mind.'
Hess smiled. 'UC. Don't know who to trust, so you don't trust anyone. That part of you gets worn down. It's why people don't trust
'Bring him in.'
'You two don't have any previous agreements or anything?'
'No way.'
'Sinclair have a thing for you?'
'He better not.'
'You never met at this abandoned mill before?'
'Never.'
Hess thought some more. 'I think we got him on the run. We got him reaching out, and it's about time. About time he made a mistake.'
'How'd the Pail crime scene come in?'
Hess scowled, people still second-guessing him after the Ripsbaugh thing. 'We got more of the same sneaker treads outside in the dirt, where the body was dragged. We recovered fibers from the kitchen and an old ottoman Sinclair brushed past on his way to the back door?the same black cotton we recovered from Frond's.'
Maddox said, 'He's wearing the same clothes?'
'The guy's on the run.'
'Yeah, but?it's been close to a month.'
Still being fucking challenged every step of the way. 'Guy's mental, all right? He's lost it. Why change clothes?' He shrugged and went on. 'No latents, but who leaves fingerprints anymore? Talcum powder instead, as before, indicating gloves. Maybe even the same ones he wore at Frond's. Found talcum in a couple of different places. The handcuffs were novelty grade, available at any toy store. Purely for show. But it's Pail's fingernail scrapings that had them doing high-fives in the lab. Skin cells. Nice ones. Matching Sinclair.'
'
'As in, irrefutable. What, am I the bearer of bad news?'
Maddox shook his head. So transparent. So Hess decided to nudge him even further.
'And then there's the pinecone.'
Maddox looked up. 'The what?'
'Pinecone. Medical examiner found it jammed up inside Pail's keister. Humiliating the corpse, you know? That's some kind of informant you were working there.'
Maddox said, 'Christ.'
'CSS profiles him as taking his revenge upon the town that shunned him. Enjoying the game of it, the commotion he's causing here, the choppers circling overhead. Getting his rocks off. Maybe even fucking with you in particular.' Hess pointed to a geological survey map of the town tacked up on the wall behind Maddox, the cleared areas of the Borderlands shaded red. 'We've been over and through those woods and he's just not there. I mean, he's not some ultrasurvivalist anyway, right? Not some gay Rambo.' He checked to see how Bryson's line played with Maddox; it did not register at all. 'He's getting help somewhere in town. Someone around here is helping this guy. We went back through his voluminous Internet activities again, his e-mails, instant messages. Picked up the words 'Hell Road,' a term we didn't know during our first go-round. He had set a rendezvous with someone he met in a magician's chat room. Someone local. At midnight on the night we now think he disappeared.'
Maddox said, 'Did you trace it back?'
'To the Brattle Public Library, one town over. But as a protest against the Patriot Act, they have a policy of not keeping records of online activity or computer users. Bottom line, it was a hookup, a date. A booty call for gay sex in the woods. That was the premise, anyway. Now that meeting?I'm sure it wasn't you.'
Maddox flat-eyed him. 'You want to get back at me, and that's the best you've got?'
'Just wondering if you might be jealous, him hooking up with someone else.' Hess started past Maddox and opened the door. 'Oh, and from this point forward? He contacts you again, I want to know about it as soon as you do.'
54
MADDOX
THE TOWN CEMETERY up on Number 8 Road was an ancient patch of sloping sod shaded here and there by great weeping willows and fronted by a low stone wall. Across the road, four steps of locally quarried granite led nowhere, high weeds and odd, blazing flowers growing out of the foundation of the old Congregational church that had burned down one hundred summers before.
He walked along the upper lanes of newer stones to the one that said MADDOX. His mother's name, MARGARET, and the dates of her birth and death were newly engraved. He squatted and touched the lettering, so dry and sharp compared with REGINALD, the name of the father he had barely known, above it. It was not his way to pray, but Maddox spoke to her in his head just as he did sometimes when sitting alone in her empty house.
Every town family was buried around him. He went and found PINTOPOLUMANOS, Pinty's last name engraved in a narrow font in order to fit across the stone. Mrs. Pinty's name and dates were filled in, as was Pinty's name, Stavros, below hers, awaiting an end date. Next to Gregory's name and dates was a carved icon of the American flag.
Pail's grave, a perfect dirt rectangle, awaited its stone marker. Two fat bales of sod stood near. The can of Bud remained, lying on its side, the open top being visited by flies.
Maddox located the Sinclair stone marker and stood before the grave. No headstone, just a slab set into the grass. Jordan was the father's name. The family had arrived in Black Falls without a mother, already the jagged piece of a whole no one had ever seen. Jordy Sinclair had briefly been a cop?they eased out bad apples back then?before going full-time into contracting and developing, putting in cul-de-sacs around town in the early 1980s before the mill went under. After only a few winters, his houses began falling apart: shifting on their foundations, joists warping and sagging, walls cracking under overweight roofs. Shoddy craftsmanship and substandard materials. At the time of his death?he was the victim of a one-car, midday drunk driving accident?he had been at the wrong end of several lawsuits.
Maddox turned to see the orange highway department pickup truck pull in. Ripsbaugh rolled along the ring road, getting out, pulling his shovel from the truck bed and carrying it in that familiar way of his. 'Don,' he said, coming toward him down the lane.
'Kane,' said Maddox, wondering why the man never tied his bootlaces.
Ripsbaugh stopped, set his shovel blade down in the grass. 'Got to finish sodding Pail's grave. Final touches.'
'I saw.'
'Is it true, what they say? About the coyote?'
'Sure is.'
'Suits him. And a meth lab? Scourge of rural America, according to the TV.'
'I guess we got lucky,' Maddox said.
Ripsbaugh squinted under the sun. 'I guess you did. Looks like you're the last cop standing.' Ripsbaugh regarded the Sinclair marker, the grave at their feet. He stared a moment as though saying a little prayer, then launched a gob of saliva at the ground. 'All this grass here should be black.'
Maddox forgot sometimes that Ripsbaugh was Sinclair's brother-in-law. 'Why did the father leave Dill all his property?'
'He didn't leave either of them anything. The mill houses you're talking about, he had them all in Dill's name for legal reasons. As a tax dodge, and so they couldn't be attached to any lawsuits. Dill didn't even know he owned them until after the death.'
'So why didn't Val ask for some of that?'
'Didn't want anything to do with it.' Maddox could see that Ripsbaugh was proud of this. 'She always says the best thing her father ever did for her was die in that car crash.'
Maddox nodded, ready to drop it, head on home.
'See, the problem with Val,' Ripsbaugh continued, thinking it through, 'the problem with Val is that she's smart. So smart, and highly intelligent people suffer more than others. When she's right in her mind, she can do anything. But she just can't maintain it.' Ripsbaugh nudged at the grave sod with the tip of his spade, cutting little divots. 'And sometimes she puts that blame on me. As the source of her problems. Sometimes I think it's why she married me in the first place, to give her this excuse. A stone for her chain. She asked me to marry her, did you know that? I always figured I'd end up, you know, adopting a wife from Russia or Cambodia or someplace. Just for a companion. I never knew I could get so lucky. But someone offers you a bargain like that, you don't think twice. You take it.'
'Sure,' said Maddox.
'So why don't we have children, right?'
'No,' Maddox said. 'I wasn't?'
'She doesn't like it. The act of sex. Physically, she gets sick.'
Maddox wasn't going to say another
