The Killing Moon: A Novel

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'Ten years undercover,' said Bryson. 'The guy's won performance awards he couldn't even show up to collect.'

Bryson with stars in his eyes. He had come to Hess highly recommended, but now Hess didn't know.

They slowed at the intersection of two ropy roads. Maddox pulled up in front of a wreck of a house, the roof moldy, the front screen door torn. The homeowner's solution to either a water leak or critter invasion had been to cap the chimney with an upended blue plastic trash barrel.

Maddox was out of his car fast. Apprehension was a new look for him. He didn't even react when Hess and Bryson caught up with him inside.

A grizzled guy in a thin brown bathrobe sat back in a pilled easy chair like slum royalty. Maddox was asking him about this Wanda, and the guy, Bill was his name, sat there like Hugh Hefner's bitter half brother, saying she was sleeping.

They crowded up the narrow hallway, Maddox pushing the door open on a room with an empty bed. He stripped back the sheets in one motion, something small and light flying out and flitting to the floor beneath a small, three-loop radiator.

Two small drug bags.

Maddox pushed past them into the tight hallway and tried another closed door. When the knob didn't turn, he banged on the unpainted wood grain with the flat of his hand, calling her name.

'Who is that?' came a sleepy voice.

Hess watched Maddox's head bow with relief. Apparently, he had thought this Wanda was dead. 'It's Maddox.'

'What are you?doing here?'

Lots of movement inside. A classic stall.

Maddox stood in that sideways manner people have of speaking through doors. 'I need to see you.'

Water was running. 'I'm gonna be a couple of minutes?.'

'Right now.'

'It's your turn to wait for me for a change, how's that? This is lady business in here.'

'Wanda.'

They heard the flush. Hess showed Maddox his impatience.

'Wanda.'

'Hold your horses.'

'Wanda. I'm going to kick it in.'

The knob had a slot keyhole in its center, and Hess motioned to Bryson for the Leatherman tool he usually carried. Bryson gave it to him and Hess unfolded a knife blade and jiggled it in the knob.

'I said I'm coming?'

Hess turned the knob and Maddox pushed in fast through the door. Wanda was a string-haired rag doll in terry-cloth shorts, a washed-out Celtics ring tee hanging off her shoulders like a nightshirt on a little sweaty girl. She was bent over the sink as though hiding something, and Hess first thought she was fixing up. But when Maddox turned her around, her hands were empty except for the two damp sweatbands she was pulling on over pad bandaging.

The white walls of the sink were bloody, and on the rim, near the torn-open box of bandages, were a pair of tweezers and nail clippers, both stained red. The woman's eyes were glassy as she bent to protect her arm, but Maddox, after his initial shock at the sight of the blood, tugged off the sweatbands, and the bandages beneath came away.

There was a puff of stink that smelled almost cadaverous. Wanda's forearm above her wrist was a mess of chewed flesh. She had been using the grooming tools to pick at her wounds, one abscess dug down to the tendon, its ridges black with spoil. The burnlike lumps of skin looked boiled from beneath, maybe from unabsorbed poisons eating their way back out of her body. The sight reminded Hess of Bucky Pail's face, and how the coyote had torn into him.

She cradled the arm as though it were precious, an infant unswaddled. 'I have an infection,' she said.

Hess rippled with a shiver. 'Good Christ.'

Wanda looked at him like a corpse turned suspicious. 'What's this?' She turned to Maddox for an explanation, but Maddox, holding her gaze, said nothing.

'This is an arrest,' said Hess. 'You have the right to remain silent?.'

Still holding her gory arm at an odd angle, she looked from Hess back to Maddox again. 'Donny?' she said, the reality of her situation slowly sinking in.

Maddox looked dazed. He stared into the middle ground between them.

Hess, disgusted but trying to get through this, said, 'Anything you say?'

'Where's Bucky?' she said, starting to panic.

Hess held up his hands to calm her down. 'Anything you say?'

'No!' she yelled at Hess, reeling backward as though he were attacking her. 'No!' With nowhere else to go, she wedged herself between the small sink and the dirty tiled wall, shaking her rag-doll head.

