A Penny for the Hangman

by Tom Savage

  He told her about himself. He’d been released in February of 1981 and lived in a town near the Florida prison for one year. In that time he’d gone to New York, hired the detective and the law firm, and met Grace.

  “Did you ever think of getting married?” Karen asked. “I mean later, when you were back in Florida, when you heard that my mother was expecting me. Was there any talk of the two of you—?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We spoke of it at length. But we both knew it wasn’t a good idea. Considering how romantic she was, your mother could also be pragmatic. Still, I was in New York when you were born; I got to hold you for a while in the hospital. Your mother’s coworkers were there, Bob Colson and the secretaries, and they all knew who I was, of course. But Grace asked them to keep quiet, so they did. I guess you’ve seen your birth certificate at some point….”

  “Father: Unknown,” Karen quoted. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it, only that my dad had died in a car accident.”

  He grimaced. “We both knew that we couldn’t use my name. Anyway, I saw you when you were born and many times over the years, whenever I went to New York. But always from a distance. No contact—that was something we agreed on.”

  “Did it ever occur to either of you that I might have something to say about all this?”

  “No,” he said. “You didn’t have a say—we agreed on that, too.” He couldn’t see her in the dark, but he heard her exasperated groan. Smiling at his first experience of paternal complacency, he continued. “After Florida, I moved around for a while, working wherever I could. The family money had all gone to relatives in Denmark, so I was flat broke. I worked all over the South, then the Midwest, and finally New Mexico. I never stayed in one place for long; I was always afraid someone would recognize me or ask too many questions. I was a car mechanic, plumber, construction worker, housepainter—whatever. But I saved every dime I made. I went to New York at least once a year, and I paid Frank Macy to send me monthly reports on you and your mother.”

  “Interesting,” Karen said. “When Rodney was pretending to be you last night, he told me he—I mean you—only went to New York once. I guess he didn’t want me to know this part of the story. Did you and Mom ever see each other again?”

  “A few times. We had dinner now and then, and once, when you were away at summer camp, we were together for a few weeks. In Taos, I was living in a motel, working there as night-shift manager, passing the time by reading mysteries and thrillers, a habit I’d picked up in prison. And one day—I’m not sure what possessed me—I went to this place called Papa V.’s Trading Post down the highway and bought some legal pads and started to write. I wrote my first story at the motel desk, then I typed it up. I took it with me to New York the next time I went.

  “Your mother read it, of course, and liked it. She showed it to Bob Colson, who knew a literary agent. Next thing I knew, Jonathan Brown was a published author. I saved up to buy a house, and I’ve been there ever since.”

  Karen said, “Your agent and your publishers—they don’t know who you really are?”

  “Nope. Bob Colson never told them, and I sure didn’t.”

  “So,” she said, “I guess you’ve been happy.”

  “I like writing the books, and I have all the money I need, but no, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been happy. I was hoping I might someday convince your mother to tell you who I was, maybe even marry me, but then she was gone. Macy sent me a fax—I’ve never had a phone. I got to New York too late.”

  “You were at the funeral,” Karen said. “I saw you there.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were silent for a while, and he could hear her breathing in the dark. Outside, the rain had finally stopped but the lightning continued intermittently. He sat beside her, feeling her warmth, thinking, This is my daughter. She’s twenty-seven years old, and she’s an interesting woman….

  Karen broke their silence. “So, why T. H. Huxley?”

  “Thomas Henry Huxley was a big chess player,” he said, “and his friend Charles Darwin gave us the theory of evolution. But it was Huxley who actually coined the word that best described their beliefs: atheism. Roddy always loved that. He was full of romantic notions about Nietzsche’s Superman and Huxley’s atheism, and somehow it all got mixed in with Hitler’s überkinder, you know, the so-called “master race.” With his IQ, Roddy felt justified in adding himself to that elite group. He honestly believed—maybe even still believes—that he is superior to all other human beings.”

