The Headsman

by James Neal Harvey

  He initialed the reports and busied himself with paperwork. He’d pay the night fighters a visit later.

  Grady came in after he’d been at it awhile. Jud pushed back from his desk and told the sergeant to sit down. “How’s it going, Joe?”

  The big man slumped into a chair. “Not great. This guy Pearson is a ballbuster.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Him and the corporal, Williger, been driving us nuts. They got Kramer and Delury working for them, which makes us short-handed, and they keep asking for more help. That’s on top of their own guys.”

  “I’ll talk to Pearson.”

  “Yeah. If you ask me, all they’re doing is spinning their wheels. They been interviewing everybody who knew the Dickens kid, but they haven’t come up with shit. Not one real lead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Delury told me. They’re just running all over telling the world how hard they work. Every time you turn around, Pearson’s talking to the papers or the TV. You’d think the guy was running for office.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  Grady’s mouth curled in an expression of disgust.

  Jud gestured at the report on his desk. “These two guys who were carving each other up. Were they on crack?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, but I think so. One of them’s been in a couple of times before. Stolen car, suspect in a convenience store burglary, shit like that.”

  “Okay, I remember now. I thought one of the names sounded familiar. You talk to them?”

  “Yeah. It was an accident, they say. Like switchblades are for cleaning your nails.”

  “Let’s stay after it. Maybe we can get something out of them. I sure don’t want a crack blowup around here. We got enough to deal with.”

  “All right, will do.”

  Jud twiddled with a pen on his desk. It was strange, but he never felt completely at ease with Grady. The resentment over Jud’s promotion was obviously still there. And in some ways it seemed as if it might be more than that. On the surface, Grady came off as just a big, stolid, hardworking cop who’d been on the job his entire adult life. He was streetwise and cynical, and like most police officers he was suspicious of anybody who came into his purview.

  Grady had also caught enough crap from the town government over the years to be able to handle it; obviously he’d learned long ago that when the punches came your way you rolled with them. Jud depended on him and made it clear that the sergeant was his number-one man. He made it a point to defer to the older cop whenever he could and to treat him with respect. Yet the attitude was always there, so palpable Jud could feel it.

  Grady stood up. “Anything else?”

  “No, Joe. That’s it for now.”

  There was a knock at the door and Bob Brusson stuck his head into the office. “Excuse me, Chief. We just got a call from Peter Harper. He says his son is missing.”

  “Buddy?”

  “Right.”

  Christ. Jud looked at Grady, whose face was impassive, and then back at the young officer in the doorway. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said the kid wasn’t in the house this morning. His car was in the barn but he wasn’t in his room. Harper wants you to call him.”

  “Okay, thanks.” He reached for the phone.

  Peter Harper answered on the first ring. The strain in his voice was apparent. “Chief, I think you’d better get over here right away. Buddy’s gone.”

  Jud felt a tightening in his chest. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I am. His mother and I are worried sick something’s happened to him. It’s just not like him to take off someplace without saying a word to us. His car’s here, too. And that’s even more odd. If he was going to go someplace, you can bet he’d use his car.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there right away. I know you’re upset, but try to think about anything Buddy might have said or planned to do that might give you an idea where he is. Could be a simple explanation after all.” He hung up.

  Grady raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  Jud got up from his desk. “I’m going over to the Harpers’. Anybody’s looking for me, give me a call.” He reached for his jacket and cap and put them on.

  “What about Pearson?”

  Jud stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Yeah, I better let him know.”

  He went down the hall to the office he’d turned over to the two state police detectives, but neither of them was there. Jud told Stanis where he was going and said to let Pearson or Williger know what had happened.

  “You want me to try to run ’em down?” the cop asked.

  “Sure,” Jud said. “Do that.”

  He hurried out the back door of the building and climbed into the cruiser. When he pulled out of the driveway his wheels kicked up gravel.

  2

  The Harper home was near the Nepawa River, a two-story gray colonial that Buddy’s great-grandfather had built for his growing family. That was years before the opening of the drugstore; the old man had started a company to produce chemical fertilizer when that industry was in its infancy. When he died his son sold the company and opened Harper’s Drug on Main Street, thereby blowing a great opportunity. But the son had lived comfortably enough, and had passed the store on to Peter, Buddy’s father. Peter Harper had built it into a thriving business, more of a department store than a pharmacy.

  There was an old-fashioned portico on one side of the house, and the drive went on out to a garage and beyond that was a barn. Jud parked in the drive and walked up to the front entrance. He knocked on the door and Peter Harper opened it.

  Harper was close to fifty, Jud would guess, but his thinning hair made him look older. He’d earned a reputation as one of Braddock’s better amateur golfers, and his name often appeared in the sports pages of the Express. He was almost always listed as a low-scorer in tournaments at the country club. He took Jud’s jacket and cap and hung them in the front hall closet, then led him into the living room.

  Jean Harper was waiting for them, and as always when he saw her Jud was struck by this woman’s appearance. She seemed at least ten years younger than her husband. Her tawny hair hung to her shoulders in soft waves, and her green wool dress showed off the trim lines of her body. He couldn’t help wondering what she’d say if he told her about the last time he’d seen her.

