Hangman: A Novel

by Stephan Talty

  “How old are you?” Hangman said. His voice was deep and resonant.

  Katrina froze. The voice went through her, echoed in her ears.

  “Tell me where I am,” she said, staring at the mask. “I want to call my mother!”

  He squatted down to study her. The eyes through the mask were blue and intent, two pools of blue floating in all that red. But Katrina met them. She wouldn’t turn him into a monster. That’s what he wanted to be. She would treat him like the loser he was.

  “You’re where you belong,” he said. The voice was even, but the mask, it made anything coming out of the little black hole cut in the cloth seem … terrifying. “Where it all started.”

  “Why do you want me?” she asked, and her voice only wavered a little at the end.

  The eyes stared, blue and horrible to look at, like the eyes of a jackal. Hungry. At last, he said, “Because you have to pay.”

  “Pay for what?” she said sharply.

  The eyes, something passed through them.

  Hangman seemed in a trance. He shoved the bag with his right hand and slid it along the floor toward her, tipping as it came closer. Katrina screamed and scurried away. She couldn’t stop thinking it was Sandy Riesen’s head in there.

  “For her,” he said, his voice almost singsong. Katrina squeezed into the corner, but she wouldn’t turn her face away. Something told her the other girls had turned away. She wouldn’t be like them. Whatever they did, she would do the opposite. Because they were dead now. She would play a part, like Cordelia. Strong and fearless. Be Cordelia.

  His eyes were roaming all over her, like a ferret. A hungry ferret. She thought he could take a bite out of her with the teeth hidden behind the red mask. “I’m Katrina Simone Lamb. That’s my name. Did you know that?”

  But he didn’t appear to hear her as he came closer. He gestured at the bag.

  Katrina shivered. Keep him talking. When he’s talking he’s not killing you. “You can take your mask off,” she said. As he stood over her, her eyes drifted down to the crimson spots on his boot.

  Katrina didn’t want to think about how they got there.

  “I don’t do that,” Hangman said slowly. “I don’t take things off. You put things on.” He reached over and grabbed the bag.

  She turned her head violently away, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him slowly pull the zipper back and reach into the bag. He began to lift something slowly out.

  It wasn’t the missing girl’s head. It was another mask—like a hockey mask but with something taped over the front. It was the picture of a woman’s face, cut into pieces and taped together, pieces of different pictures, mismatched eyebrows over the eyeholes. It was just horrible.

  Her breathing stopped.

  The mask dangled in his right hand.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, holding it out to her, and the terrifying thing was that she saw in his eyes that he was serious, that he expected her to say, Oh, isn’t it?

  Katrina backed up, the stone jutting into her back.

  Hangman’s eyes were smiling now. “This is what you’ll be wearing,” he said, “when it’s time.”

  43

  Abbie found him on the porch of her house, sitting in one of the lean-back wooden chairs that they’d bought at a yard sale over in Williamsville. The light was on, sending a cone of light onto the dark porch. They’d spent their spare hours this summer in the two olive green chairs, drinking Abbie’s homemade mojitos and watching the neighborhood parade go by, the young mothers with their strollers, the jean-jacketed hipsters, the elderly couple, Mae and Frank, from around the corner.

  Mills was cleaning his hunting rifle. It was disassembled in pieces around him, along with a bottle of Elite Gun Oil and several different-colored cloths.

  “You shouldn’t do that here,” Abbie said, folding her arms, leaning against a post.

  Mills looked up at her, smiling. “I’ve done this a thousand times, Abbie.”

  She nodded. She knew that. “I have to tell you something.”

  He looked up, worry in his eyes.

  “Not about us,” she said, giving him a quick smile that flexed back into a frown. “Well, kind of about us.”

  “Okay,” he said, laying the gun barrel down on a piece of chamois spread across the footstool. “Shoot.”

  “I’m thinking of accepting McGonagle’s offer.”

  “You’re not,” he said flatly. “Why would you even consider it?”

  Abbie felt him look at her anew. I’m not going to be the good girl anymore. But it hurt, his look.

