The Headsman

by James Neal Harvey

  Jud turned his attention to the onlookers, most of whom were eyeing him curiously. He spotted Art Ballard, the old man he’d passed on the way in and walked over to him. “Hiya, Art.”

  Ballard nodded. “Hello, Jud.” His face was rosy from the cold and his nose was dripping. He was wearing a cap that said Caterpillar on the front and there were wisps of white hair sticking out from under the cap.

  Jud lifted the rope and beckoned to Ballard to duck under it. Then he guided the old man to a place near one of the oak trees, out of earshot of the others.

  “You live near here, don’t you, Art?”

  “Just down the road there. The gray house.”

  “How’d you hear about this?”

  “I was out front, puttin’ back one of my storm windows. Glass was cracked, ’n’ I fixed it.”

  “Yeah. So what happened?”

  “So Helen Dickens, she come out her front door yelling. Lucy Keevis there, lives in the house next door, she heard her too. We both run over here and Helen was hysterical about what’d happened to Marcy. Lucy called the police right away. After that Lucy stayed in the house with her until the cop got here.”

  Jud made a mental note to question Mrs. Keevis later. “Let me ask you, Art. You see anything unusual in the neighborhood last night—maybe a stranger, or anybody who might have caught your attention? Have you seen anything like that?”

  Ballard’s eyes were rheumy, a watery green. “Oh, he was here, all right. No doubt about that.”

  Jud was startled. “Who was, Art?”

  The green eyes narrowed. “The headsman, of course. He’s come back.”

  3

  Jud had been at the Dickens house almost two hours when the New York State Police inspector arrived. He said his name was Chester Pearson and he carried himself with an I’m incharge here manner. He looked about ten years older than Jud, as broad as the chief but not as tall. Under his prominent nose a thick mustache sprouted, and he wore no hat on his bushy black hair. He was in civilian clothes, a raincoat over a brown tweed jacket and a white buttondown shirt with a red-and-white striped tie.

  In the hallway outside Marcy Dickens’ bedroom Jud recounted to the detective what he’d seen and learned so far, including his questioning of the Dickenses and several of the neighbors. Inside the room the coroner and the M.E. assisting him had finished their preliminary examination and the two-man ambulance crew had put the corpse into a rubberized bag and was trussing it onto a gurney. People from the State Police Crime Scene Unit were dusting for fingerprints and taking blood and fiber samples.

  Pearson listened impassively until Jud finished. Then he said, “Okay, Chief. Don’t sweat it. We’ll be setting up in town here while we run our investigation. Or at least I will, along with Corporal Williger, my assistant. The CSU’ll be going to Albany so the lab can run checks on what we get here. In the meantime, you say the girl had a boyfriend who took her to a dance last night?”

  “Yes. The kid’s name is Buddy Harper. I’m having him picked up for questioning.”

  “Good. He was the last one to see her alive, right? Except for the killer. So maybe they’re one and the same. I’ll want to talk to him right away.”

  “Sure. But I—”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. Coroner says he’ll see to it the autopsy is done as soon as possible,” Jud said. “Probably tomorrow.”

  Pearson fingered his mustache. “Yeah, I spoke to him. We’ll cover that, of course. No need for you to be there.”

  Jud felt a touch of annoyance, but he put it aside. “We’ll start interviewing the girl’s friends, and my men will see if we can get a line on strangers in the area or a tip on anybody talking about planning a burglary.”

  “Uh-huh. You better go light on the questioning. Too many people doing interviews can cause a lot of confusion. Anything comes your way, report it to me, of course. But leave the rest of it to us. Okay?”

  “Sure. But there’re a few things I’ll want to look into myself.”

  “Before you do, check with me. We’ll work out of your headquarters, so what I’ll need from you is an office with a separate phone line. You can set that up for me first thing.”

  Jud wanted to ask if he’d require maid service, but he bit his tongue.

  “You got a good motel around here?” Pearson inquired.

