inside his own garage. Wondered how I got in.'
'You see their eyes?'
Bucky talked smoke at him. 'Yeah, I saw their eyes. What are you, a doctor? Snap some accident scene pictures and call in Ripsbaugh to mop up. Then take off.'
But Maddox didn't leave right away. He lingered, looking kind of funny at Bucky, almost puzzled, like he was thinking something. Smelling something.
'The fuck are you doing?' said Bucky, his voice raised loud enough for the others to hear. He blew more smoke his way. 'Are you fucking sniffing on me, you queer motherfuck? The fuck is your problem?'
Maddox stood steadfast in the dissipating haze, resetting himself. 'I have a problem?'
'You do. I am your problem. Remember that.'
A school-yard stare, but nothing more. Never anything more, thought Bucky, Maddox always holding himself back. The brain inside was always working?but on what?
'Look at you here, pussyfooting around,' said Bucky. 'Fucking college boy playing cop. You know what I think? I think you ought to be real careful on these shit-shift overnights. Accidents do happen.'
'That right?'
'That's fucking right. Like that deer that hit you?you just never know. You're out here all on your own. Long way from civilization. Think about who your lifeline is. Ain't no ambulance.' Bucky peeled off a grin. 'It's us. It's me. You think about that sometime.'
Bucky flicked his cigarette butt at Maddox's boots and walked back to the wreck, where both boys were now out and being strapped to backboards. 'Fucking homo,' Bucky said to the others. He tossed a look back at Maddox and yelled, 'Pictures, camera, snap-snap, let's go!' and stared him back to his patrol car.
'Fucking spook,' said Bucky, turning back to the strapped-down boys at his feet. He kneeled and went through their pockets quickly, finding nothing, no IDs. He looked into their faces and would have said something, would have warned them against talking, but their eyes were so far gone with shock and dope that any threat would have been wasted.
He leaned into the car and studied the seat with his flashlight beam, then cracked open the glove and emptied the contents onto the floor. Two small plastic zippered envelopes slid out. Bucky reached in and pocketed them quick, making sure there weren't any more.
Maddox came up with the Polaroid as Bucky stepped back. Bucky watched him snap his pictures, making him feel his presence. Goading him into saying something, making a move. But Maddox worked silently until the ambulance arrived. Bucky caught up with one of the EMTs after they had loaded in the boys. He showed the guy his cop badge.
The EMT said, 'It'll be Rainfield Good Samaritan.'
'We found a bottle of vanilla schnapps in the backseat there,' lied Bucky. 'Pretty cut-and-dried.'
'Vanilla?' snorted the EMT, not so long out of his teens himself. 'Any flavor they don't make that mouthwash in?'
'Kids like their poison sweet. No IDs yet, but we'll track down the parents and phone in the particulars.'
'You got it. Have a good one.'
Bucky tucked his badge away. 'I'll sure try.'
16
RIPSBAUGH
RIPSBAUGH PULLED UP on the scene just as Stoddard's mechanic was driving off with the wreck. It looked bad but not fatal. The wound in the tree trunk oozed sap, but it too would survive, though with a good scar.
Maddox stood at his patrol car, arms folded, apart from the layabouts near the pumper and the rescue truck farther up the road. Ripsbaugh pulled around the road flares and angled in next to Maddox's car, silencing the engine and stepping out of the cab. He walked to the back of his truck, his untied bootlaces flicking at his heels.
'Late call,' said Maddox, coming over.
Ripsbaugh dropped the rear door. 'Usually is.'
'Couple of kids, nothing too serious.' Maddox glanced at the other cops. 'Some glass in the road, along with the fuel.'
Ripsbaugh dragged out an open sack of sawdust. He lugged it over and emptied it onto the gasoline spill, then hauled out two buckets of cat litter and shook them on top of that. The blade of his long-handled shovel scraped the pickup bed as he slid it out.