  “Oh, he still believes it,” Karen said, “and he may be right. He certainly outsmarted me, and now he has you here, to join him again in Paradise. But you failed him in his great scheme, and you never answered that letter.”

  “Yes,” Wulf said. “I think he got me here to kill me.”

  They sat in silence for a while, thinking about that.

  “So,” Karen said at last, “what’s our plan?”

  Wulf smiled to himself. He already loved this girl, but now he was really beginning to like her.

  —

  The Discs

  MARCH 10, 2009

  She is at the hotel in St. Thomas, and Carl was right about the young man following her. His name is Sidney Singleton, and Carl overheard him calling the Daily News and canceling the photographer, Don Price. Well, he might as well join the party. They will walk right in with eyes wide open. But not for long…

  —

  Karen found her shoulder bag in the dark, then felt around in it for the tiny sewing kit she always carried. Another one of her mother’s legacies: “Keep a needle and thread handy at all times.” She located a safety pin and used it to repair the bag’s broken strap. The mundane action calmed her as she spoke.

  “I don’t understand him,” she said. “He’s such a gentleman in so many ways—he wears tuxedos and safari suits, he always has the right wine for the right meal, he quotes Shakespeare and listens to Wagner, and he has these charming old-world manners. But I saw what he did to Don Price, and the whole world knows what he did fifty years ago. How can one man be both of those people?”

  “I don’t know, Karen. I’ve never understood him, either.”

  She drew in a deep breath and bit the bullet. “He’s obviously in love with you. Obsessed is a better word. Were the two of you ever—um—you know…?”

  “Lovers? No, Karen. I’m not so inclined, never have been, and he knew better than to try it. My father—Well, never mind. We won’t go into all that now.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but you should know that the new movie about you pretty much implies that you two were involved in a sexual relationship.”

  “Yeah,” came the reply. “It’s been implied in most of the books and movies and that play on Broadway. They also say we both killed everyone. But they don’t have all the facts.”

  Karen remembered something else. “Last night, when he was pretending to be you, he said that you made him promise not to harm the housekeeper, Bernice Watkins. Was that the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Her relief at this news was interrupted by sounds in the dark beside her. He was rummaging in his bag; she could hear scrapes and thumps as he unscrewed the flashlight, removed the old batteries, and put in new ones. The light clicked on, and she blinked in the sudden glare.

  “You just happen to carry batteries in there?” she asked, staring down at his worn leather shoulder bag.

  “Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “Now we can see. I need your cell phone.”

  She checked her shoulder bag, then remembered. “It’s on the bedside table in the guest room. I kind of ran out of there. But I haven’t been able to get a signal here anyway, so it would be useless.”

  “Well, that’s that,” he said, frowning. “Karen, listen to me. I need you off this island. You don’t know what he’s like, but I do. He got you here by pretending to be me, and he made damn sure that nobody else knows where you are. Still, I’m sure he has phones that work, and computers and security equipment. Have you be
en feeling tired since you got here, sleeping a lot? He was drugging you. That’s how he did it the first time, at Tamarind. And you just told me what he did to the guy in the boathouse. I don’t want you here when I go up there!”

  “Okay,” Karen said at last. “Let’s talk about it in the morning, when it’s light, when this storm is gone. In the meantime, I guess we’re relatively safe here, right? I mean, they wouldn’t come out in this, not all the way over here, would they?”

  “Probably not,” her father said, “but you never know with Roddy. You get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

  She was exhausted. It was the aftereffect of the shocks and surprises that had arrived in so short a time, overloading her senses. And the drugs, of course. She thought of the tea, the coffee, and the wine, not to mention the food. Drugs—how could she have been so stupid? Oh well…

  He clicked off the flashlight, plunging the small space once more into darkness. Karen lay back against the smooth rock wall behind her and closed her eyes, listening to the surf and the faraway thunder.