  “There’s a Howard Johnson on Route Six,” Jud said. “Isn’t too bad.”

  “All right.”

  Jud wondered if Pearson was expecting him to make reservations. If he was, fuck him. The more he saw of this guy the more he realized having him around was going to be a strain.

  The ambulance attendants wheeled the gurney bearing Marcy Dickens’ body past them and one of the Braddock cops gave them a hand getting it down the stairs.

  Doc Reinholtz came out of the room then, along with a resident from Memorial County Hospital who acted as assistant medical examiner. Pearson and MacElroy turned to them.

  “Interesting,” the assistant said. “I never saw one like that before.” His name was Porchuk and he looked like a college kid, wearing a blue V-necked sweater over a white shirt, carrying a ski jacket in one hand and an equipment case in the other. Jud wondered just how many homicides he had in fact seen.

  “Took her head off with one whack,” Porchuk went on. “Had to be from an ax.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Pearson said. He looked at Reinholtz. “You agree with that, Doc?”

  “Yes, I do,” Reinholtz said. “There was just the one clean wound. No sign he hit her more than once. I’ll make a more detailed examination when I do the autopsy, of course. But for now I’d say yes. One blow, and from an ax.”

  Pearson’s assistant, Corporal Mark Williger, had trailed them out of the room. He was also in plainclothes, taller than Pearson and not as husky, but about the same age. Below his thinning sandy hair his features were bland. He spoke up. “I think we’ve got something else says it was an ax. Come take a look.”

  The four men followed Williger back inside. After taking samples, the State CSU cops had cleaned the blood off the floor. Williger squatted beside the stained rug the girl’s body had been lying on. He pointed. “See here? This cut is in a straight line through the rug. Now look underneath.”

  He flipped the rug aside. In the floorboards was a clearly defined mark about six inches long that appeared to have been freshly made. “The blade was curved,” Williger said. “That’s why the cut’s deeper in the middle than at the ends. You see it?”

  Pearson bent down and ran a finger along the depression in the wood. “That’s an ax cut, all right.” He straightened up. “He cut her head off while she was down here on the floor, and then he put her head on the dresser.”

  Brilliant, Jud thought.

  Pearson turned to Williger. “Good work, Mark. Be sure you get pictures of it.”

  Williger rose, looking pleased. “Will do.”

  Reinholtz glanced at Jud. “You turn up anything so far?”

  MacElroy shook his head.

  “We’re taking over the investigation from here on in,” Pearson said to the coroner. “We’ll be working out of police headquarters. Any questions, or information you have, get in touch with me or with Corporal Williger here.”

  “Okay, sure,” Reinholtz said. He looked down once more at the cut in the floor and then at the other men. “I’ve got to get back to my office and make out my report. Thanks, gentlemen. I hope to God we can get this thing put away in a hurry.” He stepped past them.

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Porchuk said. He raised a hand to the others. “See you at the autopsy.” The two men left the room.

  Pearson turned back to Williger. “Go on down to police headquarters. See if NYSPIN has anything to match this M.O.” NYSPIN was the New York State Police Information Network. Law enforcement agencies throughout the state were linked to it by computer.

  “I had one of my men do that,” Jud said. “Nothing fit this.”

 
“Oh? Double-check it, Mark,” Pearson said. “And see if you can get anything by running down known sex offenders.”

  Jud was about to tell him he’d done that too, but then he thought, the hell with it. Let Pearson find out for himself.

  “I’m going to stay here awhile,” the inspector said to Williger. “I want to talk with the girl’s parents. You go ahead.” The corporal left the room.

  “Excuse me, Chief.”

  Jud turned to see Kramer standing in the doorway. “Yeah, Bob?”

  “There’s a TV crew out there, and some reporters. They want to ask some questions.”

  “Tell ’em no statement yet,” Jud said. “The investigation’s just getting under way.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Pearson said. “It’s always smart to cooperate with the media. They can be helpful, if they’re handled right. And there’s nothing wrong with good PR, either. The citizens want to know the police have things under control.” He glanced at Kramer. “Tell ’em I’ll be down to talk with them shortly.”

