Hangman

by Michael Slade

  “Not only did he stop our extradition, but he also killed the charge in Canada.”

  “Good,” said Justin. “Ethan’s innocent.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “I am,” said the reporter.

  Maddy took out her notebook. “Why?” she asked.

  “Remember the piece I wrote for the Star the night Peter hanged? To make the deadline for the edition next morning, I had to phone the copy in to Seattle from the state prison. The editor who took it down spelled Bryce with an I, and that’s how it appeared in print the next day.”

  “You were angry, as I recall.”

  “My brother had been hanged, and my paper couldn’t spell his name right. Nor, it seems, can the killer, who added an I to the hangman game scrawled in Alex’s blood on the wall of Ethan’s cabin.”

  “Because he knew how to spell Peter’s name, Ethan is innocent?”

  “Yes,” said Justin. “If not because we’re family—he did leave as a baby—then because he proofread the galleys of my book. Bryce is spelled correctly throughout Perverse Verdict.”

  “Do you think the killer got the mistake from your Star story?”

  “I don’t know. Kline used my article to raise that question with the judge. However, I do know that Ethan knows how to spell Peter’s name, so he wouldn’t add an I instead of a Y to the middle word of the puzzle. Nor did he lynch George Koulelis in his restaurant last night. Ethan was jailed in Vancouver.”

  “Answer a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t take offense.”

  “Come on, Maddy. How many years have we been doing this?”

  “What were you doing on board the ship at the time Alex was hanged?”

  “Were you looking for me?”

  “No,” said the cop. “Zinc and I were in a lounge going over the case.”

  “You want my alibi?”

  “Ease my mind.”

  “I was in my cabin.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sharing my bed with our server from the Captain Ahab bar. After Ethan and Alex left to get some air, I stayed in the bar talking with Kline for a short while. The woman gave me the eye over his shoulder, so I left to meet her outside.”

  “That’s not in your statement.”

  “And it’s not in hers. We didn’t volunteer what we weren’t asked. Ethan was in custody. The questions were about Alex.”

  “Why the grin, Justin?”

  “I find it funny. Your suspecting the Hangman might be me. I can assure you I know how to spell my twin brother’s name.”

  “So what do you make of this?”

  The detective turned over the Polaroid lying face down between them. The snapshot was of the hangman game on the bar in the restaurant. The reporter studied the print beneath the gallows:

  _E_E_ _ _ _ _E _A_ _ _ _

  No I. Guess in tomorrow’s papers. Hangman.

  “Hmmph,” said Justin. “The game has gone back a step.”

  “To correct the misspelling.”

  “And it’s back to ‘papers.’”

  “Sue Frye must have pissed off the Hangman.”

  “It reads as if the killer takes exception to the misspelling of Peter’s name.”

  “It’s a demand that we get the spelling right.”

  “So why the game on the ship?”

  “It was a red herring.”

  “How does that make sense?”

  “Damned if I know,” said Maddy. “But what we have to do in your special edition is publish, big and bold, the answer to the puzzle. Hopefully, Peter Bryce Haddon will end the hangings.”

  “A red herring?” mused Justin.

  “A red herring,” she said.

  And suddenly, the detective solved what was going on.

  Special Eye

  Vancouver

  November 15

  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has four letter sections: Special E, Special I, Special O, and Special X. Special E, the outlaw biker-gang squad, is now disbanded. It was crucial at a time when bikers were rife in this city. Special I is the ears of the force. Some say the I stands for “Intercept,” but that’s not so. I stands for I, and no one knows why. Special O is the eyes of the force. Some say the O stands for “Observation,” and that is true. Because they are the cops who surreptitiously trail the bad guys, the blandest-looking Mounties get posted to O. Special X is the Special External Section of the force, and its X derives from the fact it looks cool.

  Image is everything.

  Especially with the Mounties.