The gas-soaked gravel scooped up like cornmeal and he shoveled it back into the plastic buckets. He kept his head down, working steadily but without haste, as was his manner. He remembered the last car accident he had to clean up?Ibbits, the escaped prisoner?and how Bucky had watched over him as though afraid Ripsbaugh would steal something from the burned wreck. This time Bucky was relaxed, all of them loitering by the pumper, prolonging the accident call into an extra hour's pay.
Ripsbaugh pretended not to notice them, in the same way he generally pretended not to notice anyone, work being a cloak of invisibility he pulled over himself. Ullard was drunk as usual, nodding off against the front tire, and Stokes drew a laugh by kicking him over. Bucky took a drag off a stubby cigarette and, with his patented Pail grin, pretended to launch the lit butt at Ripsbaugh and the fuel-sodden sand.
The others snickered hard. Ripsbaugh continued scraping his shovel like he hadn't noticed.
'Hey, Buck,' said Eddie, sitting on the rear bumper of the rescue truck, looking to impress his younger brother. 'Remember that high school janitor? The one with the crazy walleye?'
Bucky said, 'The one I pulled the firecracker stunt on.'
'Every time some freshman girl coughed up her macaroni, he'd come in wheeling his bucket of slosh, sprinkle that odor-eating powder on the mess, and mop it up. Frigging thirty years he was there, mopping up kiddie spew once a week. What a life.'
Bucky said, 'Seems to me that black folk, when they mop up, usually whistle a happy tune.'
The others laughed aggressively, Eddie harder than anyone. 'Hey, Kane,' Eddie said, emboldened. 'Know any tunes to pass the time?'
Ripsbaugh slowed the rhythm of his road scraping to a stop. With both hands resting comfortably on the handle of the shovel, he stood there, looking at them all. Nothing threatening in his manner. Nothing in his face. Just him leaning on his shovel, standing, staring.
Their chuckling petered out, the sneer draining from their smiles, faces going soft and empty. All except Bucky, who kept up his tomcat grin. He didn't back down, but he didn't say anything else either.
Ripsbaugh finished his shoveling and began hauling the heavy buckets back to his truck. Maddox was there and helped him load them in one at a time, the old truck's springy suspension dipping a bit under the weight. Ripsbaugh pulled out a broom and a large paper bag and returned to the roadside by the gouged oak, sweeping up chunks of windshield.
Maddox followed. The cops were packing to leave, trying to rouse Ullard. Maddox said, 'Val tell you I stopped by earlier?'
Ripsbaugh said, without looking up or breaking pace, 'She did.'
'Seemed like I might have upset her. I hope not.'
'She upsets easily these days.'
'I was looking for Dill.'
'She said that. Building up probable cause, I suppose.'
Maddox paused. 'Building up what?'
Ripsbaugh kept right on sweeping. 'I figure you want to get inside his place. Legally, you can't just walk in. Even a sex offender's got rights. So you establish a threshold of suspicion. That's how you build it.'
Maddox was interested. 'Go on.'
'There was a case like this on Court TV a month or so back. You have to get a family member to say that he's missed an appointment, or that someone's worried about his health. Or a neighbor to say he hasn't been cutting his lawn. Make it a public safety issue. That's your in.'
'I see,' said Maddox. 'Probable cause.'
'I figured maybe that was what you were going for.'
'You a crime buff?'
'I watch all those shows.'
The pumper and the rescue truck engines started, backing up beeping into the road, Maddox following the vehicles with his eyes until they pulled away. 'Maybe you should have been made cop here, not me.'
Ripsbaugh regripped the handle of the broom and swept up the last of the shattered glass, now whistling a slow tune.
17
MADDOX
ON THE MORNING OF Donald Christopher Maddox's second birthday, February 4, 1974, Sergeant Pintopolumanos was patrolling the town with Officer Reginald Maddox. Black Falls' finest rode in pairs back then, as with the logging industry still largely unregulated and the paper mill in full operation, the department was twenty men strong and still growing. Maddox's father had come late to police work, having struggled for seven years at a career selling prefabricated office dividers: cork and wood partitions for the precubicle age. The last sale he made was to the Black Falls PD. During a tour of the premises, Sergeant Pinty picked up on the salesman's interest in police work and invited him to
