Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

Maddox said, “There’s something you need to tell me, Doctor.”

“He knew I had iodine and iodine tincture for horses. He knew that already.”

Maddox took a step closer, starting to understand. “Do you keep a supply of pseudoephedrine here, Doctor?”

“It’s prescribed for canine incontinence. A Schedule Five controlled substance. He had me order the maximum legal amount every month from my supplier. He was blackmailing me, holding things over me. Yes, I faked point-of-sale documentation. I committed multiple frauds. Every gram of it went to him.”

“Doctor, I know who it is. All I need is to hear his name. From you.”

“This is going to be very bad for me. I need protection. Real protection. Protection from the police. He’ll want to do away with me.”

Maddox said, “The best way I or anyone else can protect you from this person is to arrest him first. All you need to do is say his name, and this is over just like that. All over. You’ll be safe. Just give me his name.”

Hess was heading home for the night and some well-earned downtime. He’d phoned ahead to his wife, who had already slipped the two boys some Benadryl and uncorked a bottle of red. He thought it was her when his Nextel lit up blue, his ring tone playing Rhythm Heritage’s “Theme From S.W.A.T. ”

Bryson instead. “You’ll want to know this, Leo. Just took a call from Maddox on the local band. Requesting two units, one to the office of a veterinarian, and another for some backup for himself. Said he’s making an arrest.”

“Arrest?” said Hess, squinting at the highway in front of him, the lane markers zipping past like white bullets. What now? “He hasn’t got Sinclair, has he?”

“No, not Sinclair. Something else. Wouldn’t say over the radio.”

“And he wants us backing him up? Not his own? Who does this guy think he is?”

“I was going to ask him myself, but then the DA called. Not her office. Lady DA herself.”

Hess felt a cool rush, like a slow pour of water over him. “Saying?”

“Back up Maddox. Whatever he needs.”

Hess switched on his wigwags and grille blues and punched the gas, cutting across two lanes to the next exit. The thought bubble he had of Janine answering the front door in her black lace teddy was replaced by Maddox answering it in his junior league Black Falls police getup instead. Hess said into the phone, “I will be right fucking there.”

The driveway was unmarked and unnumbered, coming up on him quick in the darkness of Jag Hill. Maddox’s patrol car raised a squall of dust, state police cruisers trailing him as Bucky Pail’s house appeared around a bend in the driveway, a short ranch with twin carports on the left and junkyard vehicles extending around back.

Maddox stopped, getting out with his flashlight. Bucky’s house was dark. The troopers took their time putting on their Mountie hats.

The front door wore a pair of antlers. Maddox knocked and waited. He wanted to feel a certain level of satisfaction, the kind he had anticipated throughout five months of working this case, but the end had come up on him so suddenly, all he cared about now was an expedient arrest. To close the book on this case and this period in his life. To finish the job.

No answer. He stepped back, jumpy, peering in through a small, four-pane window, seeing nothing. Maddox’s worst-case scenario: Bucky holing up inside, armed and squirrelly.

One trooper stayed in sight of the front door while the other followed Maddox around the side, underneath the carport, keeping his flashlight beam wide of the house: four or five more cars, a motorbike without tires, and what looked like a speedboat engine dismantled on a black tarp.

The back door was open. Maddox crept up to it. He would not knock this time. No need. Bucky was either sleeping or hiding.

His boot snagged on something near the door, an extension cord, leading from an exterior outlet into the dark backyard. Maddox left the other trooper at the door and followed the wire with his flashlight. It was three lengths of cord plugged together, threading through the dirt and ending up at a portable radio set on a stack of milk cartons next to a small car with its hood up. The radio dial glowed faintly, but nothing played.

Maddox heard something, though. A low, doglike growling coming from the other side of the car, where the trees began to crowd in. He moved around the front bumper with his light, stopping fast.

His beam found a dog pulling at something with its teeth. Not a dog at all, but a coyote, tearing hungrily at a man’s face. The face was eaten open to muscle and cartilage, chewed back to the ears and around a full set of crooked teeth. The naked corpse lay on its belly in the dirt, arms behind its back, its wrists handcuffed.

The coyote turned slow, lupine eyes reflecting Maddox’s light. It backed off a few steps, baring bloody teeth as though flashing the grin it had just eaten off Bucky Pail’s face. Then, resentful yet unashamed, it slunk away along a narrow path back into the trees.

Cullen found Maddox sitting on a slab inside one of the two holding cells where Bucky Pail should have been locked up now. “I’ve been looking all over.”

Maddox’s head was back against the wall, his cap in his hands in his lap. He looked very much like a man doing time. “Only quiet place in the station.”

He was right about that. Cullen closed the outer door on the clamor. “We need to talk. We could be in some deep shit here. You saw the handcuffs. Just like Pail handcuffed him when he beat him up.”

Maddox closed his eyes, nodded.

“I just came from there. Saw Hess, but ducked him. Guy’s in his glory now. The blood trail starts inside the front door. Then into the kitchen, where Pail’s clothes were found, sliced off him along with some skin. That’s where he was cuffed and killed. They found the dagger there. The one missing from the witch’s house.”

“Athame,” Maddox corrected him.

“Stabbed so hard, the tip was broken off inside him. There was a little toaster oven pulled out, and a squeeze bottle of mustard on the counter. They think Pail had been making some sort of lunch when Sinclair arrived, using a paper towel as a plate. They found flecks of paper inside the corpse’s teeth. The thinking is that Sinclair, before dragging the body outside, stuffed the greasy paper in Pail’s mouth in order to draw animals.”

Maddox offered no response, turning his cap over and over in his hands like thoughts inside his head.

“Look,” said Cullen, stepping inside the open cell, “I know this is a blow, but we’ve got to talk strategy here. Hess is ramping up big. He’s got everything he needs, multiple homicides, a killer on the loose. A murdered cop, even if he was dirty. That’s an immediate threat, a killer out of control.”

“This is about covering our asses on Sinclair?”

“We built up a slam-dunk case against Pail. Problem is, our arrestee is dead. And he happened to have been killed by our informant.”

“Small snag.”

“So let’s accentuate the positive. On the plus side, everything else is bingo. We’re talking a historic drug bust for this region. We’ve got well-trod paths in the back of Pail’s house leading out to a shed and an old camper. Piles of empty cans of lye and driveway cleaner behind them, along with cases of stripped road flares. And lots of bare patches in the scrub where he must have buried waste. He’s contaminated acres of his own property. I’d be amazed if those holes don’t glow green at night. Two HAZMAT teams are en route. You know that stink they talk about around meth labs, like the piss of an asparagus-eating cat? It was immediate at the shed. I couldn’t get any closer than the door, but both structures were meth kitchens, it’s plain. The guy had grocery bags full of product stockpiled, and I mean pounds of it, ready to go. At fifteen grand a whack? He’s been a busy little beaver. He was starting up a business, the first serious meth franchise in New England. Doing the product launch here in Black Falls. He started off in the shack, and it looks like he cooked there until the place became basically uninhabitable. Also looks like he had a serious fire, which probably occasioned his move to the camper. Jars of pharmaceutical-grade pseudo, the supplier’s seals and government warnings still on them, along with the vet iodine. The animal doctor is in some serious shit, but he’s not the face on this. Bucky Pail is, and you can’t bring a dead man to trial. Except, of course, in the press. Which has been tipped and might even be up there already. Good visuals, the chemicals laid out behind the shack, HAZMAT astronauts removing waste. Oh — and the brother. He showed up while I was there.”