Dark of the Moon

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
    Publishers Since 1838
    Published by the Penguin Group
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    Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
    Copyright © 2007 by John Sandford
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Sandford, John, date.
    Dark of the moon / John Sandford.
    p. cm.
    ISBN: 1-101-14722-9
    1. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 2. Minnesota—Fiction. I. Title.
    PS3569.A516D37 2007 2007028274
    813'.54—dc22
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Benjamin Curtis: Happy Birthday, 2007

Acknowledgment
    This book was written in cooperation with my friend Larry Millett, an architectural writer ( The Curve of the Arch, Lost Twin Cities ), local historian ( Strange Days, Dangerous Nights ), and occasional novelist ( Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon and four other tales featuring Holmes and Irish barkeep Shadwell Rafferty). Millett was recently described in a general-circulation magazine as “handsome,” which threw me into paroxysms of jealousy, but which, in the end, did not deflect us from our appointed deadline….
    —J OHN S ANDFORD

1
    S IX GARBAGE BAGS full of red cedar shavings, purchased two at a time for a dollar a bag, at midnight, at the self-serve shed at Dunstead & Daughter Custom Furniture, serving your fine cabinetry needs since 1986. No cameras, no lights, no attendant, no theft, no problem.
    Moonie stacked the bags in the basement, Cross Canadian Ragweed pounding through the iPod ear-buds, singing about those dead-red lips; then up the stairs, pulling the ear-buds, to where the old man lay facedown on the rug, shaking, kicking, crying, trying to get free. Tied with cheap hemp rope, but no matter. The old man was so old and so feeble that string would have worked as well as rope.
    “Please,” he groaned, “don’t hurt me.”
    Moonie laughed, a long singing rock ’n’ roll laugh, and at the end of it, said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to kill you.”
    “What do you want? I can tell you where the money is.”
    “The money’s not what I want. I’ve got what I want.” Moonie gripped the rope between the old man’s ankles and dragged him to the basement stairs, and then down the stairs, the old man’s face banging down each tread as they went.
    “Oh my Jesus, help me,” the old man wept through his bloody lips, his fractured face. “Help me, Jesus.”
    Thump! Thump! Thump! Nine times.
    “Jesus isn’t going to help,” Moonie said.
    The old man pulled it together for a second. “He can send you to hell,” he snarled.
    “Where do you think I am, old man?”
    “You…”
    “Shut up. I’m working.”
     
    G ETTING THE OLD MAN onto the bags was the hardest part. Moonie first threw him facedown on the