  Kramer looked at Jud, who nodded. The cop turned and went back toward the stairs.

  “You can come along, if you like,” Pearson said to Jud.

  “There’s one thing you ought to know,” Jud said.

  “What’s that?”

  He’d debated getting into this, but he thought he at least ought to clue Pearson in before the news people jumped on it. “There’s an old legend in this town. According to the story, the early settlers had an executioner who did his work with an ax. A headsman. The legend says that every so often, he comes back to Braddock.”

  As he spoke, he saw a glint of amusement appear in the inspector’s eyes. But he went on with it. “There was another homicide here twenty-five years ago, never solved. Woman named Donovan was decapitated. People said it was the headsman who did that one, too. You can bet they’ll be tying this murder to the same legend.”

  Pearson brushed his mustache with a fingertip. “So what are you suggesting, Chief—we say we’re looking for a ghost with a big ax?”

  Jud felt his face get hot. “I’m just telling you something I thought you ought to know about before they start firing questions at you.”

  “Questions don’t bother me,” Pearson said. “Even screwball questions. So thanks for tipping me off, but I can handle anything they throw out. When you’ve been on the hot seat as long as I have, you learn to deal with that stuff. What was it Harry Truman said? If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

  I’m beginning to wish, Jud thought, you’d stayed the hell out of Braddock.

  “Which reminds me,” Pearson went on. “I’ll give these guys from the media the answers to whatever they ask. It’s better that way—keeps the crossfire down to a minimum. And you can tell your men that, too. There’s just one official spokesman on this case, and that’s me. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” Jud said. “Understood.”

  “Good. And speaking of your men, I may need to borrow a few of them, preferably the brighter ones.”

  “I don’t know that I can spare many people,” Jud said. “Like I told you, I want to run a sweep for vagrants or any strange characters who might be around, starting right away. But I’ll do what I can. How do you want to use them?”

  “Legwork, mostly. Also some interviews with the girl’s contacts.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I know what I said, Chief. But I’ll handle it, okay? The essential thing is to get this investigation organized fast. As far as I’m concerned, your rounding up a bunch of bums is a waste of time. You know why? Because in about eighty percent of homicide cases, the perpetrator turns out to be somebody the victim knew well. In the end, all you’re dealing with is just another asshole. Which is why I want to talk to the boyfriend. You follow me?”

  “Yeah,” Jud said. “I do.”

  “Good. What do you know about him, by the way?”

  “He was in her class at the high school. Comes from a good family. Father owns a drugstore here in Braddock.”

  “Uh-huh. You need a warrant?”

  “No. I’m sure he’ll be cooperative.”

  “Okay, good. Now let’s go downstairs so I can get the media squared away.”

  “Yeah,” Jud said. “Let’s do that.”

  4

  The news people were on the porch, crowding around the front entrance. When Pearson and Jud stepped out the door, the first thing Jud noticed was that the reporters seemed to have their own pecking order, with the TV crews at the top. Two guys with video camcorders on their shoulders were in the front row, and standing with them were two TV commentators, one male, the other female, holding microphones. The crews were from Syracuse and Albany. Braddock had no TV station of its own.

  The second thing Jud noticed was that his girlfriend, Sally Benson, was among the other reporters. Which surprised him, because what Sally usually covered for the Braddock Express was more in the line of weddings and meetings of the 4–H Club. She smiled when she caught sight of him and he nodded to her, feeling a little self-conscious about being the center of attention. Most of the other newspeople were strangers. He assumed that like the TV crews, they were also from out of town.

  As soon as Jud and the inspector appeared, the red lights on the camcorders went on, and the reporters all started asking questions at once.

  Pearson raised both hands and made a quiet-down motion, and when the noise abated he said, “I’m Inspector Chester Pearson of the New York State Police. I’m in charge of this investigation. We’ve just started our work, but I’ll answer any questions I can.”

