by Chuck Hogan
You came to beg me to spare you, she tried to say, though her lips wouldn't move the words right.
The bed shaking now, an earthquake. Ride it out. What the fuck.
The massive thumb opened her eye again. Like looking up through a deep hole in the ground. "Wake up."
"I'm dead," she sneered, and tried to roll over, but the bed wouldn't let her.
"You're burning up." The covers were peeled back like foil off a TV dinner. "You're wearing sweats?"
"Freezing," she said, grabbing after the sheets. "How'd you get in here?"
He was dream Donny, trying to reach her in a dream within a dream. He was that clever. "Listen," he said. "It's important. I need to know. Bucky ever talk about Frond?"
"I couldn't touch him," she said. "My black hand."
Shaking again, her head getting tossed. "Frond," Donny said, full into her face.
"No," she answered.
"Bucky never talks about him?"
"Are you really in my bedroom?"
His hands came off her shoulders and she wriggled back into comfort.
Noises kept her from sinking down for good. She opened an eye and saw Donny's back to her, leaning over her nightstand, the drawer open. "Going through my stuff?"
"You're dreaming," he told her.
"If I'm dreaming then get in here and fuck my ass."
When nothing happened, her eyes fell shut again, tiny black hands pulling her down.
25
PINTY
DONNY MADE HIM turn out the light over the front steps. He kept checking the road. "This escalates everything."
Pinty gripped the doorknob in order to take pressure off his hips, switching weight from one leg to the other. His right foot had been numb all day, almost causing a fall. He'd had a dizzy spell earlier, so he was trying to take it easy. "Work it to your advantage."
"It just doesn't make any sense."
"Why not? It's revenge. Frond reported him."
"But why now? Why bring the state police here? It's too dangerous a distraction. Staying under the radar, that's Bucky's only plan."
"Then?"
"I don't know." Donny pulled his cap off and ruffled his hair. "I can't think."
"Severely beaten, you say?"
"And now I've got this state trooper. A buzz-cut guy, a weight lifter, right? Something to prove. Looking for some ass to kick."
"Maybe he'll come and go."
"And what if he doesn't? What if Bucky has to shut everything down for a couple of weeks? Then what?"
"Donny." Pinty leaned on the doorknob, needing to sit down. "Relax."
"Frond," said Donny, like he couldn't get it through his head. "The timing of it makes no sense."
Donny's patrol car squawked in the driveway. An unfamiliar voice came over the police radio band.
It was a state trooper, summoning Patrolman Maddox back to the station.
Donny stared at Pinty, a look of resignation on his face. "Here it comes," he said, pulling his cap back on his head.
26
HESS
"FRIGGIN' DIAL-UP," Hess was telling the Mitchum barracks dispatch. "Goddamn stagecoach technology. Three phone jacks the entire place. Radio reception's for shit, units are R-1 all over town. And my Nextel two-way, that would be like voodoo science here. Bringing fire to the aborigines. So this is the number. The non-emergency line. Requisition me some bear repellent and a telegraph machine. Right."
Hess hung up and reached for his water bottle, chugged. The screen door whined and Patrolman Maddox, in the uniform jersey and ball cap, walked in looking like a guy assigned to beach patrol a hundred miles from shore. Decent build on him, but no rip. Five months this rookie had been on the job, without academy training or state certification. As much a cop as Hess was king of Tunisia.
"Sorry to haul you back in," said Hess, not really sorry at all. "You're new on the job, huh?"
"Yeah, just part-time."
"Holding down the fort on overnights?"
"Basically."
"Got aspirations, or is this what works for you now?"
"This works now."
"Really? Surprises me. Most guys get a taste of cop, they can't think of doing anything else."
"My father was a patrolman here, long time ago."
"Walking a mile in his shoes, huh? Making a little peace with the old man?"
"I guess."
"Makes sense. So you're from this town?"
"Originally, yeah."
"Moved away? And actually came back?"
"Hard to believe, huh?"
Maddox was giving him nothing. Maybe he had nothing to give. "You knew this Frond?"
"By sight. He stood out a little."
"Been to his Web page? His online store?"
"No."
"I have had that pleasure. Crystals, quartz stones. All kinds of New Age crap. Healing metals. Wind chimes. Pottery."
"I knew he brokered sales for some of the artists living in the hills."
"My interview list is filling up with fruitcakes. Guy claimed to be a Druid."
"Uh-huh."
"An ovate, a diviner, an interpreter of Druid mysteries. Yeah. Too much Led Zep in high school. Know what an athame is?"
"A what?"
"Exactly. It's a ceremonial dagger. Pictured on his site. Ivory-handled with a double-edged blade. He put up images of all his toys, these candlesticks, some prism thing, a 'thurible,' which I learned is an incense burnerhis was in the shape of a skull. We recovered all these things from the mantle over his fireplace, but not the dagger. I know you were first on scene when they went inside. You see this athame there?"
