Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“Donny,” said Valerie Ripsbaugh, seeing him in the doorway with the haze of late-day heat behind him. She recognized him instantly, but not because he hadn’t changed. There was more of him now, and in all the right places. As though the skinny boy she knew in high school had been ingested by this man.

With fifteen years rushing up on her, she looked down at herself. Red plaid pajama pants with a hole in the knee, flat-soled flip-flops, and a loose cranberry jersey. What he must have been thinking as he compared the Valerie Sinclair of yesteryear to the Val Ripsbaugh of today. She looked away, wishing he would too.

“Val,” he said. “How have you been?”

Most people, she didn’t care. She had let herself go a long time ago. But Donny Maddox, he was the one mirror she could not pass. In him she felt a sort of death. Though they had only been academic rivals, never boyfriend and girlfriend, Donny more than any other person had defined Val’s high school years.

“If you’re looking for Kane,” she said, “he’s gone.” She glanced over at the fenced-in septic service garage adjacent to their yard, the reason why all the window fans in her house faced out.

“No,” he said, “I came to talk to you.”

Only then did it occur to her that something might have happened to Kane. She always thought of her husband as vulnerable to nothing and no one except her. “Is it Kane? Is everything okay?”

“Oh — yes.” He reached up for his cap as though he had forgotten he was wearing the team uniform. Seeing him dressed as a local cop was so wrong. “Everything’s fine.”

Her reaction did not go quite as far as disappointment — she wasn’t that callous — but it was something like readiness, a borderline eagerness, which was close enough. I could sell the house. I could start over. I could be free.

Donny had kept himself in shape. He had found balance in his life. A few years earlier he would have seen a slimmer Val Ripsbaugh. Always up and down with her. If she wasn’t dieting, she was bingeing; if she wasn’t exercising, she was sleeping twelve hours a day. She could never get any traction in the middle ground. Yet she never recognized this compulsive behavior for what it was until she was out of one rut and into another.

Donny said, “It’s about your brother.”

Val nodded, fighting that sinking feeling she got whenever Dill’s name came up. “What’s he done now?”

“Nothing. That I know of. He’s just missing. We usually see him around the center of town, at least up on his porch. But no one has recently.”

If Donny was coming inside, she’d have to stash the wineglass in the sink, cap the open jug on the kitchen counter. “He wouldn’t come here. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, no. Just if you’ve seen him, or heard anything from him.”

“The police need to know where their sex offenders are.”

Donny shrugged, allowing that that was the extent of it.

She stepped back, her hand still on the doorknob. “I can’t believe it, Donny. I can’t believe you’re a — a cop. ”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you came back. You got out. You had a free ride to college. You were gone. On my scholarship.”

She forced a smile to leaven her bitterness, but it didn’t work.

In the year of their graduation from Cold River Regional High School, one full scholarship had been offered to the Black Falls senior with the highest cumulative grade point average. Because her tax-cheat father wouldn’t open himself up to the scrutiny of a financial aid application, this blind scholarship had been her one and only hope. Val led the class academically until their final semester, when she was edged out by Donny, by exactly one-tenth of one percentage point. Just like that, her art career dreams went up in smoke.

“I heard about your mother,” she said. “Sounded like it was awful at the end. I was very sorry. I always liked her.” The Sinclairs and the Maddoxes had lived on the same street, Val having moved to Black Falls when she was seven. Single-parent kids, both of them — Val with her crooked father, Donny with his troubled mother — and Val used to fantasize about their parents marrying and Mrs. Maddox becoming her mother and protector. Even into high school, she was always on her best behavior around Donny’s mom, on the off chance that, even if she couldn’t find a way to fall in love with Val’s father, maybe she would fall in love with Val. Maybe enough to want her as her own daughter. “But why have you stayed?”

“Just to sell her house and get her things settled.” He smiled a smile that had no meaning behind it. “I’m kind of stuck here until then.”

“You’ve got nothing else out there waiting for you? Where have you been all this time? What’ve you been doing? We heard rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“Town talk, you know. After the way you left. All the promises you made, then broke. Me, I was laughing. I hope I would have had the guts to screw off like you did.”

“What rumors?”

“Someone said you’d joined a band. Or that you were in banking or finance or something. Someone said they’d read somewhere that you’d founded one of those Internet companies and made a billion dollars.”

He smiled and shook his head, relieved to change the subject. “No, nothing like that. Just bouncing around. What about you? You still draw?”

She huffed out a laugh at her long-ago artistic pretensions.

“What?” he said. “You were good.”

“You know how they say that if you really want to make God laugh, tell him your plans? God had milk coming out of his nose every time I opened my mouth about art school.”

Donny shook his head. “None of us are the people we hoped we would be. Probably nobody ever is. But you’re happy, right?” He leaned back for a look at the house. “You have a home. A husband.”

She flashed a quick, hard smile, preferable to flowing tears. She looked down at the thin wedding band cutting into her swollen finger. “So, I don’t know where Dill is,” she told him. “No idea.”

“Okay,” said Donny. “Hey, I’m sorry if I...”

She shook her head, wanting very much not to say anything she would regret. “I was happy for you, Donny. Really, I was. Crushed for myself. I mean, a B-plus instead of an A-minus, and poof, your future plans are no more. But at least, with you getting away — one dove got free, you know? If it couldn’t be me. I just — I didn’t ever think you’d waste it. But now, fifteen years later, you’re here again. It’s a little hard for me to see. So don’t take this the wrong way, Donny. Please don’t take this the wrong way. But I really wish you had never come back.”

After closing the door, she stood with her hands trembling in a prayer pose against her nose and lips, then went to refill her glass of wine.

They came up Old Red Road in the rescue truck, Bucky and Eddie, the box siren whirring out of the roof over their heads. Eddie slowed when he saw Maddox’s blues skimming the dark trees, and eased in around the corner.

Twenty bucks extra they were paid each month, the Black Falls Volunteer Fire and Rescue, to keep their town pagers handy night and day. Seven more bucks per call, per hour, on top of that. Because of the overlap in certification training, the police force and fire and rescue were one and the same, the off-duty cops available as on-call firefighters.

Except rookie Maddox. He had not, and as far as Bucky was concerned, would never be invited to join.

Beyond the patrol car, a mustard gold Subaru wagon sat steaming. It had punched straight into a broad tree trunk, its hood mashed like a broken fist. The impact had brought a heavy limb down on the roof, and gasoline from the fuel line was puddling into the road, streaked green with antifreeze.