The Killing Moon: A Novel

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Maddox picked apart his omelet with the precision of a laboratory scientist, exposing and extracting cubes of Canadian bacon, chunks of green pepper and mushroom, inspecting each before allowing them into his mouth. 'Not really.'

Cullen surveyed his own lumberjack special, which had seemed like such a good idea when he ordered it. Now he'd be knocked out all morning, bloated and yawning.

Cullen sponged up some blueberry syrup, washed it down with a gulp of coffee. He looked out the window of the pancake house, cars curling around the rotary and up the highway ramps. Rainfield was a midsized town of strip malls, fast food, and on-the-go convenience massed like plaque at the arterial interchange of a north-south interstate and an east-west route. Not much to look at, and even less to visit, but with its Best Buy, Kohl's, chain restaurants, and a six-screen movie theater, to the scratch towns of northern Mitchum County it was a metropolis. The region's Las Vegas.

Most people, when they hear the words 'western Massachusetts,' think of the rustic Berkshires, wine and cheese on the lawn at Tangle-wood, or antiqueing in Stockbridge. But getting out to Norman Rockwell country from Boston means passing through Mitchum County first. It is the only county in Massachusetts without a city. The Cold River Valley is 725 square miles of natural isolation, rivers, hills, farmlands, and old New England. Less visible to the naked eye is the fact that, while per capita crime rates are generally low, domestic ills such as spousal and child abuse, child neglect, single-parent families, and unemployment run high. Towns that rank at the bottom in median income, yet near the top in lottery revenue. A well of desperation hidden deep in the valley, pain-filled voices that go unheard.

Cullen saw Rainfield as an open-air convenience store spread out over miles. A good deal of drug crime happened here, with the associated sordid living and dead-end behavior. This place made the town of Mitchum, the county seat where Cullen lived and worked as a prosecutor of narcotics crimes for the district attorney's office, look quaint and almost clean. The amounts seized in busts here were not large by national standards, nor was the level of drug violence statistically very high. But the devastation to families was the same if not worse.

Heroin came across from upstate New York, pot down from Canada. Cocaine was cheap these days, but currently on the ebb. What surprised Cullen most about what he saw was the effect that market forces had on drug trends. People don't become addicted to a particular drug, he had learned. They become addicted to doing drugs, period, and when conditions such as purity or availability or price change drastically, people will trade one poison for another. Simple as that. No brand loyalty exists when you're dopesick and looking to score.

It would be nice to get on top of things for a change. To be ahead of the curve. They had a real chance here to head off the Next Big Thing before it metastasized and reshaped the landscape.

Maddox wiped his mouth, again sweeping the restaurant with his eyes. Force of habit, Cullen guessed. Meeting with Maddox always put him on edge.

'My boy, Kyle,' said Cullen, checking his watch and signaling the server for the check. 'A soccer prodigy. Or so I'm told. Great moves, fast feet, everybody telling me, 'Hire a coach, you'll make it all back in scholarships. Groom him.' I'm like, groom him for what? It's soccer. Maybe the eighth or ninth most popular sport in the United States, behind Frisbee and probably bowling. Kids have been playing in leagues for two generations now, and it's catching on about as fast as the metric system. Watching him the other day, I figured out why. You know why?'

Maddox shrugged, barely putting forth the effort of humoring him.

'Because Americans don't trust a game where you can't use your hands. A sport that actually forbids use of the hands, people can't understand that. 'Pick up the damn ball and throw it in the frigging net!' But he's eight, what does he know? He loves it. So I put him in a camp for the summer. We'll see what happens.'

Maddox pulled six jelly packets from the sugar caddy, stacking them and unstacking them like a casino dealer. In terms of exchanging information, these monthly get-togethers were strictly a formality and could have been transacted over the telephone. They met so that Cullen could evaluate Maddox in person. And, as usual, he found himself doing most of the talking.

