Hangman

by Michael Slade

  “If you go for the type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t. But I’ll soon see. And God help you, Zinc Chandler, if the cop you spent the night with, and just invited on our cruise, turns out to be built like a stripper or looks the least bit sexy to me.”

  The Tyburn Jig

  Vancouver

  Tonight

  “Hangman Strikes Here,” blared the morning tabloid from the newspaper box out front of the CNIB stand in the lobby of the law courts. The headline was seventy points at least. The size saved for catastrophes like Kennedy getting shot. The stand used to be staffed by clerks who were sight impaired, fitting since it was run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, but the woman who sold me both papers that morning of November 8—the day after Jayne Curry was hanged in North Vancouver—could see as well as, if not better than, me. It was naive to hope an honesty system would work with lawyers as the stand’s main customers.

  Honor among thieves?

  I crossed to the elevators near the court registry and joined the throng of barristers on their way up. The sweet smell of money wafted off their power suits, and the number of chins on their plump, ruddy faces attested to their success. All were civil lawyers from the veal-fattening pens uptown, multi-floored international firms packed into phallic towers. Hundreds of minions chained to computers tracking billable hours were fed an endless stream of files to churn out needless paper for gullible clients who swallow padded accounts.

  Those let out for a little fresh air were the lackeys who followed their senior counsels lugging briefcases bulging with thick files.

  The lawyers looked down at me like I was shit on their shoes.

  Lard loathes lean and mean.

  The elevator arrived and we packed in. I punched 3 for the law library. I told you my only sure cure for skid-row blues was to escape uptown. Here, I could fantasize that this is where I belong. Back when I got hooked on law in Kinky’s court, I would amble over to Rattenbury’s courthouse to watch jury trials. That courthouse has since become the art gallery, so now I amble two blocks south to the new law courts. Every lawyer, fat or lean, is equal in the law library, so I planned to spend the day reading cases uptown instead of in my grungy office at Kline & Shaw.

  The elevator opened and we surged out.

  By then I was gagging from those cloying colognes fat cats slap on to disguise the pungent stench that fear of losing sweats from them.

  A long corridor ran the length of level three. A gallery of photos lined one wall: headshots of judges stretching from recent days back to when they still wore horsehair wigs. The entrance to the library separated appeal-court from trial-court judges. As I moved toward the barristers’ lounge, I traced recurring family names through several generations, as silver spoons were passed down from father to son. What hit me was how the faces grew tougher the further back I went, for those were the times when hangmen dropped forty-four cons down the elevator shaft at Oakalla Prison Farm.

  Hangmen, I thought.

  The barristers’ lounge opened off the hall beyond the last photo. A sign by the door warned laymen away. Signs within asked lawyers to PLEASE TURN CELLPHONES OFF IN COURTROOMS, and cautioned us beneath a drawing of a black-masked burglar to PLEASE … WATCH YOUR BELONGINGS. ALL ARTICLES LEFT AT OWN RISK. A Canadian trial lawyer wears British court regalia, minus the wig. At more than a thousand bucks for a basic set of robes, those left unattended vanish in a second.

  Like I said: Honor among thieves?

  Though it was nothing more than an alcove beyond the coat rack, Brian and Ken’s Coffee House did a bustling trade. WELCOME. STARBUCKS IT AIN’T … BUT THE COFFEE’S GOOD AND THE PRICE IS RIGHT, read the sign. No false advertising there. Where else can you get a twenty-five-cent cup of caffeine?

  The cupboards above the coffeepots were covered with cartoons. Snipped from newspapers and magazines, most were jokes about juries and hanging. I laughed as I stood in line.

  I drained the dregs from the pot and carried my cup of coffee through to the lounge. The lounge was full of Queen’s Counsel in shiny silk robes, wheeling and dealing to settle million-dollar lawsuits “on the courthouse steps,” and barristers without QCs in dull “stuff” robes, trying to bail new clients out by phone before rushing off to court to defend those in the dock. I found a seat at the eye of the hurricane, and then sat down with my coffee to read about last night’s hanging.

