Read A Penny for the Hangman Online
Authors: Tom Savage
A Penny for the Hangman (10 page)
“Very well, Karen,” the old man said. “And now, allow me to introduce myself. Wulfgar Anderman, at your service.” He executed a small, formal bow, and then he straightened, smiling in the sunlight, a little glint of humor dancing in his incredibly blue eyes beneath thick, perfectly white brows. He turned and led the way into the house.
Even as she’d been expecting it, the revelation came as a shock to Karen. She stood still for a moment, absorbing this new information, staring at the retreating figure leaning on the cane as the shadows of the interior of the house engulfed him. Mr. Graves stood politely aside, waiting for her. She glanced over at Don Price, whose face was almost a comical picture of astonishment, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging slackly open. Of course, she thought. He hadn’t been told; he hadn’t known the subject of today’s assignment until this moment. But, as a resident of St. Thomas, he’d be well versed in the subject of the Harper/And
erman affair. No wonder he looked surprised. It would be like meeting Elvis or Marilyn Monroe. Or, more to the point, Jack the Ripper.
Wulfgar Anderman, she thought. This man is Wulf, one half of the most infamous duo in the history of the Virgin Islands, one of the most infamous people on earth. A murderer at fourteen, a convict for more than half his adult life, a legend that had grown over the years ever since. Fifty years ago, this courtly, elegant gentleman had taken the lives of five people in cold blood, in an act of unspeakable violence, for no apparent reason….
With an effort, she banished these thoughts and moved forward, accompanying Wulf Anderman into his fortress, her journalistic mind already arranging a hundred questions. Don Price and Carl Graves followed, and the big oak door closed behind them, shutting out the halfhearted sun.
Rodney Harper’s Diary
D
ECEMBER 23, 1958
I’ve decided just how we shall do it, and I’ve even chosen who will eventually be blamed for it. I’m already working on the anonymous letters. Everyone will believe it because I have history on my side.
In the early days of these islands, there were two tribes here, the Arawaks and the Caribs. The Arawaks were the peaceful group, with well-set-up communities where they grew crops and raised livestock and strung beads and whatever. They had lots of land and large stores of food and tools and jewelry. The Caribs were fierce warriors, more nomadic and certainly more violent. They preyed on the Arawaks, killing and raping and plundering, taking whatever they wanted. They eventually obliterated their peaceable neighbors, claiming their land and making the surviving women and children their slaves. And what they did to the men was spectacular! It has inspired me in this plan. It involved knives and machetes.
With all that rich history among the local natives, there’s something rather fitting about my choice of a scapegoat. Who’s to say that their descendants wouldn’t behave the same way? I won’t have any trouble getting the cops to believe it.
I’ve chosen the ideal date: Friday, March 13, eleven weeks from now. I love the significance of Friday the thirteenth. The tradition goes back so far that no one is certain where it began. There’s a theory it was the day in 1307 when the Knights Templar were rounded up and killed, but other stories go back further. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and some say it might have been the thirteenth of the month. The best early source is Norse mythology: When Christianity came to Scandinavia, the goddess Freya, for whom Friday is named, was cast out of the pantheon. On her day of the week, she called together eleven demons and the Devil himself to plot revenge, forming a coven of thirteen. Whatever the origin, it’s a suitable date for us.
I can’t wait to tell Wulf! I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I tell him what we’re going to do.
We’re going to kill them.
All of them.
Merry Christmas!
Gabby steered the
Turnabout
between the two long points of land at the center of Hangman Cay and headed out to sea. Rain was in the air, and he didn’t like the look of those clouds to the west. A big storm was brewing. Not tonight, maybe, but tomorrow for sure. Tomorrow night would be a wet one, winds near hurricane force. He’d grown up in these islands, and he’d seen it hundreds of times before. Unseasonable tropical storms—they always surprised with their intensity. Hurricanes, now—those were expected, and most were not so bad, but the spring and summer storms were unpredictable.
Like his client. The big man who worked for the client—Carl Graves—had told him they wouldn’t be needing his services for a few days, but that didn’t make any sense to Gabby. The pretty girl and the tall man, Price, didn’t have any bags or cases, and from what he’d overheard of their conversation on the trip out, they weren’t expecting to stay overnight on the island, which got Gabby to wondering.
Graves always communicated by radio, so Gabby would check for traffic every couple of hours when he got back to the marina. He had a tentative gig tomorrow with two honeymoon couples from the Ritz-Carlton, fishing and sunbathing and a lap around St. John, weather permitting. Looking back at the house on the cliff as it receded in the distance, Gabby decided to get his friend Curtis to take the honeymooners instead.