'Six months now,' said Cullen. 'Here's the word, and it comes from on high. She believes we will be able to move on this. She wants to move on this, sooner rather than later.'

'This an election year?'

'Hey?every year is an election year. But don't get on her for that. There's always that part of it, of everything, that's the job. But she is good, and by that I mean, she is a prosecutor. This is a big juicy piece of meat here. She wants to carve it up nice and thick.'

'Okay.' Maddox nodded, still scanning the joint. 'Good.'

'But it's not enough yet. The press'll gobble up any bloody thing she throws down for them, but for herself, and for the community at large, she's got expensive tastes. She wants to serve this up right.'

'Fine by me.'

'I know it's fine by you. It's been six months.'

Maddox said, 'You're thinking, Hey, it's a small town, make fast work of it. But it's just the opposite. Everybody knows everybody else. That said, things are starting to break open now. I thought I was going to have something for you this morning. Something of consequence.'

Cullen waited. 'But?'

'But he stood me up last night.'

'Okay. What does that mean to you?'

'I don't know. Either of two things. Either something is up with him?or else he's ducking me. Which means that something else is up.'

'Where can he go, right? Small town. He has to turn up.'

Maddox shrugged, leaving it at that.

Cullen said, 'They want me to revisit with you the hardware.'

'Look,' said Maddox, firm but not agitated. 'It's not that I have anything against it. No one's frisking me or anything like that. It's just unnecessary. They don't discuss anything in front of me. This isn't like before, when I'm a party to illegal activity. I'm just a snoop here. But what I get, when I get it, will be better than words on a wire. It will be evidence, hard and fast.'

'You're that sure.'

'Why not?'

'I don't know. You think another thirty days?'

'I hope.' He sat back, extending his arm over the top of the booth. 'Don't think I'm enjoying myself here.'

Cullen looked him over again. Maddox smelled confident, a big change from when they started. 'What about you? They'll want to know I asked.'

Maddox soured the way Kyle did when Cullen made a show of touring the mowed lawn before paying out his allowance. His arm came back off the booth, his shoulders tight again. Tired of being checked up on all the time. 'How am I, you mean?'

'How are you, I mean.'

'How do I seem?'

'Tired. Frustrated. Impatient.'

'That's about right,' Maddox said, and then he was out of the booth, moving with surprising speed to the door.

14

VAL

HER DOORBELL NEVER RANG, but when it did, on this particular afternoon, the door opened back fifteen years.

'Donny,' said Valerie Ripsbaugh, seeing him in the doorway with the haze of late-day heat behind him. She recognized him instantly, but not because he hadn't changed. There was more of him now, and in all the right places. As though the skinny boy she knew in high school had been ingested by this man.

With fifteen years rushing up on her, she looked down at herself. Red plaid pajama pants with a hole in the knee, flat-soled flip-flops, and a loose cranberry jersey. What he must have been thinking as he compared the Valerie Sinclair of yesteryear to the Val Ripsbaugh of today. She looked away, wishing he would too.

'Val,' he said. 'How have you been?'

Most people, she didn't care. She had let herself go a long time ago. But Donny Maddox, he was the one mirror she could not pass. In him she felt a sort of death. Though they had only been academic rivals, never boyfriend and girlfriend, Donny more than any other person had defined Val's high school years.

'If you're looking for Kane,' she said, 'he's gone.' She glanced over at the fenced-in septic service garage adjacent to their yard, the reason why all the window fans in her house faced out.

'No,' he said, 'I came to talk to you.'

Only then did it occur to her that something might have happened to Kane. She always thought of her husband as vulnerable to nothing and no one except her. 'Is it Kane? Is everything okay?'

'Oh?yes.' He reached up for his cap as though he had forgotten he was wearing the team uniform. Seeing him dressed as a local cop was so wrong. 'Everything's fine.'

Her reaction did not go quite as far as disappointment?she wasn't that callous?but it was something like readiness, a borderline eagerness, which was close enough. I could sell the house. I could start over. I could be free.