Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“Donny.” Pinty leaned on the doorknob, needing to sit down. “Relax.”

“Frond,” said Donny, like he couldn’t get it through his head. “The timing of it makes no sense.”

Donny’s patrol car squawked in the driveway. An unfamiliar voice came over the police radio band.

It was a state trooper, summoning Patrolman Maddox back to the station.

Donny stared at Pinty, a look of resignation on his face. “Here it comes,” he said, pulling his cap back on his head.

“Friggin’ dial-up,” Hess was telling the Mitchum barracks dispatch. “Goddamn stagecoach technology. Three phone jacks the entire place. Radio reception’s for shit, units are R-1 all over town. And my Nextel two-way, that would be like voodoo science here. Bringing fire to the aborigines. So this is the number. The non-emergency line. Requisition me some bear repellent and a telegraph machine. Right.”

Hess hung up and reached for his water bottle, chugged. The screen door whined and Patrolman Maddox, in the uniform jersey and ball cap, walked in looking like a guy assigned to beach patrol a hundred miles from shore. Decent build on him, but no rip. Five months this rookie had been on the job, without academy training or state certification. As much a cop as Hess was king of Tunisia.

“Sorry to haul you back in,” said Hess, not really sorry at all. “You’re new on the job, huh?”

“Yeah, just part-time.”

“Holding down the fort on overnights?”

“Basically.”

“Got aspirations, or is this what works for you now?”

“This works now.”

“Really? Surprises me. Most guys get a taste of cop, they can’t think of doing anything else.”

“My father was a patrolman here, long time ago.”

“Walking a mile in his shoes, huh? Making a little peace with the old man?”

“I guess.”

“Makes sense. So you’re from this town?”

“Originally, yeah.”

“Moved away? And actually came back?”

“Hard to believe, huh?”

Maddox was giving him nothing. Maybe he had nothing to give. “You knew this Frond?”

“By sight. He stood out a little.”

“Been to his Web page? His online store?”

“No.”

“I have had that pleasure. Crystals, quartz stones. All kinds of New Age crap. Healing metals. Wind chimes. Pottery.”

“I knew he brokered sales for some of the artists living in the hills.”

“My interview list is filling up with fruitcakes. Guy claimed to be a Druid.”

“Uh-huh.”

“An ovate, a diviner, an interpreter of Druid mysteries. Yeah. Too much Led Zep in high school. Know what an athame is?”

“A what?”

“Exactly. It’s a ceremonial dagger. Pictured on his site. Ivory-handled with a double-edged blade. He put up images of all his toys, these candlesticks, some prism thing, a ‘thurible,’ which I learned is an incense burner — his was in the shape of a skull. We recovered all these things from the mantle over his fireplace, but not the dagger. I know you were first on scene when they went inside. You see this athame there?”

Maddox thought before answering. The guy was careful, Hess noticed. He wasn’t overeager to work with the big boys, and he wasn’t intimidated either. “No.”

“You seem sure.”

“I wasn’t looking for it, but I’m pretty sure.”

“It’s the only thing missing. Not worth much money.”

Maddox shrugged.

“How many more witches you got up here?”

Maddox smiled. “That I know of?”

“Cult activity is what I’m getting at.”

“No. Nothing I’m aware of.”

Hess nodded. “Other thing I’m hearing is that Frond had issues with some of the cops. I don’t have the full story, but I know he broke up a traffic stop or some such where a suspect was being beaten — that suspect being your missing sex offender.”

“Yeah. That was before my time.”

Hess waited, watching him. Realized he was treating this guy like a suspect. Outside the front windows he saw two sleds pull into the driveway — blue-on-blue state police cruisers — escorting an old orange pickup truck carrying something under a tarp in the bed.

“This is us,” said Hess, pushing out the screen door ahead of Maddox. A police station with a front porch: this was a first. Three stone steps led to the driveway.

The town DPW guy got out of his pickup, a broad-backed cluck with a close-shaved head who, with his build and facial expression, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a prison yard. He wiped his dirty hands on the hips of his dirty shorts. “Don,” the guy said, to Maddox.

“Here’s what I need,” Hess told Maddox. “We found an old safe in the house, under an upstairs bed. Your public works man here was good enough to haul it out for us — your name again?”

The guy mumbled it. He was as slow-moving as the rest, maybe even slower. Cement in the veins. The cruiser lights bothered him, making him squint.

“I could wait for morning and ship this box back to civilization, but that would cost me at least another half day and I don’t want that. I need a machinist in town — or a safecracker, if you got one — but more likely somebody who can drill through this thing and pop it open. Mr. Ripsbaugh here suggested a name, and, given the late hour, I wanted you to come along as a familiar face, to make introductions.”

Maddox looked at Ripsbaugh.

“Kitner,” Ripsbaugh said.

Maddox mulled over the name, looking surprised. He turned to Hess. “Okay,” he said. “But there’s something you need to know about Kitner first.”

The knocking was going to wake up Ma. In sleep shorts, Steve Kitner pulled the door open, first a little, then wider, seeing headlights in the dirt lot.

One of the local cops was standing on his top step. Behind him were real state police cruisers.

“Aw, shit,” said Kitner, a wave of depression overcoming him like rigor mortis. “Look, I’m clean, man. Whatever. I’m innocent. This is bullshit.”

The cop said, “It’s nothing like that, Kitner.”

He knew this day was coming — knew it. Knock on his door and take him away. That shoved-up-against-the-wall feeling again. “I’m registered like I’m supposed to be. I’m a citizen now.”

The cop showed him an open palm. “Listen to me.”

Kitner didn’t hear single words, only the general idea: the staties wanted a favor from him.

It seemed almost like a trap, though they had nothing to trap him for. He hadn’t done anything wrong. They were only making him feel like he had.

A favor seemed like a good idea. “Shit, yeah, I’ll help you out, why not.”

He pushed through the aluminum door, reminded he was barefoot by the rocky driveway. He wore only saggy boxers and a string tank, but who cared.

Unless there were female troopers here.

He hoped Ma wouldn’t wake up, see the cars, have a conniption. Wouldn’t be bad later to tell her how he helped out cops. How he was being so good.

He walked inside the garage-turned-shop at the outside of the road curve, under the unlit sign reading KITNER TOOL & DIE. He hit the red stopper and the power started up, the shop blinking to life. He found a pair of the old man’s safety boots and lifted his leather apron off its peg.

Two tall troopers lugged in an old safe dusty with fingerprint powder. Kitner pointed to the larger drill press and they thunked it down there and stretched their backs.

A plainclothesman with cobra arms came in, said nothing. The hard-ass act. Then the local cop and that guy Ripsbaugh, the town roadworker.

No women.

The safe, she was a beauty. Short and stout, maybe two and a half cubic feet of volume, a black dial with ivory numbers over a small silver handle.