He glanced at his family photo beside the wheel, and his gaze lingered for a long moment on the blank space next to it. He wished he could go home tonight and sleep in his own bed, but he decided against it. He should stay on the
Turnabout,
with the radio, just in case. His wife, Alma, complained about his hours on the boat. She was lonely, with both their boys now married and fathers in their own households. She called it “empty nest syndrome,” whatever that meant; Alma was always talking like that. But she appreciated the fees he commanded for his services, and she knew how important this new venture was to him, so she never sulked for long.
Gabby Smith’s Fishing and Water Taxi—
the business was new, a mere two years old, but already his profits had surpassed his old salary as a pilot for Virgin Water Tours, where he’d toiled for twenty years. Yes, the
Turnabout
was the best investment he’d ever made. And now, with today’s turn of events, he expected it to reap even more rewards, rewards beyond money.
He opened throttle, racing the weather back the way he’d come. He would wait, and he would watch, and, as usual, he would remain silent.
W
EDNESDAY,
M
ARCH 11, 2009
“Those Awful Boys”
by Karen TylerIn one of his final speeches in office, in October of 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke of the need for stronger laws for “thrill killers” in America, citing several sensational crimes that had occurred during his administra
Karen looked out at the view from the sundeck at the top of the cliff, marveling at the fact that she could see nothing in any direction but dark water and overcast sky. In the boat on the way here, they’d passed several tiny keys and something larger called Norman Island, but the nearest body of land to Hangman Cay was not currently visible from here. She turned around, iced tea in hand, to look back at Don Price and their host. The two men stood just inside the sliding glass doors of the living room, sipping and chatting. They frequently glanced over at her, and she wondered what they were discussing.
The photographer was clearly fascinated by Anderman. Don Price obviously knew all about the sensational crime from 1959, as she’d expect of any resident of the islands. Still, he seemed inappropriately delighted to be meeting one of the notorious boys. Human nature, she mused. We can make all the noises about evil, so dreadful and shocking and all that, but when it came right down to it, the evildoers were treated like rock stars. Wasn’t that what she, Karen, was doing here? She was getting the salacious story for her magazine, to be disseminated to ghouls and rubberneckers around the globe. She could hardly fault Don Price for his morbid interest.
Wulfgar Anderman had led them from the front hall into the living room, a long rectangular space, high ceilinged, running the entire length of one side of the house. Two sleek couches and matching armchairs were grouped around a glass-topped coffee table, and Oriental area rugs accentuated a gleaming dark wood floor. The walls were painted a creamy beige, and one long wall was lined with bookshelves. Perhaps two hundred volumes—she’d have to inspect the collection at some point, get an idea of the man based on his reading tastes. A widescreen TV stood on a low table beneath a large painting.
She hadn’t yet seen the rest of the house, but the living room had been furnished in simple good taste, and recently. The furniture and rugs looked fairly new; she wondered how long Anderman had been living here.
The two unusual features of the living room were the table in one corner by the doors to the sundeck and the big painting above the television. The table was small, beautifully crafted of mahogany, with two matching wooden chairs facing each other, and taking up its entire surface was one of the oddest-looking chess sets she’d ever seen. It was clearly very old, hewn of some dull blond wood, and it seemed rather the worse for wear, stained and scored with scratches and dents and watermarks and a couple of cigarette burns. The playing field consisted of dark and light brown squares, with men to match. The two teams were fully set up for play, the crudely carved pieces as careworn as the board on which they rested. But the game, incongruous as it seemed in the otherwise modern setting, was not as arresting as the vivid portrait on the wall.
She reentered the room, smiling as she passed the two men, and went over to look at the picture. It was about six feet by four, simply framed, painted in bright acrylic. Wulfgar Anderman, fourteen years old, forever. He stood on a sunlit beach, blue water and white breakers to one side and green palm leaves at the other edge. He was clad only in a pair of cutoff denim shorts, his hands on his hips, feet planted wide apart in the sand. The head above the muscular shoulders was thrown back, crowned by a flying mane of glistening white-gold hair, the sunburned chest thrust forward, the white teeth flashing below the sparkling blue eyes. He grinned out at the world, triumphantly beautiful.
She was familiar with all the photographs from 1959, of course, but now, as she studied the painting, Karen found herself reminded of the film she’d seen two weeks before, the young actor who played Wulf. He was a handsome, engaging seventeen-year-old passing for fourteen, the son of a famous actor making his début in the role, and Karen had thought he and his costar were a tad too grown-up for the parts. Seeing this picture, she realized what the filmmakers had captured, perhaps unconsciously: At the time of the murders, Wulf Anderman had appeared to be a poised, mature young man with an aura that was distinctly sensual.
It was a remarkable portrait, the work of a talented amateur, and Karen knew—as the journalist in her always knew—that the artist had painted it with love, both for the act of creation and for the subject himself. She tore her gaze away from the laughing face and sculpted torso to glance down at the bottom corner, blinking in surprise even though she’d half expected it. Rodney Harper had signed his name there in bold black letters.
The voice behind her startled her.
