The Hanging Tree sl-2

by Bryan Gruley

  “Jesus.”

  I thought of how Gracie had led us to this moment in this room filled with boxes. How she’d fooled me in the Zam shed and shown me the hiding place I later thought I was so clever to plumb. How she’d stocked her little fridge and left her Wings cap hanging and marked the calendar so that my piqued curiosity would lead me to where she wanted me to go. How she knew the pages hung on her walls would at once flatter and anger me to action. How her bogus blackmail note would neatly and easily satisfy my hunger for a motive.

  And those videotapes at Gracie’s house? They were probably blank. Of course Trixie wouldn’t let me take one.

  “That night at the pizzeria,” I said.

  It stumped her for a second. “Oh, that disgusting place. She made me go.”

  “Belly blew your cover.”

  “Belly?”

  “Was Gracie having doubts?”

  “Doubts about what?”

  I was beginning to get angry.

  “Doubts that she wanted to kill herself, Felicia. Doubts you talked her out of.”

  “No.” Felicia held my eyes, made sure I saw that she was not lying. “She had no doubts. Once she saw that I would not bend on her seeing my son, she had no doubts. None at all.”

  I believed her. It sickened me, but I believed her.

  “Gracie was fucked up,” I said.

  “Your words. But yes.”

  “So you made a deal. You could kill a lot of birds with that stone, eh?”

  “I tried, Gus,” she said. She wasn’t answering my question. She wanted me to know something else. “Right at the end.”

  “Tried what?”

  The women struggled across the road with the extension ladder Felicia had taken from the toolshed at her home. The snowstorm howled, the shoe tree a hulking phantom in the blizzard dark.

  The wind kept grabbing one end of the ladder and whipping it away. Gracie held it fast to her shoulder, spitting orders as she bit down on a penlight in her teeth. Felicia kept glancing over her shoulder for headlights. Even here, she thought, the storm would keep most people inside. She had made sure her husband took an extra sleeping pill before telling him she was going downstairs to read. Beneath her parka she wore the cashmere robe and flannel pajamas she’d been wearing before she left him snoring.

  They propped the ladder against the shoe tree.

  It would look like a suicide so obvious that it could only be murder. Haskell would take the rap after Felicia planted one of Gracie’s shoes in their fireplace. Haskell, in turn, would finger Vend. Both would go to prison for one crime or another. Felicia would disappear with Taylor. And Gracie’s life insurance policy would take care of the only people who had ever taken care of her, my mother and Trixie.

  The cool, clear logic of desperation.

  Gracie climbed the ladder, tucking her head into her shoulders against the wind and pelting snow. Felicia followed two rungs below. They faced the road so Felicia could watch for cars.

  Gracie had visited the tree at dawn to select a bough that appeared strong enough to hold her, high enough that she would not touch the ground. She had fashioned a noose from black nylon rope and foam sheathing, the same as the many she had made for her clients. She’d been wearing it around her neck beneath her coat when Felicia had picked her up on the service road in the woods behind the rink. Felicia had felt her stomach flip but decided not to say anything. This was how it would be and soon it would be done.

  Near the top of the ladder, Gracie hugged the bough with her left arm, wound the rope around the bough, and knotted it in a loose-fitting loop that she slid out onto the branch as far as she could reach. The ladder wobbled and Felicia leaned right and grabbed at the tree trunk. In the branches above Gracie’s head she saw the blurred white shapes of sneakers and boots and skates.

  Gracie bent and slipped off her left shoe, an ankle-high work boot with a worn hard-rubber sole. She wasn’t wearing a sock. She dangled the boot down by a lace and Felicia took it and stuffed it into one of the flap pockets of her parka. She looked up again and saw Gracie staring down at her.

  Felicia closed her eyes. She counted slowly to five, six, seven… She hadn’t known what to expect. Would she feel the weight of the body as the rope unraveled to tautness? Would she open her eyes to a woman struggling against her noose? She felt herself holding her breath, gripping the ladder so hard that her palms hurt. Would she be able to simply slide the ladder back into her SUV and drive home and slip back into the soft leather chair in her living room and pick up her book where she’d left off?

