The Killing Moon: A Novel

First thing they scored were footwear impressions from the wet bath mat.'

'Size ten and a half sneakers,' said Maddox. 'Hess already dangled that detail.'

'Then they found that the sink?faucet, cabinet, vanity, whole thing?had been wiped down, scrubbed clean. Again?a good spot for cleaning something off, maybe washing up. A defensive wound, perhaps. So they went down into the plumbing. The pipes underneath the sink. Pulled the drain traps, and there was blood.'

'Blood?' said Maddox. 'Heat from the fire didn't cook it?'

'Not all. Blood type immediately excluded the victim, Frond. While all this was going on, they turned up that safe under a bed upstairs. The letters.'

'Right.'

'Her husband, the roads guy, admits to knowing about his wife and the witch. Guy's alibi is soft, very uncorroborated. But the critical thing is this gash on his arm.'

Maddox looked at him now.

'Yeah,' said Cullen. 'Snagged it on a fence post, he said, but it fits just fine as a defensive wound. Typical overhelpful type, this guy, Ripsbaugh. Hess asked him for theories about who could have done this, and how. You know that old routine, 'If you didn't do it, tell me how someone else could have.' I saw only five minutes of the tape, but it's pretty pathetic, this guy holding forth with his theories.'

'He's a cop buff.'

'I know. They found all these true crime paperbacks in his house, and forensics shows on tape. Criminal genius of the armchair variety. Until Hess offered him straight out?'Hey, let me exclude you: volunteer a DNA sample.' That's when the guy started to stumble, started shutting down. Knew enough about DNA to want nothing to do with it, I guess. He refused outright. So Hess went prob cause, subpoenaed a cheek swab?which they got?and now it's a wait for the results.'

Maddox rubbed his raw knuckles. 'He's locked up?'

'No need. Not until the DNA comes back. Guy's not exactly a flight risk, right? He's being tailed twenty-four/seven, see if he cracks.'

'So this is going to go on for a while.'

'Actually, not so. A colleague in my office says Hess called in a chit at the lab in Sudbury. He's gotten somebody to cut through the backlog for him, push him to the top of the list. Apparently, Hess doesn't like this Ripsbaugh. Either that or he wants out of Black Falls even faster than you do.'

'Hess,' said Maddox. A look of disdain.

''Leo the Lion,' they call him. King of the Jungle.'

'There was somebody else from the DA's office at the station.'

Cullen shrugged. 'Probably a clerk helping to write up affidavits, that's all. No one knows you, or about you. How you want it, right?'

'How it has to be. How it is.'

'Fine line, my friend. A dangerous game.'

'You want dangerous? With Pinty gone, I'm all alone in town now. Unprotected.'

'So go to Hess. Come out to him. What's the harm?'

'Not how it's done.'

Cullen dismissed that. 'You just don't like him.'

Maddox sat forward. 'If something does happen to me, anything, an accident, if I die choking on my food, you fall on the town like the U.S. Marines.' Maddox waited for Cullen to agree to that, then sat back again. 'Ripsbaugh have a lawyer yet?'

'Hess actually advised him to get one after the DNA swab.'

'And?'

'Ripsbaugh said only guilty people need lawyers.'

Maddox shook his head. 'Jesus.'

'Comical, how wrong he's going. Getting away with murder looks so easy on TV. Motive and opportunity?sure, that's all circumstantial. But not blood evidence. And this isn't mere DNA, mind you. Actual blood.'

'No latents?'

'Guy watches TV, are you kidding? Children pocketing bubble gum at the corner store wear gloves now. CSS found traces of talcum at the witch's house, so they're thinking latex.'

Maddox shook his head grimly.

Cullen went on. 'As to Hess. You want to 'don't ask, don't tell' him? Maybe that's okay for now. But. You cannot withhold evidentiary material or mislead him in any way. We're already walking the tightrope with this. Don't cost the county money. That's the golden rule.'

Maddox nodded. That satisfied both their pro forma obligations.