  The male TV reporter shoved a mike toward Pearson. “Inspector, what can you tell us about the victim?”

  The detective cleared his throat. “The deceased was a young woman named Marcy Dickens. Age seventeen. She was a student at Braddock High School.”

  Jud glanced sideways at Pearson. He sounds like one of those dipshit characters in a TV cop show, he thought. He wondered if Pearson watched those programs too, and decided he probably did.

  “Is it true,” the reporter asked, “her head was chopped off?”

  Pearson’s face was somber, his tone grave. “The victim was decapitated, yes.”

  “What with?”

  “The preliminary examination indicates it was a sharp object.”

  Jesus Christ, Jud thought, could it have been done with a dull one?

  “What kind of object?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Was it an ax?”

  “We don’t know,” Pearson said.

  As soon as he got the words out, the reporters all started yammering again. The guy who had been doing the questioning put one hand behind him and signalled frantically for them to shut up. When they quieted down a little, he said, “We understand Braddock once had a public executioner who used an ax to carry out his—ah—duties.”

  “Is that so? I wasn’t aware of that.”

  Jud glanced sideways again. Pearson seemed to be enjoying this. Probably getting his rocks off over occupying the limelight.

  The reporter pressed on. “A lot of people in Braddock believe the executioner—the headsman—is still around, and that he may have been responsible for this killing. What’s your reaction?”

  “I think it would take a lot of imagination to come up with an idea like that.”

  The others were rumbling once more, and the TV reporter tried again to draw Pearson into making a controversial statement. “But if this girl’s head was chopped off, don’t you think that’s a possibility, and wouldn’t you want to investigate it?”

  “We’re investigating all possibilities,” Pearson said.

  One of the reporters yelled, “If the headsman didn’t do it, who did?”

  Before Pearson could respond, more questions erupted, and the crowd pressed in on him. The TV reporter gave up in disgust, while the detective went on fielding inquiries.

  Watching this, Jud decided he’d had enough. As he turne
d away, he saw Sam Melcher striding up the walk, approaching the house.

  Melcher was the mayor of Braddock, and the owner of a successful insurance and real estate business. His daughter was also a senior at the high school. He was almost totally bald, but despite the cold he wore no hat on his shining pate. He was staring at the commotion on the porch, and as he caught sight of Jud he frowned. He ascended the steps and took MacElroy’s arm, drawing him aside.

  The mayor made an effort to keep his voice down, but its tone was a rasp. “Chief, what the hell has gone on here? Who did this, for God’s sake? What have you found out?”

  “At this point we have no idea,” Jud said. “The state police are running the investigation. That’s Inspector Pearson over there, talking to the media.”

  Melcher glanced again at the swarm of reporters around Pearson, and then his gaze swung back to fix on Jud. “That’s fine, and I’m glad you’ve got their help. But I want to tell you something. This is the most shocking thing that could happen. Marcy Dickens wasn’t just a nobody. Her family are some of the best people in this town. To have her murdered like this, in cold blood, is just, just—unthinkable.”

  Jud was well aware that people often have strange reactions in times of crisis, but Melcher’s attitude was hard to fathom. He was angry, which was certainly understandable, but his manner made it seem as if he were holding Jud responsible not merely for solving the crime, but for not having prevented it.

  “Now goddamn it,” Melcher grated, “what are you doing about it?”

  Jud wished the man would calm down. “We’ll do everything we can, Sam. But as I told you, Inspector Pearson is in charge. You know we don’t have detectives in our department.”

  Melcher looked at Jud as if he were some strange species of animal. He thrust out his lower jaw. “Let me remind you that the reason we appointed you chief of police was because we wanted a go-getter. Somebody who’d bring young blood and energy to the job. Leadership, do you understand? I personally went all out pushing for you to get it. And what I expect now is for you to do your job the way you’re supposed to do it, and not try to shove responsibility off onto somebody else. Do I make myself clear?”