  Catchy name.

  The Hangman.

  Trust Americans. They’ve always had a knack for nicknaming serial killers. Son of Sam. Murder Mac. The .22 Caliber Killer. Zodiac. Candy Man. The Sunset Strip Slayer. Forces of Evil. The Night Stalker. The Boston Strangler. The Score Card Killer. The Sunday Morning Slasher.

  Having squeezed every fact from both papers, I crumpled my cup and tossed it at the basketball hoop of the wastebasket, then left the lounge for the library to cobble together a defense for an upcoming, run-of-the-mill drug case. As I wandered the shelves collecting law reports, the word “hangman” shanghaied me from the Lawyers’ Leisure section.

  Dance with the Hangman: The History of Hanging from Jack Ketch to Albert Pierrepoint.

  The book lurked among other books published to entertain: legal biographies, anecdotes, histories, and such.

  A light bulb went on in my mind.

  I reached for the book.

  Whoever the Hangman was, this killer was on a mission. A lynching in Seattle, a lynching in Vancouver—together they meant a killing spree. What began as a crime down south had become a tale of two cities, and one of those two cities was mine. No longer would my daydream be that I was an American lawyer. The killer of the decade had crossed the border, so now I could fantasize that I was me. If and when the Hangman was caught and tried, every gunslinger north and south of the line would want that client, so what could I do to make that gunslinger Jeffrey Kline?

  Attracting the killer’s attention was my bright idea.

  Whatever the Hangman’s mission, it centered on hanging. The killer had gone to great trouble to hang both victims, and to play the hangman game with police. In choosing America for the first lynching, the killer embarked upon a self-defeating course of action. With criminal law scattered among fifty-one jurisdictions, the fifty states and the federal government, the hangman never became a national icon down there. “Judge Lynch” was the law across the Wild West, but he was a different man in each county, and hanging went into decline in 1890, after Yankee ingenuity thought up the electric chair. The hangman as a named and feared executioner, hanging cons around the country and the commonwealth, was a British horror.

  Welcome to British Columbia, Hangman.

  Do you feel at home?

  Tingling with excitement, I carried the book to where I was working and shoved my legal research for the drug trial aside. With pen and paper ready, I cracked Dance with the Hangman. What I planned to do was write a background article on hangmen for the local papers, the subtext of which—aimed at the Hangman—would be “I understand your mission. Jeffrey Kline is your kind of lawyer.”

  A few pages into the book, I came across a useful hook. A hook is what a lawyer uses to kick off a jury submission.

  A century or two back, a boat full of Christian seafarers wrecked and sank in a storm. The survivors landed as castaways on a remote island. Fearing it was inhabited by headhunters or cannibals, they set out to explore their new home. On moving inland, they almost immediately caught sight of the rotting corpse of a man hanging on a gallows. No greater comfort could they have found. The hanging meant other Christians lived nearby.

  Good hook that. A nice ironic touch. Was the Hangman’s mission one of biblical retribution? An eye for an eye? A tooth for a tooth? Hey, I understand.

  Next, a little horror to titillate readers. For six centuries or more, Tyburn Hill was the execution site in London. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park is close by today, and maps still show the short road of Ty
burn Way. At the hands of hangmen like the notorious Jack Ketch, it’s estimated 50,000 people were publicly executed there.

  Ketch was hangman from 1663 to 1686.

  Hangman was a versatile job in his day. Hanging by the neck until dead was for common people, and Merrie England saw the ladder and rope in constant use. The condemned scaled a ladder placed against the gallows beam, and there was jeered by the public while Ketch cinched the noose. Then the hangman “turned him off” to dance “the Tyburn jig.” Carts replaced the ladder during that century. With nooses hanging loose about their necks, prisoners were trundled by cart to Tyburn Hill as crowds along the route cracked jokes, partied, drank, and pelted them with offal. Arriving at the gallows, the prisoners were strung up by Ketch, who then whipped the horse-drawn carts away so they could dance on air.