  The ladder shook. Felicia felt the rattle, violent and abrupt, from her fingertips to the bottoms of her feet.

  “And that was it?”

  Felicia shook her head. She held her left arm up in front of me. “Remember, I was wearing a bandage when we last met.”

  “So?”

  “I tried to grab her. I tried to reach her, pull her back. I tried. But I lost my balance and fell. By the time I got up, it was too late.”

  And once Gracie was dead, what choice did Felicia Haskell have but to follow through with their plot?

  She let her arm fall to her lap. I stood.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I called her boyfriend. I didn’t have to do that.”

  I didn’t care anymore that she was sorry. I didn’t care if she lived out of boxes for the rest of her life.

  “All you had to do was tell her you’d share Taylor. But that wouldn’t have solved your husband problem.”

  “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “What about Taylor? Is he ever going to get to play hockey again?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “He’s a good kid. He might like to play again.”

  “You people and your stupid hockey.”

  I went to the door. Felicia stayed put. I turned to say good-bye, but before I could, she said, “You still don’t really know her, do you?”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But I know she loved her son.”

  Late that afternoon, I knocked on Parmelee Gilbert’s office door. He was getting ready to call it a day and walk home, but he invited me in.

  I repeated for the fifth or sixth time my desire to speak with Gilbert’s client, Laird Haskell. But before Gilbert could again inform me that he would not be trying Mr. Haskell’s case in the media, I told him about my visit to Gracie’s house, about the drawing of the hockey player, the photograph of Gracie with Darlene, the coffee cup in the dish drainer, the implements in the boxes in her dark room.

  Only once as I told him did I glance at the picture of Carol Jo, the pigtailed cheerleader Parmelee Gilbert had lost to an unknown killer more than thirty years before. Gilbert listened to me. If the expression on his face changed from its usual flat calm, I didn’t notice. He said he would get back to me.

  The next morning, there was a message on my office voice mail: Haskell would see me at one thirty.

  twenty-six

  Three pickets walked a haphazard circle at the top of the driveway that wound down to Laird Haskell’s house. I parked across the road. A silver mist blurred the edges of the fresh leaves in the trees. On the calendar, spring had come; in the air, it was weeks away.

  “Councilman,” I said as I walked past Floyd Kepsel. He was carrying a handmade sign that read, LET THE THIEF PAY FOR HIS THEIVERY. At least one thief was spelled right. “Any news today?”

  “Hello, Gus,” Kepsel said. The other pickets, Sally Pearson and Johnny Ford’s mother, Harriet, stopped pacing. “Not a thing, of course,” Kepsel went on. “Lawyers work by the hour, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Lawyers tend to take their time.”

  “But this one didn’t take his time raiding our budget, did he?” Mrs. Ford said, jabbing her picket sign in the direction of Haskell’s house. The sign read, FEDS GO HOME-AND TAKE HASKELL WITH YOU. “He ought to be in jail.”

  “He ought to be hung in that tree,” Sally said.

  Laird Haske
ll was under house arrest while the various authorities sorted out who was going to prosecute him first. A local judge had decided it might not be safe for him in the Pine County Jail.

  Most townspeople hadn’t seemed to mind when Haskell was charged with murdering Gracie, so long as it didn’t hurt the chances of the rink opening for the next season. Even when the seamier charges came down, some seemed willing to forgive so long as rink construction resumed.

  Then came the lawsuits from contractors who hadn’t been paid. And the subpoenas to town officials from the U.S. attorney. And the growing likelihood that the town, not Haskell or any of his businesses, would be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, in unpaid bills. Not to mention the property taxes that Haskell wasn’t paying now.

  People had packed town hall at an emergency council meeting called to consider budget cuts necessitated by the financial mess Starvation now found itself in. When the clamor grew so loud and angry that it drowned out Elvis Bontrager’s gavel, he stood up, announced he was resigning as council chairman, and walked out. Petitions for a recall election to remove the rest of the council were soon circulating on Main Street. Angry pickets sprung up around town hall, in front of Audrey’s and the Pilot, and finally at Haskell’s home.

