Hangman (26 page)

Necktie Party

Seattle

Wednesday, November 15 (One day ago)

What began as a necktie party would end as a necktie party.

Different definitions.

It was deathly quiet in the Athens Taverna, unlike earlier, before midnight, when the party had been in full swing. There was a party every night at the Greek restaurant, fueled by retsina, ouzo, and Metaxa brandy. Belly dancers would undulate for lecherous businessmen out for a wild fling on the town, the drunkest of whom would end up thinking they were Zorba the Greek, dancing amid the tables with both arms crooked in the air …

Do-da … do-da … do-da do-da do-dado-dado-da …

While George Koulelis snipped off their ties with a pair of shears.

The ceiling of the main room looked like a bed of spikes turned upside down. The stalactites—thousands of them—were all businessmen’s ties. Each was pinned with the card of the diner who had sacrificed his neck phallus to the cause of the decor, and whoever had the most ties tacked up at the end of the year won a special meal cooked by George himself.

George Koulelis was a born restaurateur.

Behind the happy face, however, was hidden a well of tears, and that well overflowed each night once the Greek was alone. A wretch of a man whose hair had bleached white from paternal grief, he sat in his smoky office behind the depleted central bar. With a stiff drink at hand, he puffed on a Turkish cigarette and calculated tonight’s receipts while his heart cried for Anna. On his desk was a photo of his sweet, dead child, and though nearly two decades had passed since little Anna was raped and strangled, not a night closed in on George that he didn’t mourn for her.

Drinking didn’t help.

But he had to work the room.

And working the room meant sitting down to toast the regulars.

At least that’s what he told himself as the booze depressed him into melancholy.

Poor George Koulelis.

The door to his office was shut against the world when the exhausted Greek caught a suspicious noise out in the taverna. Stubbing his cigarette and downing the Metaxa, he rose from his chair to cross the smoky haze to the door, where he armed himself with a bat he kept nearby just in case.

Easing the door open merely sucked the smoke from his office out into the restaurant, which was dark and inhabited with spooky shadows cast by lights intruding in from the street. George stepped through the murky cloud to look around, then froze as the muzzle of a gun was pressed into the nape of his neck.

“Drop the bat.”

He dropped it.

“Hands behind your back.”

Snap! Snap!
His wrists were locked with a pair of handcuffs.

“Money?” George whispered. “Is that what you want from me?”

“No, Koulelis. I want the truth.”

The Greek smelled garlic on the breath warming the back of his ear.

“The truth?” he said.

“What time did you get home?”

A frown creased George’s forehead. He was still at work; he wasn’t home. Then, like being hit with a blow from the bat, he was struck by the meaning of the intruder’s question.

Should he lie?

Or should he tell the truth?

“Four-ten,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I checked my watch against the kitchen clock when I arrived.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes.”

“You got home at 4:10 and found Anna gone?”

The barrel of the pistol was cold on his scalp as George tipped back his head to nod.

“Why did you lie in court?”

“They made me.”

“Who?” asked the voice behind the gun.

“The police detectives.”

After all the lying he had done for almost twenty years, the father of the dead girl was all lied out. If he died tonight, it would be a blessing. If there was a heaven, Anna would be there. And if he was to join her in the afterlife, now was the time for him to unburden his soul.

“Are you the Hangman?”

“Yes,” said his confessor.

“I’m tired of lying.”

“And I’m sick of your lies.”

“The detectives came to me after the arrest. They said there was a problem with the time I
thought
I got home. Haddon killed Anna. No doubt, they said. He was a sick monster who would rape and kill again if he wasn’t stopped.”

“You believed that?”

“They were the police. For what reason would they lie to me?”

“The time?” said the Hangman.

“The time,” echoed George.

“I want to know
why
you changed the time.”

“Haddon had an alibi for 4:10. It was physically impossible for him to have snatched Anna before 4:15. If I stuck with my arrival time, they said the courts would let my daughter’s killer go. We all knew he had raped and strangled Anna, so it was up to me to think hard about the time.”

“So you changed it?”

“They showed me I was wrong.”

“How?” asked the Hangman.

“By leading me through everything I had done that afternoon. ‘How could you do all that and make it home by 4:10?’ they asked. ‘It wasn’t 4:10. It couldn’t be. The time you got home must have been 4:35, and by then Haddon had your little girl.’”

The Greek began to blubber.

He sobbed like a baby.

A flood of anguish flowed in his cry.

“They told me he was a devil. They told me he was a demon. They told me not to ask them what he did to my child. They were the police. They ought to know. I took what they told me as gospel from above. You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone that precious.”

“I do,” said the Hangman. “
You
saw to that.”

