Hangman

by Michael Slade

  “See what I mean?

  “A master of the game.

  “The only downside is that no one will know the truth of how brilliantly I played this one.

  “Sure, they’ll see me as a great lawyer.

  “But the genius is in how I set it up.

  “And that, in case you’re wondering, is why I am telling you.

  “I must admit, however, that again you took me by surprise. As did Ethan, I thought the Hangman was Justin Whitfield. And he was so obsessed with hanging those who had hanged Peter, I thought, because he had raped and killed Anna Koulelis. Come to think of it, that could still be so. Maybe that will be my next cause célèbre. I’ll be the lawyer who finally found out who murdered that little girl.

  “Damn, I’m good.

  “The only piece missing is the final link. If I ungag you, will you supply it? I’m dying to know the link between you and Peter Haddon.

  “What do you say?

  “Any last words?”

  The Drop

  Vancouver

  November 16

  Perched on the precipice high above the long drop into the stairwell, her hands shackled behind her back with her own cuffs, the double nooses of wire and rope looped about her neck, Det. Maddy Thorne listened to her hangman confess. Like every criminal lawyer she had jousted with in court, this one loved the sound of his own voice.

  Any last words?

  Screw you, she thought.

  Never talk to the cops is the lawyer’s creed.

  Never trust a lawyer is every cop’s reply.

  Lawyers are liars.

  It’s built into their trade.

  A lawyer argues black is white or white is black, according to how he’s paid.

  They’re professional liars.

  What a dirty job.

  There was stuff she could tell him to fill in the missing link. Like how her dad was ground to hamburger when she was two, sucked off both feet into the blades of a jet engine. And how her mom was living common law with Earl Haddon within a year, so the girl was raised in Seattle with two stepbrothers from her stepfather’s first marriage. Peter and Steven. Fraternal twins. And how Earl Haddon was a cruel man who belittled his sons and frightened Maddy. She was three years younger than the twins, and she loved Peter with all her heart. One summer day when she was fourteen, Maddy followed Peter into the backyard, and there, in a tepee beneath the twins’ treehouse, she lost her virginity to that sensitive youth.

  It wasn’t rape.

  Both teens consented.

  It wasn’t incest.

  They weren’t blood-related.

  It was insecure Maddy yearning for someone’s love.

  The secret relationship grew for four years. Then Peter moved out to live on his own. The plan was that Maddy would follow when she finished high school, but within two months Peter was charged with murder. Maddy’s mom quickly whisked her away from the Haddon house and its ugly scandal.

  Ten years of heartbreak and horror followed. What Maddy couldn’t do was visit Peter. Not because her mom said she couldn’t, but because it would seal his death warrant if the state discovered that Peter had had “incestuous” sex with an underage girl. The case was too precarious to chance backing up the admission testified to by the cop driving the paddy wagon. Peter would appear to be a pedophile, and appearance is all-important when a jury is involved.

  So she didn’t visit.

  And doubted him herself.

  Could Peter rape and kill a little girl?

  Of course not.

  He loves me.

  And when he’s acquitted, everything will go back to how it was.

  Then: bam! bam! bam! Three blows in a row. Peter was convicted. Peter was raped. Peter lost his manhood to a gelding blade.

  No more going back to how it was.

  What Maddy did instead was become a cop. She hoped the answer to her guilt over doubting Peter was hidden in the files of the Seattle police. It wasn’t. She hoped she could do something about injustice, but the courts were a law unto themselves. Like all cops, she was sickened when she watched them work. The good guys got fucked. The bad guys got off.

  “He wants you there,” Justin had said.

  “To see him hang?”

  “No, to see you. He says yours is the only love he’s cherished, so if you can take it, his final wish is not to die alone.”

  So she did it. She saw Peter off. And as he hanged before her on the state’s gallows, Maddy knew she had lost her one true love.

  This, and a lot more, she could tell the hangman who had her in his noose. Like how no other lover had taken Peter’s place. And how betrayed she felt when a DNA test finally proved him innocent. If not for that perverse jury shirking its duty, Peter would not have hanged for something he didn’t do, and she would have had his love through all those years. And he would be here now to see her through her fear, the abject fear she had endured for the past few weeks, since the day her doctor gave her the chilling diagnosis: the headaches were caused by a tumor in her brain.

