The Killing Moon: A Novel

before. They were taking him through again to ascertain what surfaces he had touched?he claimed none?or what if anything appeared missing or moved.

Bottom line: Something about Maddox rubbed Hess the wrong way. Something about him Hess did not like. Did not like or did not trust. Beyond the sense that the feeling was quite mutual. It was there in the way Maddox watched the criminalists and computer techs going about their work. Nothing in his interest said 'part-time cop.' There was no outsider awe, only compulsive vigilance.

In other words, he did not strike Hess as a man blown back into this town by circumstance. More like a man with a knack for moving with the eye of a storm.

Hess let them finish?waited until they asked him about the empty docking station wired to Sinclair's PC, the camera to which also appeared to be missing?before catching up with him outside on the chipped sidewalk near the CSS van.

Maddox eyed the modest crowd gathered across the intersection, mothers with their arms tight around their children. Hess said, 'They don't like it.'

Maddox turned, didn't startle. 'What's to like?'

'Sex offender accused of murder. That's a real-life monster in your neighborhood.'

Maddox nodded, knowing that Hess had a point, and waiting for him to get to it.

'I gotta hand it to you, Maddox. You don't seem fazed.'

'Fazed?'

'Dealing with real police. On a real crime, a murder. You don't seem too impressed with us, and you don't seem annoyed by our presence, and those are the two small- town-cop responses we usually get. Envy or resentment.'

He shrugged. 'I'm part-time. A spectator.'

Hess reminded himself that this 'spectator' was the first to get inside Sinclair's apartment after he went missing. Had turned up Sinclair's bike before anyone even knew it was gone. A good bit of diligence from a man with no career to make, just a guy passing through town.

'See,' said Hess, 'that doesn't do it for me. This isn't the sort of thing you stumble into, police work. A job you do awhile before moving on to the next thing. People burn out all the time, but rarely do they walk out. No small-town cop I ever met didn't dream of the big time.'

Maddox shrugged again. 'Now you met him.'

'I had this therapist one time. I was in a crisis-incident thing, a shooting; they make you do an exit interview and mandatory counseling. It's paid time, you sit, you chat.' Hess letting Maddox know he didn't buy into it much. 'But this one thing she told me stuck. It was that guys drawn to police work are really only sublimating antisocial or violent impulses. Policing the impulsive, aggressive parts of themselves, and at the same time allowing them an outlet. In her words. Make sense to you?'

'I guess.'

'Makes sense to me. Over the years I've seen it prove out. Guys don't become cops to help old ladies cross the street. They don't come in looking to 'do good.' They come in looking to stop bad. They come in looking to impose order. It's the uniform they join for, dressing themselves up in the law and wearing it around so everyone can see: Me, good guy. Me, not bad.'

Maddox pulled at his sweat-spotted POLICE jersey. 'I didn't join for the uniform.'

'No, I guess you didn't. You said your father was on the job once upon a time. I'm assuming that's how you got hired on, second- generation?'

'Pretty much.'

'Sinclair's father was a cop.'

'For a couple of years. He was a builder after that.'

'Had a falling-out with the force. Now, kids of cops, that's a whole 'nother thing. Lots of second-generation cops among them?myself included. Plenty of screwups too, though, like Sinclair. And some of both. Like these Pail brothers. Those are the ones to watch out for.'

'You think?' said Maddox.

Hess smiled at the way Maddox parried. 'You know something else I figured out? With you filling up your own patrol car here, and the price of a gallon of gas being what it is these days? I figure working as a cop in Black Falls is actually costing you. Which shows extraordinary dedication. For someone just marking time. I mean, I consider myself a good cop. But even I have to get paid every two weeks, you know? Gotta get that take-home. Or are there some incentives to being a Black Falls cop that I don't know about?'

Maddox tapped his brim. 'There's these swell caps.'

'So how was it you happened to wind up inside Sinclair's apartment that first time?'

