The Headsman (20 page)

“I’m not gifted.”

“I didn’t say you were. I just asked whether you had some kind of sixth sense or something that made you think that’s where to look for the boy.”

“I told you, all I did was try to help. It was just an impression I got when I read in the newspaper about how he was missing. It just seemed sort of logical to me. Okay?”

“Sure. But let me ask you, has anything like this ever happened with you before?”

There was the merest flicker of hesitation before she answered, but Jud caught it. “Sometimes I have hunches, but that’s all. They never amounted to anything before this. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

“Okay. But again, thanks. You were a great help, and I know it took courage for you to come forward.”

That might have had some effect, but it was hard to tell. She got off the stool, gathering her coat around her. “Thank you for the coffee. Goodbye.”

“’Bye, Karen.” He watched her walk out of the diner. She really was very pretty. And wound up so tight she seemed ready to fly apart.

He turned back to his coffee. The waitress had returned, and before he could stop her she topped off his cup.

When she stepped away he thought about Karen Wilson. Whatever went on in her head, whether she really did have some kind of extrasensory perception, he could only guess at. But one thing was indisputable: she had led Philip Mariski to the exact place where his son’s body lay entombed in icy green water. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking her for help in the Dickens case, but then he put it aside. After her reaction to his questions, he could imagine how she’d respond to such a proposal. But maybe at some point he’d figure out a way to approach her. It was worth a try. Hell, anything was.

He put a tip on the counter, paid his check and left the diner. He had some things to look into at the BPD, and then he’d attend Marcy Dickens’ funeral.

2

When Karen got back to the dealership, Charley Boggs was standing near his office door looking at some papers. He glanced up and smiled, watching appreciatively as she took off her coat and hung it up.

She ignored him. Just as she did Ed McCarthy when he made some joke about going out for a roll in the snow. She sat down at her desk and mechanically went through the process of typing some orders on the computer, only half-conscious of what she was doing.

Damn that cop. Why couldn’t he have left her alone? And how had he known about the strange ability she’d been cursed with—the sixth sense? He’d even called it that. He’d known how she saw things other people couldn’t. Known it as if he’d been able to look inside her head and see some of the dark secrets she kept hidden there.

But the real fault wasn’t the police chief’s—it was hers. She was the one who had this weird faculty. She was the one who could receive a vision, whether she wanted to or not.

But what could she have done—let the Mariskis go on suffering when at least she could offer them the scant comfort of learning what had happened to their son? Hadn’t she done the right thing after all?

Of course she had.

But that was a fact she hated to admit, even to herself. Because if acting on what she knew about the Mariski boy was right, then wasn’t she also obliged to act on what else she knew?

She shuddered and forced herself to type faster—struggling to free herself from the thoughts that were tugging at her like demons deep inside her mind.

3

What gave a song its true spirit was the melody even more than the lyrics. And also the rhythm and the chords you put under it. If it was like most country music you just strummed in two or four beats to the bar and kept it simple, never using more than about three chords throughout. Which was why so much of it sounded alike. When you heard the opening bars of a song for the first time, you knew just about to the note how it was going to go. You wouldn’t know the lyrics, but the chords would tell you where the melody was headed and how it would get there.

So what Jud always tried for was a surprise now and then, going for a seventh, say, or a minor chord when the ears of an audience would be expecting the phrase to resolve with a major. They wouldn’t know that’s what they were expecting, couldn’t define it, but instinctively that would be what they’d feel they were going to hear. And then when it came out a little differently it would make the song just that much more interesting.

At least that was the theory. He’d never tested it in front of an audience, because the few times he’d played in front of one had been in saloons where the customers were too drunk to realize what was going on and wouldn’t have cared if they had. But it was nice to fantasize about people watching and listening, pleased by his songs and his playing.

He did it now, sitting by the dying fire in the living room of the cottage, the clock on the mantel showing 1:30. He had his legs crossed comfortably and the Gibson felt natural and easy in his hands. He picked out a four-bar intro, using a variation on the melody he’d created, and then went into the song.

