'Right,' Maddox said. 'Promises.'
'It's big. More than you know.'
Maddox kept right on walking.
That had been the relationship. A rat-and-mouse confederacy, like the strategic alliances that form within a dysfunctional family.
Which was why acting disappointed was sometimes enough to motivate him into action. In that respect, Sinclair was like Maddox's damaged twin. He wanted his better half 's approval. Wanting to do well, to succeed, to shine in someone's eyes for once: that was Sinclair's greatest secret.
His greatest failure was his inability ever to do so.
More minutes passed. A car drove by, Maddox watching it from the dark corner of the lot, crossing the bridge and turning onto Main Street, pulling away. Now he was getting pissed.
Maddox brought out his pager. Nothing further. He checked the original message again. It had been sent from Sinclair's pager, there was no doubt. But the text. He reviewed it now that he had more time.
Sinclair's messages were long and rambling, not staccato bursts. Granted, the guy was on the run. But also there were no misspellings. Sinclair was notorious for that?whether he was dyslexic or just sloppy, Maddox didn't know. 'Pulp' would be 'plup.' 'Urgent' would be 'ugrent.' It was constant, every second or third word.
And why wait so long to contact him? If he had in fact been carrying the pager with him all this time, why hadn't he used it? Why hadn't he responded to any of Maddox's earlier messages? Why ignore him until now?
Maddox suddenly felt exposed, standing half visible in the moonlight behind the old paper mill, looking at the trees across the river and farther south along Mill. He was beginning to think that coming here had been a terrible mistake.
52
TRACY
SHE DREAMED A MEMORY: the afternoon her parents had sat her down in the sitting room, where all the serious conversations took place, and told her thirteen-year-old self that they were breaking up for good. Her father was not deaf, so it fell to him to utter the words?through a smile, as though everything were going to be okay?while her mother sat next to him, hands angrily mute in her lap. Tracy had cried that day, more out of confusion than anything, the distress she felt from her parents. As soon as she could, she excused herself and went into her room and shut the door. The next thing she remembered was her mother shaking her shoulder, and Tracy feeling a surge of bliss, as though waking from a terrible dream. Her relief vanished as soon as she saw the look in her mother's dark-rimmed eyes. Her mother left the room silently and Tracy felt her reproach, though she did not understand why until she was older: her mother had seen her slumber as a careless act, the betrayal of a much-needed ally.
So now, bolting awake to the rumble of the opening garage door, Tracy felt that same moment of pleasant disorientation, of consolation?only to be brought down crashing by the shameful realization that she had once again fallen asleep. How was this possible? Emotional exhaustion? Or simple cowardly escape? She chastised herself for her weakness, rubbing hard at her cheeks and her eyes, her skin feeling like it had aged a year during that nap. Her face turning into her mother's face.
She had been sleeping with an undercover state trooper. She knew nothing about the man she had fallen for. It came back to her in a bolt: who Donny was, where he had gone, whom he was to meet. So when the garage door started to close, fear woke her completely. Was this him? She went and stood half hidden inside the bathroom doorway, feeling more useless than ever.
He walked in, his holster already off his belt, his keys and pager in his hands. He shuffled his boot treads on the thin mat and shook his head when he saw her. 'Nothing. He never showed.'
'Never showed?'
'Two hours I waited. Wandered all over that rotting place.' He walked past her and dumped his stuff on the counter where the pieces of his trigger lock remained. She could smell the old building on him, sawdust and decay. 'I'm sorry, you were probably worried.'
Could he see that she had fallen asleep? 'But why would he??'
Donny pulled a jug of water from the refrigerator and poured himself a glass and drank all of it. 'Stand me up? I don't know. Any number of reasons, I suppose.'
'Okay. But.'
He poured himself another full glass and closed the refrigerator door. 'It was this feeling I had there. While I was standing out in back, by the riverbank. Like I was being watched.'
'Watched? Why would he be watching you?'
'He wouldn't. But what if someone else had his pager? Say they wanted to find out who had been paging him? That's how you'd do it. Set up a meet and draw that person out into the open.'
'But you're losing me,' said Tracy. 'Now you think someone else has his pager?'
'I don't know.' Donny paced, looking angry with himself. 'The physical evidence that Sinclair did these killings?it's overwhelming, it's obvious, it's damning. I know all that. But it still doesn't fit the person. Walking those creaking boards around the mill, I remembered him more clearly than I have in a while.' Donny's face shriveled in distaste. 'He's a?a craven little sneak. A skinny sleaze with no eyebrows, hyper-needy, loopy. I've met all kinds of people, some of the worst you could know. You don't make it that many years undercover without developing a pretty accurate radar. And, yes, there is something dripping and waxy and cold about him that is very real. Sinclair is a creep in every sense of the word. But he's not a killer. Vindictive, passive-aggressive, self-pitying, narcissistic?all those things. But without a speck of actual violence in him. Only want. He picked on kids. A total coward.'
'What about being on drugs?' said Tracy.
'I've seen him that way too. I can't say it's not possible. Anything is.' Donny threw up his hands, there being no final answer. 'In some weird way, I feel responsible for him. For what's happened.'
'That's crazy.'
'He was my informant. I was his keeper, in a sense. His handler. Waiting for him out there sort of confirmed it for me.'
'Even so?what can you do about it?'
He looked back at his pager as though hoping it would buzz again. 'Nothing, now.'
He walked around a little, Tracy standing still, watching in silence. She felt it too, the impulse to keep talking about Sinclair, to go on about it all night. Anything to avoid what they really had to say to each other.
'I'm sorry I had to leave you like that,' he said.
The only way to override her guilt at having fallen asleep was to speak to the source of her distress, to say exactly what was on her mind. 'How soon until you leave here for good?'
He took time selecting his words. He was being too careful. 'I don't know exactly. I'm here at least until they find Sinclair.'
'And if that is tomorrow?'
He struggled through a pause. 'Tracy, look. With the life I've lived up to now, it's tough for me to think about committing to anything.'
She stopped him right there with a sad nod disguised as an angry nod. 'That's fine,' she said.
'No, wait.'
'It's fine.' She was already going.
He didn't follow. She climbed into her truck, opening the garage door with the remote he had given her, then cocking her arm as though to throw it out her window and smash it to the cement floor.
Of course, she did not. She could not.
Not yet. There was still hope.
She pulled out of his driveway into the dark night, bleary- eyed and oblivious to everything beyond the haze of her distress, paying no attention whatsoever to the small, unlit car parked on the shoulder of the road.
53
HESS
'SO YOU WENT THERE ALONE,' said Hess.
'That's what it said to do.'
'You send back any reply?'
'No.'
'Nothing?'
'I sent nothing.'
Hess switched his spearmint toothpick around his mouth, chewing on Maddox's story. Dealing with him in his softball team POLICE jersey and ball cap was like dealing with a guy doing summer theater.
Hess said, 'Tracing the page got us no fix on the location of his two-way. Pager transmits by radio wave to a tower, then up to a satellite and back down again. Why people favor pagers in places like this where there's no cell reception.'
Maddox nodded, evidently knowing this already, and Hess worked the pick some more, sucking off flavor as he appraised him. He did not buy this prompt reporting of Sinclair's page as an attempt to make peace.
Hess said, 'You thought maybe it was me. Thought maybe I'd gotten hold of his pager number and was testing you.'
'It crossed my
