Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

A neighbor must have seen a man — Maddox — walking toward the abandoned Sinclair house, the entire town being in this hysterical state of alert.

“What are you looking at?” demanded the bareheaded trooper, turning on Maddox again, unable to let this go. “The fuck are you looking at?”

Maddox thought of the K-9 dogs all fired up after a search, seeking to sink their teeth into something, anything. He could ding this road guy, drop a letter in his performance file for abusive language as well as the removed hat, dock him some vacation time. But instead he just stood there and absorbed the trooper’s contempt for a small-town cop.

The helicopter moved on and Maddox returned to his driveway, finding a tan Corolla parked behind his patrol car.

Val stepped out of the driver’s side. She looked relieved, almost elated, as he approached. “Where were you?” she said. “I tried the doorbell, I knocked.”

He was startled. “Is everything okay?”

“Okay?” She held her arms away from her sides as though modeling the new Val. “Everything’s great. Can’t you tell?”

She wore a loose, grape red top over denim jeans. Her black hair was washed and brushed out, styled similarly to the way she used to wear it in high school, a little bit of makeup setting off her winged eyes.

“The smell,” she said. She presented her hands and arms for examination. “The septic stink. It’s already going away.”

“Oh,” Maddox said. “That’s — good.”

“So you’re leaving now?”

“This moment? No. Don’t look so happy about it.”

“But I am. I’m happy to give you the chance to redeem yourself.”

“Okay.” This sudden ebullience looked strange on her. Strident, like a flower in overbloom, its pedals curling back too far. “Redeem myself how?”

“I’ve been packing some things already. Quietly getting ready.”

“Packing for what?”

“To tag along with you. If you’ll have me, that is.”

She said the last part like she was ribbing him. Maddox fumbled for the right facial expression, never mind words. She saw this and jumped in.

“Just as friends, of course. I mean, at first. We wouldn’t have to — I’m not looking for anything right away. Just a friend, a helping hand. From there? You never know, right?”

“Val—”

“Everything’s going to change. Everything. You wait and see. No more drinking during the day. No more pining away out on the back porch. No more dwelling. I’ll join a gym. I’m going to be so healthy. You can help me.”

Maddox could only look mystified. After a few moments her smile started to wilt.

“You must know,” she said, “this is no snap decision on my part. I’ve thought it all through. Believe me.”

He nodded, trying to find a way into the conversation.

She said, “Think about it. Think for a moment. It would be like — like taking a potion. Like all these lost years since high school, they never happened. Like throwing luggage off a plane, watching it shrink and disappear. We’ll be free. ”

“That would be wonderful, Val. For anybody. In theory.”

“Okay.” Her smile tightened like a press squeezing the last bit of sweetness out of an orange half. “What?”

“To start with? You have a husband.”

She stared at him as though this was the most hurtful thing he could have said. “I know I have a husband,” she said. “I have fifteen years of bad decisions behind me. Of wasted life. This I know, Donny. That’s what this is all about.”

“Don’t you think you should talk to him about it?”

Now she squinted, as though trying, really trying, but ultimately failing to see the logic. “Do you think someone who is part of the problem would accept such a radical solution?”

“Because, Val, if this is truly what you want — leaving town, starting over — you don’t need me. You can go.”

“Bullshit. I do need you. It has to be you. Can’t you see that?”

The inflated smile was gone now, supplanted by something like panic and dying pride. He didn’t want to be too sharp with her, afraid she might go off flying around his driveway like a stuck balloon. “No, I can’t.”

“Can you ignore the fact that you owe me?”

“Owe you?” It took him only a second. “The scholarship.”

“ Yes, the scholarship. Yes, that is what I’m still talking about. Poor me, right? Still clinging to this — right? Do you know what it was like? To have this whole entire town against me, for who my father was, and my freak brother? No one wanted to waste that scholarship on me. They wanted to give it to their favorite son. Somebody who’d make something of himself, who’d amount to something. Not an art student from a bad family. What’s she going to bring back to Black Falls?”

“Val.”

“But who wound up wasting it? Who was the one who squandered that opportunity — for the town, and yes, for himself? Only to bounce back here fifteen years later with nothing to show for it? That chance you burned, you let slip through your fingers? That was my life, Donny. That was mine. Do you deny that you could never have won that scholarship without Chief Pinty behind you? Without his hand on your shoulder? Can you deny that now?”

“It was one-tenth of a percentage point, Val.”

“You don’t understand. You should want this. You should want the chance to make this right. As a man. This is why you came back here in the first place — don’t you know that? This is why you came here. Righting a wrong is the closest thing we have to going back in time.”

Maddox thought of Ripsbaugh, what he had said about her needing a stone for her chain. “I’m sorry, Val. I am. But I don’t think I’m responsible for whatever—”

“Is this about the farm girl?”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.” Her face was twisted now, as though a mask had been snatched away but the adhesive still stung. “I came by here last night, or tried to. Saw a truck leave your garage. Saw her behind the wheel. You don’t think she’s a little young?”

“Have you been watching me?”

“Are you going away with her ? Going to have babies ?”

“Val.” The anger in her face chilled him. “Jesus.”

She shoved hair off her face so that he would have an unfettered view of her contempt. “You owe me, Donny Maddox. You owe me a chance.”

Maddox felt heat coming up his neck. How quickly compassion can turn to enmity when someone forces her mania on you. When someone assigns you responsibility for her own frustrations. This came to him in his driveway like a lesson.

Val said, “You could live with yourself? Leaving me here? The same way you left your mother?”

He nodded, not in answer to her question, but in acknowledgment of her audacity in throwing down the kicker: the Queen of Spades with his mother’s face on it. “That’s the way to hurt me, all right.”

“Hurt you? Hurt you? How can you be hurt? You’re skating through life. Hands behind your back, gliding along.”

“Go home, Val.”

“And talk to my husband, right? Discuss? You think Kane knows me?”

“I’m sure no one knows you.”

“That’s exactly right.”

She looked at him with the pity of a madwoman, throwing open her car door and driving away.

Next morning, while waiting for his toast to come up, Maddox heard a thump. A goodly weighted noise, followed by a lesser bump, coming from the rear of his house. An unnatural thump.