The Hanged Man

by Walter Satterthwait

  She offered me the paper. I traded her the cane, opened the paper. Not surprisingly, it was a list of Chevrolet trucks, with the owners’ names and addresses.

  “That’s only one sheet,” she said. “There were four of them.”

  I was studying the paper. No names leaped out at me. I looked at Rita. “So?”

  “The fifth listing from the top.”

  I looked at the paper. “Fred Richards?” I looked at Rita. “Who’s he?”

  “I’m fairly certain that he’s the owner of the truck that ran you down.”

  I frowned. “Who the hell is he, Rita? Why would he run me down?”

  “What I said was that his truck ran you down. I didn’t say that he ran you down. According to Motor Vehicle records, he’s in his late seventies. He lives with his son. I can’t really see him racing up and down the mountain.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Joshua, look at the address.”

  I did. I looked at Rita. “But …”

  “Think back to the day you were run off the road,” she said. “Before you left for your appointment with Veronica Chang, who did you talk to? What did you say?”

  I thought about it for a moment. I mentioned some names. At one of them, Rita nodded.

  “No,” I said. “But … wait a minute.” I frowned again.

  She smiled.

  “Rita,” I said.

  Her smile grew wider.

  We talked about Rita’s theory, and what we should do about it, and what we could do, all the way into town, down the Ski Basin Road, and then along Washington Street, where the thin shade beneath the leaf-striped trees chilled the air. Back in the sunshine, we passed the public library, and then the Burrito Factory. We crossed Washington, dodged through the mob that milled at the entrance to the portico of the Governor’s Palace. We crossed Palace Avenue, and finally we were on the Plaza.

  It was crowded, as bustling in the warm winter sunlight as if this were a day in summer. Mothers strolled with their children. Couples ambled. Businessmen marched. Cowboys and pigeons strutted. Nearly all of them, it seemed to me, eyed the foam collar around my neck. Near the Memorial, some teenage boys lightly kicked and lightly tapped with sneakered feet at a frayed rubber ball. More teenagers, boys and girls, most of them sporting punk haircuts and army surplus clothes, sat in small clusters on the yellowed grass. The grass looked cold to me, but I hadn’t been a teenager for a very long time now. And hadn’t been one for very long, when I was. None of these people would be, either, but I didn’t plan to tell them that. They wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

  At the northeast corner, just at the entrance, I stopped and looked at Rita. The olive skin of her face was slightly flushed and her eyes were shining.

  It had been almost three years since she told me she would make this walk. I smiled. “So,” I said. “You did it.”

  She grinned. Rita has an extensive repertoire of expressions—grimaces, frowns, smiles that range from thoughtful to amused to ecstatic. This was definitely a grin, big and bright and delighted. “I did,” she said, “didn’t I?”

  I bent down to kiss her and her arms came around me. For a moment, the Plaza vanished.

  It, and the rest of the world, reappeared suddenly when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  I released Rita, turned.

  A big broad-shouldered man wearing boots, jeans, a zippered fawn jacket, a tattersall shirt, and a wide, pleased smile. “May I have this dance?” he asked Rita.

  She laughed and stepped forward to take his arms and to kiss, and get kissed, on the cheek.

  “Hector,” I said. I looked at Rita. “Is this a coincidence?”

  She laughed again. Eyes gleaming, face alight, she looked as young as the children scattered about the grass. “I asked Hector to meet us.”

  “Does he know about …?”

  “Not yet.”

  “About what?” Hector asked.

  “Rita has an idea,” I said.

  He smiled. “Great. Rita’s ideas are always nasty. But let’s not talk here. I’ve got us a table at the Ore House. Oh, Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Love the collar. It’s really you.”

  The table was out on the Ore House’s open balcony, beneath a radiant heater affixed to the ceiling. Hector ordered a beer, Rita and I ordered hot spiced cider laced with Applejack. Sitting beside the white wooden railing, we could look down on the people thronging the Plaza. We did more talking than looking down.

  When Rita had finished explaining, Hector sat back and sipped at his beer. He looked at me. “So it wasn’t Paul Chang.”

