Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

Light beams came bobbing out of the trees as the mud-soaked STOP team emerged from the fire road behind Maddox, faces camo-painted, assault rifles outlined beneath their vented ponchos.

“He’s playing with us,” said Hess. “Seeing how high we’ll jump.”

The STOP leader came over, his driver holding a black umbrella. “Air Wing’s still on standby, on the ground,” he reported. “Rainfall messes with heat imaging anyway.”

“He was never here,” declared Maddox, stripping off the assault vest beneath his poncho.

Hess said, “It’s time we sent him a return message. Give me an hour to huddle, think about what to say.”

“Here,” Maddox said, handing over the pager. “I’m done. Knock yourself out.”

Hess watched Maddox climb into his car and pull out. Maddox’s headlights briefly illuminated Bryson crossing the lot, looking ridiculous in galoshes and a rain hat knotted under his chin, as though his mother had dressed him.

“Another missing-person report,” Bryson said. “A young woman this time.”

The sixth such alert of the day. The first five had each ended happily, products of miscommunication and town hysteria. But the MSP would respond as they always did, quickly and conscientiously.

Hess started toward Bryson’s car through the thumping rain. “Who made the call?”

“No call,” said Bryson. “Woman came straight to the station.” He tapped his ear. “She’s deaf.”

Maddox pulled into his driveway, hitting the button on the visor-clipped remote control and watching the door go up on Tracy’s Ford truck parked inside.

He had completely forgotten about inviting her over. He tipped his head back against the headrest, cursing himself, then jumped out and ran through the rain into the garage. His peace offering had turned into an insult. Now he had to salvage this somehow. He shook out his soaked legs but didn’t even take time to remove his wet boots, walking through the door into the first-floor hallway.

“Tracy?”

The house was dark. He hit a light switch and continued down the hall toward the closet.

“Tracy?” he called out, louder. “Trace?”

Must be upstairs. He slid his holster off his belt and was reaching to store it up on the top shelf when something made him stop. The silence in the house, certainly. Also, a smell now, one he had been in too much of a rush to notice before. An odor deeper than the coppery smell of the rain. Earthy, like that of the llama farm, but less pleasant, more stinging.

Maddox stopped calling her name. He went quiet, sliding his revolver out of the holster and moving to the intersecting end of the hallway. He looked to the locked front door, rain spilling off the gutter outside.

He went to the bottom of the stairs and stood there looking up.

He did not turn on the light.

He started up. At the top landing, he just listened and let his eyes adjust.

He heard breathing.

Someone was standing at the far end of the hallway. Not hiding there. Just standing. Waiting.

It wasn’t Tracy. Maddox held his gun ahead of him, trying to see.

The figure moved, shifted its weight. Maddox made out long hair. The wig.

“Dill?” Maddox said.

He lowered his gun and took an angry step forward.

Dill started toward him. With the darkness throwing off Maddox’s depth perception, he did not until too late see how fast Dill was coming. He was further distracted by the shovel that Dill held in his hands.

As Dill closed the distance between them, Maddox got his gun up and fired two quick shots. Both rounds rang off the back of the shovel, ricocheting into the ceiling and the wall.

Dill’s body crashed into him, the shovel headfirst batting back the revolver, then swinging up to crack him near the temple.

Maddox fell hard. A warm feeling spread inside him from his head and neck through his back, relaxing him against his will. The house tipped as Dill stood over him, wild hair swaying. Then everything closed up and went dark.

In the dream that wasn’t a dream, Maddox stood in the trees beyond his backyard, the spot from where Sinclair had snapped the photograph. He saw his house exactly as in the picture, except for the presence of his mother, sitting alone on the back deck in her housecoat. Maddox yelled to her but she could not hear him. Then Tracy appeared in a second-floor window, banging on the glass with both arms, screaming, but Maddox heard nothing. A twig cracked and he turned and saw Sinclair next to him, drawn and dopesick, wearing his wig and a Black Falls patrolman’s outfit, the camera glowing around his neck like an amulet.

Maddox awoke moaning. He could not hold his throbbing head straight, a pulsing pressure on his skull. He was dizzy and on the edge of nausea.

He could not move. He thought he was still in the dream.

His mother’s kitchen was set before him like a still life, a picture in a frame he could step into. He expected her to walk in, smile, say hello.

He was shivering. Wet clothes.

Someone moved in the room behind him. Someone not his mother.

He was tied to one of the kitchen chairs with blue nylon line from the garage. His hands were numb behind him, his ankles knotted tight to each front leg of the chair. He could turn his head, but not enough to see behind him.

“Dill!” he yelled, the word accompanied by a bloom of pain.

On the counter he saw his keys and coins and beeper. His pockets had been turned out. There was his holster also, but empty.

In the near corner stood a spade with a long wooden handle.

Maddox picked up movement reflected in the sink window. He saw him. The black wig. His face blurred, standing back, watching Maddox from behind.

A hand gripped his right shoulder. Not a normal hand, as his eyes strained to see it. The fingers and palm were glazed over somehow, inhumanly smooth. Not gloved, but coated. Mannequin-like.

The hand left his shoulder and Dill came around to stand before him. He wore the rumpled black sweat suit that had shed fibers at Frond’s and at Pail’s.

But Maddox realized that his build was all wrong. The sweatshirt was stretched tight across his shoulders and chest. He saw the black Chuck Taylor All-Stars, but the sneakers had been sliced up the top, the canvas stitched back together again underneath the laces in order to fit larger feet.

Then the face below the wig. Just like the hands, it bore the smoothed-out finish of a man of pure wax.

But with eyebrows. Or something like eyebrows, taped down underneath the mask, or whatever it was he had over him.

This was not Sinclair at all. The blurred face.

Maddox got the smell now. All at once, the clinging sewer odor. He was still trying to make out what was over the face — skintight but with holes for his eyes, nostrils, and mouth — not masking its appearance as much as — as—

Kane Ripsbaugh said, “You figured it out pretty good.”

Heart pounding, brain screaming, Maddox focused on Ripsbaugh’s coated face beneath the black wig.

Ripsbaugh examined his hands as though they were someone else’s, not his own. “Liquid latex. Dries fast and solid, like a thin rubber. Seals me in. So I don’t leave any of me behind. Only him.”

The Scarecrow. Ripsbaugh’s costume looked like clothes overstuffed with a man instead of straw. “Where is he? Where’s Sinclair?”

“He’s right here.”

Either the latex deadened Ripsbaugh’s already flat expression, or it was some kind of calm insanity. All of Maddox’s breath caught in his throat.

With two bald fingers, Ripsbaugh extracted a pager from his pocket, laying it on the counter next to Maddox’s. “Identical to yours. I noticed that. But I had to call you to the old pulp mill to be sure.” He swept some hair off his shoulder, a horridly casual gesture that only showed how much time he had spent wearing the wig. “Frond told me the state police had promised to send someone. Sinclair was your informant, wasn’t he?”