Hangman

by Michael Slade

  “Chandler,” he answered.

  “Special O. Guess who just landed at the airport on a flight from San Francisco?”

  * * *

  The Lady-Killer figured it was time to settle the score with that bitch of a lesbian nurse who had blown the whistle on him, effectively putting an end to the paving of his yellow brick road. Timing was everything when it came to murder, and tonight was the perfect time for her to commit “suicide.” Doing her in earlier would have implicated him. Had she died before his trial, the suspicion would have been that he had silenced her as a witness. After the verdict, his big concern had been what to do with Jayne Curry, for the amorous juror might have been able to jeopardize his acquittal on appeal. His trip to the States had been to escape from her clinging for a while; then, when Curry was hanged, he knew he would be suspected of being the Hangman, so he had decided to lay low until tonight.

  Timing.

  What made tonight the perfect time to settle his outstanding score with that whistle-blowing nurse was the lucky interlocking of subsequent events. Not only did he have a San Francisco alibi for the night Busby was hanged from the mast of his boat, but he was also not aboard the cruise ship when Alex Hunt was killed, and now it seemed certain that the cops had the Hangman in court. The Hangman’s lynching of Curry had effectively put an end to the Crown’s appeal, so his acquittal was no longer in jeopardy. His only motive left for doing in the squealing nurse was revenge, and even if that was in his cold, cold mind, would he be foolish enough to chance the risk?

  Surely not.

  Far more likely that she did herself in, for the gossip the doctor had heard as far away as California was that his former nurse was down in the dumps after being jilted by a younger woman who had stolen the old girl’s heart.

  Is that why she stuck the hypodermic currently in his pocket into her arm? To give herself a deadly shot of the poison in the glass vial that was also in his possession here outside her garage?

  Is that why, before she stuck the needle in her arm tonight, she left the motor of her car running? So carbon-monoxide gas would fill the garage, ensuring her demise from one poison or the other?

  Is that why—

  His ears perked up.

  Was this her coming home?

  A car had turned into the lane leading to the rear of her modest house, and headlight beams were advancing through cracks in the fence toward her garage. Once the car drew near, a second motor kicked in, and the doctor heard the automatic door of the garage begin to clatter up.

  The yard between her house and the garage was full of murk and gloom. The door to the yard from the garage opened outward, and that’s where the Lady-Killer lurked to ambush the nurse. The window nearest him was a blind eye until the car turned into the garage and knifed its headlights through the glass into the dark heart of the yard. Through the window, Dr. Twist saw the face of his former nurse above the steering wheel.

  The eye went dark.

  She had doused the beams.

  The car door slammed shut; he heard the tapping of her approaching heels before the sound was absorbed by the clatter of the automatic door as it descended.

  Good, thought Twist.

  That will drown out her cry.

  His gloved hand jabbed the needle of the syringe into the glass vial, then eased back the hypodermic’s plunger to suck up the poison. The handle of the door from the garage turned as the doctor dropped the vial back into his pocket, and he prepared himself for action the moment the door swung open.

  Her hand would be on the handle as it hinged away from the jamb, her arm preceding her body out into the backyard. A quick grab of her wrist from his position beside the door, and the needle would jab into her arm before she could react. Her cry of surprise would be a gasp, not a scream, lost in the ongoing clatter of the lane door. His glove would stifle any shriek before it came out.

  Ready.

  Set.

  Here she comes …

  “John Langley Twist,” shouted a voice behind him, “you’re under arrest.”

  * * *

  The watchers of Special O had followed Twist from the airport, keeping Zinc informed of his whereabouts, and when Twist’s final destination turned out to be the backyard of his former nurse—the nurse responsible for his murder trial—Zinc had set this trap. Yes, the nurse had driven her car into the garage, but it wasn’t her on the other side of the door. It was a cop who had slouched down in the passenger’s seat, emerging to assume the nurse’s role once the garage was dark. As for Zinc, he had crept into the backyard by the walkway skirting the side of the house from out front.

  By dim light from the street and the glow cast by the windows of surrounding homes, the Mountie saw Dr. Twist coming for him. The hypodermic needle spiked down from his raised fist like the knife used to kill in Psycho’s shower scene. Zinc could have drawn the Smith & Wesson holstered at his waist, but he had yet to discharge the anger seething in him, so instead he took his rage out on the Lady-Killer.

  Zinc blocked the stab with his left forearm, then swung his right hand in an upward arc behind the immobile limb gripping the syringe. Locking his right palm over the back of his own left hand, the inspector used the strength of both muscled biceps to wrench back the doctor’s arm until a bone snapped. He threw the shocked man back against the garage, so the boards of the wall backed his head, then drove his knuckled fist forward to shatter Twist’s nose. A knee slamming into his groin finished off the Lady-Killer, dropping him to the dirt as a bloody, broken mess. His pretty-boy face would set lonely hearts fluttering no more, and his conceit of a cock would need convalescence before it would stand up to cons in the pen.

  Zinc would have kicked him, but he held that urge in check.

  Twist wasn’t on the ship the night Alex died.

  So while he had vented his anger for now on this pathetic substitute, Zinc didn’t want to be in jail on a brutality rap when the opportunity arose for a showdown with Alex’s killer.