  Special Eye was a play on Special I. The man who owned the security store was a tailing specialist with O back in those halcyon days when he and Zinc had gone after the Ghoul. The exodus from Hong Kong for fear of what would happen when China took over saw hundreds of thousands of wealthy Asians fly to Canada, and most of them had settled in Vancouver. What everyone knew (but was afraid to say, for fear of seeming racist) was that among those immigrants hid a horde of Triad thugs. Well, the thugs were here. And they were vicious. And their prey was other Chinese. And their favorite pastime was home invasion.

  Home invasion was a nasty art. The psychology was to shatter forever your sense of security, so it would thenceforth be your home that you dreaded most. A gang of thugs would overpower you at the door or be waiting inside for you to return. A nifty trick was to tie you up and gag your mouth, then pistol-whip your aged parents before one eye and rape your wife and daughter before the other. Once you knew your guests meant business, you had the choice of turning over your material possessions or sitting back and watching as the thousand cuts of Chinese tradition were performed on your family for your viewing pleasure.

  In this city, home invasions were a dime a dozen, and if you wanted the best there was in security, you went to see the specialist at Special Eye. The greeting above the door read “Let Special Eye watch over you.”

  Bill Caradon was graciously accepting a platinum credit card from an elderly Chinese couple when Zinc walked in. A lot of wealthy Asians lived in Kerrisdale, so Special Eye was on 41st, in the heart of the West Side. The amount Bill rang in had four zeros tacked on. Business was good.

  Back when Bill was an operative with O, he was a scruffy cop with long reddish hair and a pirate beard, and his muscular frame was softening to fat from too much junk food on round-the-clock stakeouts. A transformation had turned him into the Rock of Gibraltar, his buffed body fighting trim from working out, his hair cut and his chin shaved commando-style. The store surrounding him was an extension of the can-do man, with hardware for every security problem on display. If you had the money, Bill would barricade you, with anti-pry guards and Lexan shields, with bulletproof glass and countersurveillance equipment, with transmitters, monitors, phone recorders, scramblers, scanners, and pinhole mikes and cameras. “Spy vs. Spy” from Mad magazine would love the gizmos Bill sold here.

  Zinc poked around until the Chinese couple left. Finally, the cop and ex-cop were alone.

  “Long time, no see.”

  “How ya doing, Bill?”

  “Can’t complain. Fear grips the city.”

  “You always were the best. Now everybody knows.”

  “A rough go, eh? Sorry to hear about your girl and what went down in court.”

  “You have thirsty ears.”

  “It’s my business to hear.”

  “I need a favor, Bill. Lend me your ears.”

  “You have Special I.”

  “I requires warrants.”

  “Warrants make things legal.”

  “Legal be damned. I’ve had enough legalities for one day.”

  “A bug without a warrant is illegal, Zinc. Break the law, and I could be in trouble. Anything overheard is inadmissible if the person bugged had a reasonable expectation of privacy. That means the only voice caught that might end up in court is that of a burglar who mumbles while he works.”

  “I know the law, Bill.”

  “Mine’s the v
oice of reason.”

  “The love of my life was killed and her killer is free on the street. I think he and his brother lynched five people in tandem. They took turns hanging victims while the other had an alibi. I know it’s illegal, and I’m asking a lot, but I promise no finger will point at you if you help me out.”

  The ex-cop stroked his chin.

  The pirate beard was back.

  “How far do you want me to shove the wire up his ass, Zinc?”

  Blind Justice

  Vancouver

  Thursday, November 16 (Today)

  See no evil.

  Hear no evil.

  Just speak evil.

  The verdict.

  There was a moral sickness loose in the land, and for the sake of the future, someone had to act. Switched on the TV and what did you see? A video of a black man cowering on the ground as a ring of rogue cops clubbed him senseless. The case went to court and what was the verdict? A jury that watched the same video didn’t see a thing.

  Were they blind?

  O. J. beat his wife. His wife left him. O. J. blew his top. His wife was found dead. O. J. led the country on a weird car chase with a suicide gun pointed at his head. O. J. was charged with murder. The nation watched his trial. A jury heard the same witnesses as everyone else. Judging from the verdict, it seems the only word they heard was “race.”

