Bad Moon (Kat Campbell Mysteries)

by Ritter, Todd

  To my family

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  July 20, 1969

  Wednesday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Friday

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Todd Ritter

  About the Author

  Copyright

  JULY 20, 1969

  It was the baby, of all things, that woke her up. Not her husband. Not the police. Just the baby and his crying.

  Maggie had grown accustomed to the sound. Having two kids did that to you. Sometimes she’d accidentally sleep right through whatever racket one of them was making. But that night was different. The crying was different. It wasn’t the irritated wail of an infant who was tired or the pained whimper of one who was teething. It was, Maggie realized, a cry of terror, and the noise tugged her out of sleep, out of bed, and out of the room.

  Along the way, her bleary eyes caught the clock on her dresser. It was almost eleven. She had been asleep for more than three hours. Not as bad as some days, but not good, either. Not good at all. And despite the rest, she still felt weary as she crossed the hall to the nursery. Still utterly exhausted.

  In the nursery, Maggie flicked on the overhead light. The sharp, sudden glow made her eyes sting in addition to being bleary. It didn’t matter. She could navigate the room with her eyes closed, which is exactly what she did. The memories of hundreds of similar trips guided her—rocking chair to the right, dresser to the left, don’t stub your toe on the toy chest. Once she reached the crib, Maggie opened her eyes.

  The crib was empty.

  The crying, however, continued.

  Maggie heard it, loud and fearful. She rotated in the center of the room, looking for a possible explanation. Had the baby somehow escaped the crib and crawled into the closet? The dresser? Another room?

  It was only after two more twirls that Maggie’s sleep-addled mind caught up with her spinning body. When it did, she realized the source of the crying wasn’t in the nursery at all. It was coming from downstairs and had been the entire time. Only now it sounded more urgent, more frightened.

  Maggie left the nursery and clomped down the stairs. At the bottom, she expected to see Ken reclining in the living-room La-Z-Boy, the baby wriggling in his arms. Instead, the chair was occupied by Ruth Clark, whose spindly arms struggled to stay wrapped around the writhing child.

  Ruth, who was only sixty but looked at least a decade older, lived down the street. She and Maggie were friends, but not friendly enough for Ruth to be in her house, holding her child, at almost eleven o’clock at night. Yet there she was, trying to hush the baby in the gray glow of the television.

  “Ruth? What’s going on?” Blinking in confusion, Maggie noted what her neighbor was wearing—a nightgown stuffed into threadbare trousers, flip-flops on her feet. She had dressed in a hurry. “Where’s Ken?”

  “You were asleep,” Ruth said with forced cheer. “So he asked me to come over and keep an eye on the baby. He had to step out for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  Ruth stayed silent as she pressed the baby into Maggie’s arms. He had been wrapped tightly in a blanket, which covered everything but his face. Whether it was Ken’s doing or Ruth’s, Maggie didn’t know. Either way, it was a bad move on such a muggy night. Both the baby and the blanket were drenched with cold sweat, which explained the bawling.

  The crying softened once Maggie settled onto the couch and loosened the blanket. Ruth sat next to her, uncomfortably close. She was hovering, Maggie realized. And watchful.

  “Did Ken say where he was going?”

  Ruth’s reply—“He didn’t”—was rushed and unconvincing.

  “What about when he’d be back?”

  “Soon.”

  “I’ll wait up for him. You don’t need to stick around.”

  “I think I should stay.”

  Maggie didn’t have the energy to protest, not that Ruth would have allowed it. The finality of her tone made it clear she intended to stay. With nothing left to say or do, Maggie stared at the television.

  What she saw astounded her.

  The screen was mostly a grainy blur—fizzy patches of black and gray. Then an image took shape through the haze. It was a figure in a bulky uniform, looking like a ghost against a background of endless darkness. The figure was on a ladder, hopping downward rung by rung.

  It paused at the bottom. It placed a foot onto the ground. It spoke.

  “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  “Sweet Lord,” Ruth said. “He’s really standing on it.”

  He was Neil Armstrong. It was the moon. And Ruth was correct—the astronaut was standing on its surface just as easily as Maggie now sat in her living room.

  Eyes fixed on the TV, she immediately thought of Charlie. Nine years older than the baby, he had been moon crazy the past year. Earlier that afternoon, when Apollo 11 actually touched down on the moon’s surface, Charlie had cheered, jumped, and cried until he made himself sick.

  He would want to see this, Maggie knew. History was taking place.

  “I’m going to wake Charlie.”

  Ruth trailed her to the stairs. “Maggie, wait!”

  Maggie didn’t stop, continuing up the stairs with rushed purpose. At the top, her bare feet made slapping sounds on the hardwood floor as she moved down the hall to Charlie’s bedroom. Ruth remained downstairs, calling up to her.

  “Please come back! Charlie’s not there!”

