Hangman Page 9

  The lawyers shook their heads.

  “No one, dear,” Jackson said. “You see the dilemma?” he continued. “Both accused were able to choose between two undesirable options. One choice involved breaking the law. The other involved an evil of such magnitude to them and the third man that they felt justified doing so.”

  “Bullshit,” said one of his partners. “You can’t divorce morality from law.”

  “Is it immoral to kill one to save three?”

  “If you and I were shipwrecked and there was only one plank, a plank that would sink if we both grabbed hold, should I have the right to drown you so the plank is mine?”

  “If several are overtaken by common disaster, is there no right in anyone to save the lives of many by sacrificing one?”

  “No,” said his partner.

  “So it’s the duty of all to die?”

  “Alex,” her mom called. “Time for lunch.”

  The girl dropped the rope ladder to the ground and slid down from the treehouse as her dad advanced another legal argument.

  “A dam is about to burst and flood a valley. The calamity will wipe out a town of a hundred people. By opening a sluice I can relieve the pressure, but that will flood a nearby farm and probably kill the farmer. I’m faced with a choice between breaking the law by drowning him or allowing the greater evil of letting a hundred people die. Make that a million, if it helps. Don’t you think the law should excuse me if I elect to save the many?”

  His partner saw an opening and went for the jugular.

  “What if the farmer sees you opening the dam? An action he suspects you know will cause his death? If he has a rifle at hand, would he not be excused for shooting you in self-defense? And what about the boy eaten by the men? If he was strong enough to resist, would he not be excused for killing the cannibals in self-defense? If A can kill B of necessity, and B can kill A in self-defense, there is no rule of law, just anarchy.”

  “You’re beat, Jackson,” said another partner.

  “What if the boy was a pirate about to be hanged when the ship wrecked? What if the farmer was in jail on death row?”

  The partner arguing with Jackson chuckled. “I know you won’t give up. That’s what I like about you. It makes us lots of money.”

  “Come and get it while it’s hot,” the chef called from the barbecue.

  “So?” said Jackson’s adversary as they abandoned the pool. “What did that bench of judges do with the cannibals?”

  “Dudley and Stephens.” Jackson winked. “Look it up.”

  That was the day Alex decided that she, too, would be a lawyer. Intrigued by the dark side of her father’s work, she focused on abnormal psychology. The passing years saw her dad become a judge of the Oregon Supreme Court, while she completed a master’s degree in preparation for law school. Tragedy, however, altered the course of her life.

  First, her mother perished in a car crash on the I-5. Then, three months later, her father suffered an epileptic fit in court. The neurosurgeons were unable to get all the cancer, so Alex faced a choice between law school and him. She took her dad to the West Coast town of Cannon Beach, and there she nursed him through his slow death. To occupy her mind during that ordeal, Alex turned her master’s thesis on America’s premier serial killer into a true-crime book.

  House of Horrors: The Case of H. H. Holmes caught the morbid imagination of enough readers to launch her career as a writer. It also inspired two psychos to create horrific Castle Crag.

  The invitation seemed innocent enough. A group of crime writers would fly somewhere secret for a mystery weekend; there, they would match wits with a homicide detective from the Mounted Police. The outcome would determine how much was given to charity. So off Alex flew for a good cause, hoping a little R & R in Canada would ease the pain of her dad’s death. But instead, she found herself trapped in the deadly maze of her own book as one by one the writers fell victim to Castle Crag, the murder mansion on Deadman’s Island.

  How she got from there to here was charted in her subsequent books. She had escaped from the island with a thrilling story and a new boyfriend, for the Mountie sent to match wits with the writers was Insp. Zinc Chandler of Special X.

  What Justin Whitfield had in Maddy Thorne, Alexis Hunt had in Zinc.

  An inside source.

  Her own Deep Throat.

  The white police cars parked in front of townhouse 11 were jaundiced yellow by the sickly glow of sodium-vapor streetlights. Waiting ominously at the curb was a black station wagon manned by dark-dressed undertakers from the body removal service. Mist billowed from the outside vent of a clothes dryer next door, and lights peering through the fog were ringed by eerie halos. Mounties in blue windbreakers kept the curious away from death’s door, where a cop with a clipboard stopped the couple.

