Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“Pretty box,” said Kitner, stroking his tonguelike goatee. “Turn her upside down. Bottom’s usually the softest.” Just like a woman, he almost added, but thought better, thanks to his conditioning. He smiled as the troopers did his bidding.

Nineteen eighty-eight was the last time he had shared a room with this much law. From the way the plainclothes guy eyeballed him, Kitner figured they all knew about his Merrimack County prior. How he had gotten loaded on blackberry brandy and amphetamines one night during a freak snowstorm and how, driving around looking to score more dope, he had happened upon a female motorist stuck in a snow-bank and how, after offering to help dig her out, he had strangled her unconscious instead and raped her in the backseat. They found him sleeping there later, on the nod, so the guilty plea was his best bet. He pled and did his time. Prison wasn’t bad because he had been in the army, if briefly. Afterward, he tried to make it elsewhere, but the Level 3 label meant “most likely to reoffend,” so he couldn’t hold a job or an apartment anywhere without people smashing in his windows and calling him up in the middle of the night and threatening to slice off and feed him his own dick. So when his dad died he resettled up here and took over the old man’s shop. Not like he had a long list of options.

It was better here, like a self-imposed exile. Not being able to afford a car removed a lot of temptation. Sometimes, maybe once a month, he felt the change in his metabolism, that old sweet tooth starting to tingle. Sometimes, when he looked around at the old man’s shop with its dingy floors and power machinery, he saw a dungeon in waiting. Sometimes he thought about what it would be like to work on people here instead of metal. Building a person, a woman, to his own specifications, so he wouldn’t have to worry about breaking laws ever again. If he had all the money in the world he would build himself a harem of women and be real good to them.

He pulled on rubber-strapped goggles and went to work. He screwed open the chuck and inserted an old drill bit shank, one he could afford to dull or even snap, closing the three jaws tight around it. He pedaled the power and turned the drill rpm to 300 and wheeled the lever down for its first bite. The box screamed, again and again, and he kept at it, spraying sparks and hot filings. Old steel and many layers thick. It was nice to let himself go. The casing resisted so he reset the bit for another assault, and with a few whining thrusts finally pushed through. He drove again and again at the casing, wailing on it, widening his bore to spread the gap. So absorbed was he that he didn’t even notice when Ripsbaugh exited the shop. Finally, by adjusting and readjusting his aim, he joined all the various holes, having chewed open a gash large enough to admit a man’s hand.

He offered to keep going but the plainclothesman stopped him, shining a light down inside and then handing Kitner a pair of latex gloves. Kitner tested the hot wound, then reached inside, getting his fist in almost to the elbow. He felt around the cavity and pulled out a manila envelope.

The plainclothesman took it from him. Kitner saw the local cop looking on from the open front door.

“Tax returns,” said the plainclothesman, inspecting the contents. “Canceled checks.” He scanned a signed document with disgust. “Fucking health care proxy. Nothing.”

“There’s a drawer in the top,” Kitner told him, so helpful. “On the bottom now. Feels thin, if you want me to get in there.”

He did. Kitner twisted a longer bit into the chuck, working deeper into the existing hole. The safe gave up the drawer with almost no resistance. The plainclothesman handed Kitner his flashlight and a second pair of latex gloves.

The guy was getting impatient. “Is it a dagger?” he asked.

Kitner noticed that the local cop had moved inside the doors now. Kitner got his arm all the way in, pulling out a short stack of small, cream-colored envelopes tied together with a cherry red ribbon. Plainclothes held out his own gloved hands and Kitner served him the packet like a fancy slice of cake. Plainclothes lifted the letters to his nose — the perfume had a vanilla smell — then pulled at the tie, the bow knot yielding and falling limp, the envelopes undressed.

Kitner watched him open the top one, pulling out thread-flecked stationery folded into thirds. The handwriting was small and neat in red ink. Two sheets, though the handwriting on the second one ended halfway down. Below it were two pencil drawings that made Kitner go up on his toes, trying to see better over Plainclothes’s shoulder.

The first sketch was of a woman’s nude torso. One breast hung free, the other one cupped in her hand, mashed and raised in offering.

The second one below it showed the same woman but from shoulders to knees. She sat legs open, her right hand covering her pussy except for her middle finger, stuck deep inside.

Plainclothes pulled the letter to his chest like he was hiding a poker hand, and Kitner came down off his toes, wondering if maybe he had made a noise or something. The guy moved away, taking the rest of the envelopes with him.

Plainclothes summoned the local cop with a flick of his finger and showed him the first letter, including the drawings.

“‘Love always, V,’” said the plainclothes cop, pointing out the signature. “Any ideas?”

The local cop’s eyes clouded, and not because of the dirty pictures. He knew, all right. It cheered Kitner, a little, to think of somebody else eating trouble for a change.

Maddox waited outside the station, on the sidewalk at the end of the grassy slope, staying near the action while maintaining enough distance between himself and the state troopers. It was just after eight and his shift was over — Stokes and Ullard had already driven their patrol cars past him into the driveway — but Maddox lingered, pretending he was enjoying the morning heat and had nowhere better to go. Above him, the great flag rustled like a horse too lathered to lift its own head.

Stokes and red-eyed Ullard came out to see him. “They closed off rooms in there,” Stokes said. “What’s up? They get someone?”

Maddox pretended not to know who it was, liking how, when Bucky wasn’t around, the other cops could be civil if they wanted something from him.

Three kids came biking across the iron bridge, two on banana-seat bikes and one on a taller ten-speed, turning past the station. The ten-speed was an old Schwinn, black with black electrical tape wound around the handlebars.

Maddox recognized the bike. He yelled, “Hey!” and took off suddenly down Main Street after them.

After a few more yells, they slowed for him, letting him come jogging up. They were scuzzy mill-house locals, still growing into themselves at thirteen. Maddox grabbed the arm of the kid on the ten-speed to hold him where he was.

On the down tube of the triangle frame, the letter g had been added in Wite-Out to the brand name, to read, Austin Powers-style, “Schwinng.”

Dillon Sinclair’s bike. With his driver’s license suspended, this bicycle had been Sinclair’s only legal mode of transportation, taking him back and forth to the Gulp.

“I found it,” said the kid, in answer to Maddox’s question. He looked malnourished, maladapted, probably just about mal-everything.

“Found it where?”

“Woods.”

“Be a little more specific.”

“Toad Bridge. That little bridge off Edge Road. We was catching bullfrogs.” He glanced at his homeys for backup. “It was right there in the trees.”

A low one-lane bridge crossing a creek. Edge Road was where Heavey lived. “And you just helped yourself.”