The Killing Moon: A Novel

There was a puff of stink that smelled almost cadaverous. Wanda's forearm above her wrist was a mess of chewed flesh. She had been using the grooming tools to pick at her wounds, one abscess dug down to the tendon, its ridges black with spoil. The burnlike lumps of skin looked boiled from beneath, maybe from unabsorbed poisons eating their way back out of her body. The sight reminded Hess of Bucky Pail's face, and how the coyote had torn into him.

She cradled the arm as though it were precious, an infant unswaddled. "I have an infection," she said.

Hess rippled with a shiver. "Good Christ."

Wanda looked at him like a corpse turned suspicious. "What's this?" She turned to Maddox for an explanation, but Maddox, holding her gaze, said nothing.

"This is an arrest," said Hess. "You have the right to remain silent…."

Still holding her gory arm at an odd angle, she looked from Hess back to Maddox again. "Donny?" she said, the reality of her situation slowly sinking in.

Maddox looked dazed. He stared into the middle ground between them.

Hess, disgusted but trying to get through this, said, "Anything you say—"

"Where's Bucky?" she said, starting to panic.

Hess held up his hands to calm her down. "Anything you say—"

"No!" she yelled at Hess, reeling backward as though he were attacking her. "No!" With nowhere else to go, she wedged herself between the small sink and the dirty tiled wall, shaking her rag-doll head.

They weren't even police to her. They were the embodiment of the pain of withdrawal that was to come. Agents of dopesickness. That was the fear behind her hazy eyes. And the wild betrayal when she looked at Maddox.

Hess realized he could not grab her wrists. With nothing to handcuff, she wasn't going to go easy. Why the hell am I dealing with this now? he asked himself.

"Bryson," he barked. "Get in here and arrest this woman."

48

EDDIE

EDDIE BURIED HIS brother right after the autopsy. He thought that putting him in the ground—reminding people that a police sergeant had died here—would also lay to rest all the talk. So there was no wake, no service, just this graveside observance. They couldn't do an open casket anyway, and whatever religion the brothers once had was buried here with their mother, with the beads tangled up in her folded fingers.

His grief wasn't wet. It was dry like ice, angry and focused. No throwing his hands up at the sky. No cosmic "Why?" God had nothing to answer to Eddie for. Only two people did.

Scarecrow, of course. That twisted little would-be abortion. Using Bucky's own handcuffs on him (How could you let that little shit get the drop on you?) and feeding him to the wolves. Eddie wiped his nose on the sleeve of his father's old suit jacket, the double buttons on the cuff like teeth rubbing across his lips. Thinking about any aspect of the murder made him want to tear at his own skin, made him want to claw at the earth—but the one thing Eddie kept focusing on, the one thing that sickened him in the pit of his being, was Bucky's clothes being taken off. That freak seeing his brother naked. Getting his jollies. Eddie's fists weighed down his jacket pockets like two hot stones.

And then Maddox. Where was he now? Sure, he had a grudge against Bucky, and vice versa. But this disrespect? Not showing up for a fellow officer? Unforgivable. Bucky had been straight-up right about that guy, not trusting him, not liking him. And now all this drug nonsense on the news, in the papers—Eddie couldn't help thinking somehow it was Maddox's doing. They called it a "lab." What they didn't know was that Bucky got his first chemistry set at age seven, and that he had always been a dabbler. As kids, the two of them used to use his compounds to blow up stumps and things on their hill. They even made their own fireworks, Bucky experimenting to learn which powders made them spark red or green or blue.

And how was it Maddox had been the one to find Bucky's body? He'd sure never been to the house before that night. And where had he been hiding since? Didn't he know Eddie had questions?

It was Maddox's house they were heading to after this. Eddie was going to get his father's suit dirty, maybe. Maddox had a lot of talking to do.

A whupping noise drowned out the pastor's voice, and suddenly a helicopter with state police markings on its belly crested the trees, beating low over the graveyard, loosening petals from the condolence bouquet and flapping Bible pages in the pastor's hand. The same helicopter that had buzzed Jag Hill last night with its searchlight beaming down, searching for Scarecrow.

The flyby was almost like a tribute—should have been a tribute—with the mourners shading their eyes from the sun, which, to Eddie, looked like a military-style farewell salute. Bucky deserved such a tribute.