The Headsman

by James Neal Harvey

  The superintendent rested a heavy hand on a manila folder that lay on his desk. “Got her file here, if you want to look at it before you talk to her.”

  “Thanks, I will. I understand this is her second trip?”

  “That’s correct. Both times for armed robbery in New York. Knocked over jewelry stores. In the first one the guy she was with did the actual stickup, she was just a lookout. But as you know, the law don’t distinguish. She got two to five on a plea bargain, served fourteen months. Second one she was with a different guy. Only this time she had a gun too. They hit a store on Madison Avenue and the manager tried to put up a fight so she shot him. Bullet lodged in his skull. He lived, but he would’ve been better off if he didn’t.”

  “You said on the phone she’s been here three years this time?”

  “Yeah. She got five to ten, but it could’ve been more.”

  “Why wasn’t it?”

  “Another plea bargain.”

  “You must get a lot of those.”

  “Ninety-eight percent. That’s why most of the inmates here are short-timers.”

  “How is that?”

  Wallace shrugged beefy shoulders. “A perpetrator’s got any brains, or her lawyer does, she bargains. When she does, she gets off light. She comes up here and pretty soon she’s back on the street. Average term for our ladies is two years.”

  “What if she doesn’t bargain?”

  “That forces a trial. Costs a lot of time and money. Courts are so clogged now they’ll never get caught up. So like as not the judge’ll be pissed off and stick it to her. She winds up with a maximum sentence.”

  “What if she’s innocent?”

  The superintendent’s lip curled. “Innocent? Who the fuck is innocent?”

  “About Donovan.”

  “Yes?”

  “When is she likely to be paroled?”

  “Hard to say. She’s eligible, but the board turned her down.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a troublemaker, for one thing. Always running up charge sheets.”

  “What’s a charge sheet?”

  “When a CO. writes up an inmate for a violation of rules. With her it’s fighting with other inmates, giving the C.O.s shit, stuff like that. Also she’s got a long record. Prostitution, drugs, and the robberies. But the worst thing is how she conned the board before and got herself paroled the first time. Gave ’em a load of crap and they bought it.”

  He paused, and when he spoke again there was an edge of satisfaction in his tone. “Against my recommendation. She was out for a year and then she knocked over the other store and shot the guy.”

  “So they remember?”

  “It’s all in the file. They go through it and they’re not that ready to look stupid again so quick.”

  “What’s the penalty for rule violations?”

  “Depends on what somebody did. And how many charge sheets they had in the past. With her there’s plenty.”

  “What happens, usually?”

  “Restriction. That’s like solitary, only here it just means in a cell, away from everybody. No work, no exercise, nothing. Not like in a male penitentiary, where they got a real hole. Here we’re dealing with ladies.”

  Jud was tempted to ask Wallace if he’d prefer having a hole to confine his ladies in, but he held his tongue.

  The superintendent was studying him. “You said you’re on a homicide?”

  “That’s right. High-school girl was killed in her home by an intruder. Her head was cut off.”

  “Yeah,” Wallace said. “I read about that. What’s the connection?”

  “Donovan’s mother died the same way, when Joan was six years old. Family was living in Braddock at the time.”

  The bushy eyebrows lifted. “Same M.O.?”

  “Yes.”

  “All it says in the file is her mother is deceased.”

  “Uh-huh. But that’s what happened.”

  “Any suspects in the one you got now?”

  “Maybe. The girl’s boyfriend disappeared a few days after the murder.”

  “What makes you think Donovan can help you?”

  “I don’t know whether she can or not. I just want to question her.”

  “Okay.” Wallace pointed to the file jacket. “You want to see this?”

  “Yes, I do.” Jud picked up the file and opened it. There was a list of arrests and dispositions of each count, and several reports by Westchester personnel and psychiatric social workers. The typed reports by the facility people said Donovan was a bad inmate. The pages were full of grammatical and spelling errors, and read as if a ten-year-old might have written them. In contrast, the ones by the social workers contained mostly jargon, reams of psychobullshit to the effect that the subject could be fully rehabilitated, provided she received sufficient therapy. Everybody seemed to have been writing about a different person.

  There was also a set of photographs showing 82–6–74 DONOVAN, JOAN head on and in profile. To Jud’s surprise she wasn’t bad-looking, if you could get past the harsh lighting and the crudeness of the black-and-white photography.

  He put the file back down on the desk. “Can I get a copy of this?”

  “Only the arrest record,” Wallace replied. “I’ll have a Xerox made. You want to see her now?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallace lifted a phone and called a number. He told whoever answered to bring Donovan to Visitor’s Room D. Then he called another number and a few seconds later a Corrections Officer came into the office.

  This one was a woman. She was black, about as wide as she was tall, wearing a blue uniform.

  Wallace said, “Officer Tate, this is Chief of Police MacElroy. The chief is from Braddock, upstate.”

  “Hello,” Jud said.

  Officer Tate grunted.

  “Take the chief down to Visitor’s D,” Wallace ordered.

  “I suppose to stay with him?”