  An inoperable tumor.

  The life she had left was just months.

  She was going to die alone.

  Thanks to Peter’s jury.

  All this she could tell him, but what good would it do? Kline would merely pervert it to his own dirty scheme, and use it for why she’d hanged herself tonight. She hoped Zinc would spot the fatal flaw in the lawyer’s story: the fact that Maddy was with Zinc while Alex was being hanged. That, however, was up to him, and if he thought the Hangman was a killing team, he might think Maddy had linked up with either Justin or Ethan, or possibly both. He would remember telling her about Jayne Curry and Dr. Twist when he was in Seattle the night Mary Konrad died. He would remember their cellphone conversation, when he was at the Vancouver murder scene and she was driving back to Seattle on the I-5. Curry could have been hanged by any combination of them, and Maddy’s “partner” could have hanged Alex while Maddy was with Zinc.

  Very crafty.

  No wonder she loathed lawyers.

  With so many suspects, Kline was above suspicion.

  Her part in this was over. Her crusade was at an end. Vengeance was hers for the unjust conviction and hanging of her lover. The Hangman would put the scare of hell into prospective jurors, and if that inspired others to punish the perverse, then Peter’s death and her death would not be in vain.

  All that remained for her to do was to cheat the hangman herself, so Maddy wrenched free from the grip of the lawyer and hurled herself from the edge of the precipice into the dark stairwell.

  Though muffled by the gag, “I’m coming, Peter!” were her last words.

  * * *

  Her death was spectacular.

  A squishing squirt, caused by the constricting of the wire noose, filled the foyer below. Blood exploded in all directions from the severed vessels, and billowed up as red mist like spray from a fountain. A sharp crack followed as the rope yanked taut, snapping Maddy’s neck in two as her head ripped off. Released from the weight of her body dropping to the floor, the rope sprang back up like a yo-yo. Because the wire noose had cinched tight around the neck bones, her head was still caught in the loophole that bounced back to the lawyer.

  Wow! thought Jeff.

  What a cool kill!

  This he had to see.

  What a thrill!

  So down the staircase he went, to the main floor, where the headless Maddy lay in the foyer at this end of the front hall. Being careful not to leave footprints in the spray of blood, Jeff stood with his back to the door to survey his handiwork.

  Yes, he thought.

  I can work with this.

  The inspiration for the beheading was the sidebar he had read on Arthur Ellis earlier that night at the law courts:

  What finished Ellis’s career was the botched hanging of Thomasino Sarao …

  Now, a new Hangman is on the loose.

  Like Thomasino, his victims lose body parts.

  The le
gs and arms are gone.

  The body remains.

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

  The head twirling in the noose gave Jeff an idea.

  Should he scrawl a hangman game that looked like this on the wall:

  Years ago he’d seen a photo in a magazine of some poor fuck in Africa with elephantiasis. The effects of that roundworm disease were awesome to behold, for what the parasite did to certain lymph nodes was cause them to bloat to science-fiction size. The testicles of the man in the picture had grown so huge that he was shown pushing a wheelbarrow to carry them around.

  That’s how Jeff felt.

  His balls were that big.

  For what he knew in his heart was that he had it made. He would not only get Ethan off a second time, but also unmask the Hangman. All you need is one Big Win like that in your legal career and you can milk that sucker for the rest of your life.

  Look what Leopold and Loeb did for Darrow.

  Look what Sheppard did for Bailey.

  Look what Simpson did for Cochran.

  Look what Shaw did for Kline.

  If he covered his tracks here and staged a minor accident to explain the whiplash collar masking the noose burn on his neck, Jeff would be securely launched on a path to fame and fortune. He had fooled the cops and he had fooled the Hangman, and what he had told Maddy was gone with his wind, so to speak. Not another soul knew the truth, and that was a small price to pay for no more piss at the door.

