The Killing Moon: A Novel

labeled REPORTS ROOM were badly photocopied registration sheets featuring mugs and vitals of nine Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders stacked three by three. Bucky fingered the one in the center, a small-headed guy with a firing-squad expression.

Hess skimmed the bio. 'Kid-toucher,' he said. 'Girls or boys?'

'Boys.'

'He's Level Two,' said another voice. Hess was surprised to hear from Maddox now, still in back of the others. 'Nonviolent.'

Hess nodded, taking the opportunity to drill Maddox with a stare, then turned back to Bucky Pail. What were these two trying to tell him?

Hess pointed to the SO's picture. 'What's with the eyebrows?'

'He shaves them off,' said Bucky Pail. 'Guy's a full-time freak.'

In the photo, Sinclair had been posed against the wall opposite where Hess was now, unsmiling, borderline scared, the missing facial hair making him look alien and terminally ill. Probably was the look he was going for.

'All right, gentlemen,' said Hess, looking to wind this up. 'Look, maybe you don't want us here, and maybe we don't even want to be here. A blind date is what it is, and I've been on some pretty rough ones. Let me do my job, and I'll let you do yours, so long as you understand that, when the time comes to dance, I'll be the one leading. If you're good with that, then I'm good with you. We good?'

Unenthusiastic nods. A troop of sad sacks and misfits. Hess had a fun forty-eight hours ahead of him.

24

WANDA

SHE DREAMED AGAIN that she was dead and floating through town. Landing in different places, people stopping and staring as she walked up to them, awaiting her caress. She touched them over their hearts and some fell dead limp right away, as if she were one of those revival faith healers on TV. Others shivered at the contact, jolted by the release of their souls from their bodies, and then joined the small mob following her. When she came to Bucky, he was standing outside his backyard trailer, the one that stunk so bad, whose curtained windows and padlocked door glowed wild white from within. She reached for him but froze in midembrace. It was his eyes. Empty black sockets. She looked at her hand, and it was black now with all the death she had brought to people. Her nails were rotted and peeling off, knuckles shriveled to the bone. She pulled it back in shame, and Bucky turned away, leaving her to walk on alone.

'Wanda. Wake up. Wanda!'

Something peeled back her eyelid. Her vision was blurred. Donny Maddox called her name.

You came to beg me to spare you, she tried to say, though her lips wouldn't move the words right.

The bed shaking now, an earthquake. Ride it out. What the fuck.

The massive thumb opened her eye again. Like looking up through a deep hole in the ground. 'Wake up.'

'I'm dead,' she sneered, and tried to roll over, but the bed wouldn't let her.

'You're burning up.' The covers were peeled back like foil off a TV dinner. 'You're wearing sweats?'

'Freezing,' she said, grabbing after the sheets. 'How'd you get in here?'

He was dream Donny, trying to reach her in a dream within a dream. He was that clever. 'Listen,' he said. 'It's important. I need to know. Bucky ever talk about Frond?'

'I couldn't touch him,' she said. 'My black hand.'

Shaking again, her head getting tossed. 'Frond,' Donny said, full into her face.

'No,' she answered.

'Bucky never talks about him?'

'Are you really in my bedroom?'

His hands came off her shoulders and she wriggled back into comfort.

Noises kept her from sinking down for good. She opened an eye and saw Donny's back to her, leaning over her nightstand, the drawer open. 'Going through my stuff?'

'You're dreaming,' he told her.

'If I'm dreaming then get in here and fuck my ass.'

When nothing happened, her eyes fell shut again, tiny black hands pulling her down.

25

PINTY

DONNY MADE HIM turn out the light over the front steps. He kept checking the road. 'This escalates everything.'

Pinty gripped the doorknob in order to take pressure off his hips, switching weight from one leg to the other. His right foot had been numb all day, almost causing a fall. He'd had a dizzy spell earlier, so he was trying to take it easy. 'Work it to your advantage.'

'It just doesn't make any sense.'

'Why not? It's revenge. Frond reported him.'

'But why now? Why bring the state police here? It's too dangerous a distraction. Staying under the radar, that's Bucky's only plan.'

'Then?'

'I don't know.' Donny pulled his cap off and ruffled his hair. 'I can't think.'

'Severely beaten, you say?'

'And now I've got this state trooper. A buzz-cut guy, a weight lifter, right? Something to prove. Looking for some ass to kick.'

'Maybe he'll come and go.'

'And what if he doesn't? What if Bucky has to shut everything down for a couple of weeks? Then what?'

'Donny.' Pinty leaned on the doorknob, needing to sit down. 'Relax.'

'Frond,' said Donny, like he couldn't get it through his head. 'The timing of it makes no sense.'

Donny's patrol car squawked in the driveway. An unfamiliar voice came over the police radio band.

It was a state trooper, summoning Patrolman Maddox back to the station.

Donny stared at Pinty, a look of resignation on his face. 'Here it comes,' he said, pulling his cap back on his head.

26

HESS

'FRIGGIN' DIAL-UP,' Hess was telling the Mitchum barracks dispatch. 'Goddamn stagecoach technology. Three phone jacks the entire place. Radio reception's for shit, units are R-1 all over town. And my Nextel two-way, that would be like voodoo science here. Bringing fire to the aborigines. So this is the number. The non-emergency line. Requisition me some bear repellent and a telegraph machine. Right.'

Hess hung up and reached for his water bottle, chugged. The screen door whined and Patrolman Maddox, in the uniform jersey and ball cap, walked in looking like a guy assigned to beach patrol a hundred miles from shore. Decent build on him, but no rip. Five months this rookie had been on the job, without academy training or state certification. As much a cop as Hess was king of Tunisia.

'Sorry to haul you back in,' said Hess, not really sorry at all. 'You're new on the job, huh?'

'Yeah, just part-time.'

'Holding down the fort on overnights?'

'Basically.'

'Got aspirations, or is this what works for you now?'

'This works now.'

'Really? Surprises me. Most guys get a taste of cop, they can't think of doing anything else.'

'My father was a patrolman here, long time ago.'

'Walking a mile in his shoes, huh? Making a little peace with the old man?'

'I guess.'

'Makes sense. So you're from this town?'

'Originally, yeah.'

'Moved away? And actually came back?'

'Hard to believe, huh?'

Maddox was giving him nothing. Maybe he had nothing to give. 'You knew this Frond?'

'By sight. He stood out a little.'

'Been to his Web page? His online store?'

'No.'

'I have had that pleasure. Crystals, quartz stones. All kinds of New Age crap. Healing metals. Wind chimes. Pottery.'

'I knew he brokered sales for some of the artists living in the hills.'

'My interview list is filling up with fruitcakes. Guy claimed to be a Druid.'

'Uh-huh.'

'An ovate, a diviner, an interpreter of Druid mysteries. Yeah. Too much Led Zep in high school. Know what an athame is?'

'A what?'

'Exactly. It's a ceremonial dagger. Pictured on his site. Ivory-handled with a double-edged blade. He put up images of all his toys, these candlesticks, some prism thing, a 'thurible,' which I learned is an incense burner?his was in the shape of a skull. We recovered all these things from the mantle over his fireplace, but not the dagger. I know you were first on scene when they went inside. You see this athame there?'

Maddox thought