  Were they deaf?

  The flip side of those trials was Peter Haddon’s case. The state had nothing against him but junk evidence. What began as an accusation with no foundation somehow ended in a jury verdict that sent an innocent man to the gallows.

  How did that happen?

  The Hangman knew.

  The rot set in the instant that “duty” became a dirty word.

  There was a time when duty turned commoners into heroes. Watch an old movie and there is no doubt who the hero is. He or she is the one who understands duty: the binding force of doing that which is morally right.

  Maybe it was Vietnam and Watergate. Maybe it was turning on and dropping out. Maybe it was too much me, me, me as center of the universe. Whatever the reason, duty waned, leaving us with a world in love with anti-heroes. Anti-heroes lack the attributes that make us heroes, and now we laugh at that nobility of spirit and mind that once prompted us to do the right thing. How corny, we think. Today, empty vessels are summoned for jury duty, so the guilty go free while innocents like Peter hang.

  That’s blind justice.

  The Hangman was strong medicine for that disease. The hope was that these hangings would smarten up jurors. The worst enemies of justice are those who believe it rarely fails. They are like Justice herself, willfully blind, and the time had come to rip that phony blindfold from their eyes.

  See what you’re doing?

  Look what you did to me.

  Hear the cries of your victims?

  Listen to my Scream.

  Fail in your duty, and I will balance the scales.

  Someone has to put duty back in the jury room.

  A trial isn’t a game of blindman’s bluff.

  A trial is a game of hangman.

  So get your verdict right!

  Those who believed the Hangman’s retribution was murder were wrong. Necessity was the defense to these hangings. Those who were hanged deserved to die, as a lesson to those of like perversity as much as for the travesties of their verdicts. Such deaths were necessary to avoid similar evil to others in future trials, and the evil to be prevented was far greater than the evil of ridding the world of these condemned. It was like sacrificing one in a lifeboat so the rest could eat.

  Necessity.

  If only the problem was just bad apples.

  Unfortunately, the barrel was rotten as well.

  So that’s why the Hangman sat in this room, one hand holding the rope while the other coiled, coiled, coiled a hangman’s noose.

  For tonight.

  Lynch Law

  Vancouver

  Tonight

  William S. Burroughs was right.

  Take it from me.

  “A good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.”

  The phone had been ringing nonstop since I sprang Ethan from that murder charge yesterday. I am suddenly the hottest lawyer in town, and crooks and killers who didn’t know I existed before are now crashing down the piss-stained door of Kline & Shaw to hurl their filthy loot at my bank account.

  My bank account.

  Ethan and I aren’t partners.

  What brought me up to the law courts on a drizzly night like this was a sizable retainer from the father of a skinhead charged with stomping a Sikh to death. A gang of them had done it—Oops, pardon me. The proper way to put it so no blood gets on your hands is a gang of them were alleged to have done it—and a motion for separate trials had been granted. The case against the ringleader had gone to the jury, so I came up to see if the verdict resulting from his trial would help acquit my client next month. At three hundred bucks an hour, why not spend the evening reading here instead of at home?

  I had told the sheriff to give me a shout down in the barristers’ lounge if the jury came back. With my feet up on the table, I sat by myself in the empty room, reading a slew of newspaper stories about my Big Win! It pleased me to note that none of them had misspelled Kline.

  The irony of life is how the wheel comes around. A week ago I was writing a piece on famous hangmen in the hope that it would catch the eye of the Hangman and convince him I was his kind of gunslinger. Now I was featured as the lawyer of the alleged Hangman, and a paper had done a sidebar on Canada’s most famous hangman to background the story on me:

  No one knows how many people Arthur Ellis hanged. The estimates go higher than 600. Whatever the number, Arthur Ellis was a name to fear.

