Hangman

by Michael Slade

“No, the other side.”

  The reporter flipped back in his notebook to find the address. The detective used a penlight to copy it into her notes after the sketch of the hangman game.

  “Time of death?” asked Justin.

  “Ruth won’t commit. Blood settled by gravity had begun to discolor the hands and foot, so judging from that lividity, a good guess would be about an hour and a half before we saw the body.”

  “If that’s the time frame, the same neighbor may have seen the killer.”

  “Where?”

  “On the sidewalk out front of the vic’s home.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour before that time of death. Or two and a half hours before you went in.”

  “Description?”

  “Sort of,” Justin said. “The suspect was dressed in a hooded robe like the Grim Reaper. Whoever was in the costume wore a mask. The mask—and I quote—‘was like a skull face, but wasn’t a skull. It was the face in that famous picture.’”

  “What famous picture?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Height?”

  “Average. Hard to tell with the hood.”

  “Weight?”

  “Unknown. Hard to tell with the robe.”

  “Color?”

  “Black. The robe, not the person.”

  “She see the hands?”

  “No, covered by gloves.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The suspect carried a bag.”

  “What makes the neighbor think that may have been the killer?”

  “Circumstantial inference from what she witnessed later. Her son is only two, so they went out to trick-or-treat early. As they walked from their house toward the front sidewalk, three kids in costume, followed by the Reaper, turned up the walk toward the house of her neighbor. She thought the Reaper was the parent of the kids, and led her son the opposite way at the sidewalk T. Later, she passed the same kids without the Reaper. And no one answered next door when the witness and her son knocked.”

  “Time she saw the suspect?”

  “About five-thirty.”

  “Time she knocked on the door?”

  “About six o’clock.”

  “The murder was called in at 6:53. Some trick-or-treaters saw the body through the open door. The killer must have been inside when the neighbor knocked at six, then escaped in costume, leaving the door ajar.”

  “It fits,” said Justin as Maddy entered the timetable into her notes.

  “Was the neighbor suspicious when no one answered the door?”

  “No, she assumed Mary was answering the call of nature.”

  “The neighbor’s name?”

  “Gustafson. Sara and Rolf. Rolf’s off traveling. He sells lumber.”

  “Okay,” said Maddy, closing her notebook. “First I’ll track down Mary’s husband, then I’ll talk to the neighbor.”

  “What of what you’ve told me can’t I use?”

  “The only hold-back evidence is the Hangman word puzzle. You can mention the game itself, but not the number of words or how many letters in each. If that got out and the game is valid, there could be copycat trouble.”

  “Are you going to guess in the papers?”

  “Yes,” said Maddy. “If only to throw the husband off guard. But as you warned, if the game is real, we can’t afford not to.”

  “I get the scoop?”

  “Of course, Justin. The best first guess must be a vowel.”

  “I read somewhere it’s a consonant.”

  “Which one?”

  “Don’t recall.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  “Which vowel?”

  “Start at the start.”

  “A,” said Justin.

  “A as in abattoir,” said the detective.

  The Wolf Man

  Seattle

  October 31

  “You missed your flight,” said Maddy.

  “I lost track of time.”

  “There’s a couch at my place.”

  “Thanks,” said Zinc. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll tag along. This case has its hook through my cheek.”

  “Mind?” said Maddy. “You put me at ease. Without Ralph, I’m minus a partner tonight. You’ll do fine if Dag gets rough.”

  “I’ll stay in the background. It’s your show.”

  “A Horseman for backup. That’s real cavalry.”

  They parked the unmarked car within a block of the address Justin had provided. Dag Konrad was living in a four-floor, rundown, red brick walk-up in an older part of Seattle. A “Monster Mash” was well under way on one of the upper stories, judging from the boisterous drunks who staggered down the stairs as the cops went up. While Bobby “Boris” Pickett sang about a “graveyard smash,” a smashed Dracula slopping a Bloody Mary almost pitched headfirst down the steps, but with his other hand he managed to grasp the bodice of the Vampirella with him, liberating both breasts as he passed out at her feet.