  “Inspector Chandler,” Zinc said, his buffalo head badge in hand.

  The officious rookie logged him in.

  “She’s with me,” Zinc said, indicating Alex.

  “Sorry, Inspector. No unauthorized entry is the order from my sergeant.”

  Zinc snatched the clipboard and signed Alex in. “I’m sure your sergeant will find that sufficient authority.”

  Cops call them bunny suits, the duds piled on a chair inside the door. The phrase made Alex think of plunging cleavage and cottontails and Hef working the room in silk pajamas. Only Keystone Kops fail to take precautions against tainting evidence, so the two paused in the entry hall to don disposable headgear, overalls, and booties. The bunny suits made them look like astronauts, a simile reinforced by what they saw in the two-story vault off the hall.

  Six of the seven in the room wore the same white suits as Zinc and Alex. They could be performing an experiment on a shuttle in outer space. Weightlessness seemed to lift the seventh off the floor. What could be an oxygen hose rose from her neck to the landing above. Was she a species from another galaxy, this creature dressed like a vamp in skimpy underwear, with a legless torso and a bug-eyed blue face?

  Beam me up, Scotty, Alex thought.

  What brought her down to earth wasn’t the grisly grab of the crime. Having survived that charnel house on Deadman’s Island, Alex was as baptized in blood as any morgue attendant. Instead, what yanked her back to reality was Rachel and Gill.

  “Who tampered with the body?” asked Gill Macbeth. The forensic pathologist was standing on a ladder with her profile to Alex, examining the face of the hanging corpse.

  “I did,” replied Rachel Kidd. The sergeant gazed up from the foot of the ladder, where she sidestepped the pool of blood on the floor.

  “Something covered her face.”

  “A mask,” said the Mountie.

  “Why did you remove it before I arrived?”

  “To see who she was.”

  “That couldn’t wait?”

  “Not if the victim was who we thought. If so, we had a suspect to find at once. Before the Lady-Killer could alibi up.”

  “Well, the effect is you interfered with my job. Asphyxia may result from suffocation. Or from gagging or choking. Or from constriction of the neck. Or from compression of the chest. Or from suspension. A cover blocking the airways of a hanging victim must be seen in situ.”

  “Get off your high horse, Gill,” said Kidd.

  Macbeth glared down at the sergeant. “You seem to make a habit of messing up cases, Rachel.”

  Kidd shot daggers up at the pathologist. “If the cause of death has you baffled, Gill, I feel confident it wasn’t suicide. Blue face. Bugged eyes. Reddened whites. Purple lips. Clenched fists. And discolored nails. It looks like asphyxia by hanging to me. As for the mask, that came later. After the killer slashed her stuck-out tongue.”

  “What mask?” Zinc said, playing the lightning rod to draw attention to him.

  The social dynamics in this room were tainted by estrogen turned toxic. Gill Macbeth, in her forties, resembled Candice Bergen. Having spent her fertile years building a career, she had turned her mind to m
otherhood as her clock ticked down. Gill was pregnant by Corporal Nick Craven of Special X when Rachel Kidd arrested him for murdering his mother. Younger, prettier, and the first black promoted up the ranks, Rachel, it turned out, had charged the wrong man. That freed the killer to bomb the cruise ship on which the Mounties held their Red Serge Ball. Gill lost her last chance to have a child when the explosion dumped her into a cold sea, the shock of which caused her to abort. Alex wrote about the case in her third book, which Rachel viewed as a tandem attempt by Gill and Alex to undermine her career. So while the others around the body focused on Zinc, the sergeant cast a look that could kill at the writer.

  Men find it more therapeutic to kick each other in the balls.

  “Chandler!” effused the coroner, a portly, hard-drinking sot. Custer would not have looked more relieved had reinforcements arrived.

  The constable serving as exhibit man held up a plastic pouch.

  The mask within was this:

  “The Scream,” said Alex.

  “By Edvard Munch,” said Gill.

