, the kind he had anticipated throughout five months of working this case, but the end had come up on him so suddenly, all he cared about now was an expedient arrest. To close the book on this case and this period in his life. To finish the job.

  No answer. He stepped back, jumpy, peering in through a small, four-pane window, seeing nothing. Maddox's worst-case scenario: Bucky holing up inside, armed and squirrelly.

  One trooper stayed in sight of the front door while the other followed Maddox around the side, underneath the carport, keeping his flashlight beam wide of the house: four or five more cars, a motorbike without tires, and what looked like a speedboat engine dismantled on a black tarp.

  The back door was open. Maddox crept up to it. He would not knock this time. No
need. Bucky was either sleeping or hiding.

  His boot snagged on something near the door, an extension cord, leading from an exterior outlet into the dark backyard. Maddox left the other trooper at the door and followed the wire with his flashlight. It was three lengths of cord plugged together, threading through the dirt and ending up at a portable radio set on a stack of milk cartons next to a small car with its hood up. The radio dial glowed faintly, but nothing played.