  The cops stepped over him.

  “My dress!” cried the vamp.

  “His slip’s showing,” Maddy said as they brushed by.

  The party was in the apartment registered to Dag Konrad, husband of the vic. Out of the flat too, for it had spilled into the hall. Dag, it seemed, was not crying in his beer over breaking up with his wife. If he knew Mary Konrad was dead, it appeared to be cause to celebrate, for the Wolf Man who was pointed out to them as the fellow they sought was dancing wildly to the tune after “Monster Mash.” Crowding the dance floor was an array of monsters old and new, with classics like the Phantom of the Opera and twin brothers dressed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bumping butts with a pantheon of modern mutants, Jason, Freddy, and the ghostly one out of Scream. “Wild Thing” brought forth the wolfishness in Dag, for as he guzzled beer so foam frothed around his hairy mouth like rabies, his wayward hand pinched bottoms and he dry-humped passing thighs.

  A man that oversexed, thought Maddy, undoubtedly has hair on his palms.

  A wife gone fat would be a real-life monster for a sexist like Dag.

  Chandler stood ready at the door while the Homicide detective entered the apartment. Maddy gradually worked her way through the gyrating masquerade toward the werewolf, wondering if she’d need to load her gun with silver bullets. She inched between the Frankenstein monster and the Fly, around Pinhead and the Creature from the Black Lagoon; the closer she got to the Wolf Man, the bigger he loomed. Dag was a hairy and muscular man in his own right, his bare torso darkened with a matting of macho fur, the jeans below torn calf-high like the ones Lon Chaney, Jr., wore in the film. The hair on his head was combed back in a pompadour. Black eye pencil was smudged around his bleary eyes. Adhesive attached unraveled spun yarn to his face, slanting up from the point of his jaw to his sideburns, and from where his eyebrows joined to his receding temples, and then straight up from the bridge of his nose to his widow’s peak. A line of false teeth spiked up from his lower lip, the canine fangs dripping froth down his jutting chin. As Maddy jostled toward him, she was stripped by his squinty eyes. Then, with a thumb covering the mouth of the bottle in his grasp, Dag gave the beer a shake to fizz it up, gripped the bottle between his thighs like a big, brown penis, and let it blow to spew foam at Maddy. Arching back his hairy head, he howled like Wolfman Jack.

  “Police,” said Maddy, disgusted, and she held up her badge.

  A change, like in the movie, came over Dag. Hard to tell if he was turning into a man or transforming into a beast more rabid than his costume. Maddy’s leg was ready to knee him in the groin. Smash that bottle and Dag would be neutered in the process, which would tame him like any unruly dog.

  “Hey, it’s a party.”

  They had to shout to be heard.

  “This isn’t about noise.”

  “Bitch,” snarled Dag.

  Maddy gripped the butt of the gun in the holster at her waist. If the neutering failed, she might have to put him down.

  “Not you,” added
Dag. “That tub o’ lard who’s my wife.”

  “Let’s talk outside.”

  “This about Mary?”

  “Outside.”

  “Okay.”

  “You lead the way.”

  The bottle went limp between his thighs and fell to the floor. Poison Ivy, from one of the Batman films, played spin the bottle with her high-heeled boot. Dag stumbled drunkenly through the dancers, not as nimble as when he was doing the dog. The cop followed him to the door and out into the hall.

  Zinc, lurking on the threshold, had scared off the overflow. Flanking the door were plastic skulls stuck on stakes as a warning. The epitaph on a tombstone at the foot of one read

  ROTTER

  DIED OF BODY PARTS FAILURE

  (FELL OFF)

  Leaning against the wall was an open coffin, in which lay a horrified Bride of Dracula with a stake through her heart.

  “Wha’d’ya think I did?” Dag slurred his words.