  They sat facing each other, with Mrs. Harper nervously twisting a Kleenex in her fingers. Harper explained that when they’d called Buddy that morning there had been no response, which wasn’t unusual—they practically had to blast him out of bed on school days. But this morning Harper had finally gone into his room and found the bed hadn’t been slept in. Then he went out to the barn and saw his son’s car sitting there with the engine opened up, where he’d obviously been working on it. But no sign of Buddy.

  Harper clasped his hands in front of him. “That’s when I really began to worry. If Buddy was going anywhere, you could be sure he’d drive his car. That Chevy means the world to him.”

  Jud nodded. “I asked you to try to think of anything he might have said or anything he might have been doing lately that would have some bearing on this.”

  Harper shook his head. “No, there’s nothing I could think of that would explain it.”

  “Have you tried his friends?”

  “I did,” Jean Harper said. “I called several of the kids he runs around with, but nobody’s heard a word from him. They sounded as surprised as we were.”

  “Did he take anything from his room, or the house? Like a suitcase, or extra clothes, or anything that could suggest he expected to be gone for awhile?”

  “We thought of that,” Peter replied. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything missing. In fact, there was even some money he’d left on his dresser. It was just a few dollars, but you’d think if he planned to go anywhere he would have taken money with him, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jud said. “You’d think so. Tell me, how’s he been
acting since Marcy’s death? When I talked to him he was still in shock, of course. But since then?”

  “He seemed numb for the first couple of days,” Jean said. “Sort of pulled himself into a shell. Lately he’s been better, though. At least I thought so. Didn’t you, Peter?”

  “I don’t know. Or I guess so. Lot of times it’s hard to tell what’s going on in a kid’s head.”

  “Beyond that, you notice anything unusual about the way he was acting, either of you?”

  Peter shook his head, but his wife said, “Can this be between us? I’m worried about him, but I don’t want anything I might say to lead to further trouble.”

  Jud could guess what she was getting at. “Of course. What is it?”

  “Lately I have noticed something. In fact, I found it.”

  Both men looked at her quizzically.

  “The other day I went into his room, and I decided to take some of his things out and put them in the laundry. He forgets now and then, and his clothes can get a little ripe. Anyway, what I stumbled across was his stash. He had a pretty good load of marijuana in a plastic sack. I knew what it was, of course. When I was in college everybody smoked it. I know a lot of kids do today, but I couldn’t help wondering if maybe Buddy hadn’t gone over-board. I left it there, and I didn’t say anything to him. It wasn’t the first time I’d come across something that suggested he was smoking it, but I was surprised at how much he had. So it was a problem I was trying to figure out how to deal with, and now I wonder if it could have something to do with his going off. Or whatever he’s done.”

  “Jesus,” Peter said. “I didn’t know anything about that. You never told me—”

  She cut him off. “I know I didn’t. There are some things I handle better than you do, Peter.”

  Jud had a feeling she would have said more on that subject if he hadn’t been there, but he wasn’t in their house this morning to referee a squabble. “What did you do with it?” he asked her. “The marijuana?”

  “I left it where I found it. Next time I looked, it was gone.”

  “Generally speaking, how do you get along with him?”

  An ironic smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “Generally speaking, I don’t. Peter leaves the responsibility for disciplining him to me, unfortunately. As a result I’m often not very popular.”

  They were on the verge of getting into it, Jud saw. Again he tried to steer the discussion in another direction. “You said he was working on his car last night?”

  “It seemed so to me,” Peter said. “I got home a little late, and when I put my car in the garage I looked out and saw lights on in the barn. He was often there in the evenings, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Were the lights on when you went out there this morning?”

  Peter looked at the ceiling, then at Jud. “Come to think of it, yes. I remember turning them out as we left to call you, but when we got there they were on.”

  “I’d like to have a look,” Jud said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  They put on jackets and went out the back door, Peter leading the way, his wife following.

  Jud brought up the rear. Walking behind Jean Harper he was again strongly aware of her physical presence. The long legs and the way she had of swinging her hips made it hard not to be. Studying her, he decided that taken individually her features weren’t all that beautiful, but somehow the way she put everything together made her very exciting.

  He’d heard the stories about her from time to time, but until he’d seen her slipping into Loring Campbell’s room at the Mayflower Motel he hadn’t paid much attention. He hadn’t known whether the innuendos were based on fact or jealousy. There weren’t many housewives in Braddock who looked that good.

  When they got to the barn the Harpers stood aside and let Jud enter first. One glance at the Chevy told him Buddy had indeed been working on it. The hood had been removed and the engine opened up. Both heads were lying on the bench, along with the air filter and the carburetor and other parts. A worklamp with a long cord was hooked into place in the engine compartment. He was about to step closer when he noticed the oil.

  There was a large pool of it on the floor beside the vehicle. Or at least there had been. Much of it had soaked into the floorboards, but a viscous residue remained. It reminded Jud of the blood he’d seen on the floor of Marcy Dickens’ bedroom and the living room of Art Ballard’s house.

