Again the Hangman reached into the carryall.
Had Bart had functioning bowels, he would have shit himself.
The hand-held, cordless reciprocating saw weighed three pounds. Powered by a nine-volt in-handle battery that jiggled the blade at 2,700 strokes per minute, the tool looked like an electric knife, except it was able to cut through wood and mild steel. Cutting the flesh and bone of Bart’s limbs would be like sawing butter.
The Hangman went to work on the left leg first. A cut from the outside in severed the femoral artery and then the femur bone, spurting blood like a geyser from the combination of heartbeat and gravity. Muted by the halter, Bart—conscious all the while—screamed and screamed and screamed.
Blood, blood, everywhere,
And the size of Bart did shrink;
Blood, blood, everywhere,
For the Hangman’s eyes to drink.
In days of yore, in Britain, from whence Americans imported hanging, those who really pissed off the Crown were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Sharks
Seattle
Friday, November 10 (Six days ago)
Sharks can smell blood in the water, so the sharks were out this morning.
In the early hours of the new day, The Yardarm ran aground on Sand Point. With Pontiac Bay to its north and Wolf Bay to its south, Sand Point juts like a nose into Lake Washington. The county had created an airstrip here in 1920, and four years later, that was taken over by the U.S. Navy. When the air station was shut down in 1970, the city of Seattle claimed Sand Point for a park. Had the government not locked up the land during Seattle’s early years, it would probably be a residential enclave today. Instead, Magnuson Park boasts one and a half miles of largely undeveloped shoreline on the west side of Lake Washington. Here, tree-framed vistas of misty blue water front panoramas of the Cascade Mountains to the east and the glaciated cone of Mount Rainier to the south. Grass tapers down to a narrow gravel strip of a beach, and there, at a relatively isolated spot where plants and trees were left alone to attempt a return to primeval forest, The Yardarm and its bloody cargo, still dangling from the mast, ran aground in the dark before dawn.
The man who found the sloop was in a broken-hearted funk. Like Bart, he had come home from a business trip last night, a day earlier than planned, to surprise his new wife, which he did when he caught her in the throes of sexual ecstasy in their still-unpaid-for marital bed with his best man.
To drown his sorrows, the poor guy had moped to an all-night liquor store and, fortified with a bottle of Wild Turkey, driven east on NE 65th Street, across the Burke-Gilman Trail, which once was the old Burlington Northern railroad grade, and Sand Point Way into Magnuson Park. There, he had abandoned his car to walk the beach on foot, drinking straight from the bottle as Bart had done, until, pissed to the gills, he had ended up here, where, against the first flush of dawn across the lake, he witnessed a sight of such carnage that he sobered up fast.
Luckily, with him was his cellphone.
Did he call the cops?
Not on your life.
The call he made was to Sue Frye’s TV station, as it offered a cash reward to any Seattleite who phoned in an exclusive news tip.
The bigger the story, the bigger the reward.
So that’s why Sue Frye and her camera crew arrived before the cops at the scene of the Hangman’s third murder, and began feeding live video of what they found back to their TV station for immediate broadcast to the waking city.
Vancouver
“Zinc?”
“Mmm.”
“Are you awake?”
“I am now, Alex.”
“Do you still love me like you did when we fell in love?”
Opening his eyes, he rubbed away the sleep. “What brought this on?”
“Tonight’s your date with Maddy.”
“No,” he said. “Tonight’s my date with you.”
“Is she coming?”
“I have no idea. She didn’t say she was. All she said was maybe. Since I suggested we use the cruise to meet and discuss files, I haven’t heard anything different from her.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Of course not, Alex. I’m going on the cruise to have fun with you, not to work on a case. I get enough work at work, thank you very much.”
“That’s what nags at me.”
“Huh?”
“Why did you stay overnight in Seattle with Maddy when you knew I was waiting at home in bed for you?”
“The case caught my interest.”
“It wasn’t your case.”
“It is now.”
