by Chuck Hogan
There was a puff of stink that smelled almost cadaverous. Wanda's forearm above her wrist was a mess of chewed flesh. She had been using the grooming tools to pick at her wounds, one abscess dug down to the tendon, its ridges black with spoil. The burnlike lumps of skin looked boiled from beneath, maybe from unabsorbed poisons eating their way back out of her body. The sight reminded Hess of Bucky Pail's face, and how the coyote had torn into him.
She cradled the arm as though it were precious, an infant unswaddled. "I have an infection," she said.
Hess rippled with a shiver. "Good Christ."
Wanda looked at him like a corpse turned suspicious. "What's this?" She turned to Maddox for an explanation, but Maddox, holding her gaze, said nothing.
"This is an arrest," said Hess. "You have the right to remain silent ."
Still holding her gory arm at an odd angle, she looked from Hess back to Maddox again. "Donny?" she said, the reality of her situation slowly sinking in.
Maddox looked dazed. He stared into the middle ground between them.
Hess, disgusted but trying to get through this, said, "Anything you say"
"Where's Bucky?" she said, starting to panic.
Hess held up his hands to calm her down. "Anything you say"
"No!" she yelled at Hess, reeling backward as though he were attacking her. "No!" With nowhere else to go, she wedged herself between the small sink and the dirty tiled wall, shaking her rag-doll head.
They weren't even police to her. They were the embodiment of the pain of withdrawal that was to come. Agents of dopesickness. That was the fear behind her hazy eyes. And the wild betrayal when she looked at Maddox.
Hess realized he could not grab her wrists. With nothing to handcuff, she wasn't going to go easy. Why the hell am I dealing with this now? he asked himself.
"Bryson," he barked. "Get in here and arrest this woman."
48
EDDIE
EDDIE BURIED HIS brother right after the autopsy. He thought that putting him in the groundreminding people that a police sergeant had died herewould also lay to rest all the talk. So there was no wake, no service, just this graveside observance. They couldn't do an open casket anyway, and whatever religion the brothers once had was buried here with their mother, with the beads tangled up in her folded fingers.
His grief wasn't wet. It was dry like ice, angry and focused. No throwing his hands up at the sky. No cosmic "Why?" God had nothing to answer to Eddie for. Only two people did.
Scarecrow, of course. That twisted little would-be abortion. Using Bucky's own handcuffs on him (How could you let that little shit get the drop on you?) and feeding him to the wolves. Eddie wiped his nose on the sleeve of his father's old suit jacket, the double buttons on the cuff like teeth rubbing across his lips. Thinking about any aspect of the murder made him want to tear at his own skin, made him want to claw at the earthbut the one thing Eddie kept focusing on, the one thing that sickened him in the pit of his being, was Bucky's clothes being taken off. That freak seeing his brother naked. Getting his jollies. Eddie's fists weighed down his jacket pockets like two hot stones.
And then Maddox. Where was he now? Sure, he had a grudge against Bucky, and vice versa. But this disrespect? Not showing up for a fellow officer? Unforgivable. Bucky had been straight-up right about that guy, not trusting him, not liking him. And now all this drug nonsense on the news, in the papersEddie couldn't help thinking somehow it was Maddox's doing. They called it a "lab." What they didn't know was that Bucky got his first chemistry set at age seven, and that he had always been a dabbler. As kids, the two of them used to use his compounds to blow up stumps and things on their hill. They even made their own fireworks, Bucky experimenting to learn which powders made them spark red or green or blue.
And how was it Maddox had been the one to find Bucky's body? He'd sure never been to the house before that night. And where had he been hiding since? Didn't he know Eddie had questions?
It was Maddox's house they were heading to after this. Eddie was going to get his father's suit dirty, maybe. Maddox had a lot of talking to do.
A whupping noise drowned out the pastor's voice, and suddenly a helicopter with state police markings on its belly crested the trees, beating low over the graveyard, loosening petals from the condolence bouquet and flapping Bible pages in the pastor's hand. The same helicopter that had buzzed Jag Hill last night with its searchlight beaming down, searching for Scarecrow.
The flyby was almost like a tributeshould have been a tributewith the mourners shading their eyes from the sun, which, to Eddie, looked like a military-style farewell salute. Bucky deserved such a tribute.
But so few mourners. Where was the rest of the town? Didn't they know that Bucky had taken a stand for them? Who was it who first roughed up that little freak when he had the chance? And in doing so, put his life on the line for this town? This was his thanks? This was the respect they gave him? This turnout was like a vote of support for his killer.
He looked down to the low stone wall along Number 8 Road, the state police troopers grouped there. They didn't care. It wasn't one of theirs dead. Eddie looked to the side, the vehicle path that ringed the cemetery. He saw Ripsbaugh standing by his Bobcat, shovel in hand. No respect. Not even the courtesy to take a break during the ceremony. The Grim Reaper over there, couldn't wait to bury him. Like this service was holding him up.