  Not another soul …

  That wasn’t quite so …

  For unknown to this lawyer enjoying a good gloat, his confession to Maddy wasn’t gone with his wind. It had been caught by one of the tiny pin mikes secretly installed in the house by Special Eye, including that stupid admission that he was a burglar, which made the words transmitted to the digital recorder in Zinc Chandler’s car admissible in court. And even now as Jeff tried to remember the title of that film with Cagney—Was it White Heat? The one in which the punk shouts triumphantly, “Made it, Ma! Top of the World!”—that car was braking to a halt at the curb outside Ethan’s house, having driven across the East End from the home of Ethan’s mom.

  The driver’s door swung open …

  The Mountie scrambled out …

  Zinc’s blood was at a boil as the Smith & Wesson 9mm cleared the holster clipped to his belt.

  Now he was charging up the walk toward the dark door, hurtling toward having it out with the guy who hanged his lover. Anger and outrage powered this six-foot-two assault, until two hundred pounds of muscle smashed against the wood.

  The CRACKKK of the door bursting open was much louder than the crack that snapped Maddy’s neck. Jeff whirled as the Mountie exploded into the narrow hall behind him. His hand went for the Mauser tucked into his belt.

  “Police!” Zinc shouted.

  The bug was still recording.

  “Drop it!” he ordered.

  The cop had the drop on the lawyer.

  The eye at this end of the barrel aiming at his heart didn’t scare Jeff half as much as the glare of the man beyond. He saw death—his death—in those eyes, so the lawyer let go of the Mauser and raised his hands in the air.

  The cut that had made the blood oath to Alex was on Zinc’s trigger finger. That finger pulled the trigger and the gun bucked in his hand. This was one case the courts would not screw up. When the courts fail to do justice, it falls to vigilantes. The nine-mill round from the Smith caught Kline in the chest, a little to the left of his breastbone. You might say the lawyer died from a broken heart.

  Some you win.

  Some you lose.

  That’s the legal profession.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. The plot and characters are a product of the author’s imagination. Where real persons, places, or institutions are incorporated to create the illusion of authenticity, they are used fictitiously. Inspiration was drawn from the following non-fiction and video sources:

  Frank W. Anderson, A Dance with Death: Canadian Women on the Gallows 1754–1954 (Calgary: Fifth House, 1996).

  ——, A Concise History of Capital Punishment in Canada (Calgary: Frontier, 1973).

  Brian Bailey, Hangmen of England: A History of Execution from Jack Ketch to Albert Pierrepoint (London: W. H. Allen, 1989).

  Edna Barth, Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols (New York: Seabury Press, 1972).

  Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (Scarborough: Bellhaven, 1963).

  William S. Burroughs, Junky (London: Penguin, 1977).

  David D. Cooper, The Lesson of the Scaffold (London: Allen Lane, 1974).

  Chuck Davis, ed., The Greater Vancouver Book: An Urban Encyclopaedia (Surrey, B.C.: Linkman, 1997).

  Lord Devlin, Trial by Jury (London: Stevens, 1956).

  Diagram Group, The Way to Play: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Games of the World (New York: Paddington Press, 1975).

  Charles Duff, A Handbook on Hanging (Yorkshire: EP Publishing, 1974).

  Howard Engel, Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind (Toronto: Key Porter, 1996).

  Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).

  J. H. H. Gaute and Robin Odell, Murder “Whatdunit”: An Illustrated Account of the Methods of Murder (London: Pan, 1982).

  Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976).

  Reinhold Heller, Edvard Munch: The Scream (London: Allen Lane, 1973).

  Jill Hierstein-Morris, Halloween: Facts and Fun (Ankeny, Iowa: Creatively Yours, 1988).

  Gordon Honeycombe, The Murders of the Black Museum 1870–1970 (London: W. H. Allen, 1983).

  Roderick Hunt, Ghosts, Witches, and Things Like That … (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).

  John Laurence, A History of Capital Punishment (New York: Citadel, 1960).

  Kindler v. Canada (Minister of Justice) [1991] 2 S.C.R. 779.

  Peter V. MacDonald, QC, Court Jesters: Canada’s Lawyers & Judges Take the Stand to Relate Their Funniest Stories (Toronto: Methuen, 1985).

  ——, More Court Jesters: Back to the Bar for More of the Funniest Stories from Canada’s Courts (Toronto: Methuen, 1987).

  Kirk Makin, Redrum the Innocent (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1998).

  Marge Mueller and Ted Mueller, Seattle’s Lakes, Bays & Waterways: Afoot & Afloat (Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1998).