Got a pair of itchy feet

Just can’t stay at home

When I see a pretty gal

It makes me want to roam

I love to wander

Love to wander

But in my heart I’m always true

And I’ll come back to you

The grass looks so much greener

On the other side

One thing you can count on babe

You know I never lied

I love to wander

Love to wander

But in my heart I’m always true

And I’ll come back to you

“Can I depend on that?”

He turned to see Sally leaning against the doorway of the room, her arms folded. A knowing smile was playing at the corners of her mouth. He was surprised, because it was rare for her to wake up during the night, no matter how much noise he made. Her hair was tousled and she was wearing one of his shirts, the tails hanging down almost to her knees.

“Hi.” He continued to pick out the melody, modulating from E-flat to F when he got to the chorus. “Can you depend on what?”

“That in your heart you’re always true? Seems to me every time a guy picks up a guitar he sings about how he screws around a lot but it’s okay, eventually he’ll come back to his dearest love. And she’ll be so thrilled to have him back she won’t care.”

He grinned. “That’s life, isn’t it?”

“Not hardly.”

She might have a point, at that. And beside, tomcat themes were pretty much of a cliche in country songs. Maybe he ought to be going for more originality in the lyrics, as well as in the melody and the chords. He put the Gibson back into its case. “You want a drink?”

“Maybe just a little one.” She came over and sat down in the chair beside his as Jud got up and went into the kitchen.

He was back a minute or two later with a short bourbon for her, a can of Coors for himself. She was looking at what was left of the fire, and when he handed her the glass she continued to stare at the embers. There was no other source of light in the room and the glow was soft and warm on her skin. He sat down beside her and drank some of his beer.

“Jud?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to say something, but I don’t want you to make fun of me. I want you to take it seriously.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

She sipped a little of her whiskey. “Suppose it was true.”

“Suppose what was true?”

“The headsman. Suppose he was for real.”

He looked at her. “Hey, you can’t—”

“Now wait a minute. I don’t believe it either, but hear me out. We know that two hundred years ago, Braddock had a professional executioner who beheaded people. Anybody committed a crime or was considered a sinner, off with their head.”

“Go on.”

“Then over the years, other people died the same way. Their heads were chopped off, and there was never any explanation of who killed them. Except one. People said the headsman had come back. There was the Donovan killing. And now it’s happened again. Marcy Dickens is dead, and she was beheaded by a powerful man who did it with an ax.”

“Apparently, yes.”

“This time there’s you and your police force, and the state cops with their lab and all their modern technology, and what are the results? Just like the other times. You don’t even have a lead, any of you.”

“That doesn’t mean we won’t have. Something’ll break, sooner or later.”

“Will it? How can you be so sure? Maybe nothing will turn up, just like with the Donovan case. Then this one’ll go down the same way. Marcy Dickens, age seventeen. Homicide committed by person unknown. Murder weapon, an ax. Never found. And that’s all—until sometime in the future, when it happens again.”

He swallowed some of his beer. “Where does that leave us—tough shit, Marcy, you ran into the wrong ghost?”

She tossed her head impatiently. “No, damn it. That’s just my point. I’m not saying he’s real. What I am saying is that you and Pearson and all your cops have been going in just one direction. You acknowledge the killer chopped Marcy’s head off, but you say it couldn’t have been the headsman. That’s impossible.”

“Okay. So?”

“So maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. He knew the cops would never take that idea seriously. But if you did, then as a police officer, as a professional, wouldn’t you go about your investigation differently?”

“Look, let me point out something. In police work, you learn that most felonies get solved one of three ways. One, you get a tip from an informant. Two, circumstantial evidence leads you to a perpetrator. Three, the bad guy makes a mistake. Gets caught red-handed. Or sometimes he confesses, either to the cops or to somebody else who tells the cops, which gets us back to number one. In most cases, by far the majority, it’s the tip that breaks it.”

“Does that mean all you do now is sit back and wait?”