  “Who ran me down? No, not if Rita’s right.”

  He nodded. Then he smiled, shook his head. “Well, it probably won’t take much to tie this guy to Quarry’s death. The attendant at the pool—what was his name?”

  “Paco,” I said.

  Hector nodded. “He should be able to make an identification. But that’s not going to help you with Bouvier. And that’s what you’re supposed to be working on.”

  I said, “That Tarot card is probably there. At the house.”

  “You’d need a warrant.” He frowned. “Maybe you could work something with Paco. Have him make his identification from a distance. Take his deposition. A judge might buy that.” He shrugged. “But I can’t help you. It’s out of my jurisdiction.”

  “You can talk to Hernandez,” Rita said.

  Hector smiled. “I was beginning to wonder where I fit in.”

  “And I don’t think we’ll need Paco,” she said.

  “This is the good part,” I told Hector.

  He smiled.

  “I think,” Rita said, “that we can get a confession.”

  The bleached skull that hovered over the doorway had stopped dripping. The snow that had covered the lawn was gone. An old Volvo sedan, its fading black paint streaked and dusty, had beached itself in the driveway. Presumably, it had belonged to the owner of the house.

  I knocked on the door and waited. After a few moments, Sierra Quarry opened it, pale and beautiful and tentative.

  “Oh,” she said, and put a slender hand to her breast. Today she was wearing an opened gray cardigan, several sizes too large, over a loosely fitting cotton granny dress, black with white polka dots. Her feet were still bare.

  “Hello, Mrs. Quarry,” I said. “I was in the neighborhood and I wondered if I could talk to you for a few moments.”

  “Oh my,” she said in her soft solemn voice. “But I’ve already told you everything I know. And the police.”

  “I realize that. But I think we may be close to the man who killed your husband. I just need to ask you a few questions. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Well.”

  She stood back and I stepped in. She closed the door and I followed her into the small living room with its fragile embroidered chairs and its smell of wood smoke. Sierra Quarry indicated one of the chairs and said, “Please.”

  She circled around the heavy cherrywood table and lightly sat down on the floral sofa. I lowered myself into the chair. She picked up a blue bundle of knitting from the sofa and placed it in her lap. She smiled at me, tentatively. “I haven’t knitted for years. I only just started again. It helps me to relax now. And concentrate. Is it all right? Do you mind?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Is there something wrong with your neck?”

  “I had an accident. I’m supposed to wear this for a while.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “No need. I’m fine.”

  She nodded, and tendrils of her long Pre-Raphaelite black hair grazed her shoulders. “It’s a sweater,” she said, as she arranged the ball of yarn on the sofa. “I made this one”—lightly she touched the sweater she wore—“for Leonard. Years ago. It was too small for him. And now it’s too big for me.” She smiled sadly.

  “I apologize for having to bother you again.”

  “Oh
no,” she said. “You have a job to do. I understand.” She began to knit, the needles delicately clicking.

  “Mrs. Quarry, you have a neighbor. A Fred Richards. Up the road about a quarter of a mile.”

  She looked up, smiled. “Fred, yes. A sweet old man. His wife died a few years ago.”

  “Yeah, I just talked to him. He seems very kind. He’s very fond of you.”

  Click, click went the needles. She looked up. “How is Fred? I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “He’s just fine. You haven’t seen him for three days, not since you borrowed his pickup truck.”

  She nodded over her knitting, then looked up. She smiled. “Leonard’s car, the Volvo, it has one of those stick shifts.” She shrugged lightly, helplessly. “I’ve never learned to drive one.”

  “You can drive a pickup truck, though.”

  “Well, yes. That one. It’s an automatic.”

  “I was pretty impressed with the way you handled it last Thursday night, on the Ski Basin Road.”

  She was good. She rested her hands on her lap and she produced a completely convincing frown of puzzlement. But I’d known, before I started talking to her, that she was good. “I’m sorry?” she said. “The Ski Basin Road? In Santa Fe? But I haven’t been there for years. What on earth are you talking about, Mr. Croft?”