  “Because of a woman. A mother I should say, whose last sight on earth was the man who was going to kidnap and kill her daughter. Hangman. The last thing she thought was, Hangman is going to kill my child.”

  Mills’s eyes brushed over her, then settled on his hands. He was studying his left palm. “We all deal with victims’ families, Abbie. It’s the worst thing in the world.”

  “No, not being able to save your daughter is the worst thing in the world.”

  “What exactly are you thinking of doing?” Mills said.

  Abbie lifted off the porch column and looked away. “Having McGonagle talk to some people.”

  Mills shook his head. “You know that’ll just be the beginning,” he said. “What are they going to ask for in return, Abbie? These things are never, ever free. What don’t you understand?”

  Abbie sucked in a breath. She wanted to bring the barrel of his rifle down on his stubborn, uncompromising head but she also knew Mills was right. Every cop who crossed the line had a monologue running in her head, some clause that proved she was an exception to the rule. Just this one time, so I can pay off my tab with the Italians … because the judge will never give the murdering bastard what he deserves … because Hangman is unique and I’m special and Katrina is young and I promise I will never, ever do it again …

  “I’m not looking for a conviction,” she said quietly. “I don’t need this to hold up in court. I’m trying to catch a homicidal rampage killer. It’s different.”

  “Like hell it is,” Mills said, louder than she’d ever heard him. “I talk to mothers who’ve lost their kids and I don’t make deals with skels to catch the killer. You do this once, you’ll never get clean.”

  Abbie felt her cheeks go hot. “Buffalo isn’t like everywhere else, Mills. There are areas closed off to me that I need to get into. Just look—”

  “Listen to yourself! Do not do this,” Mills said. He reached down and took up the bottle of gun oil and carefully squeezed out a few drops onto a piece of cheesecloth. Then he picked up the gun barrel in his left hand, slid his hand along it to the base, and began to gently work the oil onto the dark steel.

  “Mills?”

  He shook his head once, his lips pressed tight. She watched the gleam of the gun barrel as he slid the cloth up and then back. She watched for a good thirty seconds.

  Abbie turned away and clomped up the stairs. She usually couldn’t sleep when she was angry, but as she hit the top of the stairs, she felt drained. She walked into the bedroom, peeled off her clothes, locked her gun in the gun safe, and went to bed.

  The next morning, he was gone. The rifle, too. A note said, “Went to NW.”

  Northwestern Ontario, she thought. Moose hunting. Was it even moose season?

  No return date specified.

  She felt empty, and light. She hadn’t planned on risking Mills to get Hangman; she didn’t know she was capable of doing such a thing. But now she’d done it.

  Abbie sat in her empty kitchen, echoing with the sounds of cars passing on Elmwood Avenue, and stared at the chair across from her. She felt like an old butterfly cocoon rattling back and forth in the wind. Something warm had left her.

  She wiped away a tear, made toast and tea, dressed in an olive green suit and her Tory Burch flats, and drove to Del Sasser’s bar on Seneca. What she had to say to McGonagle she needed to say in person. It was 10:15 when she got there. />
  She found him on the same stool. He looked thinner somehow. There were two phones on the bar and he was staring at them when she walked in the place.

  “McGonagle?”

  “Yeah?”

  A man sitting next to him looked up at Abbie. She stared at him stone-faced until he muttered something to McGonagle and slid away toward the pool table, which had an Africa-shaped stain on the green felt cloth.

  Abbie slipped onto the stool.

  “Are you aware,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice, “that I was going to arrest my own brother? And put him away for the rest of his life? And that I would have killed him if it had come down to that?”

  “That’s … widely understood,” said the old detective.

  “Good. So can you imagine what I’d do to you if you fuck me on this.”

  He grunted. “On what?”

  “I’ll use your boys to catch Hangman. But if you do me wrong, I will bury you while you’re still breathing. Do you understand?”

  A tiny ruffle of breath. A laugh or a sigh? Was he disappointed that there wasn’t one cop in the entire city of Buffalo that could resist the temptation?

  “Done.”

  “Good. Frank Riesen doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  McGonagle considered that. “Well, that’s rude of him, ain’t it?”

