Hangman Read online

  So why twelve?

  Why not eleven or thirteen?

  Because there were twelve Apostles?

  The twelve disciples of Jesus Christ?

  And does it not follow, if that’s so, that there may be a Judas in the jury room?

  Looking back on my breakthrough murder case, I see that anachronism is how it all began. Like I said, the case began with two hangings: the hanging of Haddon back in 1993 and the hanging of Mary Konrad in Seattle last Halloween.

  Lawyers are like vultures. We circle overhead, watching the legal landscape for bones of the dead to pick. Our picking ground is the arena of the courtroom, where, if you’re on the defense side of the bar, those trying to deny you a good feast are the guardians of the law. With meaty bones to pick and a worthy player on the other side to defeat, there is no greater thrill than a big win!

  Sixteen days ago, last Halloween, I was a hungry vulture circling on the fringe.

  Soon there would be gruesome bones to pick on the picking ground, guarded by a worthy player on the other side.

  Though neither of us knew it then, Inspector Zinc Chandler and I were on a collision course, and the outcome of our courtroom battle would focus the Hangman’s rage on me.

  Is the handle turning?

  Or am I seeing things?

  Is this the climax of the case?

  Is the psycho creeping in …?

  Gallows Game

  Seattle

  October 31 (Sixteen days ago)

  Inspector Zinc Chandler of Special X was standing at the curb in front of the hotel, waiting for Detective Ralph Stein to arrive, when a car pulled up and a tough, good-looking woman gave him the eye. Leaning over from the wheel, she rolled down the curb-side window. “Zinc Chandler, I presume?”

  “And who are you?”

  “Detective Maddy Thorne. I’m your date instead of Ralph.”

  A taxi honked behind her.

  “Climb in. I don’t bite.”

  The Mountie opened the door and sat in the passenger’s seat. The car gunned away from the curb before he pulled the door shut. From the corner of his eye, Zinc looked the driver over. Muscular body, dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “You look like a Canuck. Ralph said I’d recognize you by your hair.”

  Zinc’s natural steel gray hair had been that color since birth. Its metallic tint was responsible for his given name. The business suit he sported tonight was of the same hue. Judging from the festive costumes roaming the streets outside, he might be the most conservative-looking man in Seattle.

  “So where’s Ralph?”

  “On a stretcher. Going to the hospital.”

  “What?” said Zinc. “I spoke to him at three. Don’t tell me he took a bullet for The Job?”

  “Nothing so heroic. But I’m sure it hurts as much. Halloween’s a bad night, so we all work. Before leaving home this afternoon, Ralph scaled a ladder to clean his second-story eaves. Some of the slimy leaves he plucked from the gutter fouled the rung of the ladder directly beneath his shoes, so when he stepped down to descend—pardon the gallows humor—the step became a giant leap for mankind, to quote our first man on the moon. Broken ankles should keep Ralph in hospital traction for a few weeks.”

  “Ha!” said Zinc. It wasn’t a laugh. “Your hospital system’s a hell of a lot more compassionate than ours. In Vancouver, Ralph would be shown the door as soon as he was splinted and drugged.”

  “Anyway, that’s why you’re riding shotgun with me. I don’t have Ralph as a partner, and you need to be fed and delivered to the airport.”

  “A cab’s okay, Maddy.”

  “The fuck it is. This is Seattle. We’re hospitable here.”

  “As Ralph is learning.”

  Which made her laugh.

  The ice was broken, at poor Ralph’s expense.

  Maddy braked for a stream of monstrous pedestrians in a crosswalk. Headhunters, ghouls, cutthroats, rippers, zombies, and devils. One of the ghouls glared into the car and made a face at them. Zinc wondered if he and Maddy looked like thugs to the maskers, for The Job had definitely left its mark on both cops. Rugged and sharp-featured, his face was hard and gaunt. Forty years of life and two serious wounds—a bullet to the head and a knife in the back—had marred Zinc’s once boyish good looks. Six foot two and almost 200 pounds, he had acquired his lean physique from working the family farm in Saskatchewan as a youth. Something about Zinc made people want him on their side, for instinct told them he would be a deadly adversary if the knife were at his throat.