  “Mrs. Quarry, I spoke with you on Thursday at about two in the afternoon. You borrowed Fred Richards’s pickup at two-thirty. You told him you were driving into Espanola to see a friend. It’s only about thirty miles from here to Espanola. You’re probably not aware of this, but Mr. Richards keeps track of his odometer. Neither he nor his son has driven the truck since you returned it, early on Friday morning. The odometer says that you traveled over a hundred and sixty miles. That’s more like the distance from here to Santa Fe and back.”

  For the first time, she laughed. Lightly, easily, totally unconcerned, “Is all this because of some silly odometer? Mr. Croft, I went for a long drive before I went to Espanola. I was unhappy. Depressed. This has been a terrible time for me. I wanted to get away from myself for a while. Whenever I feel that way, I like to take a long drive in the country.”

  She was so convincing that for a moment I wondered whether Rita had gotten it all wrong. “I didn’t leave my office,” I said, “until five o’clock that afternoon. You had plenty of time to get down there, wait outside until I left, then follow me home. You knew what my car looked like. You’d seen it here, when I came to talk to your husband. You waited outside my house, then followed me again when I drove up to the Ski Basin. I’m not sure why you didn’t try anything on the way up—maybe you thought that pushing me into the side of the mountain wouldn’t be lethal enough. But pushing me over it, that was fine with you. And so you drove past the Big Trees Lodge when I parked, turned around, and waited again. When I drove out, you picked me up, followed me, and tried to run me off the road. You tried twice. It worked the second time.”

  Her mouth was open in surprise. “But Mr. Croft, that’s … that’s ridiculous. That’s crazy. Why would I do something like that?”

  “Because when I talked to you that afternoon, I made you nervous. I told you that I was going to learn who killed your husband. That I was determined to learn. The police wanted to learn, too, but I was the one who believed his death was connected to Quentin Bouvier’s. The police didn’t believe that. And I mentioned Star-bright, Giacomo Bernardi’s friend in Albuquerque, the young woman who killed herself. The police knew about her, but they never mentioned her to you. I know they didn’t. I asked Hernandez. But I mentioned her. And you decided that I was getting too dangerous. It was time to get rid of me.”

  Looking confused, baffled, she shook her head. “But I told you, I never even heard of that Starbright person.”

  “I think you did. I don’t know who told you, or when. Probably your husband. But it was because you knew about her, knew about Giacomo’s involvement with a woman who hanged herself, that you tried to frame him for Quentin Bouvier’s murder. When you stole the Tarot card.”

  “The Tarot card! My God, Mr. Croft, you are completely insane.”

  “It’s a fake,” I said.

  She blinked. “I’m sorry? What?”

  “The card. The Death card. It’s a fake. A forgery. It was done by Eliza Remington’s great-grandfather. It may have some value as a curio, but otherwise it’s worthless. Your husband and Eliza Remington were conning Quentin Bouvier. The only reason your husband was bidding on the card was to raise its price. Sweeten the deal that Eliza made with Bouvier.”

  She shook her head. “No. No. Leonard would’ve …” Her voice trailed off.

  I think she’d been about to say that Leonard would have told her. And then she’d realized, of course, that he wouldn’t have. He never talked with her about business.

  Just then, and only for an instant, I caught my first brief glimpse of the real person who hid behind the role she played. Her eyes darted to the left, desperate.

  Looking for help? Looking for the card?

  And then, effortlessly, she slipped back into her part. Her level glance met mine and she shook her head. “No. You’re lying, Mr. Croft. I don’t know why you’re lying, or why you’re saying all these terrible things. But I do know you’re lying about the card.”

  “I’m not lying. It’s worthless. It’s just an old piece of pasteboard with some paint on it. And you killed Quentin Bouvier to get it. And you killed your husband.”

  Rita’s plan had been for me to keep impersonating William Powell until my suave exposition convinced Sierra that I knew everything. At that point, according to the script, I would offer to keep silent about my knowledge, in exchange for a large fee. When Sierra agreed, we would have our confession. It was a swell plan. It always worked for William Powell.

  Unfortunately, Sierra and I never reached that point.