“But it wasn’t then. And you know what the doctor said about losing sleep. You don’t want another epileptic fit.”
“Alex, I got sleep.”
“Yes. At Maddy’s.”
“You’re not being fair. You’ve got me coming and going. Where did this sudden streak of insecurity come from? I love you and no one else. End of story. So rest at ease, and we’ll live happily ever after.”
“What does Maddy look like?”
“A shriveled-up prune,” said Zinc.
Where would Zinc Chandler be today if not for Alex Hunt?
In the aftermath of the Cutthroat shootout, he had returned from Hong Kong with a bullet wound to his head that might have ended his career as a Mountie. For the rest of his life, Zinc would pop several caps of Dilantin a day to ward off epileptic seizures. Four years had come and gone while Zinc worked the family farm in Saskatchewan, waiting for headquarters to approve his return to duty. There he lived the daily regimen of a Spartan and a Stoic, to mend himself body and mind.
Dispatching Zinc to Deadman’s Island had seemed a good idea. Special X was embroiled in a high-profile media circus—an American feminist had been butchered by a psycho who thought he was Jack the Ripper reincarnated—so Chief Superintendent Robert DeClercq could not spare an active investigator to keep his promise to provide a real cop for the detection game of a mystery weekend that had been auctioned off to aid charity. The secret buyer was specific about how he/she desired the interactive game to be played. Twelve crime writers from Canada and the States would be flown to an isolated island off the Pacific Coast to match wits with the cop for a prize of cold cash. The set-up was to echo Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Because Zinc was still waiting for his call to duty, DeClercq’s offering him as the real investigator seemed the obvious answer to his predicament. So that’s how the Mountie had found himself surrounded by scribblers in a float plane docked in Vancouver harbor, waiting for the last straggler to arrive before flying off to Deadman’s Island for a deadly weekend.
Etched in his mind forever was the first time Zinc saw her.
Barely discernible through the rain was the city’s downtown core. Huddled like a waif at its feet was the shack of Thunderbird Charters. From the shack to the float plane out on the water stretched a gangway and a hundred-foot dock. The woman sea-legging down the gangplanks struggled against the storm, suitcase lugged in one hand, umbrella opposite fighting the wind to block the slanted rain. She wore a black tight-waisted jacket over black jeans tucked into black cowboy boots, and a black trenchcoat that flapped around her like Zorro’s cape. Though her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and clipped with silver heart-shaped barrettes, her features were masked by wayward strands dancing about her face. As she neared the plane, she looked up, and Zinc’s heart was gone.
Eyes so blue you could dive in to swim in tropical lagoons. A narrow, delicate chin around a most kissable mouth. The grace of an angel in her every move, and the sensuality of a fallen woman in her sleek form. Boarding the plane was the fantasy of Zinc’s dreams, so how he wished—God, how he wished—that he was the man he had been.
“Sorry I’m late, but cross-border shoppers clogged Peace Arch. I’m Alex Hunt,” she told the others as the engines coughed to life. Zinc touched his forehead subconsciously to hide the indent the surgeons had left in removing the slug fro
m his brain.
They say the strongest relationships are forged on the anvil of war. Courage under fire fuses the deepest bond, and everything in life after that is reduced to a footnote in your biography.
What Zinc and Alex went through that weekend was as hellish as any war. Having lured the crime writers to Deadman’s Island on a false pretext while Special X hunted for him back on the mainland, the Ripper killed them off one by one in fiendish ways. Necessity forced Zinc and Alex to make a last stand, confining them to a single room through the long night before the grisly climax.
The woman who spent that vigil with Zinc had transformed herself into an Amazon warrior. Grace replaced by grim determination, Alex crouched beside the door with a knife in each fist. Hair matted and sweaty clothes clinging to her body, she glared with such ferocity that he knew she would have no compunction about stabbing their stalker in the back.
Zinc was out of Dilantin, and it was only a question of hours until the scar in his brain overwhelmed him. Stress and lack of sleep shortened his endurance, so it was a matter of life or death that the Mountie get rest.