  It was odd, but the mess seemed out of place here. The rest of the area was reasonably clean and the workbench was well organized. Tools were hanging in neat rows on a pegboard, and the engine parts on the bench had been laid out in a pattern. An open toolbox on a cart held a set of socket wrenches. Buddy was obviously the kind of mechanic who liked to keep his tools and his work in order. So why the oil, and where had it come from?

  He spotted a can lying on the floor, on the far side of the workbench. It was a five-gallon container of the kind that mechanics used to catch drain oil. This one was on its side, and it was empty. Jud stepped over to it and nudged it with his toe. There had been oil in it recently; some of the stuff was still coating the inside, and a drop hung from the lip of the can. It appeared that someone had knocked the can over, spilling its contents. But if that was what had happened, why was the can lying over here, several feet away? A better explanation would be that someone had poured oil on the floor, either deliberately or by accident, and then had tossed the can aside.

  Why?

  He walked around the Chevy, opening the doors and peering inside, seeing nothing worth noting. When he came back to where he’d been standing earlier, he noticed a wrench lying under the front end of the car, as if it had been dropped there.

  The Harpers had stood quietly by while Jud inspected the area. He turned to them. “Did Buddy always work alone, or did he sometimes have a friend over to help him?”

  “No, he did all the work himself,” Peter said.

  “He wouldn’t let anyone else touch that car,” his wife added.

  Before Jud could probe further, the sound of tires on the driveway reached them from the direction of the house. They looked up to see an unmarked state police Ford come to a stop behind Jud’s car. Inspector Pearson and Corporal Williger got out. The pair came up the drive toward the barn and Jud and the Harpers stepped forward to meet them.

  “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Harper,” Pearson said.

  They acknowledged that they were.

  “I’m Inspector Chester Pearson, New York State Police. I’m heading the investigation of the Dickens homicide. I understand your son is missing.”

  “That’s right,” Peter said. “We were just telling Chief MacElroy that he was out here in the barn last night, working on his car. But this morning he was gone.”

  Pearson sometimes had a flat way of speaking that Jud suspected was an affectation. “I interviewed your son after the Dickens girl was killed,” the inspector said. “You know that, of course.”

  “He told us,” Jean Harper said.

  “Do either of you have any idea,” Pearson asked, “where he might have gone, or why he left?”

  They said they had none.

  “I’m sure you realize,” Pearson went on, “he could be in a lot of trouble if he’s run off someplace. I told him at the very least he could be a material witness in the Dickens homicide.”

  Peter Harper cocked his head. “What do you mean, ‘at the very least?’”

  “I mean he was very close to her and one of the last people to see her alive. He was with her just before she was killed. The fact is, your son could also be a suspect.”

  Jean Harper flushed. “That’s ridiculous. Buddy thought the world of Marcy. He was just shattered when she died. The last thing he’d ever have done would be to hurt her.”

  “That could be,” Pearson said. “But if he had a clear conscience, why did he take off?”

  Her voice rose in anger. “Take off? What makes you think that’s what happened? Our son is missing, Inspe
ctor. If he wanted to take off, he would have driven his car. Which, as you can see, is right there in the barn.”

  Pearson glanced at the Chevy. “Yeah, and out of commission. What other vehicles do you have?”

  “A Jaguar and a Ford station wagon,” Peter Harper told him. “They’re both in the garage.”

  Pearson turned to the corporal. “Will, go to the car and call Braddock headquarters. Tell ’em to get out an APB with the kid’s description. Have ’em contact the Lincoln barracks, too. We’ll want to get it into NYSPIN. I’ll call Lincoln myself as soon as I get back.”

  “Yes sir.” Williger trotted back up the driveway toward the Ford.

  “I think we ought to go in the house and talk,” Pearson said to the Harpers. “There’s a lot I want to go over with you.”

  Jud noted the inspector had tacitly cut him out of the discussion. Which was okay with him. Pearson was in charge, and besides, listening to him work Buddy’s parents over was an experience Jud would just as soon skip. He told the Harpers the police would do everything possible to locate Buddy. Then he walked back to his car and drove as quickly as he could to headquarters.

  3

  When he got to the stationhouse, Jud gave Grady a quick recap of what had gone on at the Harper home and then went into his office, where a number of messages were waiting for him.

  A reporter from one of the Albany papers had telephoned, requesting an interview. The mayor had called; Jud was to call him back. An attorney had called to register a complaint about the way his client had been treated by the Braddock police.

  What client? Jud wondered. Ah, one of the duelists who’d spent the night in the can. Apparently he’d given the cops some shit and they’d slapped him around a little.

  And Sally had phoned. That one he’d save until last; it would be the only pleasant one of the bunch.

  But before returning any of the calls, he wanted to think for a few minutes. He got out a pad and doodled on it. The way he saw it, there were two possibilities. One was that Buddy Harper had run off, as Pearson seemed to think he had. That would sure as hell make the kid the prime suspect Pearson wanted to think he was. The other possibility was that something had happened to him. But what—an accident? Or worse? Jud decided to consider the runaway theory first.