by Chuck Hogan
Maddox said, "No."
"As a life, it ain't always easy. But what we have together, it's enough for me. Oh, it's plenty." Ripsbaugh nodded. "You're looking at me like"
"No, no. No."
"You never been married. There's more to it than sex. Lots more. You want to know what she does for me? So dirty I get sometimes, coming home at the end of a day? She runs me a bath. She kneels by the tub, and she bathes me. You ever been bathed, Don? Anyone ever run a warm washcloth over your shoulders? Since you were a kid, ever been shampooed? Her fingers in my scalpI'd take that touch over any other kind, any day of the week."
Maddox nodded, trying not to tip his embarrassment. "You don't have to explain yourself to me. Or to anyone."
"Sure I do. Thing is, she's my wife. You sign on, you sign on for life."
Maddox admired that, even admired Ripsbaugh, at the same time he pitied him. His openness, though a bit unnerving, stirred something in Maddoxbeyond his desire simply to change the topic. "I want to run something by you, Kane. Have you tell me if I'm crazy or not. You follow the forensics shows and that sort of thing, right?"
"A bit," he said, defensive at first, as it was this interest that had helped get him into trouble. "This about Dill?"
"The blood evidence is the main thing. I mean, they do have hairs. But hairs can be moved around. And they have sneaker tread impressions, but shoes can get around also, it seems to me. And if you have the guy's shoes well then, right there you have fibers from his residence. So it comes down to the blood, essentially."
"Okay." Ripsbaugh was starting to get it. "But if it's not Dill"
"Just talking here. Thinking it through. Tell me about blood. What could someone do with it?"
"Well," said Ripsbaugh, "it congeals fastthat much I know. It clots, making it tricky to handle. If you don't have a live donor you can store it cold, I guess. Maybe forty-two days, something like that."
"Can't you freeze it?"
"Sure. It freezes."
"Becauseand then you wouldn't even need liquid blood. If all you wanted was for it to be discovered in a sink trap, you set it there frozen. An ice cube of blood. Then you torch the house, knowing that the heat traveling along the pipes will melt it. All you need to show up there is a trace."
"Well, I suppose. But hold on. Who's doing this?"
"My point is only that the blood, even skin cells, could have gotten to these crime scenes some other way than directly from Sinclair being present. Stressing 'could.'"
"I guess," said Ripsbaugh. "But then, where is Dill?"
"Say he's compromised in some way. I don't know. Someone holding him hostage or something."
"Okay. But why?"
"I don't know. You got me there."
"No fingerprints?"
"No. Talcum powder, though. As from the inside of latex gloves."
"Okay. But there would only be powder if he took off his gloves."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Talcum powder used for anything else?"
Maddox shook his head. Because he didn't know, and because now he was starting to reconsider the whole thing. Verbalizing his speculations had made him sound half desperate. What was he clinging to? Why couldn't it be Dill Sinclair? And why the hell did he care? "Sounds crazy, right?"
"It's a theory, I guess."
"Anyway," Maddox said. Enough of this graveyard conversation. "That's all someone else's problem right now."
Ripsbaugh squinted at him in the sun. "I don't suppose you're staying on here."
Maddox thought of Tracy walking out on him the night before. He shook his head.
"How soon?"
"Soon," said Maddox.
"And after you go, then what?"
The thought occurred to Maddox as he stood there. "You know what, Kane? You should join up."
Ripsbaugh scowled. "Too old."
"You kidding? They'd bend the rules. They can't afford to be choosy."
"Val wouldn't like it. Her father having been a cop and all."
"You have the interest in police work. And what does this force need now but an honest cop who knows the town and cares about its future? The way Pinty was back in his day. A steward of Black Falls." Maddox stepped back, convinced, before starting away. "It's a good fit. At least think about it."
"Hey," said Ripsbaugh after him. "If I guessed DEA, would I be wrong?"
Maddox smiled but did not look back. "Think about taking the job."
55
MADDOX
HE PARKED IN HIS driveway, but instead of going into his house, found himself walking down the street. It had been a July of constant humidity, like living inside a cloud. Tomorrow the weather reports promised an afternoon downpour and electrical storm to jolt the atmosphere and rearrange air quality, the way an electroshock treatment alters chemistry in the brain.
This road he had grown up on, Silver Leaf Lane, rated little traffic, its houses set well apart, most of them tired 1970s-style split-levels and wood-sided ranches with stone chimneys and one-car garages. The last house before a stretch of undeveloped land emptying onto the cross street had been the Sinclairs'. It sat dark and dead on a plot of dry gray turf, a small Colonial with an unattached two-car garage. The mortgaging bank had seized the property after Jordy's death but failed to resell it: because of the Sinclairs' notorious name, because of plummeting home values in town after the mill closing, and because Jordy Sinclair had built it himself, the house having serious structural flaws.
Maddox started up the cracked, weed-sprouting driveway, drawn by his curiosity about Dill Sinclair, and curiosity about the past in general, about this street he had lived on, the world at that time. All the secrets he never knew.
The first-floor windows remained boarded up, the brick stairs crumbling, the gutters long ago raided for aluminum. The garage at the head of the driveway was swaybacked like a falling barn, a faded real estate sign lying among its dead brown hedges.
The backyard was narrow, its grass long and weedy and tired of growing. Maddox remembered the tree house where his mother had found Dill smoking her stolen cigarettes, and located it some ten yards back in the trees: open-faced with a slanted roof of surplus lumber and ladder steps, nail heads crusted with sap.
He returned to the yard, intending to complete a full loop of the house and be done with it. But a concentration of buzzing flies drew him to the rear corner, where a dead toad lay rotting in the basement window well. Maddox backed away from the flies, then noticed some zipping back and forth between there and the bottom plank of the nearest boarded window.
