Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“Bucky Pail?” he said.

The footsteps moved. Coming toward him. Whispering on the maple floor, sneakers.

“Wait. Listen, Bucky. You wanted me out of town — I’ll go. Now. I swear, I’ll leave tonight. Not a word to anyone, I’ll just go—”

Hands seized his bent leg, smooth-fingered, almost without texture, dragging him from the bed.

“I promise,” Frond pleaded. “I’ll never tell anyone.”

His sweaty flesh squeaked against the floor varnish, creating a friction burn, until he bumped up over the raised threshold of the doorway onto the rough carpeting of the upstairs hall. The strange hands were dragging him to the top of the stairs.

“ Wait! Please — I don’t know anything, I tell you. Listen to me. The state police. They said they were going to do something. They promised me, they said they were going to send someone.”

The dragging stopped. Frond was on his belly, the hands moving to his arms now. He was staring down the curving wooden stairs.

“But they never did! Don’t you see? They did nothing. It all came to nothing, and I–I was wrong. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Just please let me go, and I promise I’ll never say — No! ”

The stairs upended, rushing at him, tumbling, pummeling. Unable to protect his head or his neck or any part of him, he fell like a screaming human football, the blows coming faster and faster until they stopped.

Frond faced the bottom step. He tasted blood and rug and his neck was wrenched, his breath groaning through it.

Footsteps again. Coming down.

Frond had a fun-house angle on the curved staircase and the man descending them. Black sneakers. Black pants, black shirt. Black hair, wild and long.

But his face. Mashed and deformed, nearly inhuman — yet, somehow, horribly familiar.

Frond tried to scream as freakishly smooth hands reached for his head.

She was greedy for him. The rum and the foreplay made Tracy greedy, and she had been naked so long she was beyond willing, beyond desire, she wanted more more more now now now. She wanted it all at once. Everything. Right now.

She gripped his sides, pulling him closer to her and pushing him away at the same time. A fight she wanted to lose. Wanted so desperately to lose.

She bit down on his shoulder, but still he did not stop. He did not seem to mind it at all, so she bit down again and sucked on the hard ropy muscle until his hand reached for her neck. He forced back her open mouth, his fingers remaining at her jaw.

She swallowed so that he would feel her throat working under his hand. Feel her vulnerability, her trust. She gave him her throat as she gave herself to him, willingly. But still he refused to remove his tongue from her nipple.

Her bare heels dug at the mattress. His other hand teased the insides of her thighs and she grabbed it and pushed it where it needed to go. For a moment he obeyed her, and her hips jolted to the touch. Then his hand slid back along her leg. She tugged again at his wrist, and he lingered longer this time, but only enough to disappoint.

That hand tugged on hers. He wanted her to do it. Guiding the pads of her own fingers to her trimmed hair.

What he had wanted all along.

Her to do it herself.

She did, and finally he stopped at her breast. He watched.

Closing her eyes was a concession to the pretense that pure momentary ecstasy guided her fingers in their firm, circling touch — not years of shameful practice.

She reached for him, and he was so hard, and she was so proud, guiding him in, lifting her hips to meet and take him.

She held tight. She held on so tight. She was leaving her body, she was going off to that place.

That place.

Right there.

That place that place that fucking place

He pulled out as he came, and she held him to her until he sagged. He lay at her side, breathing hard, and she looked down at his puddle in the bowl her belly made, dipping her fingers to feel the honeyness of him.

Him and the future of him. All his secrets.

Could it be her future?

His breathing evened out as he lay beside her. She knew she didn’t want anyone else, ever. But what he wanted, she still did not know.

A cold night in the dark month of February.

Tracy had gone out driving, her only getaway from the monotony of the farm, playing CDs in a portable player hooked up through the cassette slot in her truck, singing along when the mood struck or else just letting the music take her away.

The blue lights behind her brought her back fast. A woman knew not to get out of her car for a Black Falls cop. Tracy was in the hills a long way from the center of town.

She pulled over, watching the cop’s shadow come out of the headlights. She rolled her window down just a crack. He shined his flashlight inside the car.

She didn’t know him. She had heard that there was a new one in town.

“You follow me,” he told her, through the window, then returned to his car.

She tailed him back to the center of town, to the police station driveway. She waited inside her car while he took her license and registration and ran them through the computer inside.

He returned and fed her identification back to her through the sliver of open window, along with a speeding ticket for $115.

Tracy was out of her truck in a flash.

“A hundred and fifteen dollars!” she said. “Do you know how much it costs to feed a llama?”

He stopped halfway back to his car, turning in surprise. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“This,” she said, shaking the ticket, “is why you Black Falls cops have a bad name.” On that, she turned, stomping back into her truck.

“Hey!”

The anger in his voice startled her. She turned to see the steam of the word dissipating around his head.

“Consider that the price of good advice,” he said. “Don’t go out driving around town alone. Especially at night. You might find yourself at the mercy of a different cop.”

Something — the dreariness of the month, or the liberating spirit of the drive, or the warmth of her anger — kept her going. This outburst wasn’t anything like her. “You can’t just come into town, put on a stupid T-shirt, and start writing out tickets!”

Then she drove off fast, letting him watch her speed away.

The next day, still hot, she returned to the station to complain. Bucky Pail was at the front counter, shaking his head while she detailed her encounter with the overzealous new patrolman. “Let me see that,” he said, taking the ticket from her, looking it over. “Sure, we can take care of this for you. Won’t take more than a couple of minutes. Why don’t you just come on around in back here...”

She had started to go with him. That was the scariest part. She actually walked to the end of the counter, ready to accompany him to the back. Because he was a policeman, and because he was offering to help.

She stopped, looking at his grinning eyes, his crooked thumb rubbing against the speeding ticket in his hand.

Shocked by her own gullibility as much as his leering behavior, she turned and walked fast out of the station.

Don Maddox’s next shift was two nights later. Tracy made sure it was him before pulling into the station parking lot just after eleven. “You were right,” she said.

She told him what had happened, or almost happened.

“What were you doing driving around out there, anyway?” he said.

“Just driving.” She shrugged. “Getting away from this place without actually getting away. Trying to sort out my life.”

“By singing along with the Foo Fighters?”

She smiled. He had a good memory. “Why not?” she said. “You like the Foo?”