  “Follow him. Find out where he’s going, who he’s meeting. See if you can get someone on his bank accounts, see if he’s been making any large payments with regularity. I need dates, amounts, recipients.”

  “Why aren’t you doing this official?”

  Abbie frowned. “Think it through. Can you imagine me going to Perelli and saying I want the father of the last victim to be followed? What if word leaks, or Riesen suspects something and goes to the press? ‘Father of Victim Suspected of Collusion in Hangman Murders’? I’d be off the case in three seconds.”

  “So you want me and the boys to be the fall guys?” McGonagle asked.

  “Do you mind?” she answered.

  “Not fucking especially. Anything else?”

  Abbie looked toward the bar’s dingy front window, a BUD LIGHT neon sign reflecting back from the glass. “Follow Hangman’s friends, anyone remaining in the area. High school and college.”

  McGonagle whistled. “How much manpower you think I have?”

  “All you need,” said Abbie.

  “All right, they’ll be covered by tonight at the latest. But you’re wasting your fucking time. Riesen is not the second man. The others aren’t, either.”

  Abbie shook her head. What is the most dangerous Daddy figure possible, she thought.

  Yourself. If you try to become John Kearney, you will need psychiatrists from here to eternity.

  I’m not trying to become my father, she told herself. I’ve mourned him and I miss him terribly, but I’m not becoming him, I’m becoming the best possible cop for this case. And that means using every resource I can get my hands on.

  She closed her eyes.

  Oh God, Abbie. Really?

  44

  Hangman had left. Katrina was alone again.

  He didn’t even tell me to stop screaming. What does that mean? Wherever I am, no one can hear me? Or would the screams be his excuse for coming down here and killing me?

  She was afraid to scream now. Save it. There’s time yet.

  The bowling bag sat on the floor. The mask was hung above it on a nail driven into the cement between the stones. The mask’s broken face was to the wall, the black silk straps hanging down. It looked like a crazy man’s idea of a human face.

  If Hangman puts that on me, I’ll gag, she thought. I’ll pass out for real. What if he does? Will it smell like the other girls?

  If he puts the mask on me, I am as good as dead, Katrina thought.

  Should she scream now? Was it her last chance? She’d wait until she heard voices, or footsteps. But she didn’t know where she was. She could be in someone’s basement or in a hole in the ground lined with rocks. She could be in Cleveland, for all she knew.

  She heard a rattling coming from the left, far down the dark corridor she’d glimpsed when Hangman opened the wooden door. Katrina thought of the leg in the trunk. Someone was with me then. Maybe that person is locked in another room nearby. She pushed her back up against the wall, grimacing as the rough stones scratched her skin through the thin blouse, then rushed to the door. She leaned, listened again, then tapped on it gently.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  A faint sound, again.

  It wasn’t Hangman’s deep voice, but a lighter one, male or female she couldn’t tell. Katrina’s eyes went wide. For a moment, she thought it might even be her mother.

  “HELLO! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

  She heard her voice echo out into the big room to the right. Hearmehearmehear. She closed her eyes and put her ear to one of the cracks that split the thick wooden door.

  From the left, Katrina could hear the sound of someone crying. She pounded on the door. “Oh please, who are you? Can you hear me?”

  What if it’s Mom, she thought. Is it male or female, older or younger? Only the high notes were reaching her, and the sound was being refracted by the stone rooms and the corridor.

  There. Again.

  Katrina caught her breath, and lowered her voice. Be soothing. “Let’s help each other,” she cooed into the passageway. “Tell me who you are. Let’s help each other, please?”

  Nothing. Silence now.

  Abbie turned up the walkway toward the house of her neighbors Charles and Ron. If there was anyone who knew what an obscure Buffalo reference meant, it was Charles. After leading tours of the city’s most dusty corners for years, he’d absorbed as much minutiae as was humanly possible, making him a bore at dinner parties but invaluable in other ways. He collected things like pamphlets explaining who the Madeleines were, among other things. Maybe he could tell her something about the “kings abide” lead.

