The Headsman (12 page)

We all have our secret dreams
.

And come to think of it, that might be another song idea. If it was, he’d work on it sometime.

He picked aimlessly at the strings for a while, his thoughts wandering through all the things he had to do tomorrow. It would be good if the snow would quit; that was one more problem he’d just as soon not have to deal with. He suddenly felt tired, as if all the weight of the day had at last come down on him.

He put the guitar away and went back into the bedroom, taking off his robe and tossing it over a chair. The air in here was frigid. He slipped in beside Sally, smiling to himself as he noted she didn’t so much as stir. He moved close to her warm body and put his arm around her and in seconds he was asleep.

Four

ON THIN ICE

1

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING
Karen slept late, even though she’d gone to bed early the night before. In theory Saturday nights were for going out on a date and having a good time, maybe to dinner and then later someplace where you could have a few drinks and dance. And if the guy was somebody you really liked you might end up making love.

At least that was what Saturday nights were supposed to be for. And when she was seeing Ted Barton they had been, for a while. Until her moodiness and the headaches had turned him off. So last night had been just like any other; she’d had dinner at home with her grandmother and afterward she’d gone up to her room and read. She was still miserable and it was a relief to go to sleep.

This morning she looked out and saw the new-fallen snow. The sun was shining and the snow blanketing the ground and hanging from the tree branches was dazzling white, so bright it hurt your eyes to look at it. But as beautiful as it was, the sight failed to lift her spirits. She felt dull and logy, and the prospect of sitting around all day with nothing special to do was depressing. In an effort to pick herself up she took a bath and washed her hair, and by the time she’d finished blowdrying it she was feeling a little better.

She put on gray flannels and a white blouse and her blue lambs-wool sweater and went down to the kitchen. Her grandmother was sitting at the table reading the Sunday paper when Karen walked in; the old lady looked up and said good morning and Karen returned the greeting, bending down and kissing her forehead.

Her grandmother’s eyes were magnified by the thick lenses of her hornrimmed glasses. With her slim body and her hair dyed a soft honey color it would be hard to guess her age, although Karen knew she was in her seventies. She’d been a widow since Karen was a small child; Karen couldn’t remember her grandfather at all. He was a civil engineer, she knew, and Karen’s mother had been their only child. After her death Karen had come to Braddock from Shippensburg, where she’d grown up, to make a new start. She got along with her grandmother well enough, although sometimes the old lady’s opinions got on her nerves. And her grandmother had an opinion on everything.

“There’s fresh coffee on the stove,” the old woman said. “And some Danish in the oven.”

“Fine. Smells good.” Karen got a cup and saucer out of the cupboard and poured coffee for herself. “Care for some, Grandma?”

“No, thanks. I’ve had three cups already this morning. Any more and I’ll get the jitters. You sleep well?”

“Very well.” She cut herself a slice of the pastry and put it on a plate, then sat down at the table. When she bit into the warm Danish she realized she was hungrier than she’d thought.

“This murder,” her grandmother said, “it’s just ghastly.”

Karen froze.

The old lady shoved the front section of the
Express
toward her. In large black type the headline read:

BRADDOCK TEENAGER SLAIN

D
AUGHTER OF
B
ANKER
D
ECAPITATED

L
EGEND OF
H
EADSMAN
R
EVIVED

There was a photo of a pretty darkhaired girl and the story covered most of the front page.

Karen suddenly lost her appetite. She had known what the girl looked like even before she saw the picture. Her voice was a whisper. “How awful.”

“It was on the TV last night, but you were already up in your room. Whole town’s going crazy over it.”

Karen read through the story quickly, an icy lump forming in her stomach. All of it fit, all of it confirmed what she’d seen in those horrible images two nights ago. The vision had come to her precisely when the attack occurred—when the monster had stood over the helpless girl and swung that huge ax.

She studied the girl’s features. The face seemed so young, so full of hope, so charged with excitement. Here I am, the expression seemed to say, at the very beginning. Ready and eager for life and all the good things it can bring me.