'I told you. I was driving past and saw movement in the window. He's a registered SO who hadn't been seen in a while, so I pulled over, knocked on the door. The kid answered and let me up.'

'The kid. This Frankie Sculp, right?'

'That's right.'

'Foster kid, been staying here. Didn't know where Sinclair was.'

'Correct.'

Hess nodded. 'But you knew Sinclair from before, right?'

'You mean as kids? We lived on the same street, on opposite ends. But I didn't know him know him. That was a long time ago.'

'You two didn't pal around the neighborhood?'

'He was two grades older than me.'

'His sister was your age.'

Maddox nodded slowly. Getting it now. Maddox said, 'You know a lot.'

'I keep my ears open,' said Hess. 'So she has an affair with a guy, who her brother then kills.'

Maddox said, 'You've interviewed her again, I assume. They weren't close. I doubt she's even spoken to him since he got out of prison.'

'Still, the Sinclair connection is a pretty strong link. Would you contest that?'

'It's a link,' agreed Maddox. 'But not a strong one.'

'In your professional opinion.'

Maddox shrugged. 'You asked.'

'Maybe Sinclair and Frond had something else going. His books here, he's got a lot of occult stuff. Frond with his New Age whatever, it's a common area of interest. Maybe they connected after Frond dropped dime on Pail for beating up Sinclair at that traffic stop. Bonded, you know? Banded together to curse the police department, or what have you. Some sort of cult thing.'

'A black mass or something.'

'Or something, yeah. See, I don't chuckle about it myself, because this stupid shit, it's happened before. Retarded backwoods rituals where someone gets overzealous, goes too far. People can lose their bearings in these remote towns. Lose control.'

Maddox said nothing, waiting. Hess was doing most of the talking, but sometimes that worked. Sometimes that drew them out.

'This 'Scarecrow' took a lot of abuse in this town, sounds like. Maybe he'd finally had enough. Maybe Frond let slip that he had some money stashed around his place, and maybe Sinclair was thinking about skipping town and decided he'd get a lot further with cash in hand. Maybe Frond came home and found him ransacking his place, and Sinclair panicked.'

'All 'maybe's.'

'Well, I'm doing what I can. I've got a suspect in a murder case who's up and disappeared. Completely vanished?I don't know where, I don't know how. Left behind practically everything, including a closet full of clothes, luggage, cash in a bank account which remains untouched, and the only credit card to his name is the Discover card on his bedroom bureau. Took his bicycle, maybe, but didn't get very far on it. Everything else, he left behind. Including a little blood at the scene of the crime, the imprint of a size ten and a half Chuck Taylor tread, and various black follicles from a wig of human hair. But wait. Hold on. One other thing he didn't leave behind. One thing for me to focus on. The missing piece, right? The thing that doesn't fit. You know what I'm talking about?'

Maddox shook his head, passably curious.

'Sinclair's digital camera. That empty docking station hooked up to his computer in there. Purchased in early May over the Internet, with said Discover card?camera, hot dock, and media card. Sinclair fooled around with it a bit, took some test shots in his apartment. We know this because he installed the viewing software and uploaded a few date-coded images into his computer. But after that? Nothing. Nothing at all in the two months leading up to his disappearance and Frond's murder. Meaning, to my mind, there's a pretty good chance this camera's got some pictures sitting in its memory card. Pictures that maybe even could give us a line on where he is now. You said the docking station was empty when you were inside his place the first time. It's a small camera, by the way. Pocket-sized.'

Maddox said, 'Are you accusing me of something?'

'Look, you're stuck here in the middle of nowhere. Free reign on your night shifts, nobody watching. No chief or shift sergeant crawling up your ass. You're not making any money. And nobody has a crystal ball?nobody knows how one little act, an impulse, a spur-of-the- moment decision, is going to affect everything else down the road. Hell, you might even regret it, but can't see how to make it right. I'm saying, so long as I get that media card back intact? No harm, no foul.'

Maddox worked hard to keep his cool. A tough read, this guy. 'Why don't you ask the kid who