The Killing Moon: A Novel

The bell finally stopped, the silence loud, and then the caller backed out from the doorway into the street. Frankie saw the black cap and the white jersey with the blue word on it. A Black Falls cop checking the windows. Frankie froze. The curtain shifted ever so slightly, and he realized that this particular window was open a crack.

The cop was still looking. Frankie saw that he was trying to figure out a way to climb up and get inside.

Frankie backed away fast. Too fast.

"Hey!"

The cop's eyes had jumped. He was yelling now.

"Hey!"

Frankie heard boots on the stoop and the doorbell ringing again. Frankie swiped at his nose, pinched it hard. The cop was pounding on the door.

Frankie, knowing he had been made, opened the door to the downstairs. The cat stink rose up at him as he started down, arguing with himself all the way. He remembered things Dill had said about the cops in town. He almost turned back upstairs. The cop was bellowing, "Open up, Sinclair!" It was kind of a Three Little Pigs moment. He had a forceful voice that threatened to blow the house down.

At the first-floor landing, Frankie threw the lock and pulled back on the door—and the cop pushed right inside, backing Frankie hard against the handrail post at the bottom of the stairs.

"Who the hell are you?" said the cop. He had been expecting Dill.

"Frankie. Frankie Sculp."

This cop wasn't one of the brothers, the ones with the cave eyes. "Sinclair," he said, gripping Frankie's shirt as he looked up the stairs. "Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know. He's not here?"

"I thought—maybe you were him."

"What are you doing here? How'd you get in? You break in?"

"No." Frankie was fishing around inside the pocket of his cargo shorts for the key when, all of a sudden, the cop clamped a hand around Frankie's neck, gripping his forearm.

Frankie stared, eyes bulging. He tried to gulp but the cop's hand choked it.

"Slowly," said the cop.

The guy was pissed. Frankie blinked a couple of times, pleadingly, in lieu of speech, until the cop let up on his throat and then his arm. Frankie brought out Dill's apartment key dangling at the end of a green sneaker lace.

The cop yanked it out of his hand. "He gave you this?"

Frankie swallowed hard, little tears popping out. He nodded.

"I'm around this corner a lot," said the cop. "How come I don't see you going in and out?"

Frankie shook his head. He shrugged.

"How long you been here today?"

"Dill lets me stay," Frankie said.

"Overnight?"

"Not usually."

"But sometimes. I want to know about recently."

"The past few days."

"Past few days. How many?"

"A week. I been waiting for him."

"You're saying you haven't seen Sinclair in a week."

Frankie nodded.

"How old are you, Frankie Sculp?"

"Sixteen."

"Where do you live?"

"With the Ansons. Over on Mill."

"Ansons? You a foster kid?"

Frankie shrug-nodded, feeling like he had been made to admit something.

"They know you're out here, where you are?"

"They know I'm out."

"At the apartment of a sex offender, they know that part of it?"

"I guess, not really."

Not that they would even care. The Ansons were a lot more interested in getting blitzed on their state stipend than feeding their foster kids.

"What do you come here for?"

"I just hang."

"What's here for you? Sinclair is your…"

"He's my friend."

"Your friend. That's great. You admire him? Want to be like him?"

"I don't know."

"How is it you 'hang'? What does that mean?"

"You know. Video games and stuff. He teaches me magic tricks sometimes."

"So what's he done now? Made himself disappear?"

"I don't know."

The cop was making a face, but it might have been the pet stink getting to him from the Zoo Lady's door. "Let's take a look upstairs."

Frankie went up ahead of him. The floor of the left-right hallway at the top was crowded with magic stuff, stacks of books and video dubs, poster tubes.

The cop looked both ways. "And you're sure he's not here now?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"But absolutely positive."

Frankie nodded.

"You two didn't have a quarrel recently, anything like that?"

Frankie tried to find the meaning behind the question. "A quarrel?"

"A spat. A fight, an argument. I'm not going to find him in bags or something, chopped up?"

Frankie didn't answer that. This cop was crazy.

"Okay," the cop said. "Come on."

Frankie followed him down the right end of the hall, past the door to the balcony, turning left into the living room. The cop's eyes went from the scarlet velvet wallpaper to the ruby loveseat to the old costume trunk set out as a coffee table. The Xbox console was hooked up to a small TV, where two ultimate fighters were frozen in midkick. Magic equipment and props were stacked up high behind the bar to the left: a silver-curtained disappearing booth, a levitating board, a card-dealing cart, juggling pins, Houdini-style chains and padlocks. At the opposite doorway stood a winking circus strongman, a seven-foot plaster dummy wearing only a loincloth and a handlebar mustache, a magician's top hat on his chipped bald head.