He and Alex lay on separate beds in the dark. The cyclonic storm outside was tearing at the roof. Locking themselves in here for the night was the only refuge they could muster. The springs of the bed next to his creaked, then Zinc sensed Alex moving silently across the gap between them, until she hovered over him like a guardian. Her scent was so intoxicating that shivers ran up his spine. Her breath was as soft as a feather’s breeze.
She kissed his forehead.
She kissed his wound.
She kissed his lips and said, “Sleep.”
Sleep he did.
A fitful sleep.
But sleep nonetheless.
The Ripper had stabbed Zinc in the back during the final conflict, and it was a toss-up whether the Mountie would live or die. If the man who flew to the island was but a ghost of his former self, the man carried off on a stretcher was a fading mirage.
They say those who endure a near-death experience see a blinding white light. Zinc witnessed such an aura during his struggle with death, and all that kept him from advancing into the brilliant glare was Alex Hunt calling him back from somewhere behind. When Zinc awoke in the ICU of a West Coast hospital, he saw that “somewhere behind” was the chair beside his near-death bed. Whether he saw that light or not didn’t matter. Perhaps he imagined it, but what he did not imagine was Alex softly calling to him not to slip away through all those in-the-balance days while he was unconscious.
Zinc had come around to find his guardian angel in tears.
“I love you,” Alex said.
“And I love you,” said he.
On Zinc’s release from hospital, she had taken him home with her to Oregon. There, on the windy, crashing shore of Cannon Beach, where she had previously cared for her cancer-ridden dad, Alex had nursed her unconsummated lover back to health. Each day, with sea-spray fountaining around Haystack Rock, they combed the untamed beach together from end to end. When Zinc was strong enough to add sex to his rehabilitation, Alex seduced him like he had always dreamed of being seduced, the instinctive lover who tuned up his body like a Rolls-Royce mechanic.
It was almost worth getting wounded!
The bullet to his brain had scrambled Zinc’s mind, however. If you were to ask him how much rain fell in November, and the response he intended was “The rain in November would have drowned Noah,” he might, if he didn’t concentrate, reply, “The rain in Spain falls mainly … No, that’s wrong.”
Crosswords are good. Chess is better. But nothing hones the deductive mind like a Golden Age puzzle. The 1920s and 1930s were the Golden Age of the classic detective story. The three great practitioners of the art of deception were Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. Of these, perhaps the most devious mind was Carr’s. His forte was the locked-room puzzle, the impossible crime.
To sharpen Zinc’s mind in Cannon Beach, Alex went back to Carr. She would extract the locked-room puzzles from his classic books—The Three Coffins, The Crooked Hinge, The Plague Court Murders—and set them up at home as challenges for Zinc to unravel. To add spice to the game, she made herself the prize, shedding a garment for each clue guessed and donning one for each one flubbed. Come night, this version of strip poker picked up where it had left off, and if he cracked the mystery, she was his.
Zinc soon got adept at solving such puzzles.
Eventually, thanks to Alex, Zinc was patched up. When the call to return to Special X finally came, it meant Alex had to abandon Oregon for British Columbia if she was to live with him. Knowing how important it was to Zinc as a man to return to the force, and being the one with a portable occupation, she sold her house, packed up her belongings and crossed the Canadian border.
Where would Zinc Chandler be today if not for Alex Hunt?
And what would he do if he lost her?
Now, as Alex moved into his arms, the phone by the bed rang. On reflex, Zinc reached out and punched the speaker button. “Chandler,” he said to the activated mike.
“Zinc, it’s Maddy Thorne.” Her husky voice filled the bedroom. “You get Seattle stations on cable, don’t you?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Turn on KVOT.”
In addition to the set on which they had watched Twelve Angry Men, Zinc and Alex had a TV on the wall at the foot of the bed. Plucking the remote control from the bedside table, Alex clicked it on and entered the cable channel for that Seattle station.
