Chuck Hogan - The Killing Moon - A Novel

“Put down the shovel.”

Ripsbaugh didn’t want to be too close for the kill shot, if it came to that. He wanted the round to lodge inside Maddox and not kick out. Not get lost in a wall somewhere with Maddox’s DNA on it.

Maddox was doing something to the fingers of his hand. He was picking at the tips. A few drops of blood fell to the wood floor.

“That’s for the FBI,” said Maddox. He flicked tiny droplets into the kitchen. Up at the ceiling. He smeared some on the handle of Ripsbaugh’s shovel. “Now what? What’s this do to your master plan?”

Ripsbaugh knew that, even if he could find and clean every drop, there were chemicals that brought up old bloodstains. “Now that there’s blood evidence, what’s to stop me from shooting you?”

The plan had been to march Maddox through the woods behind his house to the top of the falls. Let the force of the water dispose of him without a trace. Then throw Sinclair’s clothes in after him, the wig, the pager — everything. Flush the evidence. Flush Maddox and Sinclair. Leave nothing linking either of them to Ripsbaugh.

But, as with Frond and Pail, things wouldn’t go exactly as planned.

All Maddox was doing here was making more work for him. Ripsbaugh didn’t look forward to shouldering his dead weight all the way to the falls. But hard work was hard work. And he had found that killing — doing it right — was just about the hardest work there was.

The arteries of the chest. Same place he did Sinclair. Plenty of muscle to catch the round.

“It’s for Val I do this,” he said.

But Maddox dropped the shovel and darted fast into the cross hallway, the shot missing him. Ripsbaugh put another quick round into the intervening wall, tracking Maddox about shoulder high. Then he cut through the sitting room, beating Maddox to the front door.

Maddox wasn’t there. Instead Ripsbaugh heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

He was going to the bedrooms to hide. He was trapped and running scared.

Ripsbaugh started up after him, coming to the top in darkness. He had to be very careful not to leave anything of himself behind. Only Sinclair. That was of supreme importance now.

One door was open in the hallway. He heard bumping inside, and it occurred to him that Maddox might have another gun in the house.

Ripsbaugh peered through the doorway into the stripped-down master bedroom. The far window had been pushed open, screen and all, letting in the rain.

Ripsbaugh rushed to it. He thrust his gun hand out the window to cut Maddox down. Below was the steep roof over the kitchen, runoff coursing down the shingles to the deck below.

Maddox was not there.

Ripsbaugh realized his mistake too late.

He was pulling back into the room when the blow came from behind, shoving him halfway out the window. His hip struck the sill hard, his feet leaving the floor, the heel of his gun hand coming down heavily against the wet shingles.

Amazed he had not tumbled right out, he looked back and saw his free hand gripping the side of the window frame. The bare patches of his fingers pressed against the smooth wood — dirty oils sizzling his mark onto the painted surface.

Another body blow, so hard that the sill cracked beneath him, and his hand released the frame. The elbow of his gun arm was wedged beneath him against the shingles. His legs remained inside the house, kicking blindly, hitting nothing.

He twisted, trying to get the gun free of his own weight. Trying to aim the muzzle behind him. One shot was all he needed to push Maddox back. One bullet was all he had left.

He was half turned when the third blow came, upending him, shoving him through.

Tumbling down the roof, Ripsbaugh swung his arm around, firing wildly at the window.

Crack.

Not even close. Ripsbaugh let go of the gun to try and stop his fall. The rough shingles shredded more latex off his hands, everything coming apart now.

A rattling sound. The gutter.

He was off the roof. Twisting, falling.

It was hard, hard work. Maybe the hardest.

Maddox raced out of his mother’s bedroom, the hallway listing like a ship in a storm. He grabbed the handrail and tripped down the stairs. If his choice was to finish off Ripsbaugh or save Tracy, then there really was no choice at all.

Rain thumped the spongy grass. Beneath his feet, he heard her screaming.

“Tracy!” he yelled, lowering his shoulder and hitting an ornate stone pedestal planter like a linebacker. It shifted off its base and fell, Maddox sprawling over it, then getting up and seeing the exposed tank cap, a concrete slab split into two half circles.

Maddox got good purchase around Ripsbaugh’s dig marks. He pried up one half of the heavy slab with his bloodied fingers, sliding it aside.

The stench, the aching screams. It was like uncapping a tunnel to hell.

Maddox had no flashlight. He yelled her name, but she could not hear him over her own screaming. The white PVC outlet pipe was disgorging water, the camera end of the snake sticking out of the downspout like a lizard’s tongue.

He pried off the other half of the cap, her head coming fully into view. Her upturned face, muck-streaked and fright-wild, finding light.

“Donny?” she shrieked. “ Donny!”

The water was up to her chin. Maddox lay out on his chest, his face in the stench. Reaching down to her. Her slimy hands grasped his, but she slipped away before he could haul her up. He tried again, but could not hold the grip.

The stench gagged him and he lifted his head out, looking around the yard for something, anything. He wished he had taken the nylon rope with him.

He yelled down, “I need something to pull you out with!”

“Don’t leave me!”

“I won’t! I’m not! I’m coming right back! You hear me?”

“Where am I? What’s happening?”

She was drowning in filth. He had to tear himself away. He jumped up.

“Donny!”

He sprinted around the house toward the driveway, praying he had left the garage door open.

Tracy screamed at the open mouth that screamed rain. The mouth of the monster.

Her throat was so raw from puking and screaming that she had no sense of taste anymore, no smell, the ungodly stench having burned out her mouth and nose. Breathing this foulness was like eating it, taking it into her body. The belly acid of the beast that had swallowed her.

The water was at her earlobes now. She kept her face upturned. The opening was all she had. The sky was up there. Air. Light. Escape. Rain spattered her eyes but she did not blink.

It grew darker above. A shadow falling. Her hope rose.

“Donny!”

No.

Someone else standing over the hole. Looking down. His face in shadow.

Long black hair.

She remembered now.

Sinclair.

She screamed. And screamed. And shrank away from the mouth.

Yes — he had left it open. He rushed between Tracy’s pickup and the side of the garage where the storage shelves were. Old tools, baby food jars of nails and screws, twine and tape—

Clothesline. From when his mother used to hang out wet sheets in the backyard, a hundred years ago. He would play hide-and-seek in them with her.

He grabbed it, and a knob-handled, needle-bladed scratch awl — the sharpest, nearest thing he could find — and ran back out into the rain. He raced to the hole in the yard, sliding the last several feet over the soaked grass like a runner going for third, yelling down to her.

She was just a floating face now. The effluent up to her ears, her arms reaching for him.