The Killing Moon: A Novel

mixed up with a local girl,' she said. 'Did you. You're so afraid of getting trapped here. Of winding up like everyone else.'

She watched him brood on that, and noticed that he didn't tell her she was mistaken. 'This arrangement is unfair to you,' he said. 'I know that. But I've been up front?'

'Please. Don't.'

'I know you don't want to hear it, but I have been crystal clear, exactly so that there are no illusions. I am just passing through here.'

'Donny?'

'I'm not doing this to be cruel. This is because I don't want to hurt you.'

'Just stop, please. You have to not talk like that. Not after I just cleaned you off me with tissues.'

Sometimes he looked angry when he was only thinking.

'Please,' she said. 'Just lie down next to me and shut up now. Please.'

And he did. The room was quiet except for the air conditioner rattling the window. She lay on her side behind him, sad now, and sad about feeling sad.

After a while he laid his hand over her hip, and she didn't move away. She never slept, and he didn't seem to either.

She climbed into her truck before dawn, activating the garage door opener he had given her, the one thing of his she got to carry around. One day she was going to show up and open the door and the house was going to be empty, and him gone.

Implacable men. Every misfortune Tracy's mother had suffered over the past twelve years, she blamed on Tracy's father and his leaving them.

Her mother had to be proven wrong. Had to be.

She turned past the FOR SALE sign onto the street. Tracy's eyes remained damp the whole way home?not because things were bad between them, but because things were so good, and could be great, and still he was going to walk away. She drove on under the first candle of sky light like the dazed victim of an automobile accident that had yet to occur.

20

FRANKIE

THE DOORBELL KEPT ringing in the apartment, insistently, like the thumb pressing on the button was jabbing into Frankie's own temple. They weren't going away. Why didn't the Zoo Lady answer?

Maybe it was Dill at the door. Maybe he had lost his key.

A pretty hopeless hope, but you'll grab at almost anything if you wait long enough for someone.

Frankie went into the bedroom. The old floors were creaky and he tried to go softly heel-toe. The dogs howled downstairs like it was the moon itself ringing the bell. He heard them scratching at the walls.

Frankie went up alongside the black curtain over the left window. He peeked out, but couldn't see the door from this second-floor window because of the balcony.

It was twilight at the intersection of Main and Number 8. He looked for a car or something. Maybe Dill's bike.

The bell finally stopped, the silence loud, and then the caller backed out from the doorway into the street. Frankie saw the black cap and the white jersey with the blue word on it. A Black Falls cop checking the windows. Frankie froze. The curtain shifted ever so slightly, and he realized that this particular window was open a crack.

The cop was still looking. Frankie saw that he was trying to figure out a way to climb up and get inside.

Frankie backed away fast. Too fast.

'Hey!'

The cop's eyes had jumped. He was yelling now.

'Hey!'

Frankie heard boots on the stoop and the doorbell ringing again. Frankie swiped at his nose, pinched it hard. The cop was pounding on the door.

Frankie, knowing he had been made, opened the door to the downstairs. The cat stink rose up at him as he started down, arguing with himself all the way. He remembered things Dill had said about the cops in town. He almost turned back upstairs. The cop was bellowing, 'Open up, Sinclair!' It was kind of a Three Little Pigs moment. He had a forceful voice that threatened to blow the house down.

At the first-floor landing, Frankie threw the lock and pulled back on the door?and the cop pushed right inside, backing Frankie hard against the handrail post at the bottom of the stairs.

'Who the hell are you?' said the cop. He had been expecting Dill.

'Frankie. Frankie Sculp.'

This cop wasn't one of the brothers, the ones with the cave eyes. 'Sinclair,' he said, gripping Frankie's shirt as he looked up the stairs. 'Where is he?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know. He's not here?'

'I thought?maybe you were him.'

'What are you doing here? How'd you get in? You break in?'

'No.' Frankie was fishing around inside the pocket of his cargo shorts for the key when, all of a sudden, the cop clamped a hand around Frankie's neck, gripping his forearm.

Frankie stared, eyes bulging. He tried to gulp but the cop's hand choked it.

'Slowly,' said the cop.

The guy was pissed. Frankie blinked a couple of times, pleadingly, in lieu of speech, until the cop let up on his throat and then his arm. Frankie brought out Dill's apartment key dangling at the end of a green sneaker lace.

The cop yanked it out of his hand. 'He gave you this?'

Frankie swallowed hard, little tears popping out. He nodded.

'I'm around this corner a lot,' said the cop. 'How come I don't see you going in and out?'

Frankie shook his head. He shrugged.

'How long you been here today?'

'Dill lets me stay,' Frankie said.

'Overnight?'

'Not usually.'

'But sometimes. I want to know about recently.'

'The past few days.'

'Past few days. How many?'

'A week. I been waiting for him.'

'You're saying you haven't seen Sinclair in a week.'

Frankie nodded.

'How old are you, Frankie Sculp?'

'Sixteen.'

'Where do you live?'

'With the Ansons. Over on Mill.'

'Ansons? You a foster kid?'

Frankie shrug-nodded, feeling like he had been made to admit something.

'They know you're out here, where you are?'

'They know I'm out.'

'At the apartment of a sex offender, they know that part of it?'

'I guess, not really.'

Not that they would even care. The Ansons were a lot more interested in getting blitzed on their state stipend than feeding their foster kids.

'What do you come here for?'

'I just hang.'

'What's here for you? Sinclair is your?'

'He's my friend.'

'Your friend. That's great. You admire him? Want to be like him?'

'I don't know.'

'How is it you 'hang'? What does that mean?'

'You know. Video games and stuff. He teaches me magic tricks sometimes.'

'So what's he done now? Made himself disappear?'

'I don't know.'

The cop was making a face, but it might have been the pet stink getting to him from the Zoo Lady's door. 'Let's take a look upstairs.'

Frankie went up ahead of him. The floor of the left-right hallway at the top was crowded with magic stuff, stacks of books and video dubs, poster tubes.

The cop looked both ways. 'And you're sure he's not here now?'

'Sure I'm sure.'

'But absolutely positive.'

Frankie nodded.

'You two didn't have a quarrel recently, anything like that?'

Frankie tried to find the meaning behind the question. 'A quarrel?'

'A spat. A fight, an argument. I'm not going to find him in bags or something, chopped up?'

Frankie didn't answer that. This cop was crazy.

'Okay,' the cop said. 'Come on.'

Frankie followed him down the right end of the hall, past the door to the balcony, turning left into the living room. The cop's eyes went from the scarlet velvet wallpaper to the ruby loveseat to the old costume trunk set out as a coffee table. The Xbox console was hooked up to a small TV, where two ultimate fighters were frozen in midkick. Magic equipment and props were stacked up high behind the bar to the left: a silver-curtained disappearing booth, a levitating board, a card-dealing