A moment later, the gray room flickered with blue light. The image that appeared onscreen was an aerial view of the city taken from a chopper. The word “Live” was superimposed in the upper corner, and in the lower corner was “Breaking News.” At first, Zinc wondered if this was the morning traffic report, for there was the Space Needle on the horizon and here was traffic on a bridge across Lake Washington, people commuting into the city. But then the camera closed in on what appeared to be a park jutting out into the water, revealing police cars and cops on foot converged around a sloop that had run aground.
A body hung from the rigging, minus both legs and an arm.
“What do you see?” Maddy asked.
“An aerial shot of a boat.”
“See a good-looking woman raising her hand?”
“The one on the phone?”
“That’s me.”
Alex scowled.
“Don’t peek down my neckline,” Maddy said through the speaker.
The image onscreen switched to a land-based shot of the sloop. The sun was breaking to the east, not up like it was now. “Recorded Earlier” replaced “Live” in the upper corner. Standing in front of the boat and facing the camera was a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman flashing perfect teeth.
“Sue Frye,” she said, “reporting to you live from the scene of the Hangman’s third hanging. Those sirens you hear in the background are police cars responding. A KVOT watcher phoned in this news tip, so you are the first in Seattle to witness this sickening crime. What do you make of this?”
“Oh, no,” said Zinc.
“What do you see?” asked Maddy.
“A media shark named Sue Frye feasting on blood in the water.”
“Guess what happens next.”
“She shows what we don’t want seen.”
“The hold-back evidence is held back no more.”
As if on cue, the camera panned away from Sue Frye to close in on the butchered body hanging from the mast of the sloop. In a weak attempt at good taste, the remains were shot as a silhouette against the blazing bloodball of the rising sun. Both legs and one arm were shortened to dripping stumps, while the other arm was lashed to a deck stanchion with rope. The camera followed a drip of blood down to the cabin roof, then off that roof toward the deck beside the starboard gunwale, but stopped short to focus on a bloody hangman game scrawled on the cabin wall:
“Three E’s,” Zinc said.
“Another good guess.”
�
��So the Hangman won’t stop killing until we solve the whole puzzle.”
“If then,” said Maddy.
“Let’s hope,” said Zinc.
The camera dropped for a quick shot of the severed limbs on the bloody deck beneath the hangman game, then the focus returned to Frye.
“Here come the police,” Sue said as the cameraman swiveled around. The face of an angry uniformed officer filled the lens. “Take your hands off me,” shouted Sue. The image onscreen jumped all over the place while the sharks were repelled.
Zinc took the control from Alex and pressed the Mute button so he and Maddy could talk.
“Who’s Sue Frye?”
“Local legend. She’s been around a while. Made her name covering this state’s return to the noose back in 1993.”
“Now she’s got a scoop with another hanging, eh?” said Zinc.
“Broadcasting the hangman game to the public is a rough turn of events. We won’t be able to separate copycats from the real McCoy.”
“Look on the bright side. A viewer might solve the puzzle.”
“Does it mean anything to you?”
“No,” said Zinc.
The whup of the chopper drowned Maddy’s voice at the far end of the call, then she appeared as large as life on the silent screen. Maddy looked up and scowled at the telephoto lens, waving the helicopter away like a malarial mosquito.
“You just mouthed ‘Fuck off’ on live TV,” scolded Zinc.
“Another pass and I’ll empty my gun at the fucking pilot.”
“So this victim’s male.”
“Uh-huh,” said the detective.
“Anything else different from the Hangman’s female crimes?”
“Lots,” she replied. “The vic’s a traveling salesman named Bart Busby. It’s his boat. The Hangman didn’t use a noose this time. Strung the guy up with a harness instead. That meant he was alive and conscious for what followed. Unlike the previous killings, this vic’s guts were pulled out. Then his limbs were sawn off before he died. And finally, his jaw was slashed to ribbons after death.”
Hangman Page 15