  He sensed the same in Maddy.

  “Macha” female cops—like their macho male brethren—say “fuck” a lot. Listening to them is like going to see a Hollywood action film in which every character mouths “fucking this” or “fucking that” a zillion times before the credits roll. You know the director behind the film is a coked-up wreck, pacing back and forth as he gropes his own groin, boasting to the cast and crew that his will be the “fucking toughest film ever made.” If Mr. Tough could see himself as others do, he too might question whether there was enough down there to grope.

  The same applies to macha cops who utter “fuck” a lot. It comes across as a phony front meant to impress, and has the effect of undermining the actual toughness they possess.

  But not Maddy.

  She didn’t give a fuck.

  Zinc knew the word came to her as easily as “the” or “and.”

  This was a woman who definitely could take care of herself, and most likely take care of you in the worst situation.

  She would be a good partner.

  The crosswalk was clear of monsters and the signal had changed to green. Again, the car gunned away from a stop with decisive determination. Zinc suspected Maddy drove herself as hard as she did the wheels.

  “Steak sound tempting? I know the best diner for beef.”

  “Steak sounds great. I’m in a carnivorous mood.”

  “Special X, huh? Ralph says you’re a top dog with the Mounted’s elite?”

  “Ralph exaggerates.”

  “Ralph is down to earth.”

  “Literally, from what happened this afternoon.”

  This time, they shared a chuckle at poor Ralph’s expense. If you’re a cop, you find your laughs wherever you can.

  “What does the X stand for?”

  “External,” responded Zinc. “The Special External Section of the Mounted Police investigates cases with links outside Canada. Because we also hunt the psychos, some say the X stands for Extreme.”

  “What brings you to Seattle?”

  “A slew of cases. Some with the Bureau. Some with you. We have this deadly doctor with the fitting name of Dr. Twist. He was charged with murdering an elderly patient at his clinic for her money. He walked when he was acquitted by a Vancouver jury. We now have reason to believe he influenced that verdict by seducing one of the jurors.”

  “You mean he was screwing her during the trial?”

  “Yeah, we caught it on tape.”

  “Naughty, naughty. The doc’s a lady-killer in more ways than one.”

  “There may be trouble with the warrant that put in the bug, so we’re looking for backup that’s not a wiretap. Seems they snuck away to Seattle just after he was acquitted, so I asked Ralph to canvass local hotels. He hit pay dirt at the ritzy one where you picked me up tonight.”

  “They were guests?”

  “For two days. Positive IDs.”

  “Bye, bye, juror.”

  “Bye, bye, doc.”

  “How do you know Ralph?”

  “We jointly worked a case. A pimp recruiting teenage girls for sex across the border.”

  “Before my time.”

  “A few years back.”

  “Now, about that steak. What time’s your flight to Vancouver?”

  “Ten-fifteen.”

  “It’s tight, but you’ll make it if we go straight to the diner. I’ll phone ahe
ad and put the order in for two specials. How do you like your meat?”

  “Medium rare,” said Zinc.

  As Maddy fished the cellphone out of her jacket pocket, it rang in her hand.

  “Uh-oh,” she said to the Mountie. “Thorne,” she answered the caller. “Yeah, I know where that is. Right. Got it. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Duty calls?” asked Zinc as she rang off.

  “Yeah. A hanging. Want to come along?”

  Judge to judge, cop to cop, professional courtesy rules. If a foreign judge visits a trial, he or she is offered a seat on the bench beside the judge presiding. If a foreign cop is present when a squeal comes in, he or she is invited to go see the stiff. Only another professional grasps the stress of The Job, so—because it’s us against them—such courtesy offered calls for courtesy in return.

  “Let’s go, partner,” Zinc said.