  Maggie stopped, hand against the closed bedroom door. “What do you mean?”

  “Come back downstairs,” Ruth said. “I’ll explain.”

  Maggie did the opposite, pushing into the room instead. The streetlight outside the window cast a rectangle of light that stretched across the floor. Just like in the nursery, she didn’t need it. She knew every inch of the bedroom, from the telescope in the corner to the model rockets lined up on the bookshelf.

  The window was open, letting in a rainy breeze that dampened the curtains. Beneath it was Charlie’s bed, draped in a comforter dotted with moons, stars, and planets. Holding the baby with one arm, Maggie used her free hand to lift the comforter and whip it away.

  The bed, much like the baby’s crib earlier, was empty.

  “Please come downstairs.” Ruth now stood in the doorway, breath heavy, face pinched.

  “Where is he? Did Ken take him somewhere?”

  Ruth moved into the room and tried to
clasp her hand. Maggie yanked it away. “Answer me, Ruth. Where is my son?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  But Maggie did. She understood quite well as she shuffled backward and plopped onto the empty bed. The bed that should have contained Charlie. Her boy. Whose whereabouts were now unknown.

  “Is that where Ken went? To look for him?”

  “He called the police,” Ruth said. “Then he woke me and Mort.”

  Mort was Ruth’s husband. Maggie presumed he was also looking for Charlie, along with the police and God knows who else. Apparently everyone but her knew her son was gone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Ken didn’t think you’d wake up. And if you did, he knew you’d be worried.”

  Damn right she was worried. Her body might have been motionless on her son’s bed, but her mind was a whirling dervish of fears and bad thoughts. Where was Charlie? How long had he been gone? Was it too late to find him? When Maggie’s brain settled down, her body started up again. She rose from the bed and stomped past Ruth into the hallway.

  “I have to look for him,” she said. “I have to find him.”

  Again, Ruth tried to stop her. “I’ll take the baby.”

  “No.”

  Maggie tightened her arms around the infant. One of her children was missing. She wasn’t going to let the other out of her sight until he was found.

  She descended the stairs into the living room. The TV was still on, still broadcasting surreal pictures from another world. A second astronaut had joined Armstrong, both of them leaping like jackrabbits across the moon’s surface. Maggie moved right past it, not caring. Her only concern was her children, not the moon, or the astronauts, or the fact that she was running outside in the rain in bare feet, denim cutoffs, and a T-shirt stained with baby puke.

  She made it to the end of the driveway before seeing two men approach the house. One of them was Ken. The other was Mort Clark. Maggie looked past them, hoping to see Charlie lagging behind. He wasn’t.

  “Did you find him?” Maggie asked as she met them in the middle of the street. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Ken said. “I have no idea.”

  He looked pale and haunted—more ghostlike than those astronauts on TV. The rain had flattened his hair. Large drops of it clung to his beard.

  “We were watching TV,” he said. “They were showing stuff about the moon landing and Charlie said he wanted to go for a bike ride and look at it. He said he thought he’d be able to see the astronauts from here.”

  It was a ridiculous notion, but very much in line with Charlie’s thinking. Maggie easily pictured him hopping on his bike—midnight blue with badly painted stars—and pedaling off in excitement.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “The falls.”

  One of Charlie’s favorite places was the creek that rushed through the woods behind their cul-de-sac. There was a dirt path there, perfect for biking, that led to a footbridge. From that perch, you could see the water hurtle over Sunset Falls, which plunged thirty feet into a rock-strewn pool. They had allowed Charlie to ride there alone for the first time this summer. Maggie now regretted that decision.

  “Did you check the bridge?” she asked.

  When Ken sighed, Maggie suddenly felt the urge to hit her husband. She would have done it, too, had she not been holding the baby. She would have let loose with a few good punches while asking Ken why he didn’t go with their son, why he couldn’t find him, why he was talking to her instead of still looking for Charlie.

  “Of course I checked the bridge. It was the first place we went. The police are still there.”

  Then they needed to look somewhere else. She needed to look somewhere else, since Ken had made it clear his searching was over for the night. Maggie felt herself moving away from him, compelled to do something. Charlie wouldn’t be found with her just standing there.

  “Where are you going?” Ken asked.

  Maggie didn’t answer. Wasn’t her destination perfectly clear? She was going to find her son. End of story.

  Ken called after her, his voice muted in the rain. “I think you should leave the baby with me. I don’t—”

  He stopped himself, but it didn’t matter. He might as well have just finished the sentence and let the truth escape. He didn’t trust her with the baby. Not after what happened in May. It’s why he hadn’t bothered to wake her when Charlie went missing. It’s why he had sent Ruth to watch the baby earlier. It’s why he was trying to stop her from leaving now.

  But Maggie couldn’t stop. Her body wouldn’t let her. She had no choice but to cross the street, even as the rain increased in force. Even as Ken begged her to come back. And even as the distance between her and her husband grew wider with each passing step.

