The Killing Moon: A Novel

"See," said Hess, "that doesn't do it for me. This isn't the sort of thing you stumble into, police work. A job you do awhile before moving on to the next thing. People burn out all the time, but rarely do they walk out. No small-town cop I ever met didn't dream of the big time."

Maddox shrugged again. "Now you met him."

"I had this therapist one time. I was in a crisis-incident thing, a shooting; they make you do an exit interview and mandatory counseling. It's paid time, you sit, you chat." Hess letting Maddox know he didn't buy into it much. "But this one thing she told me stuck. It was that guys drawn to police work are really only sublimating antisocial or violent impulses. Policing the impulsive, aggressive parts of themselves, and at the same time allowing them an outlet. In her words. Make sense to you?"

"I guess."

"Makes sense to me. Over the years I've seen it prove out. Guys don't become cops to help old ladies cross the street. They don't come in looking to 'do good.' They come in looking to stop bad. They come in looking to impose order. It's the uniform they join for, dressing themselves up in the law and wearing it around so everyone can see: Me, good guy. Me, not bad."

Maddox pulled at his sweat-spotted POLICE jersey. "I didn't join for the uniform."

"No, I guess you didn't. You said your father was on the job once upon a time. I'm assuming that's how you got hired on, second-generation?"

"Pretty much."

"Sinclair's father was a cop."

"For a couple of years. He was a builder after that."

"Had a falling-out with the force. Now, kids of cops, that's a whole 'nother thing. Lots of second-generation cops among them—myself included. Plenty of screwups too, though, like Sinclair. And some of both. Like these Pail brothers. Those are the ones to watch out for."

"You think?" said Maddox.

Hess smiled at the way Maddox parried. "You know something else I figured out? With you filling up your own patrol car here, and the price of a gallon of gas being what it is these days? I figure working as a cop in Black Falls is actually costing you. Which shows extraordinary dedication. For someone just marking time. I mean, I consider myself a good cop. But even I have to get paid every two weeks, you know? Gotta get that take-home. Or are there some incentives to being a Black Falls cop that I don't know about?"

Maddox tapped his brim. "There's these swell caps."

"So how was it you happened to wind up inside Sinclair's apartment that first time?"

"I told you. I was driving past and saw movement in the window. He's a registered SO who hadn't been seen in a while, so I pulled over, knocked on the door. The kid answered and let me up."

"The kid. This Frankie Sculp, right?"

"That's right."

"Foster kid, been staying here. Didn't know where Sinclair was."

"Correct."

Hess nodded. "But you knew Sinclair from before, right?"

"You mean as kids? We lived on the same street, on opposite ends. But I didn't know him know him. That was a long time ago."

"You two didn't pal around the neighborhood?"

"He was two grades older than me."

"His sister was your age."

Maddox nodded slowly. Getting it now. Maddox said, "You know a lot."

"I keep my ears open," said Hess. "So she has an affair with a guy, who her brother then kills."

Maddox said, "You've interviewed her again, I assume. They weren't close. I doubt she's even spoken to him since he got out of prison."

"Still, the Sinclair connection is a pretty strong link. Would you contest that?"

"It's a link," agreed Maddox. "But not a strong one."

"In your professional opinion."

Maddox shrugged. "You asked."

"Maybe Sinclair and Frond had something else going. His books here, he's got a lot of occult stuff. Frond with his New Age whatever, it's a common area of interest. Maybe they connected after Frond dropped dime on Pail for beating up Sinclair at that traffic stop. Bonded, you know? Banded together to curse the police department, or what have you. Some sort of cult thing."

"A black mass or something."

"Or something, yeah. See, I don't chuckle about it myself, because this stupid shit, it's happened before. Retarded backwoods rituals where someone gets overzealous, goes too far. People can lose their bearings in these remote towns. Lose control."

Maddox said nothing, waiting. Hess was doing most of the talking, but sometimes that worked. Sometimes that drew them out.

"This 'Scarecrow' took a lot of abuse in this town, sounds like. Maybe he'd finally had enough. Maybe Frond let slip that he had some money stashed around his place, and maybe Sinclair was thinking about skipping town and decided he'd get a lot further with cash in hand. Maybe Frond came home and found him ransacking his place, and Sinclair panicked."

"All 'maybe's."