Instead it had brought her a hideous death.

“That poor kid,” Karen said. “And her parents. God.”

Her grandmother was watching her. “Isn’t the first time, you know. You saw the rest of the story, about the headsman?”

“Yes, I read it.”

“That last one was twenty-five years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Same situation, too. The Donovan woman was a hell-raiser. Married and had a little girl, but she played around plenty.”

Karen found the smug conclusion irritating. “Same situation?”

Behind the thick glasses her grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “Come on, Karen—you know what these kids are like today. All they think about is sex and drugs. Wasn’t just some accident that he picked her out.”

“You think that’s why it happened?”

This time the old woman didn’t answer immediately. She seemed to be gauging Karen before she replied. Finally she said, “You may think that headsman story is just an old wives’ tale, but a lot of people in Braddock know better.”

Karen found it hard to breathe. “But what do
you
think?”

Again the old woman paused before answering. “I think there’s a lot of evidence says it’s true. Every so often, each time years apart, he comes back here. Somebody’s been messing around, up to no good—
whack
. He takes their head off. You asked me what I think? All right, I’ll tell you. That kid was into something, you can bet on it. And if the police ever come up with so much as a clue, I’ll be surprised.”

Karen read through the story again. It was by a reporter named Sally Benson, and the writing had a breathless quality about it. The article described in graphic detail how the girl’s head had been severed, and how the murder weapon had unquestionably been a large ax.

When she finished reading it, Karen went through the rest of the paper slowly, as much to avoid getting into a further discussion of the murder as for any other reason. Most of what she read didn’t register at all.

Until she saw a piece buried on one of the inside pages, next to an ad for an appliance sale. The headline said,

BOY STILL MISSING

The story wasn’t much—a few lines on the Mariski child, more or less a rehash of what she’d seen yesterday. But reading it brought her an almost overwhelming sense of guilt. She pushed the paper aside and sat back in her chair.

As much as she dreaded it, what she had to do now could not have been more clear. Nor did she feel she had any choice. She got up and scraped the remainder of her Danish into the garbage pail under the sink, hoping her grandmother wouldn’t notice. Then she washed her plate and her cup and saucer, drying them with a dishtowel before putting them away.

Her boots and her ski jacket were in the back hall closet. She got them out and put them on, then took her car keys from the hook next to the door.

Her grandmother looked at her. “Where you off to?”

“Just out,” Karen said. “For a breath of air. Do you need anything?”

“Nope. Did my shopping yesterday.”

“Okay, back soon.” She went out the back door and down the snowy steps to the driveway.

2

Karen’s car was a gray Escort, bought at dealer cost from Boggs Ford. She took a broom out of the trunk and, after sweeping off the snow, got into the car and drove out to the address she’d seen in the paper. The roads had been cleared, and driving was no problem.

The house was the type that was sometimes called an expanded cape, meaning one story with rooms added in what had been the attic. It had green shingle siding and white trim and needed paint. There was an apple tree in the side yard with a tire swing hanging from one of its lower limbs, and a couple of junky cars were parked in the driveway.

The drive had been plowed out, and mounds of fresh snow were heaped on both sides. Pulling into it took all the courage she could muster. She parked her car behind the others and made her way to the house, following a shoveled path. When she got to the front door she hesitated, instinct telling her to turn around, go back to the car and get out of here, mind her own business. But as much as she wanted to, she didn’t do it. She knocked on the door.

The woman who opened it probably wasn’t much older than Karen, but she already had that worn look you saw on wives who had borne too many children too fast and had worked too hard and worried too much and knew the future didn’t hold a lot to look forward to. She had on a cotton dress with a ratty sweater over it and her brown hair was tied in a bun. A tiny, half-naked child with a pacifier in its mouth was clinging to her leg and staring up at their visitor. The child appeared to be a boy, but it was hard to tell.

“Are you Mrs. Mariski?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Karen Wilson. I—wanted to talk to you about your son. The one who’s missing?”

“What about him?”