  “That’s not The Scream I know,” said Zinc.

  “Munch did a lithograph and an oil. This is the lithograph,” Gill replied as she descended the ladder to join the others at ground level.

  Zinc took the pouch from the exhibit man, reversing the mask to see the blood smeared around the mouth inside.

  “This was on her face?”

  “Yeah, when I arrived. One reason,” Rachel said, “why I called you. It’s like the mask Seattle police say the Hangman wore.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “A neighbor walking his dog. The front door was blown open by the storm. He called in, got no answer, and took a peek.”

  “Looks like a sex crime.”

  “I doubt it,” said Gill. “Unless the killer has a fetish for underwear. The victim soiled herself when she was hanged, caking her panties to her buttocks. If she was raped, why’s she wearing them?”

  “The setup is definitely a puzzle,” Rachel said. “Got to be careful. Nothing is what it seems. The table is set for two with candles, roses, and wine. Romantic music. Sexy underwear. The inference is the victim invited a heartthrob here for dinner, and he or she was a monster who preyed on the hanged woman.”

  “The Lady-Killer?” said Zinc.

  “Possibly. That’s why I’ve got an APB out for him. And why”—she snapped a scowl at Gill—“I checked to make sure the hanged woman was Jayne Curry.”

  “Has Twist been located?”

  “Not yet,” Rachel said. “Though he’s the prime suspect, I think she dined alone.”

  “Miss Lonely Heart?” said Alex. “Like in Rear Window, the Hitchcock film. Jimmy Stewart broke his leg and was confined to his apartment. To pass time, he spied on his neighbors through the rear window. He gave each a name based on what he saw. Miss Lonely Heart spent each night alone, pretending her lover joined her for dinner at a table set for two.”

  Rachel nodded. “The same with Jayne Curry. That’s why she fell for the doctor, isn’t it?”

  “What’s your theory?” Zinc asked.

  “She was ambushed.”

  “Having dinner?”

  “No, sitting at the computer.”

  The sergeant pointed to the glowing screen across the room.

  “She was building a Web site about the trial, and whoever lynched her left it on. If it was Lady-Killer, why not delete her work?”

  “Leaving it up makes it look like the killer wasn’t him.”

  “Perhaps,” said Rachel.

  “So what’s your take?”

  “I think she dressed up in her finery for a Miss Lonely Heart dinner. Then she worked on her Web site at the computer. We found a recently cut branch outside that window, with two sets of indiscernible footprints in the mud. I think the killer bashed the limb against the glass to lure her out. She went upstairs to remove her expensive clothes. Her shoes are up on the landing and her dress is on the bed. With just a raincoat over her underwear, she disarmed the security system before she went outside. While she was cutting the branch with shears around the side of the house, the killer used the open door to slip in here. The victim returned and left her coat, boots, and the shears at the back door, where we found them wet with rain. She entered this room in her underwear, probably to reset the alarm, and was ambushed by the killer.”

  Rachel directed Zinc back to the hanged woman. The other bunny suits at work were forensic techs. As one dusted the wine glasses on the table for fingerprints, the other measured the distance from the nearest leg stump to the pillar supporting the landing overhead. Secured around the pillar was the rope that had been looped up over the railing to lynch Jayne Curry.

  “The killer hanged her, slashed her tongue, then put on the mask. Finally, after she was dead, her legs were cut off. The killer kicked them across the floor to the wall behind you, and then used the victim’s blood to scrawl that game.”

  Zinc and Alex turned to face the wall between the entry hall and this room.

  “That,” said the sergeant, “is the main reason I called you.”

  A pair of legs sheathed in nylons lay against the baseboard.

  On the wall above, scrawled in blood, was a hangman game:

  E as in Enigma

  Vancouver

  November 7

  Those who make murder their business seek refuge in gallows humor. Take the job too seriously and your retirement will be spent in a rubber room. The corpse still hung from the balcony as those investigating the murder took a welcome break. The coroner was telling a story. Gallows humor, for sure.

