Hangman (17 page)

Jury List

Seattle

November 10 (Six days ago)

Justin Whitfield awoke from a dream about his twin brother to find that he had overslept until ten o’clock that Friday morning. In his dream, it was the summer that he and his twin had erected a Cheyenne tepee beneath their treehouse in the maple at the far end of the backyard. They’d painted the tepee with Indian designs by coating their hands with various colors to press around the canvas cone in a Plains tribe pattern. Unknown to both his brother and the girl his twin was secretly undressing in the tepee, the other half of the fraternal whole was up in the treehouse spying down on them through the gaping smoke hole.

“Yes,” said the girl.

Yes, he thought as the teenage memory faded, and Justin awoke with a hard-on like the one he enjoyed in the dream.

“Weird,” he said to himself. “Why, when I dream of sex, do I dream of underage girls? Especially
her?
”

Of late, the
Star
reporter had deprived himself of sleep. What with the tug-of-war between trying to scoop the media competition on the Hangman case and having to proofread the galleys of his soon-to-be-published book, not to mention the damage he did to himself by matching Ethan drink for drink in that airport bar in Vancouver, Justin had pushed himself to the point where you crash and burn. So not only had he overslept this morning, but the exhausted reporter had snored through several important phone calls.

After crawling out of bed to brew a pot of coffee, Rip Van Winkle punched Play on his answering machine.

Beep …

“Justin, it’s Maddy. There’s been a third hanging. Pick up if you’re there. Sue Frye and a camera crew are already at the scene. The stiff’s on a boat run aground on Sand Point.

“I’m waiting …

“I’m waiting …

“Remember the early bird and the juicy worm?

“Okay. All I can say is turn on KVOT.”

Beep
…

“Wake up, sunshine. It’s your boss. The Hangman is prowling. Where the hell are you? Call back immediately or the story goes to Frank.”

Beep …

“Maddy again. The worm’s been gobbled. KVOT broadcast the hangman game. I’ve spoken to the Mounties. Our third guess is
I.
It hurts, but I gave the scoop to Sue Frye.”

Beep …

Jolted by adrenaline instead of caffeine, the
Star
reporter forsook the kitchen for his living room. Every surface in here was covered with documents and pictures pulled from Justin’s bulging Peter Haddon files, all fanned around the galley proofs of
Perverse Verdict
, which were piled high on a table in front of the TV. He grabbed the remote from beside a can of Coke and a bag of chips, clicked it on to bring the dead screen to life, then surfed the channels through mindless junk to KVOT.

Years had passed since she had covered the hanging of Peter Bryce Haddon, but time had failed to leave its mark on Sue Frye’s face. Either she slept in a cryonics deep-freeze or she had recently gone under the knife of a plastic surgeon.

“In yet another exclusive for KVOT, Seattle police have asked me to reveal their next guess toward solving the hangman puzzle. Following previous guesses of
A
and
E
, the third is the letter
I
.”

The picture onscreen switched from Sue to one of a mangled body lynched in silhouette against the rising sun.

“It has been confirmed that the body found early this morning hanging from the mast of a sailboat beached on Sand Point was that of the sloop’s owner, salesman Bart Busby …”

The mention of the latest victim’s name on TV galvanized Justin to reach for a sheaf of papers beside the galley proofs. He shuffled through them until he found the jury list from Peter Haddon’s trial. His eyes ran down the list until a name jumped out at him:

Ron Hughes, foreman

Denise Weston

Wally Berekoff

Darcy Desjardins

Miles Illington

Bart Busby

Carmen Landry

John Chwojka

Mary Somerset

Michael Eastman

Saranjit Singh

Rudi Goldman

 

Sue was back on the tube. “A KVOT viewer earned a reward this morning when he phoned in the news tip that brought you coverage of the murder first on this station. Now KVOT is offering an all-expense-paid trip to the island of Tahiti for the first viewer who cracks the baffling Hangman word puzzle.

“Our phone lines are open …”

Sue’s orthodontically perfect smile gave way to the gruesome hangman game scrawled on the forward cabin of
The Yardarm.

As Justin picked up the portable phone beside the galley proofs,
not
to call KVOT with the right answer, his mind filled in the letters missing from the bloody word game.

Married Name

Seattle

November 10

The skulls that had flanked the door on Halloween were gone, as were the tombstone in the hall and the coffin with the count’s bride staked through the heart. Before Detective Thorne could rap on Dag’s apartment door, the nosy neighbor in the adjoining suite stuck out her head, which was pinned up with hair curlers, and shouted, “I hope you’re here to throw that bum out on the street.”