  Tyburn’s Triple Tree had three gallows beams. Cart after cart could be emptied with ease. Often the condemned’s bowels and bladder let go, so Ketch was also known as “the crap merchant.” A euphemism for hanging was “pissing when you can’t whistle.”

  Those who really pissed off the Crown were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Ketch would hang you by the neck until you weren’t dead, then cut you down and rip you open so he could draw out your bowels and roast them in front of your eyes. To finish, he would hack off your head and butcher you into quarters. The four pieces, stuck on poles, were displayed around London as a warning. Your severed head was a trophy to mount on Traitors’ Gate.

  “Quartering?” I wrote.

  “The cut-off legs?”

  So hated was the hangman that Ketch himself was hanged in Punch and Judy shows. Children were kept quiet with threats of “Jack Ketch will get you.” The last witch, Alice Molland, was hanged in Britain before Ketch died, in 1685. So enduring was Ketch’s gruesome legacy that every hangman after him was referred to by the public as “Jack Ketch.”

  My pen was flying.

  On I read.

  Another hangman of that time was John Crosland. How he came to get the job is the stuff of legend. A father and his two sons were tried and convicted for horse-stealing at Derby Assizes. Gallows humor ruled sentencing that day, so the judges offered to pardon one of the three men if he would consent to hang the other two.

  The offer was made to the father, who hurled it back at the bench. “What!” he shouted with contempt. “A father hang his sons? How can I put to death the life I gave? No, let me hang by the neck a hundred times instead!”

  The offer was made to the elder son. He too spat it back at the judges. “How could I live with myself if I hanged my own family?”

  The offer was made to the younger son, and John accepted at once. So fine a job did he do of hanging his father and brother that John Crosland went on to become the hangman for several counties, an office he held to a ripe old age.

  “Important point.”

  Notes were coming fast.

  “Hangman isn’t a job. Hangman is a calling.

  “What makes someone conclude his mission in life is to hang people?”

  The last execution at Tyburn was in 1783. From there, the Tyburn jig moved to a scaffold in front of Newgate Prison, in Old Bailey. Thenceforth, a convict strung up for slow strangulation was said to be “dancing in Bailey’s ballroom.”

  Hmmmm, I thought. The Old Bailey. Now the name of London’s Central Criminal Court.

  I made another note.

  “Hanging and the courts?”

  The hangman who served the longest was William Calcraft. He was in office from 1829 to 1874. Death by slow strangulation was Calcraft’s trademark. For work on the scaffold, he always wore dead black. In 1831, he hanged a boy of nine. There were times when Calcraft took pity on a strangling condemned, so he would pull down on the wretch’s leg to help him die faster. Thus the origin of the saying “You’re pulling my leg.” Sometimes, relatives took up that task. Thus “hangers-on.”

  A memorable hanging occurred in his first year as hangman. Calcraft was to execute David Evans for murdering his sweetheart. The rope snapped as Evans dangled from the gallows, plunging him unnerved but unhurt to the ground.

  “Shame! Shame! Let him go!” shouted the unruly mob.

  “I claim my liberty,” declared the half-hanged man. “You hanged me once. You have no right to hang me again.”

  Evans staggered to his feet, struggling to get away. Down came Calcraft to haul him up for another try.

  “It’s against the law,” cried Evans, “to hang me a second time!”

  “You are mistaken,” the hangman replied. “There is no such law that you must be let go if there is an accident and you are not properly hanged. My warrant is to hang you by the neck until you are dead. So up you go, and hang you must until you are dead.”

  Evans hanged, protesting to the end.

  “The Marquis of Queensberry rules don’t apply on the gallows,” I wrote.

  “The same with the Hangman.

  “The Hangman killed again, though police correctly guessed the letter A.

  “The guess in this morning’s papers was the letter E.

  “Will the Hangman kill again if that guess, too, is right?

  “I wish the cops would release the Hangman’s word puzzle so I could take a stab at solving it.

  “How many words?

  “How many letters in each?”