  *

  There were four houses on the cul-de-sac, set apart by wide lawns and rows of sycamore trees. Ken and Maggie’s was by far the smallest—practically a cottage—and the most full. Two parents and two kids, crammed together in a house that Maggie struggled to keep clean. Across the street, in a cruel reflection of her own abode, sat the home of Lee and Becky Santangelo. It was everything Maggie’s house was not—large, rambling, spotless.

  With Ken watching her from the driveway, Maggie crossed the Santangelos’ yard. It was so much larger than her own, an expanse of crisp green kept trim by a local teenage boy. At the moment, though, it was soggy with rainwater. It squished between her toes as she made her way to the front porch. Once there, she grabbed the giant brass knocker that dominated the door and rapped twice. When no one answered, she knocked again, this time slamming continuously until Lee Santangelo eventually opened it.

  Like their disparate houses, Lee was the complete opposite of Ken. He was taller, for one thing, and far more handsome. Strong build, matinee-idol looks, always clean shaven. Normally, he was pleased when Maggie dropped by with Charlie and threw the door wide open for them. But this night was different. The door opened only a crack as Lee peered at her with a mixture of surprise and annoyance.

  “Maggie,” he said, pretending to be happy to see her. “What’s going on?”

  They were the same three words Maggie had used to greet Ruth Clark. Hearing them directed at her, she realized just how rude and suspicious they sounded.

  “It’s Charlie. We can’t find him.”

  Music was playing loudly inside. Something psychedelic that Maggie couldn’t place. Beyond that, barely audible, was a constant whirring sound. When Maggie tried to peek inside, Lee blocked her view with a quick side step. Seeing the length of his body, she realized he was wearing next to nothing—a pair of boxer shorts and an unbuttoned shirt, tossed on no doubt for her benefit. It didn’t matter. He could have been stark naked and she wouldn’t have cared.

  “And you think he could have come here?” Lee asked.

  “With all this moon business going on, I thought he might have stopped by. You know, because—”

  Because Lee Santangelo was an astronaut. Or had trained to be one. Or had almost been one. Maggie didn’t know the details. She only knew that Charlie had driven him crazy with questions all summer.

  “He hasn’t been by tonight. I’m sorry. But I’ll definitely keep an eye out.”

  “If you see him, please tell him we’re looking for him. And that we’re worried.”

  She added that last part in the hope that Lee would fling open the door and let her look around the place. Instead, he tried to close it. Maggie, thinking fast, blocked the door with her foot. The squeeze of it against her big toe made her wince.

  She persisted, despite the pain. “What about Becky?”

  “What about her?”

  “Maybe she saw him tonight.”

  Maggie knew Charlie had a crush on Lee’s wife, even if the boy didn’t know it himself. It was well within reason that Charlie could have bypassed Lee
and instead sought out Becky, who offered him cookies, tousled his hair, and tut-tutted over his scraped knees.

  “She’s not here,” Lee said slowly. “She’s gone until tomorrow. I’m the only one here.”

  And that, Maggie realized, was all the information she would get at the moment. Time was ticking, and every second spent with Lee Santangelo was another second wasted in the search for her son. So she thanked him for his time, apologized for bothering him, and moved on.

  She was halfway across the lawn when a sudden movement from the Santangelos’ house caught her eye. It was a curtain being rustled in a second-story window. Maggie saw a shadowy face peek out from behind it and stare down at her. She kept walking, pretending she hadn’t noticed. But when she reached the edge of the yard, she allowed herself one last, quick glance. What she saw was a silhouette standing in front of the window. Maggie could make out a thin frame and shaggy, shoulder-length hair.

  A woman.

  Maggie didn’t have a clear enough view to see if it was Becky Santangelo. But who it was didn’t really concern her. What mattered was that Lee had lied. He was definitely not alone.

  *

  Pebbles jutted into the soles of Maggie’s bare feet as she crossed the street. Each stone she stepped on caused a small flare of pain. For that, she was grateful. It took her mind off the knot of worry lodged in her chest. The distraction was only momentary, but considering the circumstances, she’d take what she could get.

  In front of her house again, Maggie noticed that Ken had finally gone inside. Through the front picture window, she saw him pacing in the living room. His mood earlier had been maddeningly unreadable—equal parts annoyance, worry, and prickliness. But the unfiltered view through the picture window showed a man who was clearly distressed. He stared at the floor. He tugged at his beard. He closed his eyes and pressed a thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, which Maggie knew meant he was trying to stave off a headache.

  Part of her wanted to return to the house and comfort him. Despite all the mistrust of the past few months, she still loved him deeply. But Maggie needed comfort, too. She knew that would only come once Charlie was found safe and sound. So she pressed on, even though her arms were tired from carrying the baby and her legs were weak with worry.