  “I ran into the strangest suicide of my career in a bar. To make sure his method of self-destruction did him in, the fellow hit upon what he thought was a foolproof plan. First, he found a hanging tree with a stout branch jutting out over a sheer cliff plummeting down to the sea. Then, to ensure that he suffered no pain, the would-be suicide swallowed an overdose of liquid morphine. Finally, to keep from strangling to death if his neck failed to break, he loaded a revolver to shoot himself in the head.”

  The coroner chortled to let them know the punch line was coming.

  Scotch perfumed his words.

  “The fellow tied one end of a rope to the jutting branch, then noosed the other end around his neck. The gun he carried as backup accidentally went off as he jumped over the cliff. The bullet struck the rope, almost severing it, then the jerk of his body snapped the remaining strands. Sixty feet below, he plunged into the sea, gulping salt water as he submerged. The gulp caused him to throw up the morphine, and, suicide thwarted, he swam ashore. That’s how I met him in the bar, guzzling a hot toddy to get warm.”

  The listeners laughed as Zinc’s cell called him back to work. He moved away from the group to answer his phone.

  “Chandler,” he said.

  “Hi. It’s Maddy Thorne. You left an urgent message with Homicide for me to call?”

  Traffic in the background. She was in a car.

  “That was quick,” Zinc said.

  “I’m off duty. But who’s off duty these days with pagers and cells?”

  “Sorry,” said the Mountie. “Duty calls. Looks like we have a second Hangman victim here.”

  “Where’s here?” Excited.

  “North Vancouver. I’m staring at the victim as we speak.”

  “What’s the link?”

  “A Scream mask. And a hangman game.”

  “Jesus!” Maddy said. “We guessed wrong.”

  “Are you on a cell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it secure?”

  “Maybe not to the CIA. But it’s digital.”

  “That’s good enough,” Zinc replied. “You guessed right. An A’s filled in.”

  “Which word?”

  “Third word, second letter.”

  “Son of a bitch! The bastard won’t play fair.”

  “If it’s him. And not a copycat. How tight a lid did you put on the hangman game?”

>   “Strictly need-to-know. Hold-back evidence. You heard what I said to Justin. He could mention the game, but not the number of words or the number of letters in each. I doubt there’s been a leak. We’ve kept the puzzle on a tight rein.”

  “So just the Hangman, Justin, and Seattle police know the content of the word game?”

  “Yeah. Plus you.”

  “I haven’t told anyone. It’s not my case. I didn’t even tell the woman I live with.”

  “Looks like we have a cross-border serial killer,” Maddy said.

  “Looks like,” agreed Zinc.

  “The A doesn’t solve the puzzle, but it answers a question. We wondered what would happen if we guessed the letter right.”

  “No quarter,” said the Mountie. “The killer killed again. And will keep killing, I suspect, until the puzzle is solved.”

  Laughter broke out at his end of the phone as the coroner cracked a joke. A police siren passed Maddy at the other end.

  “You mentioned a mask? Someone got a look at your killer?” she asked.

  “No, the killer placed the mask over the victim’s face.”

  “Why?” wondered Maddy.

  “No reason I can see. Unless the Hangman wants us to link both hangings. Your APB last week said the Halloween killer might have worn a mask of The Scream. You get that from the neighbor who saw the Reaper approach Mary Konrad’s door?”

  “Yeah,” said Maddy. “Remember what Justin told us? The neighbor described the mask as being like a skull face, but not a skull. It was, she said, the face in ‘that famous picture,’ which she couldn’t name. Later, she was shown The Scream and identified it as the suspect’s mask.”

  “You know there’s more than one Scream?”

  “I do,” said Maddy. “The oil painting. The lithograph. And a stylized version in the Wes Craven horror film.”

  “Ours is the lithograph.”

  “That’s what the neighbor picked out. If you send me a copy, I’ll double-check.”

  Zinc took out his notebook and jotted a reminder to do that.

  “How’s your case going?”

  “It’s not,” said Maddy. “The task force working it has no solid leads. HITS did a computer search for possible links. Nothing came back. If a serial killer’s on the loose, the hangman game seems to indicate Halloween was the first murder. The only suspect with a specific motive is the vic’s husband.”