“Is there a problem?” Maddy asked.

“You should have heard ’em. Rutting like minks. I didn’t get a wink of sleep because of them. Dag Konrad is the neighbor from hell.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“Of course I’m sure. The bed was pounding against my wall all night. Three of them! Really! There must be a law about orgies. The jerk bellows like a bull when he comes.”

As if snorting out of his pen to meet the matador, Dag flung his door open and stood there, no less hairy than he had been on Halloween, even though he was devoid of makeup today. His head hair and chest thatch were plastered flat with sweat that glistened on his skin while it fouled Maddy’s nose. Stubble darkened his chin like a dirty shadow, and spikes of hair bristled down at her from his flared nostrils.

“Animal!” shouted his neighbor.

“Hag!” Dag yelled back.

“Evict him!” ordered the woman.

“Drop dead, bitch!”

“Asshole!” she cried, and slammed her door to have the last word.

“My alibi,” Dag said, winking at Maddy.

There’s a strut some men do after they’ve had sex, much like a take-a-look-at-
me
cock coming out of a hen house. Dag wore nothing but pajama bottoms held up with drawstrings, and from the front they made him look like a half-and-half satyr. The grin on his face was that of the cat that ate the canary. Bull, cock, goat, cat. Dag was a full barnyard this morning.

“I’ve been expecting you. Enter,” he said, moving aside so Maddy could step into his dark apartment. It reeked of sex and cheap perfume, like every whorehouse she had tossed when she worked Vice.

A TV flickered in a bedroom to the left, casting a cold blue glow out at them. Against the wall shared by Dag and his nosy neighbor, a brass bed filled the frame of the door, and in that bed were two naked women with pumped-up breasts.

“Join the party,” Dag said.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I’ve been in that bed since last night until late this morning.”

“No offense, but I suspect those two are
paid
witnesses.”

“And worth every penny.”

“For sex perhaps. But not as an alibi.”

“You’ll want their names.”

“That I will.”

“Girls,” Dag announced as they entered the bedroom, “meet Det. Madeline Thorne. The sexy redhead is Peaches and the luscious blonde is Cream.”

“Out of bed,” Maddy said, “and show me ID.”

The bed creaked and rattled as the hookers obeyed, then the headboard banged the wall as the weight of all that silicone left the mattress.

Dag ogled the pneumatic pair as they bounced away for their purses, then drew Maddy’s attention to the TV, where Sue Frye was reporting.

“That’s how I knew you’d come after me. And here’s why, as much as you may wish it isn’t so, I can prove the Hangman doesn’t live here.”

Dag fingered a button on the VCR to convert the TV picture from one that came in on cable to one recorded on videotape. Onscreen, Peaches gripped the headboard for dear life while Dag gripped her hips from behind to pound her toward the wall, against which—
bang! bang!
—banged the brass bed. Sure enough, Dag let out the bellow of a bull, as if he had just been jabbed by a picador’s lance, though truth was the one impaled with the lance was Peaches.

“What time did we start filming, girls?”

“An hour after you ordered in Chinese,” responded Cream.

“You’ll want to check the delivery time,” Dag told Maddy. “The name of the restaurant is on the cartons in the garbage under the sink. Is seven o’clock last night a good enough alibi?”

The cop nodded. “
If
you were here,” she said.

“You think we shot that scene some other night?”

“Why not?”

Dag grinned. “You do agree that hunk is me? Where would I find a body-double hung like that?”

“It’s you,” Maddy conceded.

“Hark,” said Dag, cupping an ear. “Is that a voice you recognize?”

“Animals!” the nosy neighbor was heard to shout on tape.

“The walls in this dump are paper thin,” Dag said matter-of-factly. “And what is that? I do believe it’s a TV program.”

As if to demonstrate how two could play this game, the neighbor next door had cranked up the volume of her TV on tape, so between the cries of ecstasy—fake or real, it was hard to tell—pounded from Peaches, Alex Trebek was heard asking questions on
Jeopardy!

“What time did we stop filming?”

“We haven’t,” giggled Cream.

The ID Maddy took from Peaches confirmed that her name was Peaches Hoite. Cream’s ID said her name was Shirley Creame.

Wonders never cease.

Dag ejected the tape from the VCR. He stacked it on two others and offered the three to Thorne. “I need ’em back for the Academy Awards,” he said. “Match what you hear in the background with last night’s and this morning’s TV schedules. You’ll find my alibi is water-tight.”