  Parmelee Gilbert won a restraining order to curb the pickets at the house, but Dingus and his deputies weren’t too aggressive about enforcing it. Too short staffed because of budget cuts, Dingus said. Haskell had hired a pair of security guards. I saw them chatting where the driveway ended at Haskell’s house.

  “What are you here for anyway?” Floyd Kepsel said to me now. “Taking him some provisions?”

  “If I’m not out in an hour, call Dingus, will you?”

  “Haw,” Kepsel said. “Tell Laird I said hello. He ain’t been out of that house in two weeks, so far as I can tell.”

  “Will do.”

  Kepsel lowered his sign. “Tell me, Gus. Why in heck did the newspaper wait so long to tell us this guy was a damn liar? Why all the happy stories about what a marvel this rink was going to be?”

  Floyd Kepsel was not joking. I wasn’t sure how to answer him, though I knew it would be a waste of time to tell him he was full of shit.

  “Ask Elvis,” I said.

  Laird Haskell stood facing the bay window in his office, hands clasped behind his back. The lake was a flat sheen of blue and purple in the mist. Haskell’s starched denim shirt was untucked.

  “Please sit,” he said, without turning around. Parmelee Gilbert and I sat at the table where I’d been with Haskell and Jason Esper when I met Felicia. We waited. Haskell didn’t move or speak for a full minute.

  I hadn’t come with a particular plan in mind. I really just wanted to see Haskell and let him see me. It wasn’t quite like lining up to shake hands with the opposing team after a tough game. I didn’t want or need to shake Haskell’s hand, nor did I think he wanted to shake mine. But once I had seen Felicia, I wanted to make sure I saw her husband face-to-face once more to hear what, if anything, he had to say.

  I had no such desire to see Vend.

  Finally, Haskell said, “I guess I have you to thank, Gus. Is that right?”

  “Thank me for what?”

  I knew what he meant but wanted to hear him say it. He turned to face us, hands still behind his back. He looked as tired as Felicia had.

  “For getting the murder charge removed.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’m confident, of course, that my very able attorney would have succeeded in doing the same, but it would have taken a great deal of time and money.”

  “You have plenty of one and not much of the other, huh?”

  Haskell smiled.

  “I see the River Rats didn’t go very far in the postseason.”

  The Rats had won the regional title but lost in the state quarterfinals to-who else? — the Pipefitters, 3–2, in overtime. Dougie Baker played well in the net but surrendered a goal late in the third period that tied the game; some folks in town were griping that he should have stopped it, a wrist shot from the blue line, skimming just above the ice. But Soupy told me it had glanced off a Rats player’s toe and changed direction. “Handcuffed him,” Soupy said. “Tough break.”

  I had been hoping to bump into the kid at the rink so I could tell him he had done a good job.

  “They did fine,” I told Haskell. “Felicia says hello.”

  He was straining now to keep the smile on. “Really? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said you saw her.”

  “I did. She’s gone.”

  “How did you-” He looked impatiently at Gilbert. “Did we-never mind.” He looked back at me. “She has Taylor with her?”

  “So far as I know.”

  “That’s my son,” he said, stabbing an index finger into his chest. “It’s not even her son. It’s my son.”

  “What about Gracie?”

  He slowly sat down, setting his palms flat on the table. “I must say, I am sincerely shocked and dismayed-increasingly so, at my advancing age-at the ingratitude of people.”

  “Who? Gracie? Are you kidding?”

  “Of people who have absolutely no reason to be anything but grateful for what someone has given them. This town. My wife. Your family member. Every single one of them.”

  “My family member?”

  “Wake up, Gus. I didn’t hang her in the tree. That is an established fact. I didn’t do it. You had all of your life to keep her out of that tree. Do you feel responsible? Maybe you do. But she did it. She put herself there. With the help of my lovely wife. She’s the one who ought to be enduring this, not me.”

  “How about Vend?” I said. “Do you think he was ungrateful for everything you did for him, all that business you brought in?”