  * * *

  Patrol cars had cordoned off the block by the time Det. Madeline Thorne of Homicide arrived. The blue standing guard recognized her, and moved aside to clear the way so Maddy and Zinc could pass through. Slowly she cruised along the street in the unmarked car, closing on a knot of mid-block gawkers dyed red-blue red-blue by flashing wigwags on the roofs of the first-response vehicles snouted into the curb. The block was a blue-collar neighborhood serving the Boeing plant, and some of those milling about probably built planes. The houses were small and pushed together, and seemed to date from the Second World War. You’d think that war was still being waged by the boom of fireworks exploding overhead, raining down bursts of white, purple, and green. The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns peppered surrounding blocks when firecrackers were set off in series, and pungent fingers of cordite smoke gripped the dark. Screams of the dying grew louder as Maddy braked the car, gibbering up to ungodly shrieks as she angled into the curb, clipped on her ID, and got out with the Mountie.

  “Who lives next door?”

  The question was asked by the crowd-control cop at this end of the walk to the murder scene.

  “I do,” said one of the gawkers.

  “Then show some respect. Your neighbor’s dead, sir. Silence those screams.”

  A beer drinker from the look of his ruddy face and rotund belly, the disgruntled man indicated a stereo speaker affixed to his house. “It’s on a sensor. Movement sets it off.”

  “I don’t care if Mr. Spock on the good ship Enterprise is at the controls. What I’m saying is let’s have no … more … screams.”

  Beer Belly belched.

  “The beam cuts across my walk and hers. It’s you cops coming and going that prompts the screams.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Beer Belly turned.

  And found himself eye to eye with the no-nonsense glare of a don’t-mess-with-me woman.

  “Who are you?” he asked the intruder.

  Beer fumes billowed.

  Maddy stood firm.

  “Detective Thorne. Homicide. Who are you?”

  “Joe,” said the neighbor.

  “Joe who?” she asked, pulling out her notebook and flipping it open to the page after the rubber band. She poised her pen.

  “Hey, what is this?”

  “Why’d you dislike her, Joe?”

  “Dislike who?”

  “Your dead neighbor.”

  “Who says I disliked her?”

  “Actions speak louder than words. Would a neighbor who liked his neighbor hurl screams at her house on the night she died? Or would he be civilized enough to stop the racket himself?”

  “You think I killed her?”

  “Did you, Joe?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “You act like it.”

  “It’s Halloween.”

  “I know it’s Halloween.”

  “All I’m saying is you got no right to spoil it. I paid a lot of money for those screams.”

  “Joe who?” Maddy said.

  “All right. I’ll kill ’em.”

  “Kill who?” Maddy asked.

  “The screams,” Joe answered. “You want to know who killed her”—he jerked his head at his neighbor’s house—“speak to her husband.”

  Joe turned and jostled through the crowd clustered on the sidewalk in front of both his home and his neighbor’s. He angled up the walk that led to his front door and cut the beam across the path that set off the screams. As Halloween shrieks shrilled from the outside speaker, several onlookers laughed amid the masquerade.

  Some of the costumes showed a lack of imagination, a quick fix of plucking something off the shelf in Kmart or Wal-Mart or some such store. Others were creative. A woman balanced six-month-old pumpkins on her hips, each twin bundled in an orange felt Snugli, with triangular eyes, a similar nose, and a mouth of pegged teeth stitched in black on each tummy. Green leaf hats were tied under drool-covered chins. A mummy swaddled head to foot with hospital bandages held the hand of an ogre with a third eye painted on its forehead. Creepy surgical tools made from kitchen implements like an old eggbeater, a spatula, and a turkey baster hung from the belt of a witch doctor. Purple balloons enshrouded one tyke to make him a bunch of grapes. His mom carried a wine bottle. If Maddy were to award a prize for best getup, the winner would be a dad with his daughter sitting on his shoulders. He was chalked white, with sunken black eyes, and his left arm was gilded gold. A huge hypodermic was stuck in the golden arm. The girl astride his shoulders was costumed as the cutest little monkey you ever saw. Together, dad and daughter were a wasted heroin junkie with the monkey on his back.