  “Not necessary.” He looked at Jud. “The C.O. who brings Donovan down will wait for her. When you’re through, tell the C.O. to call here and we’ll send somebody for you.”

  “Okay, thanks for your help.”

  Wallace made no reply.

  Jud followed Tate out of the office, carrying the box of photographs. They went through a labyrinth of corridors and doors and wound up before a room marked Visitor’s D.

  When Tate opened the door to the room, she followed him inside and asked, “What you after Donovan for?”

  “I’m not. I just want to talk to her.”

  Tate gestured toward a wooden table with straightbacked chairs on either side. The room was much smaller than the typical visiting setup in a men’s facility, and there were no glass partitions to separate you from the inmates. He put his box and his cap down on the table and hung his jacket on the back of a chair before sitting down.

  Tate made another attempt. “You looking for her on something she done?”

  “No. I just want to ask her a few questions.” It wasn’t hard to figure out what the C.O. was after—any information on an inmate might turn out to be useful, one way or another. He smiled pleasantly. “She a friend of yours?”

  Tate expelled air from between thick lips. “Sheeit.”

  At least that put an end to the probing. A minute later another C.O. appeared. This one was also female, white this time and tall, with a prominent nose and a downy line of dark hair on her upper lip. Following her into the room was a slim young woman wearing a pale green prison dress. Clipped to the neck of the dress was a laminated I.D. card.

  The tall CO. looked at Jud. “You the visitor?”

  “Yes. I’m Jud MacElroy, Chief of Police in Braddock.”

  “I’m Officer Geraldi.” She indicated the inmate with a tilt of her head. “This here is Joan Donovan. Sit down, Donovan.”

  Jud said, “Hello, Joan.”

  Donovan fixed him with cold blue eyes and remained silent. She took the chair opposite him.

  Her face was thinner
than it had appeared in her file photograph, and her ash-blond hair was tied back in a bun. With makeup and her hair done she would have been quite attractive. Jud had never seen a picture of her mother, but from the way Ray Maxwell had described her, she’d probably looked much like the woman seated across from him now. Despite the baggy dress he could see that her body was trim and shapely.

  The Corrections Officers continued to stand there, giving no indication they intended to leave. Geraldi leaned against the wall and folded her arms.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Jud said to them.

  Tate turned and left the room, but Geraldi kept her position against the wall.

  He tried again. “I said—”

  Geraldi sniffed. “I heard what you said. But I gotta stay with the inmate. Regulations.”

  Joan Donavan turned toward the C.O. and spoke for the first time since she’d entered the room. “Okay, bull dyke—why don’t you do what the man says and get the fuck out of here?”

  The C.O. flushed. “Watch your mouth, Donovan, or you get a charge sheet.”

  “Take your charge sheet and wipe your hairy ass with it.”

  Jud held up his hands. “Excuse me, Officer. I was told this could be a private conversation. If you want to call the superintendent’s office, I’m sure Mr. Wallace would confirm that.”

  Bright with anger, Geraldi’s eyes locked on the inmate. She moved away from the wall and started for the door.

  Donovan returned the stare, opening her mouth and flicking her tongue from side to side obscenely.

  For a moment the C.O. looked as if she was going to pop off again, but then she walked out and closed the door behind her.

  Donovan turned back to Jud, a mirthless smile lifting one corner of her mouth. Her voice was no longer strident, but low and husky. “So how are things in dear old Braddock?”

  “You remember the town?”

  “Sure I remember it. And I know why you’re here, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Mm-hm. Matter of fact, I’ve been expecting you. Ever since I heard about that kid getting her head chopped off. I figured sooner or later somebody’d connect it to what happened to my mother and see if they couldn’t get something out of me. And here you are.”

  Jud sat back in his chair. “You think you can help me?”

  The crooked smile widened a notch. “It depends on the deal.”

  “I can’t promise you anything,” Jud said.

  “Yes you can.” There was genuine amusement now in Donovan’s blue eyes, as if she knew exactly what his thoughts were and she was enjoying the little game they were playing.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  She tilted her head. “You guarantee me you’ll go to bat with the parole board. And I don’t mean you just write a nice polite letter and that’s it.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “I mean you help get me out of this shithole.”

  “I don’t have that kind of clout.”

  “I think you do.”

  He raised a hand. “Look, Joan. You help me, I’ll do my best for you. I’ll go before the board personally, and I’ll pull every string I can. That good enough?”

  “Maybe. You guarantee it?”

  “Yes. I guarantee I’ll do my level best.”

  She seemed to relax a little. “Okay, so let’s talk. Your name’s Jud?”

  “Right.”

  “Pretty young, aren’t you, to be chief?”

  She was stroking him, of course. And yet it was the damnedest thing—even though he knew it, she was projecting an animal magnetism that was almost palpable. Joan Donovan would be some handful. Again he thought of her mother.

  “How old were you,” he asked, “when you left Braddock?”

  “Seven. We moved to Binghamton a few months after my mother died.”

  “How well do you remember her?”

