Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

It was late, the sun gone now, summer light straggling in the western sky. He left the kids in the back of his patrol car and followed the rock path to the front door of the house. The bell was an old one you twisted like a key, but it did not ring. He knocked. While he waited he heard a muffled thump inside like someone tripping, then the sound of something dropping to the floor and rolling away.

Maddox moved to the side of the door. He kick-knocked with his hiking boot, the old training coming right back to him. He sized up the heavy door and figured he was as likely to dislocate a shoulder as he was to break it down. He backed off and started around the side of the house, under a picture window, looking for another way in.

He heard a feeble tapping as he neared the bulkhead doors. A block of wood was jammed under the handles, and Maddox drew his revolver, kicking at the wood, once easy and then harder, popping it free and stepping back, waiting to see who came up.

One door was pushed open, stretching out spiderwebs and shaking loose rust, revealing the arm and scared eyes of a man in his fifties.

Dr. Bolt looked at Maddox’s handgun and POLICE jersey as he climbed the stairs out of the basement. “Thank the good Lord.”

Maddox grabbed him, helping the older man onto the grass. He wore an undershirt and boxer shorts and a pair of old rain boots he must have found in the basement. He carried a mayonnaise jar under his arm with a few ounces of fluid swishing inside it. “Who’s in the house?”

Dr. Bolt made a grand gesture of defeat. “His name is Frankie. He locked me in the cellar.”

“Frankie Sculp?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he doing in there?”

“What isn’t he doing?” Dr. Bolt looked at his house as though it were a family member in jeopardy. “Just please get him out. He’s paranoid, hallucinating. He sees people who aren’t there. You can’t talk to him.”

Maddox looked at the stone basement steps, revolver in hand. He thought about calling for backup. “Does he have a gun? Any guns in the house?”

“No. He has a steak knife in the back pocket of his shorts. He thinks you are coming to kill him, the police. He said he hears SWAT teams in the air-conditioning ducts. I don’t even have air-conditioning ducts.”

Maddox needed to talk to Frankie before anyone else could. “My patrol car is in your driveway. There’s a radio under the dashboard. Give me five minutes, then use it. Tell them the situation and your address. The cellar door is locked?”

“A chair wedged under the knob, I think.”

“What’s in that jar?”

Dr. Bolt held it low at his side. “My urine. I’ve been down there all day.”

Dogs started barking inside. Howling. Dr. Bolt looked stricken.

“The kennel?” Maddox said.

“In back.”

Maddox went down into the cool, dusty basement, two dim lights buzzing. He passed an old croquet set under the stairs and took the red-striped mallet, his revolver out in front of him as he climbed the old plank stairs. He gave the door at the top a test shove with his foot, then brought the mallet head down a few times against the ancient doorknob, which cracked apart. He stood the mallet in the corner and kicked open the door.

The chair went crashing against the opposite wall. Maddox jumped out and swept both sides of the short hallway in a two-handed stance, grateful for the light from the basement.

The house was a mess inside. No light switches worked. Broken glass crunched under his boots on the rug.

With the dogs barking madly in the rear, his sweep was perfunctory, throwing open doors and checking rooms. He crossed into the adjoining office, clearing the front counter and the examining room, then moving through a door to the barking dogs in back.

The room smelled of pet shampoo. Three occupants in eight large aluminum sleeping pens, all of them stomping and howling. Maddox zeroed in on a low, open-doored supply locker at the end of the row, and was making his way toward it when a clatter erupted behind him. He turned to metal pans tumbling off the top of a high cabinet and a figure springing from a narrow hiding space beside it.

Frankie Sculp, knife in hand. Maddox had time and cause to shoot him but did not. Frankie, screaming incoherently, brought the knife blade down again and again in a slashing motion, cutting his own chest and legs through his T-shirt and shorts.

Maddox holstered his revolver and lunged with both hands for the knife. He got Frankie’s wrist and drove the kid back against the high metal cabinet, bringing more supplies crashing down on them. With one hand on the knife wrist and the other around Frankie’s throat, Maddox spun and dropped him face-first to the floor.

The knife popped free, twirling away along the gritty tile. Frankie was howling and bucking, not fighting Maddox, exactly, though the violence amounted to the same. Maddox bent both his wrists behind him, twisting and yanking up on his thumbs, putting a knee into his back and holding him there, letting him kick the floor and wail along with the dogs.

Maddox yelled for Dr. Bolt and then tried to get Frankie’s attention. The kid kept squirming, smearing some blood on the floor, but no fast-flowing pool. Incredible, how much heat was coming off him.

“Is he hurt?” said Dr. Bolt, appearing in the interior doorway.

“Not badly.” Maddox looked around, trying to figure a way to immobilize the possessed teenager. “Handcuffs. I left mine in my car.”

Dr. Bolt looked on, the jar of urine still in his hand, its contents gently swaying. “I might have a pair,” he said.

He returned from his bedroom with nickel-plated handcuffs and handed them to Maddox by the linking chain. Maddox clasped them around Frankie’s wrists and stood, pulling Frankie to his feet, hooking an arm around his bent elbow and then pushing him, headfirst, through the vet’s office and back into the adjoining house.

Dr. Bolt righted a table lamp in the main room out front and screwed in a lightbulb, finding a bare wall socket to plug into.

The interior of the room was demolished. Meticulous destruction: the bookshelves stripped bare, tables upended and their legs unscrewed, sofa cushions removed and unzipped and unstuffed, pictures and photographs taken from their frames, the ceiling fan pulled apart to its wires. An upright piano in the corner had been completely disassembled, frame, keyboard, strings, everything.

Maddox set Frankie down on his side to get a look at his wounds. Sweat-drenched ribbons of T-shirt hung over the bloody streaks crisscrossing his chest. Subcutaneous but not life-threatening. Just enough to mark him for life.

For his part, Frankie was feeling no pain. He sneered at the lamp, addressing the shining light. “See? Now they’re going to bind my feet and throw me in the river like a puppy in a potato sack, and you just look the other way! ”

Maddox tried to find a telephone he could reassemble. He located the base and the speaker for the interior of the handset.

“He cut the wire outside,” said Dr. Bolt, slumping into an easy chair with no cushions, the jar in his lap. “I’m going to lose my practice.”

Maddox assessed the scene: a room in shambles, a bloody guy handcuffed on the floor muttering at an unshaded lamp bulb, and an older man in boxer shorts sitting with a jar of his own urine. “Want to tell me what’s going on here, Doctor?”

“I’m relieved.” Dr. Bolt stared straight ahead. “I am actually relieved now. That it’s over. Finally over.”

Frankie told the light, “You said you had to get them or else they were going to get you. You were going to show them all. ”

Dr. Bolt said, “I’ll hire a lawyer. A good one.” He looked at Maddox across the destroyed room. “Why did I ever let it get this far?”