Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

Back outside, past the ambulance, he made his way to the reserved parking for police vehicles. Maddox would have to find another way into the hospital from now on. His life was like that, whole towns and city neighborhoods, entire regions of the state, walled off to him.

Once he left the overhang and the bright sun hit him, he remembered the pages in his hand. He smoothed out the wrinkles and skimmed the forms. He noticed that the boys’ addresses were identical: that of the Ansons, the foster family in town. The same family responsible for Frankie Sculp.

Below that, the person who signed the boys out from the hospital had checked off “Guardian” next to her name. The signature was illegible, but the name typed next to it read, “Tedmond, Wanda.”

The Ansons’ ranch house looked outwardly normal in the same way a shaken can of soda looks fine until you crack it open. The weedy land was once a thriving apple orchard and seasonal farm stand, now a remote foster farm for Department of Youth Services residential placements.

It was late in the day when Maddox arrived. The school bus was gone from the driveway, meaning that Mrs. Anson was not at home. The man of the house finally responded to Maddox’s knocking, Dan Anson seeing the uniform and looking for an accompanying social worker. He wore an oily T-shirt and sweatpants apparently without underwear. “Going camping?” Maddox said.

“What’s that?”

“Are you planning a camping trip?”

Anson blinked his blitzed eyes. “Not that I know of.”

“Because you already pitched a tent.”

Anson looked down at the lazy erection pressing against his gray cotton sweats as Maddox stepped past him into the house.

Inside was no less humid than outside. “I spoke to your wife last time,” said Maddox.

“She said. You still looking for Frankie, right? We don’t know where he is. Kid’s a professional runaway.”

“I’m looking for two others now. Carlo and Nick. They went joyriding recently, cracked up a stolen car.”

Anson played at thinking. “No,” he said, “I haven’t seen them.”

Maddox walked into a living room of magazines and catalogs fluttered by window fans. A boy about eleven, one of the Ansons’ two biological kids, stared at the TV, barely registering him. Maddox went to the kitchen, checked the contents of the refrigerator. Predictably not much. He went back up the hallway opening doors.

“Uh, excuse me, what is this?” said Anson, moving sideways, peering into each room after Maddox did. “I said they’re not here.”

Maddox opened the door on what appeared to be the Ansons’ bedroom, the sheets tossed, window shades drawn down. He saw a computer on a student-sized homework desk. The modem lights were working, but the monitor was off. Maddox switched it on.

Anson stayed by the door, scratching at his unshaved neck. “You can’t really do that.”

While the screen was warming up, Maddox noticed a lightbulb behind the monitor, its screw base, wires, and filament all removed.

Anson said, “Yeah, that lightbulb burned out.”

The fat end was blackened inside. “Pretty spectacularly,” said Maddox, picking it up and hazarding a waft. He did not see the accompanying straw.

Maddox checked the monitor. It showed the home page for a fantasy football site.

“See?” said Anson. “Everything’s cool.”

Maddox reached for the warm mouse, dragging the cursor over the BACK button and clicking. The previous page visited showed a naked guy shackled up in leather restraints on an S&M rack, curse words and racial epithets scrawled over his chest in purple lipstick, his left nipple about to be burned with the lit tip of a cigarillo by a chubby she-male wearing a Nazi helmet, infantry boots, and a monocle.

“Look, I was just killing a little time—”

Anson ducked as the lightbulb shattered against the wall behind his head, glass tinkling to the floor.

Next to the PC was an open two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew Pitch Black grape soda. Maddox pressed buttons to open the CD trays and made ready to empty the contents of the bottle into them.

Anson threw out both hands from his crouch. “Jesus, man, what the fuck?”

“Carlo and Nick, where are they?”

“I’d know, man? How can you keep track?”

“That’s supposed to be your damn job.” Maddox splashed soda across the room, fizzing like black acid on Anson’s shirt. He dribbled a little into the computer.

“You wouldn’t. You can’t!”

“Say it loud again,” said Maddox. “How you don’t know where they are. Maybe they didn’t hear you.”

A bang like a loose door snapping shut. Maddox carried the bottle of soda across the room and hauled down one of the shades, rod and all, from the window.

Two boys were racing away across the backyard into the old orchard.

Maddox looked back at Anson, shrinking against the wall. Maddox moved fast to the desk, glugging soda into the CD slots while Anson covered his head and groaned. “I’ll be back for you,” said Maddox, rushing past him, cutting down the hall to the living room, past the kid at the TV to a back door leading to a short flight of rickety stairs outside.

Maddox ran fast and angry. The kids had a head start, but the two burnouts hadn’t seen anything like exercise in months. They looked back and saw him coming and veered off into what remained of the apple orchard. Never even occurred to them to split up. Running lockstep, they cut between trees and across lanes, unable to shake Maddox’s pursuit. Seeing he was about to catch them, they slowed.

Maddox did not. He tackled both at full speed, throwing them hard to the dirt and spoiled fruit and scavenging ants.

Both teens had the same choppy home haircut. Maddox got his knees into their spines.

“Why are you running?”

“Because,” said one.

“Because?”

“Of Frankie,” said the other.

They were trying to look up at him, but Maddox was kneeling on their backs, forcing their faces into the ground. “What because of Frankie?”

“He said cops were looking for him. We’re looking to do him.”

Paranoid tweaker. “Where is he now?”

“Hiding, I guess.”

“Who brings in the meth?” said Maddox. “Him to you or you to him?”

One teen remained silent. The other said, “What?”

Maddox grabbed their home haircuts and mashed their faces into the dirt. Not a good day to cross him. He asked again.

“Him,” said one.

“Him to us,” said the other, spitting dirt.

Maddox said, “And you deal to Anson back there?”

One tried to rise up in protest. “That douche bag?”

“He steals,” said the other. “Took half our stash. To protect us, he said. Otherwise he’d turn us in.”

Maddox said, “Where does Wanda figure in to all this?”

Blinking. Swallowing. “Wanda who?”

Again, Maddox ground their mouths into the dirt and ants. “You’re teenagers, lying’s supposed to be a talent. ”

They coughed up truth. They’d seen her around, but the hospital was the first time they’d met her. She’d introduced herself as a friend of Frankie’s. That was all they knew.

Maddox floated Bucky’s name but neither of them so much as blinked.

“I’m asking again. Where is Frankie now?”

“We don’t know.”

“We might, though,” said the other one.

His partner winced at that.

To the talker, Maddox said, “Out with it.”

“We followed him this one time.”

“We were just curious,” said his partner.

“You wanted to take him down!” said the talker.

“Show me,” said Maddox, standing, pulling them to their feet.

Maddox buzzed the office door first, because it was closest to the driveway. DR. GARY BOLT, VETERINARIAN, read the sign. A window sticker said, HILL’s SCIENCE DIET SOLD HERE. He gave the button two quick pushes but didn’t wait, the office dark, just like the house attached to it.