Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

Maddox started up the cracked, weed-sprouting driveway, drawn by his curiosity about Dill Sinclair, and curiosity about the past in general, about this street he had lived on, the world at that time. All the secrets he never knew.

The first-floor windows remained boarded up, the brick stairs crumbling, the gutters long ago raided for aluminum. The garage at the head of the driveway was swaybacked like a falling barn, a faded real estate sign lying among its dead brown hedges.

The backyard was narrow, its grass long and weedy and tired of growing. Maddox remembered the tree house where his mother had found Dill smoking her stolen cigarettes, and located it some ten yards back in the trees: open-faced with a slanted roof of surplus lumber and ladder steps, nail heads crusted with sap.

He returned to the yard, intending to complete a full loop of the house and be done with it. But a concentration of buzzing flies drew him to the rear corner, where a dead toad lay rotting in the basement window well. Maddox backed away from the flies, then noticed some zipping back and forth between there and the bottom plank of the nearest boarded window.

The plank did not sit flush with the rest. When Maddox touched it, it moved.

He tugged and the entire board pulled away in his hand.

The one above it came away just as easily, both planks simply propped up there on the sill. He could see where the pointed ends of the carpenter nails were twisted, the wood, at some point, having been pried away.

The revealed window was without glass, the frame itself ripped out. Someone had broken the seal on this place. Someone had been inside.

He waved off the flies and peered in. Dark, because of the boarded windows, but after a moment he could make out the vague contours of an empty room, with flattened moving cartons on the floor and an empty cardboard roll of packing tape.

Maddox ducked back out again, hassled by the flies. He looked around the side of the house, wondering if he should do this. Then he hoisted himself up over the sill.

Headfirst was the only way in. His hands found the floor, dusty but clear of broken glass. He got his legs through, the soles of his Timberlands thudding hollow in the gloomy room. Two rooms, actually, open to each other, running the length of the house. Dust floated up as he moved, grit stirred by his presence like a ghostly thing trying to resurrect itself out of ashes.

A short passageway took him past a bathroom alcove into the kitchen, empty except for an old refrigerator, stove, and pulled-open trash compactor, mouse droppings peppering the countertop.

Continuing clockwise, he moved through another doorway into a small dining room with a fireplace of blackened brick. Cobwebs formed filament shelves in the corners, fist and heel holes cratering the walls.

He arrived at the bottom of a staircase, almost back where he had begun. The balusters along the bottom were all karate-kicked in half, the wooden handrail ripped out of the wall. He started loudly up the steps, proclaiming his presence.

The second floor was four more empty rooms. Some small animal had hoarded niblets of what looked like Indian corn; the nylon webbing of an old umbrella left behind in one of the open closets had been shredded and chewed. The plaster walls were cracked under the weight of the roof.

Back downstairs, Maddox retraced his steps to the short passageway between the kitchen and the first room. A door stood ajar opposite the bath, its unpainted edge showing the grain of the original wood inside. The hinges gave with a rusty whine, Maddox smelling basement. It was dark down there, a low-ceilinged stairway hooking ninety degrees at the halfway point. The cellar from every horror movie ever made.

He listened. He waited.

“Police!” he barked. Worth a try. “Who’s down there?”

He heard nothing except the open-channel static of anxiety in his head. He wished he had brought his flashlight. He tried the light switch inside the door, as though it might magically work for him. It did not. But like a gamer needing to sweep every corner of every virtual room before moving on to the next level, he pushed ahead down the dark plank steps.

“I’m coming down,” he announced.

From the bottom step, he scoped out the area on either side, spotting a pair of glinting eyes that turned out to be two crushed beer cans. The window wells admitted just enough sunlight to see by. He moved along the edge of the underside of the stairs, something big and bulky appearing behind the base of the chimney like an animal rising up: a rusty oil tank on four legs.

His boot toe nudged another can, which he kicked away as if it were a rat. The acoustics were unsettling, and there was a trapped smell here, less an odor than a vapor. Maddox’s hand found the wood grip of his revolver. He hesitated leaving the perceived safety of the underside of the stairs, but did so, turning, the side wall of the basement revealed.

Its paneling was marked with spray paint. The boldest of the graffiti read: Black Falls is Helllll!

One of the images from Sinclair’s camera’s memory stick. Suddenly, Maddox felt him here. Felt Sinclair’s presence. In this basement where he had practiced his magic routines obsessively. Where Val had once found him playing with a hangman’s noose. Sinclair had returned here recently, at least once, standing right where Maddox stood now, camera in hand. Going over old ground like a dog on a short tether, looking for reasons or explanations. Looking for answers. Just as Maddox was doing now. What was it Val had said?

I feel like everything with Dill, everything, is this attempt to get back his childhood.

Would he kill to get it back?

Maddox heard a creak. A gritty scrape. A thumping, muffled; something moving overhead.

Footsteps on the floor above him. Someone else was inside the house.

Maddox’s revolver cleared his holster. He moved silently to the bottom of the stairs. He started up slowly, the handgun thrust before him like a flashlight, turning at the bend, making for the brighter dimness of the open door at the top.

He caught a hint of shadow. Someone in the kitchen. He crept ahead, wincing at the little wooden groans beneath his boots.

The house was silent up top as he crossed the threshold into the hall. The piece of the kitchen he could see was clear. With his revolver closer to his chest now, he rounded the corner, sensing movement in the dining room and whipping toward it hard.

He saw the wide-brimmed campaign cover first, then the silver whistle and badge. He pulled off his aim, and the trooper in front of him howled and did the same with his sidearm, then spun off and ripped a string of curses.

“Okay, okay,” Maddox said, settling himself down, his heart kicking at his chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here!” howled the red-faced trooper, angry and scared at how close he’d come.

“Easy.” Maddox was conciliatory. “Easy. Hold up.”

The trooper stabbed his still-drawn Sig Sauer P226 toward the floor. “Fuck you, ‘hold up,’ you fucking dickhead! Almost got your ass killed! The fuck are you doing in here?”

“The fuck am I doing?”

“I’m responding to a call, motherfucker. Like a real fucking law officer. Joke-ass local yokel. Get out of my face.”

The trooper thrust his sidearm back into his duty belt holster and strode out of the room.

As Maddox climbed back out through the missing window, the high branches of the backyard trees began to shudder. Leaves twisted and blew down as a concussive whup ping rose up overhead. The roaring flutter of a Massachusetts State Police Air Wing helicopter.

The trooper had his hat off now, a uniform violation for a road trooper in the MSP. He was snarling into his shoulder radio. “Nothing showing... some local dink playing cop, snooping around... false alarm.”