“I think maybe I—” She had been about to say, “know where he is,” but she couldn’t put it that way. And besides, she wasn’t sure. “May I come in?”

The woman moved aside, and Karen stepped past her, into the living room. Newspapers littered the shabby furniture, and toys and assorted debris lay on the floor. There was a bicycle leaning against one wall and the TV set had crayon streaks on the face of the tube. Another child, this one a girl a few years older than the little boy, came into the room, looked at Karen in surprise and ran out again.

Mrs. Mariski closed the front door. She picked a pile of papers off a chair and added them to the heap on a table. “Sit down,” she said. “Take your coat?”

“No, thank you.” Karen sank onto the chair and unzipped her jacket.

Mrs. Mariski pushed more papers aside on the sofa and sat on it, the child still clutching her leg. “What about Michael?”

Karen had thought about how she’d handle this, but now she couldn’t get the words out. Or at least have them make sense without her sounding like some kind of a nut. Which was probably how she’d be seen anyway. She took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about your son. But I think I might be able to help find him.”

“How?”

“I—have some ideas as to what might have happened to him.”

“What kind of ideas?”

“Did he ever go skating after school?”

“Oh, lord. We went all over that with the police. Right now he don’t even have skates. He had a pair, but he outgrew them. And he never cared much about skating anyhow.”

“Is there a pond near here?”

It might have been the intensity in Karen’s voice. Whatever it was, Mrs. Mariski glanced at her curiously. Then she turned her head toward the rear of the house and yelled, “Phil? Come in here, will you?”

She turned back to Karen. “I want my husband to hear this.”

A moment later a man came into the room. He was dark-skinned, with receding black hair. There was a beard shadow on his jaw, and he was dressed in blue work pants and a gray shirt. Mrs. Mariski introduced him to Karen and he sat down beside his wife on the sofa.

“She says she knows something about Michael,” Mrs. Mariski said.

Philip Mariski looked at Karen. “You know where he is?” The way he asked the question made it sound aggressive.

“No. That is, I just thought—maybe I could help.”

His expression turned to one of suspicion. “What makes you think so?”

“I—intuition, maybe.”

“You from around here?”

“I work at Boggs Ford,” Karen said, knowing how irrelevant that sounded. But she wouldn’t try to explain what had led her to come here; that would only make it worse. “I was asking Mrs. Mariski if your son ever went skating.”

“I told her Michael don’t have skates,” Mrs. Mariski said.

Mariski cocked his head as he looked at Karen. “Okay, so what’s the point?”

“Is there a pond near here?”

“No.”

Karen’s heart sank. You damned fool, she berated herself.

“There’s Kretchmer’s,” Mrs. Mariski said.

Her husband glanced at her impatiently. “That’s a couple miles away.”

“Did he ever go over there?” Karen asked.

“I don’t think so,” Mariski said.

“Do you know the pond well?” she persisted.

“Yeah, I guess so. I know where it is, been by it enough times. But if you think he was fooling around over there, forget it.”

“Why?”

“Because old man Kretchmer’s been known to chase kids with a shotgun. Michael wouldn’t go anywhere near the place.”

Karen again felt foolish. But she’d come this far, and maybe there was a chance. “So you know what it looks like?”

“It’s a pond,” he said. “That’s all—a pond beside a pasture. Kretchmer uses it to water his cows.”

“Would you show it to me? Drive over there with me?”

Mariski continued to hold his dark eyes on her. He was quiet for a few seconds. “Look, lady. I don’t know you, and I don’t know why you’re here. Our son’s lost, and we been out of our minds worrying. We got everybody looking for him. Cops, Boy Scouts, you name it. If you’re guessing he fell in a pond, I think you’re wrong.” His voice rose. “But if you know something about where he is, for Christ’s sake, tell us.”

The child holding onto Mrs. Mariski’s leg began to cry and she shushed him.

“I don’t know,” Karen said. Her voice grew small. “I just think I might have an idea.”

Before Mariski could respond, his wife said, “Go with her, Philip. She wants to see it, take her over there.”