  Would her killer make the same mistake as Dr. John Twist?

  Faced with the Mountie, would he too misread the signs?

  Something about Zinc made people want him on their side, for instinct told them he would be vicious if the knife was at his throat.

  Necktie Party

  Seattle

  Wednesday, November 15 (One day ago)

  What began as a necktie party would end as a necktie party.

  Different definitions.

  It was deathly quiet in the Athens Taverna, unlike earlier, before midnight, when the party had been in full swing. There was a party every night at the Greek restaurant, fueled by retsina, ouzo, and Metaxa brandy. Belly dancers would undulate for lecherous businessmen out for a wild fling on the town, the drunkest of whom would end up thinking they were Zorba the Greek, dancing amid the tables with both arms crooked in the air …

  Do-da … do-da … do-da do-da do-dado-dado-da …

  While George Koulelis snipped off their ties with a pair of shears.

  The ceiling of the main room looked like a bed of spikes turned upside down. The stalactites—thousands of them—were all businessmen’s ties. Each was pinned with the card of the diner who had sacrificed his neck phallus to the cause of the decor, and whoever had the most ties tacked up at the end of the year won a special meal cooked by George himself.

  George Koulelis was a born restaurateur.

  Behind the happy face, however, was hidden a well of tears, and that well overflowed each night once the Greek was alone. A wretch of a man whose hair had bleached white from paternal grief, he sat in his smoky office behind the depleted central bar. With a stiff drink at hand, he puffed on a Turkish cigarette and calculated tonight’s receipts while his heart cried for Anna. On his desk was a photo of his sweet, dead child, and though nearly two decades had passed since little Anna was raped and strangled, not a night closed in on George that he didn’t mourn for her.

  Drinking didn’t help.

  But he had to work
the room.

  And working the room meant sitting down to toast the regulars.

  At least that’s what he told himself as the booze depressed him into melancholy.

  Poor George Koulelis.

  The door to his office was shut against the world when the exhausted Greek caught a suspicious noise out in the taverna. Stubbing his cigarette and downing the Metaxa, he rose from his chair to cross the smoky haze to the door, where he armed himself with a bat he kept nearby just in case.

  Easing the door open merely sucked the smoke from his office out into the restaurant, which was dark and inhabited with spooky shadows cast by lights intruding in from the street. George stepped through the murky cloud to look around, then froze as the muzzle of a gun was pressed into the nape of his neck.

  “Drop the bat.”

  He dropped it.

  “Hands behind your back.”

  Snap! Snap! His wrists were locked with a pair of handcuffs.

  “Money?” George whispered. “Is that what you want from me?”

  “No, Koulelis. I want the truth.”

  The Greek smelled garlic on the breath warming the back of his ear.

  “The truth?” he said.

  “What time did you get home?”

  A frown creased George’s forehead. He was still at work; he wasn’t home. Then, like being hit with a blow from the bat, he was struck by the meaning of the intruder’s question.

  Should he lie?

  Or should he tell the truth?

  “Four-ten,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I checked my watch against the kitchen clock when I arrived.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got home at 4:10 and found Anna gone?”

  The barrel of the pistol was cold on his scalp as George tipped back his head to nod.

  “Why did you lie in court?”

  “They made me.”

  “Who?” asked the voice behind the gun.

  “The police detectives.”

  After all the lying he had done for almost twenty years, the father of the dead girl was all lied out. If he died tonight, it would be a blessing. If there was a heaven, Anna would be there. And if he was to join her in the afterlife, now was the time for him to unburden his soul.

  “Are you the Hangman?”

  “Yes,” said his confessor.

  “I’m tired of lying.”

  “And I’m sick of your lies.”

  “The detectives came to me after the arrest. They said there was a problem with the time I thought I got home. Haddon killed Anna. No doubt, they said. He was a sick monster who would rape and kill again if he wasn’t stopped.”

  “You believed that?”

  “They were the police. For what reason would they lie to me?”

  “The time?” said the Hangman.

  “The time,” echoed George.

  “I want to know why you changed the time.”

  “Haddon had an alibi for 4:10. It was physically impossible for him to have snatched Anna before 4:15. If I stuck with my arrival time, they said the courts would let my daughter’s killer go. We all knew he had raped and strangled Anna, so it was up to me to think hard about the time.”

  “So you changed it?”

  “They showed me I was wrong.”

  “How?” asked the Hangman.

  “By leading me through everything I had done that afternoon. ‘How could you do all that and make it home by 4:10?’ they asked. ‘It wasn’t 4:10. It couldn’t be. The time you got home must have been 4:35, and by then Haddon had your little girl.’”

  The Greek began to blubber.

  He sobbed like a baby.

  A flood of anguish flowed in his cry.

  “They told me he was a devil. They told me he was a demon. They told me not to ask them what he did to my child. They were the police. They ought to know. I took what they told me as gospel from above. You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone that precious.”

  “I do,” said the Hangman. “You saw to that.”

  George was so distraught that he didn’t absorb the comment. All he could hear was Anna screaming for help in the woods.