George was so distraught that he didn’t absorb the comment. All he could hear was Anna screaming for help in the woods.

“She was so innocent. She was my life. Anna loved animals. And she
loved
me. That’s the precious child I lost to some demented monster, so I did what they told me was necessary to bring Haddon to justice. I trusted what they said. I had to have revenge. What greater burden could be laid on the shoulders of a father than the one they laid on mine? I was angry. I was trying to grieve. Her death was an emotional apocalypse for me. Unless I changed the time, her killer would go free, so I moved the time forward to 4:35. The end justifies the means, the cops told me. Oh, good God! What did I do!”

“You hanged four people,” the Hangman said.

“I didn’t find him guilty! Twelve jurors did!”

“If you hadn’t fingered Haddon, he wouldn’t have been arrested. If you’d told the truth, he would have been acquitted. And if he’d been acquitted, who would have hanged?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Too late, Koulelis.”

The pressure of the gun against his spine forced George forward. He and his confessor moved toward the darkest part of the taverna, a corner that could not be seen from the street. Ahead was the ladder the Greek had climbed to hang the ties he had snipped off during the necktie party. The ladder wasn’t where he had left it before heading to his office to add up the night’s receipts.

“Huuuh!” gasped the Greek.

Until his breath was cut off.

So dark was it near the ladder that George didn’t see the noose hanging from a ceiling beam up among the jagged teeth of ties until the Hangman slipped it over his head. The gasp was cut short by a hard yank on the other end of the rope, and George went up on his tiptoes to ease the stranglehold. Never had he been so scared.

“Climb,” ordered the Hangman.

The Greek scaled the ladder.

“Stop,” ordered the Hangman.

George was halfway up.

The Hangman secured the loose end of the rope to the bar.

“You want a necktie party? You’ve got one, killer.”

The Hangman gripped the ladder wobbling beneath the Greek’s feet.

“It’s all your fault, Koulelis. And now you must pay. Whoever raped and strangled Anna is free because of you. By fingering Peter, you focused police attention on your home when she could just as easily have been snatched off the street. Anna was to meet a friend in the park at four. What if she arrived early and was grabbed there? No matter whether you got home at 4:10 or 4:35, Anna would not have been at your house for Peter to kidnap.

“The irony is that in spite of you, Anna’s killer will probably be caught. Authorities now have his DNA from the stains on her underwear, and soon every perv with a history of sexual violence will have his genes stored in a central data bank. One day a computer will spit out a match, and Anna will have the justice you denied her.”

The Hangman wrenched the ladder away to turn the Greek off like Ketch used to do on Tyburn Hill.

“I wish I could say your pain will be over in a moment …”

George kicked desperately in the air as he hanged.

“But witnesses who lie must learn the same lesson as perverse jurors.”

Whirrrrrr!
The motor of the hand-held cordless saw cut in.

“So I have some cutting to do.”

Loophole

Vancouver

Tonight

“My lord,” I announced, loud and clear, as I came in the main door to Quick Draw McGraw’s courtroom yesterday morning, “I have a habeas corpus.”

All heads turned.

Showtime, folks.

I had checked the case list half an hour ago and, taking note of the fact that there were other matters to be heard by the judge, had stalled until his court was in session to make my move. Slipping down to the criminal registry on the second level, I filed my papers like a thief in the night and asked the clerk to get them up to court ASAP. As I pushed open the gate between the gallery and the counsel pit, the clerk brought the file in by another door.

Again, Lyndon Wilde, QC, had donned his silky best, but whether he was putting on the dog I don’t know. At Tuesday’s adjournment, he did tell the judge he’d be in court on Wednesday, so I magnanimously gave him the benefit of the doubt. To show he was in chambers, he had doffed his black gown, which was draped over the back of his chair. The prosecutor rustled as he rose to his feet and fished his pocket watch from his vest to confirm the time.

“Not only is my learned friend late,” he told the judge, “but he has also rudely interrupted the case at bar.”

“My lord …”

I paused.

We call that pregnant suspense.

“Yes, Mr. Kline?”

I had the go-ahead.

“Must I refresh my learned friend on the history of habeas corpus? The writ dates from before the Magna Carta in 1215. The Latin means let’s ‘have the body’ brought into court so we can test the legality of the prisoner’s detention. There was a time in these courts when freedom was sacrosanct. A habeas corpus
always
went to the front of the line. Has Mr. Wilde become so jaded that liberty is ho-hum to him?”

The old fart bristled.

“I argued my first habeas corpus before you were born, son. I don’t need you—”

Bang!

I slammed my fist on the table.