  The man who sat beside her was a loner, a quiet type who’d lived his post-prison life as inconspicuously as possible. He wrote novels and lived anonymously, in out-of-the-way places. He’d given up the woman he loved and any chance of personal happiness to ensure the happiness and well-being of their daughter. Despite the legend around him, Wulf Anderman wasn’t a killer and never had been. He was as ill equipped for this situation as she was, and now she spoke this thought aloud.

  “We’re the wrong people, you and I,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here. Let’s just get out of here and leave Rodney Harper to Lieutenant Faison.”

  “Faison? He retired years ago.”

  Karen giggled. “I mean his son, Joshua Faison, Junior. He has his father’s old job. He’s very nice. I wish I could call him now.” This thought made her remember something her father had said a little while ago. “You’ve never owned a telephone?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  She heard him shifting—or fidgeting, she couldn’t tell which—in the darkness. He said, “When you live like I do, with a low profile, it’s best not to keep a lot of stuff around that people might use to trace you. I’ve been off the grid so long, I don’t think about things like telephones. Besides, I don’t have anyone to call.”

  “You do now,” Karen said. “You have me. The minute we’re out of here, we’re getting you a cell phone.”

  There was a pause. Then her father said, “Go to sleep.”

  “Okay.” She rolled onto her side, facing him, curling up into a fetal position. It was cold in the cave, but his jacket covered her, and the rhythmic sounds from outside soon lulled her into somnolence.

  She’d come here for an exclusive story, and she’d ended up with so much more. Her father who was not her father but a deranged killer, and the sudden arrival of the father who was her father. And poor Don Price—she’d never seen a mutilated body before.

  Her father—her real father—was here, and he would keep watch while she slept. She was safe as long as he was with her. She’d only felt this sense of security before with her mother and with Jim O’Brien. She wanted Jim to meet this man, get to know him. She knew Jim would like him.

  —

  The Discs

  MARCH 11, 2009

  Ah, Wagner! There’s nothing to compare to his music. Tristan, the one I’m listening to now, is my favorite.

  Just back from the beach, where we made short work of that dreary Singleton. I left Carl there to bore holes in the old speedboat and clean up the beach.

  Ah, the “Liebestod.” My favorite part; it always makes me cry. This is the music I associate with Wulf, with us as we were then. Why couldn’t he have gone along with the plan? Things would have been so different now….

  —

  Wulf sat in the dark, listening to his daughter’s even breathing, planning his next move. The storm was weakening, moving away, and he knew the day ahead would be warm and dry. Within hours, all evidence of this bad weather would disappear, evaporating in the intense tropical heat. The only mess left to clean up would be his own.

  If he were to be honest with himself, he’d always known in the back of his mind that this reunion was inevitable. There was unfinished business between them. Still, it was an eventuality he dreaded. He’d always been a coward compared to Roddy, as his behavior on March 13, 1959, would attest. He certainly hadn’t been brave enough to stop Roddy—he’d passed out and missed the whole thing. But over the years, in long days and longer nights in prison, he’d secretly come to the conclusion that he wasn’t particularly upset about his father’s end. Still, when the time had come, when Wulf had raised the knife up over his father’s sleeping form, he’d been unable to do it. His mind and body had shut down. He’d woken to find himself on the wood floor of the veranda, dead bodies all around him. Roddy had knelt beside him, grasping Wulf’s right arm and knee in his bloody hands, shaking him.

  “Wake up, Wulfie. Wake up!”

  Wulf hadn’t gone with him, as Rodney had planned, leaving the weapons and carnage behind, racing down the hill to the waiting speedboat. If Wulf had run when he’d had the chance, they might have gotten away with it. Hank Vance would have been blamed for the crime. Instead, Wulf had been unable to move, and the arrival of Hank’s truck had prompted Roddy to panic and flee to the boat alone. Hank had found Wulf with the bodies and called the authorities. By the time Faison had escorted Wulf into Fort Christian, the Coast Guard people had been fishing Roddy out of the sea, kicking and cursing, and it had been all over.