  Haskell looked to Gilbert again. Without raising his gaze from his folded hands, the attorney recited, “My client cannot comment on pending legal matters.”

  Vend remained at large. Police supposedly were hunting him in Toronto, but they worried that he had fled overseas. Really they had no idea.

  “Tell me, Laird,” I said. “You feeling a little trapped? Are you more afraid of going to prison or not going?”

  Gilbert started to repeat what he’d just said, but Haskell stopped him.

  “You’ve seen Vend?”

  Crater Face, Jason Esper, and other of Vend’s cronies were in jail. But they were all flipping on Haskell and Vend so they wouldn’t be behind bars forever. That couldn’t have made Haskell feel too good. One of the rent-a-cops at his door was the fuzzy-lipped kid who’d told me to have a good day in Traverse. He was going to protect Haskell from Vend?

  “Not recently,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  I let the question sit there while Haskell’s face got redder.

  “‘Recently’ is one of those words newspapers find so useful when the only way to be accurate is to be vague,” I said. “Like ‘several.’ Or ‘expected.’ Words designed to disguise we’re not really sure what we’re talking about, or we don’t really want you to know we don’t know. ‘Recently’ could be yesterday or two months ago. Who knows?”

  Haskell threw up his hands. “So what are we doing here? Did you come here to torture me? Or to ask questions? If it’s not-”

  “I’m working on a follow-up story,” I said. “A more detailed look at the relationship between you and Vend. Who was the real mastermind behind it all? Who called the shots? Who was whose bitch?”

  “You’ll never get that in your little rag.”

  “Sure I will. Suddenly, this place can’t get enough stories that shit on Laird Haskell. Did you know the Pilot ’s circulation is up thirteen percent in the last month? And funny, but nobody seems to give a damn about the guy downstate. He didn’t screw them over on a hockey rink.”

  Haskell shifted in his chair and looked out at the lake, idly rapping the fingers of one hand on the table. I watc
hed him calculate. He turned back to me, the red washed out of his face for the moment.

  “I can help you with that story,” he said. “I have documents. All sorts of documents. Boxes of them.” He leaned into the table. “Copies of handwritten ledgers. Credit card slips. Photographs. Voice mails. E-mails, even. We could put away some of the biggest names in Michigan. And Vend-we could put that twisted pervert in prison for the rest of his life.”

  “You’re one of the biggest names in Michigan, Mr. Haskell.”

  “Not even close. These are big. You can’t imagine. Dangerous big.”

  I smiled. “I’ll take whatever you want to give me. On the record.”

  “On the record?” Haskell said. “No. Be reasonable. I give you the papers, you quote from the papers. No need to say where you got it.”

  “Sorry.” I stood to leave. “This is not a negotiation.”

  “Are you crazy? Are you fucking crazy? Some of these people-they would-fucking Jarek Vend is-you don’t realize.” He was halfway out of his chair, sputtering, spittle whitening the corners of his mouth.

  Gilbert lifted his head to watch. He looked fascinated, as if he’d never seen this particular client before.

  “If I see Vend, I’ll be sure to tell him you said hello. Maybe he’ll give me the documents. What do you think?”

  “Wait.” Haskell rushed around the table. He took me by an arm. I could smell the sweat on him. “Wait. Please, Gus, think about this.”

  “You already offered all that stuff to the cops. Right? But they’re not playing, are they?” I pulled my arm away. “They’re taking you down, Mr. Haskell. Or Vend will take you down. Either way’s fine with me.”

  “What-what did I ever do to you? I didn’t return your fucking phone calls, so you just hang me out to dry?”

  I turned to Gilbert. “Thanks, Parm.”

  “Feel free to call if you have follow-up questions,” he said.

  “Follow-up questions?” Haskell said. “You don’t even have a story.”

  “Well,” I said, “you did say you have all these ledgers and credit card slips that could bring down the biggest names in Michigan. Including Vend. What did you call him? A twisted pervert? I mean, I’d love to have the documents, but the quotes I got are pretty good.”