The Killing Moon: A Novel

the new hire, the one they called Maddox. He felt a dash of relief, but kept moving just the same, pulling open his unlocked door. He trusted none of them.

Frond had moved up here seven years ago. Sick of the pace and cost of living in the real world, and in an effort to renounce consumerism, he gave away his television and most of his possessions and retreated to a stone-and-timber house. He subsisted now on Internet sales of New Age paraphernalia and as an online broker?his 56K dial-up modem demanded Zen-like patience?for a consortium of potters and weavers in the hills of Mitchum County.

But the modern world didn't like losing even one consumer. That was the only way he could explain his recent turn of bad karma. One good deed had begat a chain of punishments and tiny agonies.

He was fishing his keys out of his shorts pocket when Maddox came around, asking, 'Everything all right?'

He started up the engine. Something uneasy about this one. Not an evil vibe, as from the others, but a strange one. He struck Frond as a watcher, as a seeker, and Frond was usually right about people.

Maddox said, 'You looked a little spooked when I pulled up.'

'Did I?' said Frond, swiping at his nose. Fear worked as well as cayenne in loosening up the nasal passages. 'No, just the bright headlights.'

'I thought it might be the sight of the patrol car. I heard you had some run-ins with other members of the department.'

Harassment was the legal term for it. Intimidation was the purpose. Ever since he had passed Bucky Pail beating up a man in handcuffs by the side of the road. What did it matter that Dillon Sinclair, the sex offender, was the one getting smacked around? Frond did what any good citizen of the world would do: he filed a complaint with the county through the state police. Now he worried every time he left his house.

Maddox said, 'If you feel that some members of the police force are overstepping their authority, you should come forward.'

'I think I tried that, didn't I?' What was this? Using the new guy to get to him? 'They want to punish me until I move, and they might just get their way. You're not so new that you can't know. I'm not the only one who's scared.'

The swinging door slapped shut behind Maddox, Big Bobby Loom locking up for the night. He looked them over talking together, then turned and swayed toward his white Fairlane parked around the side.

Why was Frond bothering? When would he learn to keep his mouth closed around Black Falls cops? He shifted his Jeep into gear. 'I'm no crusader. Not anymore. State police promised me they'd do something.' He was pulling away. 'I'm still waiting.'

12

TRACY

TRACY COULDN'T SLEEP.

She didn't want to call, but lying there in the dark wasn't getting her anywhere, thinking hard and not sleeping, so she picked up the phone. The green-backlit number pad was the only light in her room as she dialed three numbers.

'Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?'

'Yes, well? there's this guy I've been seeing for about four months, okay?'

'Ma'am?'

'Actually, four months, six days, twenty-two hours. Give or take a few minutes.'

'Go ahead.'

'Well, today I stopped by his house and I caught him with this total low-rent hoochie.'

'You say a hoochie?'

'Big-time hoochie.'

'Ma'am, this line is intended for emergencies only.'

'This is an emergency, or it was?for me, anyway. There was an altercation, but it was mostly verbal. Actually, it was mostly me.'

'Anyone hurt?'

'Not really, no. I tried to inflict some emotional damage, but as usual it totally backfired. So now I'm home all alone, stressing out that I embarrassed myself beyond repair.'

'I'm sure that's not the case. I bet you behaved admirably well under the circumstances.'

'I just wanted you to know. I'm not mad.'

'Good.'

'But I'm no pushover either. I'm no doormat.'

'Okay.'

'But leaving you that way, us parting the way we did?that hurt the most. That felt really shitty. I don't ever want to do that again, okay?'

'Okay.'

'Okay. What are you doing now? I picture you sulking the night away.'

'I'm reading. While I sulk.'

She pushed herself up on her pillow. 'That same war book?'

'Volume three. Marching toward Appomattox.'

'Do you think it's weird that people have favorite wars?'

'I guess I do, yeah.'

'I'd say Revolutionary War people are optimists. Birth of a nation and all that. Brightly colored uniforms, fireworks in the sky?right? World War Two people, they seem sort of downbeat. Drab and tough and dirty. We won, but at what cost? Realists. But Civil War people?I would say we are humanists. You know, brother against brother, a nation divided. People interested in people, in their fellow countrymen.'

'And slow readers.'

'That too. Did you bring lunch? Since we never actually ate, I thought maybe I could?'

'I did bring something, yeah.'

She shook her head in the darkness of the room, pushing past his reluctance. 'Well, do you want some company when you take your forty? A midnight lunch, like the first time?'

'I can't. Not tonight.'

She lay very still in order that he wouldn't hear the pillow crunching or the mattress creaking or any other sounds of distress. 'You have to be somewhere later?'

'I do.'

'Okay,' she said. She moved her head a little, just to clue him in. 'And I'm not going to take that the wrong way. I'm not going to overreact.'

'Good.'

'I'm definitely not going to think you're meeting Wanda.'

'You know I'm not.'

'Of course I do.' She let some silence play. 'Of course.'

'The badge and the gun, they mean something in a town full of nothing. To some people. That's all that is.'

Not me, she thought. She wished he would take them both off, and for good. She pictured him there at the station with his book open on his lap, wondering why he bothered with her at all. 'Is this humiliating call going to be saved forever on tape?'

'I switched off the recorder when the Sam Lake address came up.'

'You're lucky she's so gross, you know. I mean?lucky.'

'I do know it.'

'I can tell by your voice, you're smiling.'

'I can tell by yours, you're lying down. In bed?'

'I was worried you were going to try and hand me some bullshit. Like that she was in trouble or something. Like you were 'helping' her.'

'What are you wearing?'

'Uh- uh,' she said. 'No way.'

'I can tell by your voice,' he said, 'you're smiling.'

'Just tell me that all this sneaking around is really necessary.'

'All this sneaking around is really necessary.'

'I don't know how cops' wives do it. I really can't imagine.'

'You can't?'

She couldn't believe he had just said that. 'Don't play with me. Mr. 'I'll-never-lie-to-you.' Mr. 'I'll-be-brutally-honest-when-it's-time-to-break-your-heart.''

Across the silence of the phone line, she broadcast her thoughts: Ask me to go away with you. See how fast I can pack.

Yet the shame of this secret desire, her guilty ambition, reddened her cheeks. She thought of the barn, the llamas sleeping under the summer moon, and everything she had to do after dawn. But especially her mother, in her bed in the room across the hall. How profoundly the deaf sleep.

13

CULLEN

'SUMMER MORNINGS,' said Cullen. 'The air, before it heats up? Nothing like it. A gift. This is the only time of year when I don't question what the hell are we doing still living here.'

Maddox, taciturn Maddox, sat over his food across from Cullen in the red vinyl booth.

'Must be nice for you these days,' said Cullen, pursuing him, 'seeing the sun come up. I don't imagine that happened much in your previous incarnations.'