  Roddy’s plan—the version he’d given Wulf, anyway—had been to kill their four parents, take off in the boat, arrive home later that night to “discover” the crime and the sleeping housekeeper, then call the police. The two boys would say they’d been on Hangman Cay all day, and Roddy would helpfully mention Mr. Harper’s eight-thirty appointment with Hank Vance. The cops would immediately go after Hank, who wouldn’t be able to deny going to the house. Hank would tell them he’d simply found the bodies and run, but no one would believe him.

  Hank, the black down-islander with a well-known history of animosity toward his rich, white employer—and two threatening notes in Mr. Harper’s desk to prove it—would have been arrested, tried, convicted, and possibly executed. Wulf hadn’t thought about it at fourteen, but he’d later realized the innocent foreman would have been yet more collateral damage of that terrible night, like Bernice Watkins. Roddy must have enjoyed killing her.

  Roddy was up in that house on the cliff, waiting for him. Karen had found the photographer in the boathouse, and her description of his remains told Wulf all he needed to know. Roddy had the taste of blood in his mouth again, the scent of it in his nostrils. For all his civilized poses, he was more animal than human.

  Wulf reached inside his bag and grasped the gun, reassured by its presence. Whatever happened to him, Karen would return to her life, to the young man in New York who loved her, to her friends. He settled back against the rock wall, listening to the waning thunder, watching over his daughter.

  —

  The Discs

  MARCH 12, 2009

  It’s nearly midnight. Tomorrow is the day. Fifty years! We’ll be together, where it all began.

  I moved heaven and earth to get this place. I hope Wulf appreciates the gesture. I came down here from Boston a few years ago, done up like Toby and bearing his passport, and met the people interested in buying Tamarind. It wasn’t difficult to convince everyone that I was my brother, merely a matter of tinted contact lenses, a beard, and a show of intoxication. The excellent Mrs. MacArthur made an excellent offer. I signed Toby’s name, took the money, and ran straight to London, where I camped out on the doorstep of the woman who’d inherited Hangman Cay from her parents. I had to do some fancy talking to get her to sell the island to me—or, rather, T. H. Huxley—but she finally did.

  When I went back to Boston, to Toby, he was far gone with hi
s booze and drugs. It wasn’t hard to get him to sign a new will. As for his car accident, I drained the brake fluid and sent him off—drunk, as ever—in a rainstorm to buy more liquor. I wept tears of joy as I signed all the papers that put the family fortune in my hands. The lawyers thought it was grief for my dearly departed brother. I sold the Boston house and spent the next few years roaming the world, waiting for the day when I could slip, unnoticed, into my new home, the only home I would ever need. Hangman Cay—mine, at last!

  And in all those years, wherever I roamed, whatever I did, I always kept up on Wulf. I even once went to Taos, New Mexico. There he was, in a little mud dwelling near the highway, not far from a reservation where the deer and the antelope play, for God’s sake! How could he end up in a place like that? I only saw him from a distance, but he looked wonderful. He was always gorgeous, but he’d actually improved with age.

  I’d painted him from memory at Raleigh, and the portrait was the only possession I took with me when I finally left that wretched place. In Boston, I hung it in my bedroom until Toby was gone and the house was sold. Then I put it in storage along with my childhood books and the family china, waiting for the eventual move to Hangman Cay, when I could hang it here, on the living room wall. I gaze at him every day, laughing on that beach, age fourteen, the only beauty in my otherwise dull existence.

  Midnight. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

  Mr. Singleton is in the boathouse, and Carl and the cow are tucked in their bed, halfway to hell. Miss Tyler is probably crouching in the caves—she must be cold and wet, poor dear. The important thing is that she’s still here. And tomorrow morning, Wulf will come sailing into the bay, to the rescue.

  I can hardly wait….

  Chapter Twelve

  “Good morning.”