  She tried to ignore the clock ticking in her head. Hangman was working fast. He’d barely been with Martha Stoltz for an hour before killing her. If Katrina Lamb was even alive, today would probably be her last day on earth. Tomorrow would be the latest, Abbie just felt it.

  She ran up the Tudor’s flagstone pathway. Just as she reached the doorbell, she saw movement upstairs at the bedroom window—a curtain let fall and swinging for a moment before coming to rest.

  Sounds of feet pounding down wooden stairs. The door opened. Charles. He was in his mid-forties, deep brown eyes, waxy skin, chiseled features, his hairline receding over a forehead that itself seemed muscled, a gym bunny turned English professor.

  “Hi Charles.”

  Charles nodded. “Abbie. Nice to see you.”

  “I don’t want to disturb you, but I need your help with some Buffalo history.”

  Charles blinked. “The Madeleines? Ron told me …”

  “Actually, it’s something else.”

  “Of course,” Charles said, a little stiffly. “Come in?”

  “I don’t have time,” she said, a little out of breath. “I’m trying to track down a reference, just one line. It goes: ‘I live where the kings abide.’ I believe it refers to somewhere in Buffalo.”

  Charles stared at her, but his eyes were far away, his mind already flitting through dusty papers in some enormous file room at the back of his mind. “What era are we talking about?” he asked.

  “Era?” Abbie said. “Fairly recent, I would guess. Don’t rule anything out, but let’s say the last fifty, sixty years.”

  “No kings have ever visited Buffalo in that span,” said Charles, “except for the opening of the Peace Bridge. Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales at the time, was there, as well as an array of dignitaries.”

  “But he wasn’t king yet?” she asked.

  “No. It was ten years, give or take, before he ascended to the throne. And then, of course, he abdicated for that slut Wallis Simpson, so he was king for less than a year.”
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  It felt odd, talking about English royalty in pursuit of a serial killer in her own backyard. “Doesn’t sound right. No one lives on the Peace Bridge.”

  Charles screwed up his face, as if he were in pain. “You said it was ‘kings.’ Plural?”

  “Yes.”

  Charles’s face seemed to grow a tinge redder. Abbie thought the failure to come up with an answer might induce a stroke. “The millionaires who lived along Delaware Avenue. They were sometimes called the ‘kings of Buffalo’ by newsmen of the day. They were fabulously rich, like Turkish pashas. But we’re talking a hundred years ago.”

  Delaware Avenue was the North personified. If that was it, the clue did little for her. There were a hundred and fifty houses strung along the avenue, she guessed. “Any home in particular?”

  Charles shook his head. “It was a general term. I’m sorry, I …”

  “Listen, call me if you think of anything. And please don’t tell anyone that I asked you.”

  Charles scoffed. “Who would I tell? Ron? He couldn’t care less about these kinds of things.”

  Abbie heard in the distance the dispatcher’s voice on her handheld radio notch up a decibel. She couldn’t make out the words, but she turned quickly and began running.

  “Thank you, Charles,” she cried out and dashed for the Saab.

  45

  “—repeat. All units in the North. Corner of Elmwood and Summer. Man in red hood running.”

  Abbie spun into the driver’s seat. Her eyes went wide and she reached for the key, jammed it forward. The Saab’s engine roared to life.

  “I repeat, red hood or mask. Spotted in the backyard of 242 Summer Avenue. Heading west toward Bryant.”

  Abbie whipped the wheel left and the Saab’s rear end swung in a lazy arc before the tires caught on the wet pavement and it shot off west on Delaware.

  “Male, black jacket, black pants,” the dispatcher said tersely. “Approximately six feet, thin build.”

  That was on-target for Marcus Flynn. Abbie called McGonagle. If you’re gonna use the Network, might as well get all you can. The phone rang twice before McGonagle barked a hello.

  “You listening to this?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She heard McGonagle typing. The sound of the turbo whining and the parked cars on both sides merged into a continuous stream of colors and chrome. The needle hit 65 and kept climbing, Abbie’s eyes straight ahead, hitting the horn as cars braked and then fell away to the side of the road.