“This isn’t a
game!
” I protested. “Alexis Hunt was hanged in Canada
and I can prove it.
Ethan Shaw is charged with capital murder. America
wants to kill him.
Is his fate to hang in the balance while your lordship listens to a charge of …”

I turned to the lawyer at the bar.

“What’s your case?” I asked.

“Theft,” he replied.

“Theft,” I echoed. “My client waits in the shadow of the death house as my learned friend blusters about my manners in interrupting a
theft!
”

Man, I love the decorum of the law. All that “may it please your lordship” when you think he’s a moronic dunce, and “my learned friend” when you’re out to slit his throat.

In the philosophy of law, there are two schools of jurisprudence. The British favor positivism, the belief that law is an objective pursuit governed by statutes and previous court decisions that offer some certainty to the outcome of trials. The Americans favor realism, the belief that law is a subjective pursuit influenced more by whether the judge just had a tiff with his wife or spent the past hour in bed with his mistress.

I’m a realist.

And so was Quick Draw.

McGraw knew this would likely be the crowning case of his legal career, with more publicity than he could imagine. His finger was in the air to determine how the wind was blowing, and I knew he would side with me to make himself look good.

“Clear the deck,” he ordered. “Counsel for Ethan Shaw has a habeas corpus.”

“And an abuse of process,” I added.

“Sheriff.”

“Sir?”

“Let’s ‘have the body.’”

With his backbone ramrod and his shoulders squared for the media, the “brownie” went to the door that brought Ethan up from the cells, then led him with even-handed respect across to the dock. No sign of torture, as you can see.

From my battered briefcase, I withdrew the secret papers I had just filed and dropped copies of what the clerk handed to the judge in front of Wilde.

“My lord,” he chuffed, “this material takes me by surprise.”

“It shouldn’t,” I said. “As you will see.”

“Once we know where this is going, I’ll deal with that,” said McGraw.

“My lord?” I prompted.

“Begin, Mr. Kline.”

“Some background is essential for perspective. I was aboard the
North Star
the night of the hanging. My client dined with me as we sailed north from Seattle; then, before dessert was served, Ethan Shaw asked his brother, Justin Whitfield, and Alexis Hunt to join us at our table. For quiet, we later moved to a bar called the Captain Ahab, where three of us had coffee and Mr. Shaw drank. A compass built into the tabletop tracked the ship’s direction.

“By then, we were cruising in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, somewhere near the border between Canada and the United States, which runs along the middle of that dividing waterway. While we were talking, two crucial things occurred.

“First, a photographer took a picture of the four of us in the bar, with the lights of Victoria, British Columbia, twinkling in the background. Next, Ethan Shaw spilled his drink on the table, and as it was wiped up by our server, she drew our attention to the direction of the inset compass. The ship was sailing
due west
in the strait.

“The documents filed to prove these truths are as follows: My affidavit—”

Wilde was on his feet.

“My young friend should know better than to offer himself as a witness in his own case.”

“The affidavit of Justin Whitfield—”

“The
brother
of Ethan Shaw! Blood is thicker than water, my lord.
Res ipsa loquitur.
”

“The affidavit of John Dunn, captain of the coast guard vessel
Vector
, to confirm that the configuration of lights in the background of the photograph is indeed Victoria.”

“So?” said Wilde.

“I’m sure my friend has a cellphone if he wishes to call the captain.”

“Do you take issue with that, Mr. Wilde?”

“No, my lord. So what?”

“And finally, the affidavit of Diane Marsden, the bar server, to confirm that the inset compass did point due west.”

The judge turned to Wilde.

“Is that in issue, Counsel?”

“No, my lord. Again I say, ‘So what?’ Nothing my friend has offered changes matters one whit. The ship sailed west past Victoria. I accept that. It’s a fact. But even if, as this photo indicates, Alexis Hunt was alive at the time, who’s to say the ship was north of the borderline?”

“Do you sail, Mr. Wilde?”

“No. Golf is my passion.”

“Pity,” said the judge. “I do,” he added.

“Your lordship gets my point?”

“Yes, Mr. Kline.”

“I fear my learned friend thinks I’m wet behind the ears. Perhaps your lordship would explain the problem to him?”

The judge nodded.

I had made him my co-counsel.

“The sea, too, has rules of the road, Mr. Wilde. And the rule of the road in the Strait of Juan de Fuca is this: ships sailing east cruise in American waters and ships sailing west cruise north of the borderline in Canada’s jurisdiction.”

The prosecutor winced.

He was in
big
trouble.

The kind of trouble that can turn your bowels to water in court.

Be it Canadian or American, the ship of state had taken a torpedo below the waterline.

I closed in for the kill.