“The Secret Place,”
Wulf Anderman said. “That’s what he called the painting. I’m sure you recognize the beach; you were just on it.”
“You were here—before?” Karen asked.
He smiled. “Constantly. It was our refuge from the world back then. We had a speedboat, and we came here all the time.”
Karen wondered if this speedboat was the one in which Rodney Harper had attempted his getaway after the murders, but she didn’t ask. Instead she said, “Who lived here then?”
“Nobody. It was all boarded up in those days. The people who owned the island never used it. Over lunch, I’ll tell you how I ended up owning it. But it’s private property and not a part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, so I haven’t breached any court orders by being here.” He joined her in front of the portrait, and for a moment they studied it in companionable silence. Then Anderman said, “He painted this years later, in prison.”
Karen was surprised by this revelation, but she didn’t want it to show. “You’ve seen him since then?” she asked in what she hoped was a casual tone of voice.
“Oh no,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since ’59.”
“So, how did you get the painting?”
He shrugged. “That’s rather a long story. Later, perhaps.” He regarded the picture for another moment, then sighed and shook his head. “I never really looked like that. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
Karen turned her head to look at the man beside her. Don’t you? she thought, but she didn’t say it. Now, studying the subject fifty years on, she found it incredible that this bald, wrinkling old man had once been the blond young god in the painting. They didn’t resemble each other at all.
“Let me show you the rest of the house,” the old man said.
“Those Awful Boys” (continued)
“Frick and Frack,” says Darlene Provall Gleason, 64, a former classmate of Harper and Anderman. “That’s what we called them. They kept their distance from the rest of us, and they were always playing chess on that ratty board Rodney carried everywhere. The other boys tormented them, called them names like ‘sister’ and ‘girly-boy,’ and they got beaten up a few times. Rodney wore a swastika around his neck, and he used to draw swastikas on everything
Sid was recording every word of Wulfgar Anderman’s story from the baggy pocket of his pants. He’d left his cell at the hotel in favor of the recorder. Karen had a similar device running on the table in front of her, and she was also jotting things down in a notebook.
The house tour had been brief and, in Sid’s opinion, a bit dull. Aside from the living room and sundeck where they’d begun, there were the dining room, kitchen, and rooms for Mr. Graves and his wife on the ground level. The staircase from the front hall led up to a gallery with bedroom suites at either end. Anderman didn’t show them his bedroom, but he told them the guest room was identical to it. This was a large bedroom and bath, with windows facing the water in two directions, the cove below the cliff and the open sea. The canopied, four-poster mahogany bed was freshly made up with white linens, and brand-new-looking towels and soaps and shower curtain glistened in the bathroom. A third door between the two suites revealed a smaller room with windows that faced out above the sundeck, its large wooden desk and bookshelves indicating that it was used as an office. An old Remington typewriter stood on the otherwise bare desk. Sid noted that Anderman unlocked the door of this room to show it to them and then quickly relocked it.
The interior of the building was cool and dry, the result of central air-conditioning, and lamps and chandeliers shone in every room. Anderman explained that the generator was in the boathouse, along with a tank for oil that was refilled regularly by a barge from Tortola. He pointed out the television and a DVD player in the living room, explaining that the TV signal was sporadic, working only in good weather, so DVDs were the best bet for entertainment. The only telephone on the island was in the front hall, a heavy, corded landline with a rotary dial that looked to be the oldest thing in the house, and he explained that its undersea cable came from Tortola. When Karen asked about cell and Internet reception, he smiled ruefully and shook his head.
“Welcome to the West Indies,” he murmured.
Their host was cordial throughout the tour, and he smiled a great deal, but Sid wondered about the house itself. Why, he thought, would the man need a second bedroom in this remote place? Whom did he entertain? Who knew he was here? Was there a
Mrs
. Anderman? He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Why was his office kept under lock and key?
Sid had no opportunity to pose any of these questions. Not that he would, he reminded himself, because Karen was the ostensible interviewer here, and he was merely the shutterbug. At that point in the tour the silent Mrs. Graves—and what an odd-looking character
she
was!—had arrived to indicate, as opposed to announce, that lunch was ready on the sundeck. So, here they were, the three of them, at a wrought-iron table at the top of the cliff, gazing out over the ocean, with chicken salad and fresh rolls and iced tea. Sid and Karen listened as Wulfgar Anderman spoke in his strong, mellifluous voice.
“Roddy discovered this island in his speedboat. Actually, it was his brother’s boat, but Toby lost interest in it when he discovered girls, so Roddy inherited it. He used to go all over the place—St. John and Tortola and Virgin Gorda—and he especially liked to explore the little places here in the British Virgins, the cays. Nowadays a lot of them are rented out by their owners as expensive vacation sites—one of them is owned by Richard Branson, the Virgin billionaire—but in those days they were mostly deserted.