Maddox thought before answering. The guy was careful, Hess noticed. He wasn't overeager to work with the big boys, and he wasn't intimidated either. "No."
"You seem sure."
"I wasn't looking for it, but I'm pretty sure."
"It's the only thing missing. Not worth much money."
Maddox shrugged.
"How many more witches you got up here?"
Maddox smiled. "That I know of?"
"Cult activity is what I'm getting at."
"No. Nothing I'm aware of."
Hess nodded. "Other thing I'm hearing is that Frond had issues with some of the cops. I don't have the full story, but I know he broke up a traffic stop or some such where a suspect was being beatenthat suspect being your missing sex offender."
"Yeah. That was before my time."
Hess waited, watching him. Realized he was treating this guy like a suspect. Outside the front windows he saw two sleds pull into the drivewayblue-on-blue state police cruisersescorting an old orange pickup truck carrying something under a tarp in the bed.
"This is us," said Hess, pushing out the screen door ahead of Maddox. A police station with a front porch: this was a first. Three stone steps led to the driveway.
The town DPW guy got out of his pickup, a broad-backed cluck with a close-shaved head who, with his build and facial expression, wouldn't have looked out of place in a prison yard. He wiped his dirty hands on the hips of his dirty shorts. "Don," the guy said, to Maddox.
"Here's what I need," Hess told Maddox. "We found an old safe in the house, under an upstairs bed. Your public works man here was good enough to haul it out for usyour name again?"
The guy mumbled it. He was as slow-moving as the rest, maybe even slower. Cement in the veins. The cruiser lights bothered him, making him squint.
"I could wait for morning and ship this box back to civilization, but that would cost me at least another half day and I don't want that. I need a machinist in townor a safecracker, if you got onebut more likely somebody who can drill through this thing and pop it open. Mr. Ripsbaugh here suggested a name, and, given the late hour, I wanted you to come along as a familiar face, to make introductions."
Maddox looked at Ripsbaugh.
"Kitner," Ripsbaugh said.
Maddox mulled over the name, looking surprised. He turned to Hess. "Okay,
" he said. "But there's something you need to know about Kitner first."
27
KITNER
THE KNOCKING WAS going to wake up Ma. In sleep shorts, Steve Kitner pulled the door open, first a little, then wider, seeing headlights in the dirt lot.
One of the local cops was standing on his top step. Behind him were real state police cruisers.
"Aw, shit," said Kitner, a wave of depression overcoming him like rigor mortis. "Look, I'm clean, man. Whatever. I'm innocent. This is bullshit."
The cop said, "It's nothing like that, Kitner."
He knew this day was comingknew it. Knock on his door and take him away. That shoved-up-against-the-wall feeling again. "I'm registered like I'm supposed to be. I'm a citizen now."
The cop showed him an open palm. "Listen to me."
Kitner didn't hear single words, only the general idea: the staties wanted a favor from him.
It seemed almost like a trap, though they had nothing to trap him for. He hadn't done anything wrong. They were only making him feel like he had.
A favor seemed like a good idea. "Shit, yeah, I'll help you out, why not."
He pushed through the aluminum door, reminded he was barefoot by the rocky driveway. He wore only saggy boxers and a string tank, but who cared.
Unless there were female troopers here.
He hoped Ma wouldn't wake up, see the cars, have a conniption. Wouldn't be bad later to tell her how he helped out cops. How he was being so good.
He walked inside the garage-turned-shop at the outside of the road curve, under the unlit sign reading KITNER TOOL & DIE. He hit the red stopper and the power started up, the shop blinking to life. He found a pair of the old man's safety boots and lifted his leather apron off its peg.
Two tall troopers lugged in an old safe dusty with fingerprint powder. Kitner pointed to the larger drill press and they thunked it down there and stretched their backs.
A plainclothesman with cobra arms came in, said nothing. The hard-ass act. Then the local cop and that guy Ripsbaugh, the town roadworker.
No women.
The safe, she was a beauty. Short and stout, maybe two and a half cubic feet of volume, a black dial with ivory numbers over a small silver handle.
"Pretty box," said Kitner, stroking his tonguelike goatee. "Turn her upside down. Bottom's usually the softest." Just like a woman, he almost added, but thought better, thanks to his conditioning. He smiled as the troopers did his bidding.
Nineteen eighty-eight was the last time he had shared a room with this much law. From the way the plainclothes guy eyeballed him, Kitner figured they all knew about his Merrimack County prior. How he had gotten loaded on blackberry brandy and amphetamines one night during a freak snowstorm and how, driving around looking to score more dope, he had happened upon a female motorist stuck in a snow-bank and how, after offering to help dig her out, he had strangled her unconscious instead and raped her in the backseat. They found him sleeping there later, on the nod, so the guilty plea was his best bet. He pled and did his time. Prison wasn't bad because he had been in the army, if briefly. Afterward, he tried to make it elsewhere, but the Level 3 label meant "most likely to reoffend," so he couldn't hold a job or an apartment anywhere without people smashing in his windows and calling him up in the middle of the night and threatening to slice off and feed him his own dick. So when his dad died he resettled up here and took over the old man's shop. Not like he had a long list of options.