  The custom in Calcraft’s time was that a hangman owned his victim’s clothes and the rope used to hang him. That “Jack Ketch” made a pretty penny off the perquisites of his office. He sold the garments of those he hanged to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks and other exhibitions. The notoriety of the convict put to death determined the price it cost relic hunters for a piece of the rope, sometimes as much as five shillings an inch.

  Calcraft carried out the last public execution in 1868. A large crowd assembled in front of Newgate Prison. The corpse was left to hang for the usual hour. As the hangman was cutting down the hanged man, he was taunted by the mob with cries of “Come on, body snatcher. Take the man you killed.” The public spectacle had seen its day. Henceforth, the jig was danced in private within Bailey’s ballroom. Later, the Old Bailey was built on the prison site. Do the ghosts of the gallows haunt London’s criminal courts?

  I made another note.

  “Hanging as public deterrent.”

  Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. As I worked in the library on November 8, I wondered if the article I hoped to publish could be fashioned into a double hook. Perhaps the Hangman would conclude that Jeffrey Kline was a lawyer who understood the mission and, if the killer was caught, should therefore be the gunslinger to defend the accused in court. Too many “woulds” and “shoulds” made that a long shot, so was there more to be gained by provoking the psycho? What if the article induced the Hangman to contact me? Once the killer was hooked, I could reel in the case. Say I made the piece read as if I understood the mission, but I included mistakes that cast doubt? Would that lure the Hangman in to set me straight?

  A deadly game in hindsight, as events tonight are proving.

  Hanged, drawn, and quartered.

  Prophetic words.

  Is that the fate the Hangman has in mind for me …?

  Scribblers

  Seattle

  Wednesday, November 8 (Eight days ago)

  The galley proofs of Perverse Verdict were spread across Justin Whitfield’s desk in the newsroom of the Seattle Star. The room was a wide-open space humming with manic activity as reporters writing to deadline banged away at keyboards to fill computer screens with copy, or transcribed interviews from hand-held recorders, or jotted notes while cradling phones in the crook between shoulder and ear. The cubicles in which they worked were scattered around concrete pillars holding up the ceiling. Bulletin boards pinned with maps, work schedules, and union notices covered the supports. A bank of windows along the west wall overlooked Elliott Bay, with Puget Sound beyond. The sky out there was as joylessly gray as the carpet, cubicles, desks, and upright surfaces in here, but
not as gray as the hangover clouding Justin’s mind.

  Thank you, Jack Daniel’s.

  God, how his head hurt!

  Deadlines, stress, and the urge to unwind.

  Booze was, and always would be, the main hazard of his job.

  If Justin had known the Hangman would strike again last night, he would have stayed in Vancouver and sworn off the sauce. Instead, he had imbibed with his brother in the airport lounge, watching planes come and go on the rainy runways of Sea Island while the waiter came and went with enough shots of bourbon and water to drown both men. Ethan drank like a lawyer. Justin drank to keep up. So by the time he caught the last flight to Seattle from Vancouver at close to midnight, the reporter was in no condition to report. Having missed the Hangman scoop despite being in the city where the crime went down, Justin first heard about the second killing on the radio in the taxi driving him home from SeaTac Airport.

  Shit! he thought.

  Just my luck!

  With dawn had come no respite from the pain in his head. It was an ordeal simply to get to work. Work itself was self-flagellation. The piece he had just finished for tomorrow’s edition was, understandably, not up to par. It lacked the insight he brought to a story by personally haunting the murder scene, and his pipeline from Maddy could provide only sketchy secondhand details. As for the crispness of his prose, the craftsmanship of the wordsmith reflected the hangover addling his brain.

  The Star’s star reporter was fading today.

  A shout from across the newsroom caught Justin’s ear. An editor, jumping up, was waving his fist for the story. Time to check the stillborn copy into city desk, so Justin punched a button to send his Hangman article there.

  That done, he switched hats from writer to editor.

  The galleys covering his desk were page proofs for his soon-to-be-published true-crime book. As such, they marked the point of no return for last-minute changes. How they read was how Perverse Verdict would end up in print, so Justin turned his fuzzy attention to weighing Ethan’s margin-scribbled comments.