  “Very well. I remember everything about her. The way she looked, the way she walked. Even the sound of her voice. People’ve told me I’m a lot like her.”

  “How’d you get along with her?”

  “Great. It was simple. She had as little to do with me as possible.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because I cramped her style, of course. The last thing she wanted was a kid around. But I just happened, so I guess she figured the best way to deal with it was not to deal with it.”

  “Then she wasn’t home much?”

  “Sure she was. See, she had a lot of friends. And even though she spent a lot of her time out of the house, there were other times when she’d have them over.”

  “You’re talking about men she was seeing?”

  The half-smile returned to her mouth. “What else? You don’t think she belonged to a sewing circle, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Yeah. So when she’d have a friend over, she didn’t care whether I saw them or not. They closed the bedroom door—I don’t mean I saw them that way—but she didn’t care if I knew it. Afterward she’d give me candy and stuff to shut me up. And a lot of times the guy would give me money.”

  “So you never mentioned any of this to your father.”

  “What, and kill a good thing? Hell no, I didn’t.”

  “What was he like, your father?”

  Her voice took on an edge of bitterness. “He was an asshole. After a while I realized he knew what was going on too. Or at least he suspected it. But the dumb shit never said a word about it.”

  “They ever fight?”

  “Not really. Not that I remember. He just let everything go by, and as long as it didn’t interfere with his business he didn’t care to know about it. At least that was the way it seemed to me.”

  “After you moved to Binghamton he remarried, right?”

  “He sure did.”

  “And I take it you didn’t get along with your stepmother.”

  “That bitch?”

  “I understand she died last year.”

  “Should have been twenty years sooner.”

  Jud was quiet for a moment. “About your mother’s friends.”

  The blue eyes fixed on him. “You want to know if I can remember any of them, right?”

  Again she’d been a step ahead of him. “Yes.”

  “I think I can, but it’s been a long time. And I can remember what some of them looked like, but not their names. I doubt if I knew their names, anyway.”

  He gestured toward the box. “I brought some photos. Old ones, from around that time.”

  “Aren’t you clever.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  He got out his pocket notebook and a ballpoint, placing them on the table. Then he opened the box and took out the stack of pictures. “I’m going to show you these one at a time. If you spot somebody, say so. Even if one of them just looks sort of familiar.”

  “Sounds like fun. Do I get a prize?” She made the question sound like a proposition.

  Jud held up the first photo. On the back he’d lightly penciled a number, as he had on all of them. This one was a picture of George Demmerle, who currently ran the Gulf station out on Route 23.

  She squinted at it. “No.”

  He put the picture back into the box and held up the next one.

  She shook her head.

  They went through a dozen of them before she said, “Wait a minute.”

  “Recognize him?”

  “No. It’s just that you’re going too fast. You go that fast, it gets confusing. Screws up my memory.”

  “Sorry. I’ll show you one, and then we’ll wait a moment. Or if you want to take a break anytime, just say so.”

  “Okay.”

  He raised the next photo.

  “That one.”

  “You sure?”

  “I think so. Yeah, I’m sure. Let me see.” She took the photo from him and peered at it intently for half a minute or so. When she handed it back she said, “That one used to give me money.”

  A slight
sensation passed through Jud’s chest. The picture was a head shot of Bill Swanson.

  “You remember anything else about him—anything at all?”

  “No. Just him giving me money.”

  Jud opened his notebook and jotted down the number he’d penciled on the back of the photograph. Then he put the photo back in the box and picked up the next one.

  They went through ten more before she hit another. “Yeah. Him.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.” She went through the same routine, staring at the picture. “I remember his face. But that’s all.”

  “Okay.” The guy was Mark Stanton, a manager with the telephone company.

  They took a few minutes’ break after that, and she asked him how long he’d been a cop.

  Eleven years, he told her, counting his MP time.

  “You must like it, huh? Or just do it for the money?”

  He knew she was needling him. “What money?”

  “Only kidding, Chief. Fact is, I know what makes a cop tick.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s the power, right? You get to carry a big gun, wear a badge that tells the world you’re hot shit. And with you it’s even better, because now you got a gold badge that says you’re the hottest shit of all.”

  “That must be it.”

  “You married?”

  “No.”

  “Bet you got a cute girlfriend, though. And I’ll bet she just loves getting that big cop dick shoved into her. See, women are like that too, if you haven’t noticed. Nothing turns them on like power.”

  She was stroking again, and he knew it, but for some crazy reason it was having an erotic effect on him, sitting here while she worked on him with that knowing look in her eyes.

  He picked up another photo. “How about this one?”

  She shook her head.

  They kept going, and as the pile dwindled he began to wonder if this would work out. Two hits out of all these pictures wasn’t overly encouraging.

  Suddenly she burst out laughing, pointing at the photograph he was holding.

  He peered at her, eyebrows raised questioningly.

  She laughed again. “Uncle Sam.”

  “What?”

  “Uncle Sam. That one I even remember his name because it was kind of a joke. He said to call him that, and I used to wonder how he could be Uncle Sam without the whiskers and the top hat. But that’s the guy, all right.”