  “You tell me,” Maddy said over the music echoing from the flat.

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You shou’n’t be talkin’ to me.”

  “Off the record.”

  “Honest?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “So you said.”

  “Want that clear.”

  “Where were you between five and seven tonight?”

  “Here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Lookit my face. Took a lotta time to gum it all on.”

  “Anyone with you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anyone call?”

  “Naw.”

  “Any way you can prove you were here?”

  “Wha’s this about?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Can’t be Mary.”

  “Why?”

  “Di’n’t see ’er today.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I was drunk.”

  “So you said.”

  “I want that clear.”

  “Everybody’s a lawyer.”

  “I need a lawyer?”

  “Do you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Why do you need a lawyer?”

  “Who says I do?”

  “You,” said Maddy.

  Dag looked confused. “I don’t need a lawyer.”

  “If you say.”

  “The bitch provoked me.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So what happened?”

  “Aren’t you s’posed to warn me or somethin’?”

  “What good would that do? You’re drunk, remember?”

  “I am.”

  “You are. That’s settled.”

  “I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “I was provoked. Mary said she’d take me to the cleaners for spite.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So you did what?”

  “Let her have it.”

  “You mean you killed Mary?”

  “Huh?” said Dag.

  “Mary’s dead. She’s been murdered.”

  That seemed to sober the Wolf Man up fast, if he was drunk.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “I thought you didn’t.”

  “One little punch and you’re tryin’ to stitch me up.”

  “Sir—”

  “This is America. I got rights. You shouldn’t question me when I’m drunk. You got a duty to warn me if I’m a suspect. I got a right to silence. And to have a lawyer present. And if I can’t afford one, you got to provide it.”

  “Sir—”

  “This! Is! America!”

  “You got me there.”

  “You think I’m stupid? I watch TV.”

  “You want a lawyer?”

  “Fuckin’ right.”

  “Can you afford one?”

  “No,” replied Dag. “Get me Johnnie Cochran.”

  Maddy sighed. “Johnnie who?” she said.

  Kline & Shaw

  Vancouver

  Tonight

  It was my law associate, Ethan Shaw, who drew the article on the Hangman to my attention. At ten o’clock in the morning on November 1, fifteen days before the peril I find myself in tonight, I sat in our storefront office on the west side of Main, staring through

  LAWYERS

  KLINE & SHAW

  stenciled backwards on the reception-area window, while outside the flotsam and jetsam of Vancouver’s skid row ebbed and flowed, to and fro, from the cop shop across the street and the courthouse kitty-corner. Halloween, as always, would be good to the law business, so there I sat, waiting by the phone for legal aid to throw some new cases my way.

  Yes, I said the “west side” of Main.

  I suppose you’re thinking, The East End kid made good. No doubt you recall me saying Main Street marks the divide between the affluent West Side and where I grew up. Well, the divide isn’t that marked. The west side of Main is still skid row, so what I saw passing by as I gazed out was the grungy client base of Kline & Shaw. Junkies, boozers, hookers, strippers, con men, and such. The Needle Exchange was just up the street, so hypes by the handful jitterbugged by on their way to swap outfits against HIV. The ambulance parked out front said another had died. A nut we called the Windmill churned his arms near the courts, whirling them frantically in an effort to keep people away, shouting “Mother lovers!” at the top of his lungs. A crackhead was down on her hands and knees in front of our door, checking cracks in the sidewalk for crack others may unknowingly have dropped. Ethan had to sidestep her to open the door.

  “Another uneventful day at Kline & Shaw,” I said as he entered.

  “Any calls?”

  “Nope.”

  “No million-dollar mortgage?”

  “Just a mountain of bills in the mail.”

  “Where’s Suzy?”

  “Sick.”

  “Not again. How am I to function without a good admin?”

  “She wants a raise.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “She’s working to rule.”

  “No, she’s not. The rule is we start work about nine a.m.”

  “I was here. Where were you?”

