Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

And then Maddox. Where was he now? Sure, he had a grudge against Bucky, and vice versa. But this disrespect? Not showing up for a fellow officer? Unforgivable. Bucky had been straight-up right about that guy, not trusting him, not liking him. And now all this drug nonsense on the news, in the papers — Eddie couldn’t help thinking somehow it was Maddox’s doing. They called it a “lab.” What they didn’t know was that Bucky got his first chemistry set at age seven, and that he had always been a dabbler. As kids, the two of them used to use his compounds to blow up stumps and things on their hill. They even made their own fireworks, Bucky experimenting to learn which powders made them spark red or green or blue.

And how was it Maddox had been the one to find Bucky’s body? He’d sure never been to the house before that night. And where had he been hiding since? Didn’t he know Eddie had questions?

It was Maddox’s house they were heading to after this. Eddie was going to get his father’s suit dirty, maybe. Maddox had a lot of talking to do.

A whup ping noise drowned out the pastor’s voice, and suddenly a helicopter with state police markings on its belly crested the trees, beating low over the graveyard, loosening petals from the condolence bouquet and flapping Bible pages in the pastor’s hand. The same helicopter that had buzzed Jag Hill last night with its searchlight beaming down, searching for Scarecrow.

The flyby was almost like a tribute — should have been a tribute — with the mourners shading their eyes from the sun, which, to Eddie, looked like a military-style farewell salute. Bucky deserved such a tribute.

But so few mourners. Where was the rest of the town? Didn’t they know that Bucky had taken a stand for them? Who was it who first roughed up that little freak when he had the chance? And in doing so, put his life on the line for this town? This was his thanks? This was the respect they gave him? This turnout was like a vote of support for his killer.

He looked down to the low stone wall along Number 8 Road, the state police troopers grouped there. They didn’t care. It wasn’t one of theirs dead. Eddie looked to the side, the vehicle path that ringed the cemetery. He saw Ripsbaugh standing by his Bobcat, shovel in hand. No respect. Not even the courtesy to take a break during the ceremony. The Grim Reaper over there, couldn’t wait to bury him. Like this service was holding him up.

Eddie’s brother. His baby brother. Pails had lived in Black Falls almost since the beginning, and they had plots throughout this cemetery, from the thin, cracked, pre-Revolutionary-era stone markers leaning like bad teeth in the front row to the broad, modern headstones in the rear. Eight or nine separate markers here with PAIL carved into them.

Eddie was the last one now. Eddie was all alone.

People were looking at him, Big Bobby Loom nodding. Eddie hadn’t been paying attention. It was his turn. He took Bucky’s cop hat and set it on top of the casket, then cracked open two cans of Bud, sipped the foam off his, and set the other at the edge of his brother’s open grave.

Eddie stayed down on one knee, head bowed.

Help me, Bucky. Bring me Scarecrow. Bring him to me, brother. I dedicate the rest of my life to avenging you. To clearing your everlasting memory and our proud name. And to punishing this town for turning its back on you today.

When it was over, Eddie lingered while the mourners wandered away. He stared at the coffin as though he could see inside, his brother’s faceless head nestled in padded white satin. Mort Lees and Stokes and Ullard gathered at his back. A good feeling, them united. Eddie turned away his hazy eyes and they started off together, as one.

The uniformed troopers detached from the stone wall. Eddie thought they were at last coming to pay their respects, but then he saw their faces. The troopers stopped, blocking the way to the road.

“You don’t want to make a scene now,” said one of them, thumbs hooked inside his gunbelt.

“What scene?” said Eddie, Mort at his side. “What is this?”

The trooper said, “All of you, raise your hands, lace your fingers behind your heads.”

This broiling heat. This beating summer sun. Eddie felt himself going wild inside. “This is a graveside observance.”

“Graveside observance is over, Jack. Feel lucky we let you have that. You want to maintain some dignity, you comply with my command now and come along quietly. Hands up and behind your heads. Let’s go.”

Eddie saw one trooper move his palm flat against the butt of his sidearm, another with his fingers holding open the flap of a pouch of Mace. From that point on Eddie was blind with rage. The fight occurred as much inside him as around him. He unloaded his despair. Wanting to hit and be hit. To hurt and be hurt. Mace burned his eyes, and the name he yelled as they pulled him to the ground was Maddox’s.

“Bolt did indeed go out and get himself a good lawyer,” said Cullen, sitting on a thin-cushioned divan inside Maddox’s mother’s house, casually bobbing the shoe of his crossed leg, the hand of his outstretched arm plucking at the stiff crocheted slip covering a wheel-shaped pillow. “A smart lawyer who convinced him to roll over fast. Had no choice, really. With Pail dead, they knew Dr. Bolt was the one we would go after, get his face on TV, make an example of. And it’s an easy case to prove. This way, we get what we want — Pail the archvillain, whose crimes die with him — and Bolt gets what he wants — to play the victim. Which is less than a half-truth, but it gets us close enough to the full story. He’ll plead out early to avoid a jury. Take short time, some token like thirty months, long probation, and register as a sex offender.”

“Sex offender?” said Maddox.

“Bolt occasionally hired some of the foster kids to do odd jobs around the kennel. Some of them he fed ketamine hydrochloride, which I understand is a dissociative anaesthetic for animals.”

“Special K.”

“What you call it on the street. Himself, he’d take some Internet Blue. Viagra.” To Maddox’s scowl, Cullen said, “Yup. Bolt stresses it was ‘only a few times,’ as though he should be eligible for further sentence reduction for not doing it to hundreds or thousands of kids. Good Sergeant Pail found out about this somehow, and instead of taking him down, used it against him. Which raises the question of how did Bucky Pail know that veterinarians handled not only pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in making meth, but the other government-restricted precursor, iodine?”

“Ibbits,” said Maddox, seated across from him in a chair upholstered in brocaded rose blooms. The ticking came from a ceramic clock on the otherwise empty mantle behind him. Everything else was in open boxes, half packed, and probably had been for months. It was an old house with attendant aches and pains. Including the irregular wood creaks Cullen kept hearing upstairs.

“Ibbits indeed,” said Cullen. “A fugitive from justice, a nomad with the epic misfortune of cutting through Black Falls on his way to nowhere. Of being pulled over in one of Bucky Pail’s notorious speed traps. Hugo Ibbits was Patient Zero for meth here in Mitchum County. Like a spore floating on the air, who landed inside our throat. He did spend time in lockup, brother Eddie finally confirmed it. Bucky came and got him out on a Sunday night, though Eddie still insists his brother released him. He truly believes that Ibbits cracked up his own car and died in the fire. And he still backs his brother’s innocence one hundred percent on the meth lab. When we showed him printouts from his brother’s Internet searches, seeking property in Daytona Beach, Florida, Eddie actually broke down. Guy cried.”