  Arthur Bartholomew English was born in England in 1864. Before he was mustered out with the rank of captain, he fought colonial battles with the British army in India, Egypt, and South Africa. Kicking around, with nothing to do, he found work in the hanging trade with James Billington, who was then number one on Britain’s list of executioners. Arthur’s uncle was John Ellis, a hangman also on the list who later slit his own throat with a razor.

  A hangman gets paid by the number of necks broken by his noose, so English sought executioner’s work out in the colonies. Having hanged prisoners in the Middle East, he finally settled on Canada as a good base and made his home in Montreal. For anonymity, a trade name was needed, so Arthur English, family man, turned into Arthur Ellis, hangman.

  Have gallows, will travel was his calling card. A portable hanging machine, made from the wood of the scaffold that hanged the Patriotes of 1837, accompanied the hangman. Assembled with nuts and bolts, it was painted a suitable red.

  From 1913 to 1935, Arthur Ellis executed Canada’s killers, as well as the killers in colonies spread around the world. His weakness was a fondness for strong drink, and one night of drunkenness saw him shouting and brandishing a loaded .38 in the middle of an opera at Montreal’s Orpheum Theatre.

  What finished Ellis’s career was the botched hanging of Thomasino Sarao. The prison told the hangman that the woman weighed 145 pounds, so he calculated a long drop. What she weighed in fact was 187 pounds, so the sound heard on the scaffold when Ellis released the trap was a squish instead of a thud. The extra weight and gravity had torn off her head.

  Now, a new Hangman is on the loose.

  Like Thomasino, his victims lose body parts.

  The legs and arms are gone.

  The body remains.

  If there’s another victim, will he tear off its head?

  * * *

  “What you reading, Jeff?”

  Ethan had found me in the barristers’ lounge.

  “A piece on us.”

  “The interview in the Star?”

  “No, I left Justin’s paper at home.”

  “I hear you’ve got Suzy phoning around to secure new office s
pace?”

  “We’re moving uptown.”

  “You and her?”

  “Me, her, and you, Eth. What did you think? That I would abandon you if I made it big?”

  “You don’t need me.”

  “Yes, I do. Every barrister needs a good solicitor.”

  “You can have your pick of solicitors now.”

  “Who am I going to choose? Some silver spoon? You think that would make me happy? Working with some West Side prick?”

  “You’d really stick with me?”

  “You’re my right-hand man. It’s onward and upward, Eth. Just one condition: The time has come for you to stop drinking.”

  “I drink to drown my sorrows.”

  “Your sorrows are gone. You drank because the assholes wore us down. That’s history, buddy. We beat the fuckers. Now we’re going to thrash them at their own game.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “You’ll quit the bottle?”

  Another nod.

  “Then it’s a deal. No more puddles of piss at our door. From now on, we do the pissing.”

  Ethan smiled.

  I gave him a grin.

  We shook hands.

  Kline & Shaw.

  “Is this why you left the message with Suzy for me to come here?”

  “No,” I said. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  I swung my feet off the table and we left the barristers’ lounge. The hall lined with judges’ photos was deserted at this late hour. The hum of a vacuum cleaner echoed from one of the chambers courts opposite the library. We turned in the other direction and passed through a set of doors that led out to the great hall. It was suddenly colder in this open area, where we had to choose between three routes. The staircase ahead descended to the court registry where I had filed my habeas corpus motion. The escalator ascending beside us to the right doubled back to carry those who had difficulty with stairs up to the next level. Beyond that was the great hall, reached by an entrance that yawned wide in front of the escalator.

  That yawn swallowed Ethan and me.

  The courts were tiered behind us as we walked into the glass wedge. Voices filled the upper reaches of the huge cavern from the level where the skinhead was being tried for murder. The main doors to our left in the side wall of the wedge were usually locked after the court day was finished, even if a jury was deliberating late. The death of the Sikh, however, was such a racial tinderbox that the chief justice had ordered that nothing be done that would make it look like access to justice was being denied. Painted on the glass beside the doors was a welcome—ALL COURTS WHEN IN SESSION ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. So instead of the usual procedure of having the public enter by the back doors, the main doors remained unlocked tonight.