The Killing Moon: A Novel

But now, ever since the DNA flop, Hess noticed Bryson standing back from him a bit. Tossing out questions where before he was content to listen and let Hess speak. Pointing out things to the CSS guys without routing it through Hess first.

Hess wasn't overly sensitive, but he was observant; that was what made him, working out of the smallest barracks with the least resources at hand, the trooper with the highest clearance rate of any other DU investigator statewide. Getting this understudy heat from Bryson was the capper on a bad stretch of slow-motion progress. Hess needed to turn this ship around, and fast. Not just for his batting average but for himself. Someday his boys were going to look at their dad and see not a Superman but a guy who was simply doing his best. He could accept that from his boys, but not from Bryson, not just yet.

CSS wouldn't allow the windows to be opened as they went about their glove-and-bag dissection of the sex offender's crib. What struck Hess most about Sinclair's black-curtained place were the contents of the guy's kitchen cabinets: Devil Dogs, Beefaroni, snack-pack puddings, Kool-Aid mix, and boxes and boxes of cereal, from Apple Jacks to Quisp. The ultimate pantry as imagined by a ten-year-old boy.

Hess was encouraged by the black wig they had found hanging scalplike on Sinclair's bedpost. It was human hair, more expensive than an acrylic wig and much more realistic in wear and feel. CSS had recovered eleven different hair follicles from inside Frond's bathroom, stairs, and second-floor hallway, all black, all of similar length, but varying in ethnicity: two Caucasian, two Negroid, and seven Mongoloid or Asian. Turned out, Hess learned, that dozens of different donors—including cadavers—are used to make one human-hair wig.

So, no match on the hair, but the dots were there to connect. Sinclair's credit card showed he had laid out eight bills for a new wig in March, this one an inch longer than the one found hanging on his bed—the length matching the hairs recovered from Frond's.

The wig was good and the blood was better, but what Hess needed now was to establish some before-murder connection between Sinclair and Frond. Not for motive. Motive can cloud a case as much as clarify it, especially in court. Defense attorneys can have a field day with motive. Hess himself had a legally compelling motive to do away with a dozen people who had wronged him over the years. In order to feed the DA a solid conviction, he needed to link Sinclair to Frond in life, not just in death.

To that end, Hess was pulling books from Sinclair's collection on the occult. Working the Magician and the Witch angle. It had potential, considering the missing athame. He was in the side hallway flipping through a book of voodoo recipes when a CSS criminalist entered the kitchen with Maddox in tow.

Turned out Maddox—surprise, surprise—had been inside Sinclair's place before. They were taking him through again to ascertain what surfaces he had touched—he claimed none—or what if anything appeared missing or moved.

Bottom line: Something about Maddox rubbed Hess the wrong way. Something about him Hess did not like. Did not like or did not trust. Beyond the sense that the feeling was quite mutual. It was there in the way Maddox watched the criminalists and computer techs going about their work. Nothing in his interest said "part-time cop." There was no outsider awe, only compulsive vigilance.

In other words, he did not strike Hess as a man blown back into this town by circumstance. More like a man with a knack for moving with the eye of a storm.

Hess let them finish—waited until they asked him about the empty docking station wired to Sinclair's PC, the camera to which also appeared to be missing—before catching up with him outside on the chipped sidewalk near the CSS van.

Maddox eyed the modest crowd gathered across the intersection, mothers with their arms tight around their children. Hess said, "They don't like it."

Maddox turned, didn't startle. "What's to like?"

"Sex offender accused of murder. That's a real-life monster in your neighborhood."

Maddox nodded, knowing that Hess had a point, and waiting for him to get to it.

"I gotta hand it to you, Maddox. You don't seem fazed."

"Fazed?"

"Dealing with real police. On a real crime, a murder. You don't seem too impressed with us, and you don't seem annoyed by our presence, and those are the two small-town-cop responses we usually get. Envy or resentment."

He shrugged. "I'm part-time. A spectator."

Hess reminded himself that this "spectator" was the first to get inside Sinclair's apartment after he went missing. Had turned up Sinclair's bike before anyone even knew it was gone. A good bit of diligence from a man with no career to make, just a guy passing through town.