The Killing Moon: A Novel

"Dribbles off into the leeching fields. Seeps back down through the rock and soil, reentering the water table. Then you pull it back up through your well and drink it, start the whole cycle over again."

"Yum," said Maddox.

"Earth is the best filter there is. All these other towns on water bans now, because of the lack of rainfall? That's public sewers. Piping out all their water instead of returning it to the ground. These new developments go up and bleed the land dry, just so that residents don't have to face the once-a-year stench of getting pumped out. People want to believe in magic white bowls that make everything disappear."

Maddox looked back to Ripsbaugh's rumbling tanker. "And from here…?"

"Treatment facility over in Aylesbury, they burn it clean." He left the thirsty hose sucking air on the dirt lawn, picking up a long, flexible wire tool with a two-pronged end. "I don't take it all out, though. You leave the sludge on the bottom, the bacteria that feeds on the waste. Breaks it down. The dirtiest part of the tank, that does all the work." He lay flat on the ground and reached into the smelly tomb with the tool in his gloved hand. "That's nature in action."

He worked by feel, picking around inside the PVC pipe, then pulling back sharply as though hooking a fish. Fluid from the unclogged pipe disgorged into the tank.

Ripsbaugh brought the tool out of the mouth of the chamber and deposited the dripping obstruction on a clump of dead grass. Maddox glanced back at the front door. This went beyond snooping through the Tedmonds' garbage, closer to a necropsy of their home.

The matter was sodden and soiled but not mucked brown. Some prodding and separating with Ripsbaugh's tool revealed the bulk of it to be gauze strips and first aid tape. A swollen packet that looked like a fat, cotton wallet was an absorbent bandage, and threaded into it were faint traces of black.

"Blood," said Maddox.

"That's what people flush," said Ripsbaugh, picking through it some more. He poked out two tiny, waste-streaked, zippered plastic envelopes, small enough that their only legitimate use could have been stamp collecting.

Maddox looked at Ripsbaugh, and found Ripsbaugh already looking at him. "That what I think it is?" Ripsbaugh said.

"I think so," said Maddox.

"Probably soaked too long in there for any drug trace to show up in a lab."

The guy knew his cop shows. Maddox looked back at the house again.

Ripsbaugh said, "Search ain't legal anyway. 'Plain view' is the rule. Bathrobe Bill gave his consent for you to be inside, but this goes beyond discovery."

Maddox played it down, shaking his head. "I'm not here as a cop."

Ripsbaugh looked at him, the wire tool dripping to the ground. "Then what are you here as?"

Maddox tried to come up with a good answer for that.

Ripsbaugh said, "I heard you asking Bathrobe Bill about Wanda. She still go around with Bucky Pail?"

Maddox said, "She does."

His tone let Ripsbaugh know that he would not go any further. The empty sucking of the dirty vacuum hose was the only noise as Ripsbaugh absorbed the information he had gleaned.

Maddox's back pocket started to vibrate. He pulled out his pager and checked the number.

No. Not Sinclair. Cullen. Maddox ignored it.

"Nice pager," said Ripsbaugh, watching him return it to his jeans.

"My girlfriend," Maddox said.

Ripsbaugh looked surprised.

Maddox added, "She's not from around here."

Not a good lie, but whether he believed him or not, Ripsbaugh let it go. He bent to pick up the dripping hose, about to return it to the hole. He pointed at the gauze and the little dope bags on the ground. "What about this?"

They were indeed worthless to a lab, and unallowable as evidence. Maddox nodded, and Ripsbaugh used his hungry hose to suck them up into his tanker.

The nozzle went chugging back into the septic tank, and Maddox stepped away. No more waiting for Wanda to come around to his side, he decided. No more paying out rope. He needed to find her or Frankie as soon as possible.

A voice came out of his patrol car, the police radio calling his unit number and his name.

40

HESS