  “She was so innocent. She was my life. Anna loved animals. And she loved me. That’s the precious child I lost to some demented monster, so I did what they told me was necessary to bring Haddon to justice. I trusted what they said. I had to have revenge. What greater burden could be laid on the shoulders of a father than the one they laid on mine? I was angry. I was trying to grieve. Her death was an emotional apocalypse for me. Unless I changed the time, her killer would go free, so I moved the time forward to 4:35. The end justifies the means, the cops told me. Oh, good God! What did I do!”

  “You hanged four people,” the Hangman said.

  “I didn’t find him guilty! Twelve jurors did!”

  “If you hadn’t fingered Haddon, he wouldn’t have been arrested. If you’d told the truth, he would have been acquitted. And if he’d been acquitted, who would have hanged?”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Too late, Koulelis.”

  The pressure of the gun against his spine forced George forward. He and his confessor moved toward the darkest part of the taverna, a corner that could not be seen from the street. Ahead was the ladder the Greek had climbed to hang the ties he had snipped off during the necktie party. The ladder wasn’t where he had left it before heading to his office to add up the night’s receipts.

  “Huuuh!” gasped the Greek.

  Until his breath was cut off.

  So dark was it near the ladder that George didn’t see the noose hanging from a ceiling beam up among the jagged teeth of ties until the Hangman slipped it over his head. The gasp was cut short by a hard yank on the other end of the rope, and George went up on his tiptoes to ease the stranglehold. Never had he been so scared.

  “Climb,” ordered the Hangman.

  The Greek scaled the ladder.

  “Stop,” ordered the Hangman.

  George was halfway up.

  The Hangman secured the loose end of the rope to the bar.

  “You want a necktie party? You’ve got one, killer.”

  The Hangman gripped the ladder wobbling beneath the Greek’s feet.

  “It’s all your fault, Koulelis. And now you must pay. Whoever raped and strangled Anna is free because of you. By fingering Peter, you focused police attention on your home when she could just as easily have been snatched off the street. Anna was to meet a friend in the park at four. What if she arrived early and was grabbed there? No matter whether you got home at 4:10 or 4:35, Anna would not have been at your house for Peter to kidnap.

  “The irony is that in spite of you, Anna’s killer will probably be caught. Authorities now have his DNA from the stains on her underwear, and soon every perv with a history of sexual violence will have his genes stored in a central data bank. One day a computer will spit out a match, and Anna will have the justice you denied her.”

  The Hangman wrenched the ladder away to turn the Greek off like Ketch used to do on Tyburn Hill.

  “I wish I could say your pain will be over in a moment …”

  George kicked desperately in the air as he hanged.

  “But witnesses who lie must learn the same lesson as perverse jurors.”

  Whirrrrrr! The motor of the hand-held cordless saw cut in.

  “So I have some cutting to do.”

  Loophole

  Vancouver

  Tonight

  “My lord,” I announced, loud and clear, as I came in the main door to Quick Draw McGraw’s courtroom yesterday morning, “I have a habeas corpus.”

  All heads turned.

  Showtime, folks.

  I had checked the case list half an hour ago and, taking note of the fact that there were other matters to be heard by the judge, had stalled until his court was in session to make my move. Slipping down to the criminal registry on the
second level, I filed my papers like a thief in the night and asked the clerk to get them up to court ASAP. As I pushed open the gate between the gallery and the counsel pit, the clerk brought the file in by another door.

  Again, Lyndon Wilde, QC, had donned his silky best, but whether he was putting on the dog I don’t know. At Tuesday’s adjournment, he did tell the judge he’d be in court on Wednesday, so I magnanimously gave him the benefit of the doubt. To show he was in chambers, he had doffed his black gown, which was draped over the back of his chair. The prosecutor rustled as he rose to his feet and fished his pocket watch from his vest to confirm the time.

  “Not only is my learned friend late,” he told the judge, “but he has also rudely interrupted the case at bar.”

  “My lord …”

  I paused.

  We call that pregnant suspense.

  “Yes, Mr. Kline?”

  I had the go-ahead.

  “Must I refresh my learned friend on the history of habeas corpus? The writ dates from before the Magna Carta in 1215. The Latin means let’s ‘have the body’ brought into court so we can test the legality of the prisoner’s detention. There was a time in these courts when freedom was sacrosanct. A habeas corpus always went to the front of the line. Has Mr. Wilde become so jaded that liberty is ho-hum to him?”

  The old fart bristled.

  “I argued my first habeas corpus before you were born, son. I don’t need you—”

  Bang!

  I slammed my fist on the table.

  “This isn’t a game!” I protested. “Alexis Hunt was hanged in Canada and I can prove it. Ethan Shaw is charged with capital murder. America wants to kill him. Is his fate to hang in the balance while your lordship listens to a charge of …”

  I turned to the lawyer at the bar.

  “What’s your case?” I asked.

  “Theft,” he replied.

  “Theft,” I echoed. “My client waits in the shadow of the death house as my learned friend blusters about my manners in interrupting a theft!”

  Man, I love the decorum of the law. All that “may it please your lordship” when you think he’s a moronic dunce, and “my learned friend” when you’re out to slit his throat.