A pretty nurse with a thin, well- bred nose poked her head in, smiling at Maddox. 'You can go back in now.'

Cullen thought how they must love Maddox here. Heart-on-his-sleeve moody, devoted to a dying old man, and all nicked and banged up himself. Like a teddy bear tossed from a moving car.

Two doors down the curved hallway, they entered the warm, white hospital room. Cullen had met Pinty only once, six months ago, at the start of all this, and the man whose hand he shook then resembled not at all the sleeping ghost he visited now. His lips were slack around the tube in his mouth, flesh sagging off his proud jaw. The large headboard looked like an uncarved headstone, and Maddox, standing at the foot of the bed, an early mourner. The old man's hairpiece, Cullen guessed, was in a plastic bag inside the nightstand drawer. No such thing as dignity in death. Not that Cullen ever saw.

Maddox said, looking down at the old man, 'Blood clots broke loose from his legs. Lodged in his brain and possibly his heart. He had a series of small strokes, but they won't know the damage until he regains consciousness. 'Until and unless,' they say.'

'You blame the stress?'

'I do.'

Cullen dropped into the padded chair that flattened out into Maddox's night bed. A yellow plastic tray held his uneaten lunch. Maddox must have told them he was family. That was his cover here.

'I could get those guys right this minute if I wanted,' Maddox said. 'Multiple counts of harassment, excessive use of force, abuse of power. All sorts of bullshit they could worm their way around in court with lawyers stalling and all that. No. When I get them, they're going to know they've been gotten.' He looked down at the old man. 'I'll cut them so deep, everything's going to come pouring out.'

Maddox was vengeful now. Triple the motivation.

Cullen chewed his lip thoughtfully. 'Just one more question, then.'

Maddox didn't look up. 'What's that?'

'Where the hell is Sinclair?'

30

TRACY

DONNY SAT NEXT TO HER in her old Ford pickup. He was quiet most of the way, but not silent, not morose. More anxious than anything. She guessed that it was his having just left Pinty for the first time. If anything happened to Pinty while he was gone, it would be like his mother all over again.

The week's groceries she had bought for her mother as an excuse for this midday excursion to Rainfield knocked around in plastic bags behind the seat. They passed a slumping barn with a faded HAY FOR SALE sign leaning against a decaying tractor set out as yard art. Back in Black Falls, they picked up the Cold River running along Main. Across the street from the mailbox reading RIPSBAUGH was a state police cruiser.

'Kind of creepy,' Tracy said, 'having them in town. A little like an occupation.' She watched the whip-antennaed cruiser shrinking in her rearview mirror. 'They've been following him everywhere. The one time I saw them, heading up toward the highway department garage, it was like a little parade.'

'How's he handling it?'

'He was driving straight along like he wasn't even aware. Maybe he isn't.'

They passed the Falls Diner and the Gas-Gulp-'N-Go, the crumbling mill houses coming into view.

Tracy said, 'I heard they found a sex video of his wife and Mr. Frond.'

The phrase 'sex video' roused him a bit. 'No,' he said, sitting up, watching Number 8 Road go past. 'They were just love letters. High school?type stuff. But with drawings.'

'Drawings?'

'She was a good artist in school. Still is, by the look of it.'

'Dirty stuff?'

'Or erotic, depending on your point of view.'

'Dirty,' she said, hoping to cheer him up. 'Drawings make more sense to me, anyway.' She had imagined an Internet-type video of an older, ponytailed guy and a heavy woman doing it. Ick. 'In drawings you can make yourself thinner.'

They passed another state police cruiser parked outside the police station and didn't talk again until she pulled into Pinty's white-stone driveway, behind Donny's patrol car. 'Thanks,' he said. 'For the ride, for bringing me my stuff, for everything.'

'Wish I could stay with you. But I have to get back, finish up for the day.'

He took his leather toiletry bag, the one she had packed for him. How strange it had felt, being inside his house alone. Walking room to room, poking around his bathroom things. He said, 'I'm heading in to work soon, anyway.'

She touched the cut just under his sideburn, now healed to a nick. 'Good luck