Dark of the Moon

8

MOONIE LAY BACK with a little weed, in a little weed-out in the backyard-and blew smoke at the sky and watched the Big Dipper rolling around, under the glow of the Milky Way, and considered the question.

THE NUMBER of necessary killings was growing. There was no emotional problem there, but the risk had increased. Moonie recognized risk.

Two of the remaining killings, Jerry Johnstone and Roman Schmidt, were matters of honor, simple as that. They were essential and inescapable and had already been delayed too long. If not done now, the targets might escape forever.

Moonie blew some more smoke at the sky.

Once the honor killings were done, and the reality had soaked in-the completion of his task, the pleasure of the memories-there'd be time to rest. Sleep had never come easily-four good hours were hard to find, and after thirty-plus years of sleep deprivation, Moonie had built up a great crankiness.

Or maybe insanity.

Whatever.

Made no difference.

TWO MORE KILLINGS were business necessities. A third, that of Virgil Flowers, might become necessary, because of the way Flowers was deliberately roiling the town. People were closing down, locking doors, talking from behind chains.

Maybe…maybe, Moonie thought, the dope wasn't helping. The tactics of the killings had been fine, but the strategy now seemed wrong. Judd should have been last. Could have been last. Moonie had killed him simply because the urge had no longer been containable. And because the old man's brain had been going. No good killing him, if he didn't know why he was dying.

Not an easy thing to manage, multiple murder.

SO WHAT about Flowers?

Flowers would be purely business: he was too competent, a danger.

Flowers also seemed to have a kind of karmic presence: he'd come into Bluestem in the middle of a thunderstorm, had virtually driven into the Judd killing. Then, instead of pushing, probing, demanding, investigating, he'd sort of…bullshitted his way around town, not to put too fine a point on it. Gone around talking to everybody, telling lies, telling stories: had taken even the clerk at the Holiday Inn into his confidence.

And in bullshitting his way around town, he'd caused a disturbance. Waves from the disturbance were washing around the county. Instead of waiting for something official to be done, for cop cars and crime-scene crews, people were asking questions, and some were looking backward…

Too soon for that.

SO THE QUESTION Moonie was here to decide, after work, out in the backyard on a blanket with a little help from some friendly smoke and the Milky Way, was whether to kill Flowers now, and then go onto Jerry Johnstone or Roman Schmidt, or do Johnstone and Schmidt, and only do Flowers if it was absolutely necessary.

An attempt on Flowers would be huge. Hard to tell where he'd be at any given moment, which meant that the killing ground couldn't be scouted ahead of time. You couldn't simply follow him: if he didn't see it, somebody else would.

Couldn't invite him over and do it, somebody would know about the invitation. That was the trouble with a small town like Bluestem: there were eyes and ears everywhere. You couldn't hang out without people noticing, and worse, knowing who you were, and wondering why you were hanging out. Walk down the street, and you could see the drapes moving, the eyes pressing out of the houses, following behind you; the dogs watching from behind fences, witnessing your intrusion.

There was an old joke about a small town: a real small town meant that you didn't have to use the turn signals on your car, because anybody behind you already knew where you were going…