Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“It was probably just the shock of the crash.”

“That’s what Bucky said.”

Pinty didn’t like that, jabbing at the rug with the rubber nub and twisting the handle, as though screwing the cane into the floor.

“Look,” Maddox said. “I know you don’t want to believe it.”

Pinty gripped the fat arm of his chair, Maddox knowing better than to help him get to his feet. Stiff from sitting too long, Pinty hobbled over to the China dolls, as though presenting himself before their glass-eyed innocence. “So, this guff about the schnapps?”

“Cover story. Kids drunk, and now dazed from the crash. He doesn’t want them drug tested.”

Pinty sagged a bit before the display. “If you’re right about all this, Donny...”

“It’s not about me being right. It’s about Bucky going down.” Maddox frowned, remembering Bucky’s attempt at intimidation at the accident scene, then summarizing the exchange for Pinty. “He basically outlined the Ibbits crash scenario to me.”

In October of the previous year, a man living out of a 1989 Ford Escort had died in a fiery, one-car crash way up in the hills above town. By the time the Rainfield Good Samaritan ambulance arrived to take over for Black Falls Fire and Rescue, the blaze had long since burned through the Escort, its driver, and all his belongings.

The wrecking company recovered enough of the VIN number to trace the car back to a California fugitive named Hugo Ibbits, which occasioned a visit to Black Falls from a U.S. Marshal. It turned out that Ibbits was a former chiropractor who, six months before his death, skipped out of Fresno while awaiting trial on malpractice and insurance fraud charges. He had been a prominent player in a complex automobile insurance scam set up to finance the mass production of crystal methamphetamine, of which the ex-Dr. Ibbits was an addict.

After some initial confusion over the exact time line, the marshal was informed that Ibbits had not been held in the Black Falls lockup on a vagrancy charge over the long Columbus Day weekend, as was initially thought, but was released following a traffic stop late Friday afternoon. Witnesses who had claimed to see Bucky Pail handcuff and arrest the driver of a beat-up Ford Escort outside the Falls Diner three days before the late-Monday-night crash later changed their stories. Once the fugitive’s remains were proven conclusively to be Ibbits’s, the matter was considered closed.

Maddox said, “And another thing. I don’t know where Bucky was when his beeper went off tonight. But when I got up close to him, there was this smell.”

“Yeah?” grumbled Pinty. “Like corruption?”

“Like ammonia. Or cat piss. Same smell I got when the Zoo Lady pulled open the front door of Sinclair’s building.”

Pinty turned to him. “You’re saying?”

“Well, I finally got a call back this morning from the probation office. Sinclair’s caseworker is away on vacation for two weeks. That’s why we haven’t heard anything about him missing his court-ordered group sessions.” Maddox briefly considered telling Pinty about the footprints in Heavey’s backyard, the hand-rolled cigarette he had found in the trees. He decided Pinty was red-faced enough as it was. “Zoo Lady hasn’t seen him. Says she heard him upstairs. But then again...”

“Then again she’s the goddamn Zoo Lady.”

“The woman sings to her dogs to help them urinate in the street. And she’s one of the least crazy people in town.”

Pinty discovered his breakfast napkin and pulled it from the neck of his loose-collared, Cuban-style shirt. “You think they got onto him somehow? Maybe decided to finish what they started before that kook Frond got in their way?”

Maddox scowled at the mental image of that fidgety freak Sinclair, reminded once again that the future of the town and Pinty’s legacy rode on that skinny pervert’s shoulders.

Noises brought him back. Like a knuckle tap-tap-tapping on his consciousness. Randall Frond’s eyes fluttered open, only to have his forehead, brow, and lids slam down immediately again like a crash gate.

A smashing headache. He was hurt. He didn’t know how, yet — maybe badly — but he was not paralyzed.

He was restrained.

He heard the protest of the old mattress as he moved. He was tied up, facedown, on the bed in his spare room.

Okay. He was being robbed.

He had maybe forty dollars in cash in the kitchen downstairs. No television. No consumer electronics, other than his computer. Nothing thieves want.

His arms were pulled behind him, wrists bound by something cutting like wire or twine, also his ankles. He tried to twiddle his fingers, to see if he could get loose, but without circulation they were dead.

In T-shirt and boxers, he had just come out of the bathroom. He was taking quick little showers three times a day to keep the humidity from driving him mad — he owned only one window fan, no air conditioner — but it was a losing battle. Sweat popped from his pores as soon as he toweled off, which was when he had heard the loose board on the stairs. The third step from the top: he knew exactly where it was. Artists would occasionally drop by for him to take pictures of their wares, which he fronted for them on eBay, but unlike most others in town, Frond locked his doors. A real-world habit he had been unable to shake. He’d said, “Hello?” and stepped into the hallway with a stick of deodorant in his hand.

Rummaging. He heard that now. Near, on the other side of the wall. The bathroom? What were they looking for in there?

Water ran through the pipes. You could hear it wash all the way down into the basement. Creak, creak — the sound of the wooden towel rack.

Burglars who washed their hands?

He shut his eyes. He tried to journey to another place. He worried about freeing himself after they were gone. It could be days until someone else came by.

And what then? What could he do about this robbery? Call his friends at the police station?

What happened when the thieves didn’t find anything worth taking? What if they were messed up on drugs or something? What if they came back in here pissed off and wild? All they needed was one of these pillows. Hold it over his head, and in a minute or two he would be on to the next life. He was utterly vulnerable.

Panic rising, he started rocking himself. He wasn’t even aware at first, but then he began to rock in earnest, desperate to get his face off this soft comforter. His arms were numb and aching at the same time, almost like phantom limbs, as he tried to get some back-and-forth momentum.

He got too much. He rolled onto his arms and his tied-back feet, arching his belly, then tumbled off the bed, landing hard on his side with an “ Ooof!” that knocked the wind out of him.

He was sucking for breath when he realized the rummaging had stopped.

Footsteps now. Leaving the bathroom, coming around through the hallway.

Oh God.

He regained his breath with a great and awful groan, lying there facing the underside of the bed, where his fireproof safe was.

The footsteps were in the room now. He could feel their weight on the floor. They were going to be pissed off. They were going to break his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Frond said. “I fell. I just fell. I’m sorry. Take anything you want.”

Silence. Maybe it was better not to hear the intruder’s voice. Good that he was facing away from the door.

“I know it’s not much. I don’t have much. Some cash in the creamer in the downstairs cupboard. I gave away everything when I moved up here.”

Waiting.

Nothing.

But in the awful silence, huge in the room, like an enormous bell without a clapper — something about the intruder’s malevolent presence, his barely heard breathing, gave Frond a sudden, terrible insight.