“No, of course not. You have to run down every possibility.”

“Okay, then let’s say the killer really is the headsman. How are you doing to run
that
down?”

He finished his beer and set the can down on the hearth, trying to be patient. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. You see what I’m getting at? I’m saying, why not start out with the premise that it’s true, that the headsman really did kill Marcy. Even if you didn’t believe it, wouldn’t that make you think about this whole thing differently? Maybe take you in some whole new direction?”

“Maybe.”

“Then why not try it? Why not use your procedures to run him down just the way you would any other killer?”

He snorted. “Because if you’re right, you can forget about police techniques. What procedures do you use to track a ghost? Do you try to use an informant? Or go after him on the basis of circumstantial evidence? Evidence of what? Does the guy evaporate into the air? Does he go back to the dead and stay there until it’s time to return here? Is that what you try to track?”

“Um. I see what you mean.”

“Right. Mrs. Donovan was killed over twenty-five years ago. Before that? Who knows? All we have are a lot of stories that’ve been handed down.”

“Yes. Well.” She finished her drink and stood up. “I’m cold.”

He got out of his chair and put an arm around her. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Sure. That’s a problem I can do something about.”

As he led her back to bed, one corner of his mind was turning over the beginning of an idea. Maybe her train of thought wasn’t so crazy at that. Maybe it had triggered something he’d want to look into. The only trouble was, he was almost afraid to learn whether it was true.

4

The shrill pealing jarred him out of sleep, but he couldn’t figure out what was causing it. On the second ring he realized it was the phone. He fumbled the receiver off the hook and pulled it into bed with him. The digital clock read 4:12. “Yeah?”

“Chief, it’s Stanis.”

“What’s up?” He still wasn’t awake.

“We got a suicide.”

That cut through the haze. “Who?”

“Art Ballard. That old man lives near the Dickenses?”

Jud sat up in bed. “When?”

“Few minutes ago. His wife said he shot himself. Sorry to call you, but—”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” It was a standing rule that in the event of any violent death in the town, the BPD was to notify its chief immediately. “You send a car out there?”

“Yeah, Delury. I sent an ambulance, too.”

“All right, I’m on my way.”

He put the phone down and got out of bed. As he did Sally stirred in her sleep, burrowing deeper under the covers. Jud dressed in the semidarkness, the only illumination in the room coming from the face of the clock. The air was icy cold. He moved as quickly and as quietly as he could, and within minutes he was out the door and into the cruiser.

Sally’s car was parked behind his in the driveway, and he had to inch around it as he backed out, hoping he wouldn’t get stuck in the drifts. When he made the street he accelerated quickly but didn’t bother with the siren or the flasher; the roads were pretty well deserted at this time of the morning. It took several minutes before the heat came up in the car, and he wished fervently he had a cup of coffee.

Art Ballard a suicide? Jud could see his face, with its network of blue veins, the nose dripping from the cold, wisps of white hair blowing in the wind. And most of all he saw the rheumy eyes burning with conviction as Art told him the headsman had returned to Braddock. What the hell could have driven the old man to shoot himself?

When he got to the house he saw lights in all the windows of the small gray frame structure. Car Three was parked out front. The ambulance and the coroner had not yet arrived. Jud got out of the cruiser and went up to the front entrance.

For the second time in less than a week, Jud found himself going into a home where sudden death had occurred in the middle of the night. But this time he didn’t have to ask where the body was. What remained of Art Ballard was not far from the door, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. A Winchester pump shotgun lay beside him.

Delury wasn’t in sight; Jud assumed he was with Mrs. Ballard.

If he hadn’t known who it was, Jud would never have been able to identify the corpse. The old man apparently had shoved the muzzle of the shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. His lower jaw was still intact, but that was the only part of his head that was. The rest of it had been blown completely away, and pieces of bone and tissue had exploded onto the wall. The gaunt frame was dressed in pajamas and a frayed blue robe. A pair of scuffed leather slippers were on the feet.