They weren't even police to her. They were the embodiment of the pain of withdrawal that was to come. Agents of dopesickness. That was the fear behind her hazy eyes. And the wild betrayal when she looked at Maddox.

Hess realized he could not grab her wrists. With nothing to handcuff, she wasn't going to go easy. Why the hell am I dealing with this now? he asked himself.

'Bryson,' he barked. 'Get in here and arrest this woman.'

48

EDDIE

EDDIE BURIED HIS brother right after the autopsy. He thought that putting him in the ground?reminding people that a police sergeant had died here?would also lay to rest all the talk. So there was no wake, no service, just this graveside observance. They couldn't do an open casket anyway, and whatever religion the brothers once had was buried here with their mother, with the beads tangled up in her folded fingers.

His grief wasn't wet. It was dry like ice, angry and focused. No throwing his hands up at the sky. No cosmic 'Why?' God had nothing to answer to Eddie for. Only two people did.

Scarecrow, of course. That twisted little would-be abortion. Using Bucky's own handcuffs on him (How could you let that little shit get the drop on you?) and feeding him to the wolves. Eddie wiped his nose on the sleeve of his father's old suit jacket, the double buttons on the cuff like teeth rubbing across his lips. Thinking about any aspect of the murder made him want to tear at his own skin, made him want to claw at the earth?but the one thing Eddie kept focusing on, the one thing that sickened him in the pit of his being, was Bucky's clothes being taken off. That freak seeing his brother naked. Getting his jollies. Eddie's fists weighed down his jacket pockets like two hot stones.

And then Maddox. Where was he now? Sure, he had a grudge against Bucky, and vice versa. But this disrespect? Not showing up for a fellow officer? Unforgivable. Bucky had been straight-up right about that guy, not trusting him, not liking him. And now all this drug nonsense on the news, in the papers?Eddie couldn't help thinking somehow it was Maddox's doing. They called it a 'lab.' What they didn't know was that Bucky got his first chemistry set at age seven, and that he had always been a dabbler. As kids, the two of them used to use his compounds to blow up stumps and things on their hill. They even made their own fireworks, Bucky experimenting to learn which powders made them spark red or green or blue.

And how was it Maddox had been the one to find Bucky's body? He'd sure never been to the house before that night. And where had he been hiding since? Didn't he know Eddie had questions?

It was Maddox's house they were heading to after this. Eddie was going to get his father's suit dirty, maybe. Maddox had a lot of talking to do.

A whupping noise drowned out the pastor's voice, and suddenly a helicopter with state police markings on its belly crested the trees, beating low over the graveyard, loosening petals from the condolence bouquet and flapping Bible pages in the pastor's hand. The same helicopter that had buzzed Jag Hill last night with its searchlight beaming down, searching for Scarecrow.

The flyby was almost like a tribute?should have been a tribute?with the mourners shading their eyes from the sun, which, to Eddie, looked like a military-style farewell salute. Bucky deserved such a tribute.

But so few mourners. Where was the rest of the town? Didn't they know that Bucky had taken a stand for them? Who was it who first roughed up that little freak when he had the chance? And in doing so, put his life on the line for this town? This was his thanks? This was the respect they gave him? This turnout was like a vote of support for his killer.

He looked down to the low stone wall along Number 8 Road, the state police troopers grouped there. They didn't care. It wasn't one of theirs dead. Eddie looked to the side, the vehicle path that ringed the cemetery. He saw Ripsbaugh standing by his Bobcat, shovel in hand. No respect. Not even the courtesy to take a break during the ceremony. The Grim Reaper over there, couldn't wait to bury him. Like this service was holding him up.

Eddie's brother. His baby brother. Pails had lived in Black Falls almost since the beginning, and they had plots throughout this cemetery, from the thin, cracked, pre-Revolutionary-era stone markers leaning like bad teeth in the front row to the broad, modern headstones in the rear. Eight or nine separate markers here with PAIL carved into them.