  She came over the coffee table in a leap, more quickly than I would’ve believed possible. Her mouth in a rictus, both hands wrapped around one of her knitting needles, its point lunging for my heart, she dived at me.

  I caught her forearms in my hands but our combined weight was too much for the antique chair. It toppled backward, legs shattering as it went. I landed with a thump on the floor and she landed with a thump on me, slamming my breath away. Her teeth were bared, her eyes narrowed. Fury and desperation gave her an impossible strength—her arms were trembling, tendons taut, as she tried to drive the needle into my chest. The needle’s point twitched in the air, only inches above me.

  I rolled onto my side, pulling her with me, away from the wreck of the chair, and she started using her knee, ramming it at me, going for my crotch. I swiveled atop her, pinning her legs beneath mine. Her head darted forward like a cobra’s and she sank her teeth into the fingers of my left hand.

  I may have squealed. I do know that the pain suddenly energized me. I slipped my right hand loose from her forearm and I popped her, as hard as I could, on the point of the chin. Her head banged back against the floor and bounced once.

  Her eyes lost their focus. Her arms lost their strength and the knitting needle fell harmlessly away, onto the floor. I rolled off her and sat up, panting.

  Dimly I heard a door crash open. The cavalry had arrived. Hernandez and Green rushed into the room, waving guns. Green, I noticed, was still wearing his earphones. I wondered what the struggle with Sierra had sounded like, broadcast from the concealed mike I wore.

  “You okay?” Hernandez snapped at me.

  I nodded.

  Someone else came rushing into the room. Rita. “Joshua!” She ran to me, and I saw that she was limping. She shouldn’t be running, I thought. “Are you all right?” she said as she knelt down beside me.

  I nodded some more. “Yeah. Fine.”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  I looked. Blood was streaming from my fingers, pattering against the wooden floor, pooling there. “She bit me.”

  “Probably need a rabies shot,�
� Hernandez said. He had moved around the unconscious Sierra. To Green, he said, “This guy’s good, huh? He gets the suspect to eat right out of his hand.” And then, bending down onto one knee, holding the gun on her with his right hand, he reached forward with his left and twined his fingers in her long, black, Pre-Raphaelite hair. He tugged, and her wig came free.

  He stood up, holding it away from him as though it were a dead raccoon. “Shit,” he said.

  “Sierra?” Giacomo Bernardi said. “She is a man?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Monday morning. He and I were back in the Interview Room. In his droopy T-shirt and orange pants, Bernardi looked exactly the same. Since I’d last seen him, however, I myself had been somewhat modified. Bruises, a foam collar, bulky bandages on the first two fingers of my left hand.

  “But how?” he asked me.

  “How what?”

  “How could she …” He frowned, blinked. “He? How could he do such a thing? To be living as a wife? And no one knows?”

  I didn’t blame him for his confusion about the pronoun. I’d been a bit confused myself. But Sierra had lived most of her life as a woman, thought of herself as a woman, and if that was what she wanted, that was fine with me. So long as she didn’t try to stab me with a knitting needle again.

  “It was easy enough,” I said. “When she and Quarry got married, no one in San Francisco knew she was a man. She had false papers saying that she was Maria Sorenson. She changed her name to Sierra when the two of them came to Santa Fe. She never went out as a man in San Francisco, and she never did here.”

  “So the marriage, it was legal?”

  “No. It was invalid. But no one knew that until now.”

  He thought for a moment, brow furrowed, his hand rubbing at his salt and pepper stubble. He looked at me. “And he steals the card for the money?”

  “Yeah. She didn’t plan to kill Bouvier, she says. She planned to slip into his room, grab the card, and slip away. But Bouvier woke up and saw her. She hit him with the piece of quartz, but she realized that that was just a temporary solution to her problem. Bouvier had seen her. She’d never be able to keep the card and, worse, she’d be arrested. Her real identity—who she was, what she was—would be revealed. She knew about you and Starbright, knew about the fight you’d had with Bouvier that night, and decided that you’d make a nice patsy. She went to the closet in your room, got your scarf, came back and hanged Bouvier. You were still asleep in the library.”