Eddie's brother. His baby brother. Pails had lived in Black Falls almost since the beginning, and they had plots throughout this cemetery, from the thin, cracked, pre-Revolutionary-era stone markers leaning like bad teeth in the front row to the broad, modern headstones in the rear. Eight or nine separate markers here with PAIL carved into them.
Eddie was the last one now. Eddie was all alone.
People were looking at him, Big Bobby Loom nodding. Eddie hadn't been paying attention. It was his turn. He took Bucky's cop hat and set it on top of the casket, then cracked open two cans of Bud, sipped the foam off his, and set the other at the edge of his brother's open grave.
Eddie stayed down on one knee, head bowed.
Help me, Bucky. Bring me Scarecrow. Bring him to me, brother. I dedicate the rest of my life to avenging you. To clearing your everlasting memory and our proud name. And to punishing this town for turning its back on you today.
When it was over, Eddie lingered while the mourners wandered away. He stared at the coffin as though he could see inside, his brother's faceless head nestled in padded white satin. Mort Lees and Stokes and Ullard gathered at his back. A good feeling, them united. Eddie turned away his hazy eyes and they started off together, as one.
The uniformed troopers detached from the stone wall. Eddie thought they were at last coming to pay their respects, but then he saw their faces. The troopers stopped, blocking the way to the road.
"You don't want to make a scene now," said one of them, thumbs hooked inside his gunbelt.
"What scene?" said Eddie, Mort at his side. "What is this?"
The trooper said, "All of you, raise your hands, lace your fingers behind your heads."
This broiling heat. This beating summer sun. Eddie felt himself going wild inside. "This is a graveside observance."
"Graveside observance is over, Jack. Feel lucky we let you have that. You want to maintain some dignity, you comply with my command now and come along quietly. Hands up and behind your heads. Let's go."
Eddie saw one trooper move his palm flat against the butt of his sidearm, another with his fingers holding open the flap of a pouch of Mace. From that point on Eddie was blind with rage. The fight occurred as much inside him as around him. He unloaded his despair. Wanting to hit and be hit. To hurt and be hurt. Mace burned his eyes, and the name he yelled as they pulled him to the ground was Maddox's.
49
CULLEN
"BOLT DID INDEED GO OUT and get himself a good lawyer," said Cullen, sitting on a thin-cushioned divan inside Maddox's mother's house, casually bobbing the shoe of hi
s crossed leg, the hand of his outstretched arm plucking at the stiff crocheted slip covering a wheel-shaped pillow. "A smart lawyer who convinced him to roll over fast. Had no choice, really. With Pail dead, they knew Dr. Bolt was the one we would go after, get his face on TV, make an example of. And it's an easy case to prove. This way, we get what we wantPail the archvillain, whose crimes die with himand Bolt gets what he wantsto play the victim. Which is less than a half-truth, but it gets us close enough to the full story. He'll plead out early to avoid a jury. Take short time, some token like thirty months, long probation, and register as a sex offender."
"Sex offender?" said Maddox.
"Bolt occasionally hired some of the foster kids to do odd jobs around the kennel. Some of them he fed ketamine hydrochloride, which I understand is a dissociative anaesthetic for animals."
"Special K."
"What you call it on the street. Himself, he'd take some Internet Blue. Viagra." To Maddox's scowl, Cullen said, "Yup. Bolt stresses it was 'only a few times,' as though he should be eligible for further sentence reduction for not doing it to hundreds or thousands of kids. Good Sergeant Pail found out about this somehow, and instead of taking him down, used it against him. Which raises the question of how did Bucky Pail know that veterinarians handled not only pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in making meth, but the other government-restricted precursor, iodine?"
"Ibbits," said Maddox, seated across from him in a chair upholstered in brocaded rose blooms. The ticking came from a ceramic clock on the otherwise empty mantle behind him. Everything else was in open boxes, half packed, and probably had been for months. It was an old house with attendant aches and pains. Including the irregular wood creaks Cullen kept hearing upstairs.
"Ibbits indeed," said Cullen. "A fugitive from justice, a nomad with the epic misfortune of cutting through Black Falls on his way to nowhere. Of being pulled over in one of Bucky Pail's notorious speed traps. Hugo Ibbits was Patient Zero for meth here in Mitchum County. Like a spore floating on the air, who landed inside our throat. He did spend time in lockup, brother Eddie finally confirmed it. Bucky came and got him out on a Sunday night, though Eddie still insists his brother released him. He truly believes that Ibbits cracked up his own car and died in the fire. And he still backs his brother's innocence one hundred percent on the meth lab. When we showed him printouts from his brother's Internet searches, seeking property in Daytona Beach, Florida, Eddie actually broke down. Guy cried."
Maddox nodded but demonstrated no sympathy.
Cullen rounded it up quickly, tired of the details he had spent the last forty-eight hours assembling. "Wanda moved it through Sculp and others via a drop at the vet's. Sculp dealt to the other kids at his house, and the kids further seeded it around town. The supply chart was growing, doubling every eight to twelve weeks. The tipping point was approaching soon, where Bucky would have to turn it loose. Sculp dealt to Sinclair. Don't know how they connected originally, and unless Frankie gets a grip on himself after detox, we'll have to wait for Sinclair to get caught to find out."