It was better here, like a self-imposed exile. Not being able to afford a car removed a lot of temptation. Sometimes, maybe once a month, he felt the change in his metabolism, that old sweet tooth starting to tingle. Sometimes, when he looked around at the old man's shop with its dingy floors and power machinery, he saw a dungeon in waiting. Sometimes he thought about what it would be like to work on people here instead of metal. Building a person, a woman, to his own specifications, so he wouldn't have to worry about breaking laws ever again. If he had all the money in the world he would build himself a harem of women and be real good to them.
He pulled on rubber-strapped goggles and went to work. He screwed open the chuck and inserted an old drill bit shank, one he could afford to dull or even snap, closing the three jaws tight around it. He pedaled the power and turned the drill rpm to 300 and wheeled the lever down for its first bite. The box screamed, again and again, and he kept at it, spraying sparks and hot filings. Old steel and many layers thick. It was nice to let himself go. The casing resisted so he reset the bit for another assault, and with a few whining thrusts finally pushed through. He drove again and again at the casing, wailing on it, widening his bore to spread the gap. So absorbed was he that he didn't even notice when Ripsbaugh exited the shop. Finally, by adjusting and readjusting his aim, he joined all the various holes, having chewed open a gash large enough to admit a man's hand.
He offered to keep going but the plainclothesman stopped him, shining a light down inside and then handing Kitner a pair of latex gloves. Kitner tested the hot wound, then reached inside, getting his fist in almost to the elbow. He felt around the cavity and pulled out a manila envelope.
The plainclothesman took it from him. Kitner saw the local cop looking on from the open front door.
"Tax returns," said the plainclothesman, inspecting the contents. "Canceled checks." He scanned a signed document with disgust. "Fucking health care proxy. Nothing."
"There's a drawer in the top," Kitner told him, so helpful. "On the bottom now. Feels thin, if you want me to get in there."
He did. Kitner twisted a longer bit into the chuck, working deeper into the existing hole. The safe gave up the drawer with almost no resistance. The plainclothesman handed Kitner his flashlight and a second pair of latex gloves.
The guy was getting impatient. "Is it a dagger?" he asked.
Kitner noticed that the local cop had moved inside the doors now. Kitner got his arm all the way in, pulling out a short stack of small, cream-colored envelopes tied together with a cherry red ribbon. Plainclothes held out his own gloved hands and Kitner served him the packet like a fancy slice of cake. Plainclothes lifted the letters to his nosethe perfume had a vanilla smellthen pulled at the tie, the bow knot yielding and falling limp, the envelopes undressed.
Kitner watched him open the top one, pulling out thread-flecked stationery folded into thirds. The handwriting was small and neat in red ink. Two sheets, though the handwriting on the second one ended halfway down. Below it were two pencil drawings that made Kitner go up on his toes, trying to see better over Plainclothes's shoulder.
The first sketch was of a woman's nude torso. One breast hung free, the other one cupped in her hand, mashed and raised in offering.
The second one below it showed the same woman but from shoulders to knees. She sat legs open, her right hand covering her pussy except for her middle finger, stuck deep inside.
Plainclothes pulled the letter to his chest like he was hiding a poker hand, and Kitner came down off his toes, wondering if maybe he had made a noise or something. The guy moved away, taking the rest of the envelopes with him.
Plainclothes summoned the local cop with a flick of his finger and showed him the first letter, including the drawings.
"'Love always, V,'" said the plainclothes cop, pointing out the signature. "Any ideas?"
The local cop's eyes clouded, and not because of the dirty pictures. He knew, all right. It cheered Kitner, a little, to think of somebody else eating trouble for a change.
28
MADDOX
MADDOX WAITED OUTSIDE the station, on the sidewalk at the end of the grassy slope, staying near the action while maintaining enough distance between himself and the state troopers. It was just after eight and his shift was overStokes and Ullard had already driven their patrol cars past him into the drivewaybut Maddox lingered, pretending he was enjoying the morning heat and had nowhere better to go. Above him, the great flag rustled like a horse too lathered to lift its own head.
; Stokes and red-eyed Ullard came out to see him. "They closed off rooms in there," Stokes said. "What's up? They get someone?"
Maddox pretended not to know who it was, liking how, when Bucky wasn't around, the other cops could be civil if they wanted something from him.
Three kids came biking across the iron bridge, two on banana-seat bikes and one on a taller ten-speed, turning past the station. The ten-speed was an old Schwinn, black with black electrical tape wound around the handlebars.