  “I stopped by Mom’s. Her toilet was plugged. It took Roto-Rooter to clear it.”

  “I wish they’d clear the pipeline to legal aid. All I want is a six-month trial from a big Halloween murder.”

  “Move to Seattle.”

  “Why?”

  “The Hangman,” Ethan said. With that, he dropped the morning tabloid that was nestled under his arm onto Suzy’s desk.

  “Hangman Lynches Woman,” blared the headline.

  “Leg Cut Off in Hangman Game,” teased the subhead.

  “By Justin Whitfield,” accredited the byline.

  Our local paper had picked the story up from the Seattle Star.

  “I’ve read it,” Ethan said, and disappeared into his office.

  People find it hard to believe Ethan and I share space. We’re not partners—we’re associates. Partners combine incomes and jointly pay the bills, then split profits equally. Associates keep what they each make, after jointly paying the bills. Either way, Ethan and I are an odd couple. Ethan’s blond and skinny, a runt of the litter, with disheveled hair above eyes bleary from too much time spent boozing in the Blarney Stone after work. When he’s stressed, one eye twitches. Not from lack of rest, but from a mild case of Tourette’s syndrome. Me, I’m as different from him as black is from white. I wish I could say I am handsome, but I’m not. That is unless your taste runs to Mike Hammer tough. Survival through high school saw me in the gym, boxing muscles into my physique and roughing up my baby face in the process. My hair’s dark and short. My eyes look mean. And it’s a look I use to advantage in court. Spooking witnesses is the name of the game. But does that mean there�
��s no beauty inside the beast?

  Mike Hammer.

  Cool name.

  I must read one of those books.

  What Ethan and I have in common is the East End. He was raised there by his mom; I was raised there by Gram. We met at Lord Strathcona. We endured Britannia High. And we were two grubby-faced urchins surrounded by West Side silver spoons at UBC Law School. I think it was preordained that Ethan and I would end up back here on the skids. Our wallets are joined at the hip. Like Siamese twins.

  Don’t harbor any illusions about Kline & Shaw. I don’t want you thinking our law firm is two noble men who forsook uptown riches to return to their roots, preferring to run a rundown storefront office serving the under-funded needs of poor, disenfranchised wretches. Believe me, I can relate. I was one of them for too many years. But I didn’t fight my way up from the East End to end up a legal-aid lawyer serving the skids. I fought my way out of that cockroach-infested slum to become the best goddamn criminal lawyer there is, a man living on the West Side in a mansion of cedar and glass, with a client base of the richest and heaviest bad guys around.

  If your life is on the line,

  Time to call for Jeffrey Kline …

  So what happened?

  Why am I still here?

  The first thing you’ve got to understand is that law is about connections. If your parents live on the West Side and you’re a silver spoon, you’re connected in some way through them. You go into Mommy’s firm or bill Daddy’s business friends. Or you capitalize on a client base of other silver spoons like you. West Siders go mostly into civil law. That’s where the real money is, and they follow it. East Enders have always been left with criminal law. Criminals, for the most part, make up our connections. Small-time hoods and grifters are our client base. Big-time bad guys will always go for flash, so they get cherry-picked by mavericks working white-collar crime and the stock exchange, leaving us with the dregs funded by legal aid.

  The East End bar.

  Lawyers like Kline & Shaw.

  When we went into law school, Ethan and I, legal aid was a springboard to the West Side. Graduate with debts up to here from student loans, without a single connection to launch your practice, and your best bet was a call to legal aid to say there was a new gun in town, so start sending cases. Elect for a jury trial whenever you had the option, and thanks to that new milk cow, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you could squirt an endless stream of money from the bottomless public purse. Work, work, work until you paid off your debts, and soon you could afford a move up the food chain. It was only a matter of time until you struck gold, since the law of averages was with you. Pan enough dreck and you were sure to get a Big Case, a small-time punk who hit the big time, and if you were good and got him off scot-free, you could use the win to hook clients flush with cash.