Maddox sat forward. "They need help here for this. We have to go through town and figure out some way to deal with these people, reach out to them. They've had a taste of it now. We need to get in here and address this before it occurs to somebody that they can cook this shit themselves, in the trunk of their car."
"Well," said Cullen, "I'm with you on that, but let's be honest. That's the mopping up that never gets done. The message is always, 'Mission Accomplished,' through the press, and, yes, through my office. Drugs confiscated? Problem solved. That's the only story people want to hear. I just don't see us getting much support. Especially with the Sinclair hysteria ongoing. You following that?"
"Not really." Maddox had been out of action since Wanda Tedmond's arrest.
"Sightings all over town," said Cullen. "A twelve-year-old kid walking home from a friend's house yesterday saw Sinclair beckoning to him from some trees across the street. People've seen him cutting across their neighbors' backyards. Calls come in to nine-one-one saying he's down in the basement right now. Or their kids' toys were moved around in the drivewaymaybe it was Sinclair." Cullen smiled in amazement. "It's a legitimate phenomenon. We have a saying in the DA's office: Awaken the fears of a parent and you awaken the fears of a community."
"Police radio last night said something about coyotes"
"Roaming the streets, it's true. A couple of them got shot and killed. The Air Wing helicopter with its thirty-million-candlepower searchlight rousted them all from the state forest. Or maybe they were drawn here by the scent of fear. Of course, having state police strike teams in full ninja tac skulking through your neighbor's pasture, clearing old barns and outbuildingsthat doesn't exactly help calm things down. Doesn't ease much anxiety. My way over here, I passed people out on their front steps, hunting rifles across their laps. Guy shot out his own patio window last night, thought he saw a shadow. They're pulling down antique Winchesters from over the fireplace, riding around with loaded handguns on the passenger seat. Massachusetts has the most restrictive firearms laws in the country, but enforcing those statutes tonight would mean packing half the town into two small jail cells. This is a holiday for people, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lock and load in public, maybe even bag themselves a gen-u-ine child molester."
Maddox said, "Wonderful."
"So you can see how well martial law would go over. State police actually imposed a curfew, but nobody knows it. How do you alert a community without a Web site or cable TV channel or even a town newspaper? This is why you need to stay on. In name only, just until Sinclair is brought in. Can't totally disband a town's police department during a crisis like this. Plus, my boss's perspective is, there's one thousand seven hundred fifty-eight potential votes here, so don't mobilize taxpayers by pissing them off."
"Nobody here votes."
"Still, she doesn't want a lawless town on her register. Just let Hess and his bunch do their thing, and wait this out. Play the small-town cop for a couple more days."
Maddox nodded unhappily. "And after that?"
Cullen shrugged, flapping his tie out over his lap. "That's up to your brass. You might as well know, no matter how this Sinclair shit storm falls, I'm recommending you back with full confidence."
"Actually," said Maddox, "I was asking about the town."
"You mean their police?" Cullen shrugged again. "That's a little beyond our purview, isn't it? I'm sure they'll work it out, hire on replacements. What other choice do they have?"
Maddox accepted this quietly. He had seemed uncomfortable since answering the door, but only now did it occur to Cullen that Maddox was impatient for him to leave. Another subtle creak upstairs drew Cullen's eyes to the swirled pattern of the plaster ceiling, then the detailed molding around the edge.
"One thing I've been meaning to ask you," said Cullen. "I saw the pictures from Sinclair's camera. The one of your house here. What was that?"
"I don't know. I don't think I want to either. You ever crack open an egg and get a bloody yolk? Crack open Sinclair's head, and that's what you'd get."
"But what do you think? Was he fixated on you?"
"I don't know how he saw me. I had a secret. A secret job, a secret life. He was drawn to that. I think he wanted that for himself. A great secret existence."
"Maybe he found one. I'd watch yourself, anyway." Cullen patted his own knee, uncrossing his legs. "And now I get to go home." He stood, returning the wheel pillow to the corner of the divan, reaching for his file. "What about you? What's the night hold?"
Maddox shrugged, getting to his feet.
"Alone with your thoughts, eh? Well, enjoy your downtime. God knows, it never lasts."
The moment had arrived either to shake hands or not. Cullen tapped Maddox lightly on the chest with the file folder, then nodded and started away. Sometimes it ended that way. No finish-line string-breaking or end-zone spike. There was an excellent chance they would never even see
each other again.
On his way out through the garage, Cullen took another look at the old Ford pickup. Its rusted wheel wells and dinged sides and mud-browned tires marked it as a true, working truck, a farm rig, and, as such, unsuited to Maddox's needs. Cullen checked the front seat through the driver's window and saw a package of breath mints, a garage door remote control, and a paperback with a pink and blue cover he recognized as being one of his wife's book group novels.
A pickup truck and chick lit. Cullen was only sorry he'd never been introduced.
50
TRACY
TRACY WENT DOWNSTAIRS after she heard the car drive away.