  George L. Murray, “Manson’s Last Case,” The Advocate 42 (1984).

  Reference Re Ng Extradition [1991] 2 S.C.R. 858.

  Regina v. Dudley and Stephens (1884), 14 Q.B.D. 273.

  Regina v. Frisbee (1989), 48 C.C.C. (3d) 386 (B.C.C.A.).

  Regina v. Morin [1988] 2 S.C.R. 345, on appeal from Regina v. Morin (1987), 36 C.C.C. (3d) 50 (Ont. C.A.).

  Peter Randall, Adult Bullying: Perpetrators and Victims (London: Routledge, 1997).

  Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, director [1957]; William Friedkin, director [1997]).

  J. C. Smith and Brian Hogan, Criminal Law (London: Butterworths, 1969).

  Frank Smyth, Cause of Death: The Story of Forensic Science (London: Pan, 1980).

  United States of America v. Burns and Rafay (1997), 116 C.C.C. (3d) 524 (B.C.C.A.).

  The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, and The Seattle Times.

  Colin Wilson and Patricia Pitman, Encyclopaedia of Murder (London: Pan, 1984).

  Dilys Winn, Murder Ink (New York: Workman, 1977).

  The best Dracula? Christopher Lee. Though purists would probably argue for Lugosi.

  And what about those cannibals who killed and ate the boy in the lifeboat? Did Dudley and Stephens have a defense of necessity to murder?

  No, said Lord Coleridge, the chief justice of the Royal Courts: “Who is to be the judge of this sort of necessity? By what measure is the comparative value of lives to be measured? Is it to be strength or intellect, or what? It is plain that the principle leaves to him who is to profit by it to determine the necessity which
will justify him in deliberately taking another’s life to save his own.”

  In the case of Regina v. Howe [1987] AC 417, the British House of Lords recently upheld Dudley and Stephens as having decided that necessity is not a defense to murder.

  America, however, offers another view.

  In U.S. v. Holmes, 26 Fed Cas 360 (1842), also a shipwreck case, the court held that a drawing of lots in similar circumstances would legalize a killing. The American Model Penal Code includes a general defense of necessity.

  The noose and necessity?

  Where would the Hangman rather be tried?

  When I’m at a social gathering and someone finds out I’m a lawyer, the question that usually crops up is, “How can you defend someone you know is guilty?”

  That depends on your ethics.

  Jeff Kline offers both answers.

  When I’m at a social gathering and someone finds out I’m a writer, the question that usually crops up is, “Where do you get your ideas?”

  Let me tell you the tale of my brush with Canada’s gallows.

  Sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. on March 29, 1974, Miller and Cockriell returned to Miller’s house from a pub in Fort Langley, B.C. They found a beer-drinking party in progress. Something was said about the death of Miller’s brother two years before, when he drove into a ditch at the end of a police chase. There was talk about shooting a policeman, during which Cockriell said words to the effect that if Miller didn’t shoot a cop, he would. As he and Cockriell were leaving the house at about 3 a.m., Miller took with him a 30-30 Winchester rifle and loaded it with one shell in the chamber.

  With Miller at the wheel and Cockriell in the passenger’s seat, they drove to Cloverdale, a few miles away. There, the courthouse and the Mounted Police detachment were side by side in one block. To attract the attention of a Mountie, Miller drove around the block several times and Cockriell threw a beer bottle through the window of the courthouse.

  Constable Pierlet was driving a marked police car. His relatives were on their way to the West Coast for his upcoming wedding. When Miller’s car attracted his attention, he followed it, flashing his red light. Miller pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. The Mountie pulled his car in behind, and at 4:58 a.m. radioed the license number to the detachment and asked for backup. The constable got out of his car and walked up to the driver’s window of Miller’s car. Miller’s hands were on the steering wheel and the rifle was resting across his arms with the muzzle pointing toward the open window. The constable asked Miller to get out of the car. That was the moment when Cockriell pulled the trigger and the bullet struck the Mountie in the chest. He managed to get as far as his own car, where he fell to the ground. About two minutes after he had made the radio call, the officer was found there by the Mountie who had come to cover him. He died almost immediately thereafter.