  “You,” Thorne said, recognizing a familiar face in the crowd.

  “Me, Detective?”

  “Yes, you. Come here.”

  Justin Whitfield left the crowd, which strained to listen in. Maddy turned to Zinc and said, “Give me a moment,” then led the reporter along the sidewalk, out of earshot.

  “You got here fast.”

  “It’s my job, Maddy.”

  “My job too. More than yours.”

  “Then you should listen to dispatch as diligently as I do. You’d be surprised by some of the scoops I’ve picked up by blending into a crowd milling at a murder scene. Particularly if it’s a neighborhood clutch like this.”

  “The husband?”

  “The husband.”

  “Fill me in,” said Thorne.

  “The happy couple moved here about a year ago. The honeymoon was over almost from the start. He’s the sort of man who wants a looker on his arm. The kind who sees a pretty wife as evidence of his own virility. His wife was slim when they moved in, but she soon began to thicken. The heavier she got, the more he berated her. The story is she always had a chocolate bar in her mouth. I’d say something was eating at her, and the way she coped with it was through an eating disorder. He liked booze. They began to fight. The rows disturbed their neighbors. And last month he stomped out. What he shouted back at her, according to the neighbors, was ‘I ought to butcher you for the fat pig you are.’”

  “How long were they married?”

  “About a year.”

  “Names?”

  “The vic’s Mary Konrad. Her husband’s Dag.”

  “Know where Dag lives?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Keep working while I take a look inside.”

  “From what I hear, the scene’s a slaughterhouse. I ought to butcher you for the fat pig you are.”

  “You ought to be a cop.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Anyone see the husband near the house tonight?”

  “No, but he could have approached in costume. What better night to kill someone than Halloween? Only night of the year when you can walk around in disguise, and door securities are relaxed.”

  “Anything heard?”

  “Yeah, a lot of screams. Trick-or-treaters crossed Joe’s beam all night.”

  Another round of fireworks exploded overhead. Boom, boom, boom! The deafening din dampened conversation. The cop watched the repor
ter turn a kaleidoscope of colors. His sandy hair and blue eyes flared a rainbow spectrum. Justin was older than Maddy by several years: well into as compared to halfway through his thirties. A lightweight in build, he was no taller than her, and he wore the uniform of reporters everywhere: windbreaker, open-throat denim shirt, corduroy trousers, and sneakers. For as long as Maddy had been a cop, they had worked like a team. A police reporter needs a deep throat with access to the facts, while a cop needs a private detective for off-the-record snooping. He was Thorne’s leg up through the glass ceiling, and she had made him the Star’s star reporter.

  “Here’s the ME. Catch you later, Justin.”

  “I’ll be waiting for a description of the abattoir inside.”

  “If it bleeds, it leads?”

  “You ought to be a reporter.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  The medical examiner’s car cruised down the street with an escort. Lumbering along beside it lurched three walking dead, jeans filthy from having crawled out of a muddy graveyard, bullet holes and knife slits dribbling poster paint from their zombie hearts, faces gray, lips black, and dirty hair squirming with spaghetti al dente as worms.

  The car parked at the curb and Ruthless Ruth got out.

  “Fitting escort,” Maddy greeted her.

  “Naw, they got it wrong. The chest wounds indicate murder. So there’d have been an autopsy and each should have a suture stitched from behind both ears up over the crown of the skull to show where I removed each of the little fuckers’ brains.”

  Ruthless Ruth was the nickname Homicide detectives bantered behind Ruth Lester’s back. Lester the Les was another sobriquet. Your average Homicide cop doesn’t care about political correctness. Day in, day out, a Homicide bull (cow, too) wades through bloody messes left by what one human being has done to another, and he must be excused if he cynically calls something what it is, instead of by some wishy-washy term that has no meaning.