The Killing Moon: A Novel

She clicked keys on her computer with long, jeweled nails, eyeing Maddox while the pages printed silently behind her. A Portuguese woman with dark eyes and a broad nose. Line-thin eyebrows and a faint scar beneath her left ear, riding over her jaw. She handed him the copies and said, "You don't remember me."

Maddox went cold.

She said, "You're wearing a uniform now."

Lowell, he remembered. Eight years ago. Her name would come to him. Her hospital ID was on her belt, too low for him to read.

She said, "I was Bobby Omar's girl."

She was alone inside the window, and there was no one in the hallway within earshot. She seemed as interested in keeping this private as he was.

Maddox said, "I didn't recognize you."

"You haven't changed. Much."

He had to be careful. So many different ways this could go. "I guess Bobby's upstate now?"

"I guess so."

"You don't visit?"

She shook her head, earrings tinkling.

"Glad to hear it," he said.

"He trusted you, you know. He always said he was never sure about the others, never sure about anyone. Even me. Why he kept that wolf on a chain in our crib. But he was sure about you. Mad Dog Maddox."

She seemed to mean this as a compliment. Maddox folded and refolded the pages in his hands, stopping once he realized he was doing so.

"It was a lifetime ago," she said. "Who I was then. The anger I had for everything, for everyone. I was in so deep." She looked away, curling her tongue. "I'm out here with my sister and her husband now. I have this job. I'm dating one of the drivers."

He sensed her eagerness, her need for his approval.

Back outside, past the ambulance, he made his way to the reserved parking for police vehicles. Maddox would have to find another way into the hospital from now on. His life was like that, whole towns and city neighborhoods, entire regions of the state, walled off to him.

Once he left the overhang and the bright sun hit him, he remembered the pages in his hand. He smoothed out the wrinkles and skimmed the forms. He noticed that the boys' addresses were identical: that of the Ansons, the foster family in town. The same family responsible for Frankie Sculp.

Below that, the person who signed the boys out from the hospital had checked off "Guardian" next to her name. The signature was illegible, but the name typed next to it read, "Tedmond, Wanda."

THE ANSONS' RANCH house looked outwardly normal in the same way a shaken can of soda looks fine until you crack it open. The weedy land was once a thriving apple orchard and seasonal farm stand, now a remote foster farm for Department of Youth Services residential placements.

It was late in the day when Maddox arrived. The school bus was gone from the driveway, meaning that Mrs. Anson was not at home. The man of the house finally responded to Maddox's knocking, Dan Anson seeing the uniform and looking for an accompanying social worker. He wore an oily T-shirt and sweatpants apparently without underwear. "Going camping?" Maddox said.

"What's that?"

"Are you planning a camping trip?"

Anson blinked his blitzed eyes. "Not that I know of."

"Because you already pitched a tent."

Anson looked down at the lazy erection pressing against his gray cotton sweats as Maddox stepped past him into the house.

Inside was no less humid than outside. "I spoke to your wife last time," said Maddox.

"She said. You still looking for Frankie, right? We don't know where he is. Kid's a professional runaway."

"I'm looking for two others now. Carlo and Nick. They went joyriding recently, cracked up a stolen car."

Anson played at thinking. "No," he said, "I haven't seen them."

Maddox walked into a living room of magazines and catalogs fluttered by window fans. A boy about eleven, one of the Ansons' two biological kids, stared at the TV, barely registering him. Maddox went to the kitchen, checked the contents of the refrigerator. Predictably not much. He went back up the hallway opening doors.

"Uh, excuse me, what is this?" said Anson, moving sideways, peering into each room after Maddox did. "I said they're not here."

Maddox opened the door on what appeared to be the Ansons' bedroom, the sheets tossed, window shades drawn down. He saw a computer on a student-sized homework desk. The modem lights were working, but the monitor was off. Maddox switched it on.

Anson stayed by the door, scratching at his unshaved neck. "You can't really do that."

While the screen was warming up, Maddox noticed a lightbulb behind the monitor, its screw base, wires, and filament all removed.

Anson said, "Yeah, that lightbulb burned out."

The fat end was blackened inside. "Pretty spectacularly," said Maddox, picking it up and hazarding a waft. He did not see the accompanying straw.

Maddox checked the monitor. It showed the home page for a fantasy football site.

"See?" said Anson. "Everything's cool."