The Killing Moon: A Novel

"Frankie," he said. "I am alone. Please. Open this door."

"I checked your phones. For bugs."

Dr. Bolt did not understand. "You're seeing bugs now?"

"Police bugs! Surveillance! I checked every appliance."

"Every appliance? How did you—"

"And I opened up all the light switches and plug outlets. Anything near a power source. It's for your sake too."

Dr. Bolt closed his eyes, swooning a bit at the thought of the destruction awaiting him behind this door. "Frankie. This is known as clinical paranoia. You have not slept in a week—"

"Here they come again!"

Dr. Bolt heard a table—it would be the high credenza, the one standing beneath the picture window, that had been his mother's—fall, and then glass—yes, the frame holding his grandmother's engagement portrait, an antique, irreplaceable—smash and tinkle.

He whipped toward the street. A white sedan approached.

"Don't let them in, doc!" came Frankie's voice behind the window. "They'll kill you to get to me!"

The automobile rolled past, and Dr. Bolt recognized Mrs. Poulin leaning over the wheel. She brought her cockatoo in to get his wings clipped every three months. The bird's name was Hamilton. Mrs. Poulin waved.

Dr. Bolt stood there holding up his flat hand.

"What are you doing?" said Frankie. "Are you signaling them? You're signaling them!"

Dr. Bolt put down his shaking hand. Earlier in the day, one of his best customers, the kind of woman who could single-handedly keep his practice afloat for an entire year, who some in town unkindly referred to as the Zoo Lady, had asked him why he had left his stereo playing so loudly to an empty house.

And just now, Tracy Mithers, from the llama farm on Sam Lake, showed such concern for him as he threw together his bag and begged off in evident distress, pager in hand.

He was going to lose everything.

What Frankie did not know—and could not ever know, for it would only explode his already flaming paranoia—was that Dr. Bolt already had a legitimate reason to fear the Black Falls police. And by Black Falls police, he meant specifically Bucky Pail.

"Frankie. You paged me, do you remember? You said you needed me, you needed my help. I am here now. Let me come inside. Let me help you."

The curtain rippled again. He heard breathing on the other side of the door.

"Please," said Dr. Bolt.

The lock turned. The door was pulled open a few inches.

Frankie stood behind it, a steak knife in his hand, its tip bloodied.

His hunted eyes searched the street and yard, and then, settling on Dr. Bolt's kindly country-doctor face, the stress lines around them slackened. For a moment Frankie was just a teenager again, possessed of the neediness and confusion that marked his age.

He pulled the door open wider, and Dr. Bolt saw that Frankie had been using the knife tip to pick at the sores on his face.

"Help me," Frankie said.

He was an ugly boy, yet there was something beautiful in the pain of his ugliness, something angelic and touching. His vulnerability was exquisite. A mutt with a sad limp and a mangy coat. Wanting only to lay his head in the lap of an owner who would not mistreat him.

Dr. Bolt had always assumed that the predator-prey relationship came down to the simplicity of strength versus weakness. But it was so much more symbiotic than that. He saw it now as a negotiation of vulnerabilities. The very same vulnerability that made Dr. Bolt easy prey for a blackmailer like Bucky Pail—specifically, Dr. Bolt's affinity for the attentions of much younger men—was what compelled Dr. Bolt to exert his advantage over Frankie Sculp. In other words, the strong were just as vulnerable to the weak. There was no one without the other.

Inside, he found his living room dismantled. Completely destroyed. A shambles. What a damn fool he was. Much too old for these ups and downs.

But this was what a life without love did to you. It put you at risk. To the temptations of a mercurial teenager, and to a dark manipulator like Bucky Pail.

Dr. Bolt allowed the frail, weeping boy into his arms and helped him down the hallway to the bathroom, to dress his self-inflicted wounds.

38

CULLEN