“My elderly friend has much to learn about jurisdiction,” I said, giving him back the line he had laid on me yesterday. “But even more troubling, he has much to learn about
ethics.
”

“I protest!” fumed Wilde.

“Careful, Mr. Kline,” cautioned the judge.

These West Side wimps were virgins when it came to street-fighting. In the East End, you fight like this. First you knee them in the balls. Then, as they double over, you ram your fingers into their eyes. Then, once you have them on the ground, you curb-stomp their heads against the concrete gutter.

“My lord, Mr. Wilde seeks to deceive this court. In the aftermath of what occurred aboard the ship, an unfortunate turf war developed between authorities on both sides of the border. The result was that they refused to share witness statements, and this extradition was launched to send my client to the United States so he can be executed. It is only by fortune that this information fell into my hands, because these crucial witnesses—Justin Whitfield and the bar woman—were interviewed by
American
police.”

Another pregnant pause.

Let it fester.

I whiffed the stench of fear coming off Wilde.

Time for the
coup de grâce.

“In other words, the key to jurisdiction lay within Mr. Wilde’s grasp, and knowing my client is fighting for his life, counsel for the United States hid this fact from
you!
”

That did it.

The hair of the judge was on fire.

If there’s one thing you never do in court, it’s make the judge look like a dupe.

“Mr. Wilde, what have you to say?”

The old boy began bailing water as fast as he could heave.

“My lord, I can assure you that I knew nothing of this. My learned friend has bushwhacked me with these allegations. In all my years at the bar, I have never been a party to—”

“Judgment,” barked the judge.

The court recorder sat up. That was her cue.

“Ethan Shaw applies for a writ of habeas corpus. He submits that this court lacks jurisdiction to extradite him to the United States of America to stand trial on an indictment for murder. This morning, a provisional arrest warrant was issued by this court. The death of the victim, Alexis Hunt, occurred on board a ship that was sailing from Seattle to Vancouver. From what this court has considered in unchallenged affidavits filed by counsel for Ethan Shaw, it is now evident that the murder occurred in Canadian waters, and that there is no jurisdiction in this court to extradite Ethan Shaw to stand trial in Washington State. A writ of habeas corpus will issue. The warrant is vacated.”

That’s how I like it.

Shoot from the hip.

We don’t call him Quick Draw McGraw for nothing.

“My lord,” I said, pulling more paper out of my briefcase, “I have taken the liberty of drafting the writ. If your lordship would sign it here and now, my unjustly imprisoned client can walk out of your court a free man.”

The scratching of reporters’ pens was music to my ears.

“Damn!” one cursed. “I’m out of ink!”

I do believe I heard the clench of Lyndon Wilde’s hemorrhoids.

“My lord, I ask you not to sign the writ until I can have the provincial Crown re-lay a charge of first-degree murder.”

It was time to curb-stomp this old fart. After I finished putting the boots to him, his cases from the Feds would dry up too.

“Enough!” I exploded, slamming down my fist. “Has this man no heart? Has this man no shame? In this same court yesterday, I submitted that there was no case against my client. I asked him for a trial in Canada’s courts, and his dismissive reply was this: ‘The consent required to try an American for murder committed on a foreign ship in Canada’s territorial sea is a matter for the attorney general of Canada. No consent is forthcoming. Those are my instructions.’ What he did was force your lordship to say to me, ‘That ends the matter of the necessary consent.’

“Well”—I was building steam—“that does
end
the matter.”

I whacked the table again for emphasis.

“Because this crime assuredly occurred on our territorial sea”—I pointed west toward the wide Pacific—“and without the consent of the attorney general of Canada, there can be no charge tried by the provincial Crown!”

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

I was breaking bones.

“Mr. Wilde has already deceived this court in an attempt to
lynch
Ethan Shaw, and now he seeks to make your lordship a henchman too.”

I walked to the dock to stand with Ethan.

“This is habeas corpus.

“This isn’t a game.

“Give my client justice.

“Sign the writ, my lord.”

The gallery held its collective breath in anticipation. Quick Draw weighed the scales of justice in his best interest. Should he rein me in for stepping over the line, and thus make it look like he was a closet Crown prosecutor, or should he let Lyndon Wilde, QC, take the fall?

No contest.

The judge signed the writ.

“File it,” he told the court clerk. “You’re free to go, Mr. Shaw.”

As I led Ethan out of court to reap my reward in the limelight of the cameras massed outside, I had to pass the player on the other side. Zinc Chandler stood by the gallery exit.

I could have said something nasty like “I’m sorry for your loss,” but hey, I’m a lawyer who’s got a soft spot.

So as my lips passed within range of his ear, I whispered in consolation, “Every noose has a loophole.”