The plank did not sit flush with the rest. When Maddox touched it, it moved.
He tugged and the entire board pulled away in his hand.
The one above it came away just as easily, both planks simply propped up there on the sill. He could see where the pointed ends of the carpenter nails were twisted, the wood, at some point, having been pried away.
The revealed window was without glass, the frame itself ripped out. Someone had broken the seal on this place. Someone had been inside.
He waved off the flies and peered in. Dark, because of the boarded windows, but after a moment he could make out the vague contours of an empty room, with flattened moving cartons on the floor and an empty cardboard roll of packing tape.
Maddox ducked back out again, hassled by the flies. He looked around the side of the house, wondering if he should do this. Then he hoisted himself up over the sill.
Headfirst was the only way in. His hands found the floor, dusty but clear of broken glass. He got his legs through, the soles of his Timberlands thudding hollow in the gloomy room. Two rooms, actually, open to each other, running the length of the house. Dust floated up as he moved, grit stirred by his presence like a ghostly thing trying to resurrect itself out of ashes.
A short passageway took him past a bathroom alcove into the kitchen, empty except for an old refrigerator, stove, and pulled-open trash compactor, mouse droppings peppering
the countertop.
Continuing clockwise, he moved through another doorway into a small dining room with a fireplace of blackened brick. Cobwebs formed filament shelves in the corners, fist and heel holes cratering the walls.
He arrived at the bottom of a staircase, almost back where he had begun. The balusters along the bottom were all karate-kicked in half, the wooden handrail ripped out of the wall. He started loudly up the steps, proclaiming his presence.
The second floor was four more empty rooms. Some small animal had hoarded niblets of what looked like Indian corn; the nylon webbing of an old umbrella left behind in one of the open closets had been shredded and chewed. The plaster walls were cracked under the weight of the roof.
Back downstairs, Maddox retraced his steps to the short passageway between the kitchen and the first room. A door stood ajar opposite the bath, its unpainted edge showing the grain of the original wood inside. The hinges gave with a rusty whine, Maddox smelling basement. It was dark down there, a low-ceilinged stairway hooking ninety degrees at the halfway point. The cellar from every horror movie ever made.
He listened. He waited.
"Police!" he barked. Worth a try. "Who's down there?"
He heard nothing except the open-channel static of anxiety in his head. He wished he had brought his flashlight. He tried the light switch inside the door, as though it might magically work for him. It did not. But like a gamer needing to sweep every corner of every virtual room before moving on to the next level, he pushed ahead down the dark plank steps.
"I'm coming down," he announced.
From the bottom step, he scoped out the area on either side, spotting a pair of glinting eyes that turned out to be two crushed beer cans. The window wells admitted just enough sunlight to see by. He moved along the edge of the underside of the stairs, something big and bulky appearing behind the base of the chimney like an animal rising up: a rusty oil tank on four legs.
His boot toe nudged another can, which he kicked away as if it were a rat. The acoustics were unsettling, and there was a trapped smell here, less an odor than a vapor. Maddox's hand found the wood grip of his revolver. He hesitated leaving the perceived safety of the underside of the stairs, but did so, turning, the side wall of the basement revealed.
Its paneling was marked with spray paint. The boldest of the graffiti read: Black Falls is Helllll!
One of the images from Sinclair's camera's memory stick. Suddenly, Maddox felt him here. Felt Sinclair's presence. In this basement where he had practiced his magic routines obsessively. Where Val had once found him playing with a hangman's noose. Sinclair had returned here recently, at least once, standing right where Maddox stood now, camera in hand. Going over old ground like a dog on a short tether, looking for reasons or explanations. Looking for answers. Just as Maddox was doing now. What was it Val had said?
I feel like everything with Dill, everything, is this attempt to get back his childhood.
Would he kill to get it back?
Maddox heard a creak. A gritty scrape. A thumping, muffled; something moving overhead.
Footsteps on the floor above him. Someone else was inside the house.
Maddox's revolver cleared his holster. He moved silently to the bottom of the stairs. He started up slowly, the handgun thrust before him like a flashlight, turning at the bend, making for the brighter dimness of the open door at the top.
He caught a hint of shadow. Someone in the kitchen. He crept ahead, wincing at the little wooden groans beneath his boots.
The house was silent up top as he crossed the threshold into the hall. The piece of the kitchen he could see was clear. With his revolver closer to his chest now, he rounded the corner, sensing movement in the dining room and whipping toward it hard.
He saw the wide-brimmed campaign cover first, then the silver whistle and badge. He pulled off his aim, and the trooper in front of him howled and did the same with his sidearm, then spun off and ripped a string of curses.
"Okay, okay," Maddox said, settling himself down, his heart kicking at his chest.
"What the fuck are you doing here!" howled the red-faced trooper, angry and scared at how close he'd come.
"Easy." Maddox was conciliatory. "Easy. Hold up."
The trooper stabbed his still-drawn Sig Sauer P226 toward the floor. "Fuck you, 'hold up,' you fucking dickhead! Almost got your ass killed! The fuck are you doing in here?"
"The fuck am I doing?"
"I'm responding to a call, motherfucker. Like a real fucking law officer. Joke-ass local yokel. Get out of my face."
The trooper thrust his sidearm back into his duty belt holster and strode out of the room.
As Maddox climbed back out through the missing window, the high branches of the backyard trees began to shudder. Leaves twisted and blew down as a concussive whupping rose up overhead. The roaring flutter of a Massachusetts State Police Air Wing helicopter.
The trooper had his hat off now, a uniform violation for a road trooper in the MSP. He was snarling into his shoulder radio. "Nothing showing some local dink playing cop, snooping around false alarm."
A neighbor must have seen a manMaddoxwalking 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."