The Killing Moon: A Novel

"I don't know." Donny paced, looking angry with himself. "The physical evidence that Sinclair did these killings—it's overwhelming, it's obvious, it's damning. I know all that. But it still doesn't fit the person. Walking those creaking boards around the mill, I remembered him more clearly than I have in a while." Donny's face shriveled in distaste. "He's a…a craven little sneak. A skinny sleaze with no eyebrows, hyper-needy, loopy. I've met all kinds of people, some of the worst you could know. You don't make it that many years undercover without developing a pretty accurate radar. And, yes, there is something dripping and waxy and cold about him that is very real. Sinclair is a creep in every sense of the word. But he's not a killer. Vindictive, passive-aggressive, self-pitying, narcissistic—all those things. But without a speck of actual violence in him. Only want. He picked on kids. A total coward."

"What about being on drugs?" said Tracy.

"I've seen him that way too. I can't say it's not possible. Anything is." Donny threw up his hands, there being no final answer. "In some weird way, I feel responsible for him. For what's happened."

"That's crazy."

"He was my informant. I was his keeper, in a sense. His handler. Waiting for him out there sort of confirmed it for me."

"Even so—what can you do about it?"

He looked back at his pager as though hoping it would buzz again. "Nothing, now."

He walked around a little, Tracy standing still, watching in silence. She felt it too, the impulse to keep talking about Sinclair, to go on about it all night. Anything to avoid what they really had to say to each other.

"I'm sorry I had to leave you like that," he said.

The only way to override her guilt at having fallen asleep was to speak to the source of her distress, to say exactly what was on her mind. "How soon until you leave here for good?"

He took time selecting his words. He was being too careful. "I don't know exactly. I'm here at least until they find Sinclair."

"And if that is tomorrow?"

He struggled through a pause. "Tracy, look. With the life I've lived up to now, it's tough for me to think about committing to anything."

She stopped him right there with a sad nod disguised as an angry nod. "That's fine," she said.

"No, wait."

"It's fine." She was already going.

He didn't follow. She climbed into her truck, opening the garage door with the remote he had given her, then cocking her arm as though to throw it out her window and smash it to the cement floor.

Of course, she did not. She could not.

Not yet. There was still hope.

She pulled out of his driveway into the dark night, bleary-eyed and oblivious to everything beyond the haze of her distress, paying no attention whatsoever to the small, unlit car parked on the shoulder of the road.

53

HESS

"SO YOU WENT THERE ALONE," said Hess.

"That's what it said to do."

"You send back any reply?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"I sent nothing."

Hess switched his spearmint toothpick around his mouth, chewing on Maddox's story. Dealing with him in his softball team POLICE jersey and ball cap was like dealing with a guy doing summer theater.

Hess said, "Tracing the page got us no fix on the location of his two-way. Pager transmits by radio wave to a tower, then up to a satellite and back down again. Why people favor pagers in places like this where there's no cell reception."

Maddox nodded, evidently knowing this already, and Hess worked the pick some more, sucking off flavor as he appraised him. He did not buy this prompt reporting of Sinclair's page as an attempt to make peace.

Hess said, "You thought maybe it was me. Thought maybe I'd gotten hold of his pager number and was testing you."

"It crossed my mind."

Hess smiled. "UC. Don't know who to trust, so you don't trust anyone. That part of you gets worn down. It's why people don't trust you." The desk phone rang, Hess ignoring it. "What were you going to do if he showed up?"

"Bring him in."

"You two don't have any previous agreements or anything?"

"No way."

"Sinclair have a thing for you?"

"He better not."

"You never met at this abandoned mill before?"

"Never."

Hess thought some more. "I think we got him on the run. We got him reaching out, and it's about time. About time he made a mistake."

"How'd the Pail crime scene come in?"

Hess scowled, people still second-guessing him after the Ripsbaugh thing. "We got more of the same sneaker treads outside in the dirt, where the body was dragged. We recovered fibers from the kitchen and an old ottoman Sinclair brushed past on his way to the back door—the same black cotton we recovered from Frond's."

Maddox said, "He's wearing the same clothes?"

"The guy's on the run."

"Yeah, but—it's been close to a month."