Maddy pulled on a latex glove to accept the homemade pornographic tapes.

Dag scratched his belly and cocked his head.

“You got balls, you know. Coming here alone. What if I
was
the Hangman at the end of my rope? Look at me and look at you. If push came to shove, you’d be dead, Detective.”

Maddy shrugged. “You say you’re innocent. So what have I to fear?”

“Where’s your partner?”

“Injured.”

“You think I did that too?”

“No,” she said, and managed a smile.

“I should have been a cop. I’ve got the knack. You think that’s bullshit?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Want me to prove it?”

“How?” she asked.

“By giving you the motive for the Hangman crimes.”

“Bullshit, Dag.”

“Try me, partner.”

“Why was your wife killed?” Maddy asked.

“The same reason as Busby. Because she was on the jury that convicted Peter Haddon.”

That shut her up.

“You do remember him? The guy the state hanged in 1993? The con that reporter later proved was innocent? Mary was on that jury. Under her married name. The name of her
first
husband. Mary Somerset. It was Bart Busby who secured the conviction. That guy was a bully in the jury room.”

Takes one to know one, Maddy thought. “You’re right,” she said. “You should be a cop.”

Dag puffed his hairy chest with pride. “Told you, Detective. I got the knack.” Unconsciously, his hand dropped to give his balls a heft.

“I’m listening,” Maddy said. Out came her pen and notebook to flatter him.

“Mary was a country girl from eastern Washington. Grew up on an apple farm as Mary O’Grady. Mary married a local hick named Bill Somerset. She tired of him and working the earth, so she escaped to Seattle. One day, as happens to most of us, she got a jury summons. This was back in the eighties, when she was twentysomething. Mary was a looker up to a year ago, but beauty didn’t give her confidence to deal with men. When guys looked her over, their eyes locked on her body, and that made her feel physically threatened.”

“Mary was submissive?”

“She liked her man on top.”

“What happened in the jury room?”

“Busby fucked her over.”

“How so?” Maddy asked.

“Mary’s vote was to acquit Haddon. Busby’s vote was to convict him. The final day of deliberation was Halloween. The pressure was on to reach a verdict so those jurors with kids could get home in time for the trick-or-treating. One by one, the acquitters buckled under Busby’s bully tactics, until the only remaining holdout was Mary.”

“Eleven to one—they ganged up on her?”

“No,” said Dag. “It was Busby’s show. What’s that fancy term for a person’s weakness?”

“Your Achilles heel?”

“Bingo,” he said. “Busby was a bully who saw Mary’s Achilles heel. He
knew
his victim, and how to get to her. When she was talking, he stripped her with his eyes. When she got up from the table, he did too, and he invaded her personal space to confront her man to woman. After the others gave in, when Mary stood alone, he accused her of having rape fantasies. That’s why she was trying to hang the jury, he said. Because secretly she got off on the thought of Haddon raping the little girl.”

“So she crumbled?”

“Mary didn’t have the strength of her conviction,” said Dag.

“In Haddon’s case, the strength of her acquittal,” said Maddy.

“She should have hung the jury. Like the Hangman’s doing now.”

Peaches snickered.

Cream joined in.

Gallows humor caused their big balloons to bounce about.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Maddy asked.

“I didn’t connect the dots until Busby was hanged overnight. Besides, only a fool who’s under suspicion of his wife’s murder talks to the cops trying to loop a noose around his neck.”

Maddy glanced at Peaches and Cream, still ajiggle with aftershocks.

“Why’d you marry? Mary wasn’t your type.”

“I made a mistake. It seemed right at the time. I was a reformed drunk and womanizer. Mary was an eyeful. She’d kept herself in shape. And she was looking for a man her love could save. The downside was that Mary couldn’t save herself. She thought she had put the Haddon verdict to rest. Appellate courts had ruled the jury was right to convict. Haddon was hanged. Justice was done. Then just after I married her a year ago, that reporter proved Haddon was innocent of raping and strangling the little girl.”

“Mary couldn’t take the guilt?”

“So she began to eat. You saw the size of her when she died.”

“And you fell off the wagon?”

“Yep,” said Dag. “What can I say? I like ’em slim, with big hooters.”

Maddy closed her notebook and put it away. “I’ll leave you to your budding movie career.”

“Before you go. Is there a reward?”

“For what?”

“Helping Seattle police solve the hangman game.”

“Come again?” Maddy said.

“I already called it in to KVOT. I won the reward they offered for the solution. The hangman word puzzle spells Haddon’s name.”