The Killing Moon: A Novel

weird, her hands and legs tingling. Drugs. Donny. She looked at him standing across the kitchen, suddenly realizing that she might not know this man at all. 'Did you wear wigs, disguises?'

'No.'

'You used your real name?'

'Mostly. Twice I got loaned out to DEA short-term, they tagged me with a phony background. But predominantly, it was just me.'

'And you've put away a lot of people?'

'A good few, yeah.'

'Don't you worry about them coming back to find you?'

'Not really,' he said.

This was his first lie to her, she realized with a chill. 'These people?you would live with them, gain their friendship, trust? Knowing you were going to turn on them in the end?'

'It's the second-dirtiest game out there, right after the drug trade itself. But there is no other way. The only way to fight street crime is with street presence.' She watched him try to come up with some way of illustrating it so that she would understand. 'There are people who are good at doing drugs. That may sound strange to you, but there just are. They can handle it somehow, they can manage their life. What I was good at was this. Undercover. I tried not to question it beyond that. And generally I had success. Until Haverhill.' He could see that he was having trouble getting through to her. 'Can you see now why it was so important to me that no one knew about us?'

Tracy felt cold. And scared, and suddenly heartsick. She felt squeezed. 'What was her name?' she asked.

Donny didn't understand at first. Then he looked down at the floor. He was thinking about that girl, remembering her. 'Her name was Casey.'

She watched him so closely, needing to read his face for the answer to this question. 'Were you in love with her?'

'No,' he said. 'I wasn't. But isn't that worse?'

This was like trying to wound him by ripping out chunks of herself and throwing them at his head. 'You were playing a role.'

'That's right.'

'Are you playing a role now?'

A weird buzzing ended the charged stillness. Tracy looked at the corner of the counter where he routinely dumped his wallet and keys. His pager was creeping sideways, vibrating.

Donny picked it up, checking the message screen. He looked confused at first, then alarmed. He pressed a button, read something more. 'It's him,' he said.

He started moving, past her and around the corner to the hall closet.

'Who him?' she said, following.

From the top shelf he brought down his leather holster, unsnapping it and pulling loose his gun. 'Sinclair.'

'What?' She took the pager from him to see for herself.

The sender's SkyTel address was displayed along with the header and the current time. Meet at pulp mill. Urgent. ALONE.

'How do you know it's him?'

Donny used a key from his ring to undo the trigger lock on his gun. 'Three people have that pager number. No?four. The assistant district attorney, who just left here. You. Wanda, who's in lockup. And Sinclair.' He took the pager out of her numb hands, and, before slipping it into his back pocket, showed her. 'That's his account number. This was sent from his pager.'

The two halves of the lock spilled onto the counter. He popped open the barrel to check the load, then closed the gun back up again and tucked it into his holster. He undid his belt strap to his right hip, threading the holster onto it, fixing the belt and buckling it tight.

Tracy said, 'You're not going there alone. He's already killed one policeman.'

Donny grabbed his wallet and pocketed his keys. 'It's nothing like that.'

'How do you know?' She looked to the window, the night outside. 'Call your state police.'

'They would scare him off. You read the message. Look?it's just not like that. I don't have time to explain right now.'

He started away, then came back fast.

'Stay here. Wait for me, okay? Please. And don't open the door for anyone but me.'

'Don't open the?Wait! What if you don't come back?'

He hurried down the hallway. 'I'm coming back.'

51

MADDOX

MADDOX WAS ALMOST an hour in, and still no sign. He had gone through every desolate room on three long floors, painstakingly clearing the crumbling mill, not wanting any surprises. Every single window had been smashed, stones lying where they landed on the floor after having been launched by kids on the other side of the river.

He went back outside via the same kicked-in door. A few decaying bales of paper stock remained in the adjoining lot, and he stood among them looking up at the big former polluter, an ominous industrial carcass looming over the river's edge. He had forgotten how much he used to dread these secret meetings with Dill Sinclair. How, after all the schemers and psychos who had crossed his path over the years, he had to come home to meet the one guy he literally could not stand to be around.

He remembered their last meeting, farther north along the bank of this same river. Sinclair emerging from the trees at dusk, the hood of his black shirt pulled over his balding head despite the heat, pocketed hands tugging it down. 'Shall we do the secret handshake?'

Maddox, despising his dripping familiarity, said nothing in response. Behind him the river rushed to the small island that divided the flow at the edge, the twin cascades plummeting to the natural rock basin seventy feet below.

'Ever come here as a kid?' asked Sinclair, moving to the edge. The right cuff of his loose black jeans was still tucked into his sock above his black-and-white Chuck Taylor All-Stars high-top, to keep the fabric from tangling in his bicycle chain. He looked out over the drop into the lower valley, the water cutting a path through the trees as it wound south. 'I did. I used to look down on the town and wish I could hop in this river and ride it right out of here.' He glanced back at Maddox with a smile. 'Do I make you nervous, standing out here? Some say people have a natural aversion to heights, but I don't think that's true. I think people are actually drawn to heights. They're drawn to the edge, and I think that is the scary part. People keep back for fear they might be tempted to take the leap.' He looked way down to the churning pit below. 'The ease of it. One step. What would it feel like, falling? You never wonder?'

Maddox stood his ground some twenty feet back. He could have rebutted that people with nothing to lose tend to find precipices just about anywhere they looked.

'The water, the way it crashes down there, forms a whirlpool.' Sinclair scooped up some loose stones, dropping them one by one over the edge. 'You wouldn't have a chance to drown. The force of the water would destroy you first. Tear off your clothes, your skin. Mash you up against the rocks. Obliterate you, leaving no trace.'

Maddox said, 'If you're waiting for me to talk you down from there?'

Sinclair snickered, tossing the rest of the stones and brushing dirt off his hands. 'Nobody would cry, right? Nobody would shed one tear. They'd be happy. They'd be thrilled. It's almost funny. If the people in this town only knew.'

'You don't do this for them.'

'No? That's true, I guess.' He turned back to Maddox. 'But then again, neither do you. I wonder sometimes, who hates this place more?you or me?' He rolled his head to one side, rubbing his neck. 'Who would ever have guessed that the two of us together would join up to save these hicks from themselves?'

He seemed to be smiling. Remarkable how much the absence of eyebrows cut down one's range of expression.

Maddox said, 'You brought me out here for nothing, didn't you.'

'I'm trying to be good,' Sinclair said. 'I am. But it's so fucking lonely when there's nothing to do.' He chewed his nail. 'Except go crazy. Okay, so nobody wants me to be happy, right? So, fine. I can't even find anybody to be miserable with. How do you get by? You met anyone here?'

Maddox didn't like Sinclair's look?didn't like it because he couldn't fully read it. Did he know about Tracy? Had he been watching Maddox?

'Okay,' Maddox said, and started walking off.

Sinclair's voice sounded bewildered behind him. 'Where are you going?'

'I can do this myself. You think you're playing games with me? You give me nothing.'

'It's my life on the line here,' Sinclair said. 'We can't just talk? Have a goddamn conversation like normal people?'

'I'm not your friend. You find out something I can use, you page me. And next time don't show up here tweaked.'

That silenced him. Until Maddox was almost to the trees.

'I will have something,' Sinclair said. His voice wasn't cracking, but it was strained. He hadn't moved from the edge of the falls. 'You'll see.'