The Headsman (29 page)

The barroom had the ambience of an old-time saloon, with its dark wood paneling and beamed ceiling. Jud had been in here once or twice before, and it hadn’t changed. It probably hadn’t changed since the club was founded at the turn of the century, which was where its name supposedly came from.

The bartender smiled broadly when he saw them. “Afternoon, Mr. Maxwell. Chief.”

“Hello, Arthur,” Maxwell said. “I heard a rumor that you had run out of scotch whiskey and I thought I ought to come right over and check up on it.”

Arthur’s face grew serious. “No sir, that’s not true. I’d like to have an opportunity to prove it.”

“All right then, give me a double on the rocks.”

Maxwell and the bartender burst out laughing, and Jud realized this had to be an old gag between them. Maxwell probably went through the same goofy-ass routine every time he came in here. Jud told Arthur he’d have a beer.

They sat at a corner table, the only people in the bar. When the bartender had served their drinks they touched glasses and drank, and the older man gave Jud one of his sharp-eyed looks. “You think Buddy Harper killed the Dickens girl?”

Jud put his glass down. “No, I don’t.”

“Then why do you suppose he ran off?”

“I don’t know.”

The blue eyes continued to bore in on him. “But there’s something else on your mind, isn’t there? Something else you wanted to talk about. What is it?”

“The headsman.”

“Ah. The ghost of Braddock. You’re probably angry because of all the play the press has given him. Including the
Express
. Gets people all riled up.”

There was a barely disguised cynicism Jud sometimes observed in this man. It was another thing he found hard to reconcile with what the paper seemed to represent. He wondered if Maxwell was jaded from years of reporting on corruption and disasters and man’s inhumanity to man, or if he was simply a hypocrite at heart.

“I do think it’s wrong,” Jud said. “But I don’t think you plan to stop it, either.”

Maxwell laughed. “You’re right about that. It sells newspapers. And one thing I learned early on, it doesn’t mean a goddamned thing how good a paper is if nobody reads it.”

“The stories you ran on the Dickens homicide referred to an earlier murder back in the sixties.”

“Janet Donovan.”

“Yes.”

“Did you cover that yourself at the time?”

“I certainly did.”

“Did you know her?”

“Knew her, knew her husband, John. He was an insurance man. Father left him the business. John Donovan wasn’t overly bright.”

“And his wife—what was she like?”

Maxwell sipped his whiskey. “Pretty, and a terrible flirt. They belonged to the country club, and Helen and I used to see them there at the Saturday night dances. Janet was always beautifully dressed, in a sexy way. You’d see her with low necklines and slit skirts, things like that. She had a great body, and she loved to show it off. The joke was, if you wanted to get your rocks off, all you had to do was dance with Janet Donovan.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Worse. She had affairs all over the place. John worked late a lot, trying to hold his business together. Or maybe he was trying to figure it out. But she didn’t sit around waiting for him.”

Jud drank some of his beer. It was draught, and its cold fresh taste was better than the canned stuff he was used to. “I tried to look up the case in our files. There was nothing there.”

Maxwell smiled. “Not surprised. Woody McDermott was our chief of police back then. He went around half-bombed most of the time. Wouldn’t know a murderer if one confessed to him.”

“What about the state police?”

“At that time they didn’t have a separate detective force, as they do now. All they had was troopers, and they rarely got involved in a homicide case unless it was related to something else they were working on. Not like today at all. You know how the state police got started in New York?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It was back in the twenties,” Maxwell said. “They were formed by an order from the governor, for the purpose of stopping bootleggers from running booze down from Canada. At least that was what he proclaimed. What he really wanted to stop was the criticism from the press over what a piss-poor job he was doing. There were so many liquor trucks they practically ran on schedules.”

“So he probably had a piece of the action.”

“Bet on it.”

“Dirty politics. Not so different from now.”

“Nope. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or another way to put it is that times change, but people don’t. The Volstead Act made a lot of folks rich, and a good many of them were politicians.”

They finished their drinks, and Maxwell signaled the bartender for another round.

“According to the county attorney,” Jud said, “there were never any arrests in the Donovan case.”

“No. No arrests, but half the men in Braddock could have been suspects. After a while it all just blew over. Most of the idiots in our fair village really believed the headsman did it. They never took any other idea seriously. Everybody knew Janet had a whole flock of lovers, but do you think any of them were ever under suspicion? Hell, no. They could have had any number of motives, too. Yet all anybody talked about was that half-baked legend. The headsman had come back and chopped her with his big shiny ax. And you know why he did, according to them? Because Janet was a floozy. You see? Human nature again. It was
her
fault. She was a sinner, so the headsman punished her. Just the way he’d been doing for over two hundred years.”

Arthur brought fresh drinks to the table and collected the empties. When he’d gone back to the bar Jud asked, “What happened to the Donovan family after that?”

“Oh, they stuck it out for a while, but John’s business finally went down the drain altogether. They moved to Binghamton, and he got a job with another insurance firm there. I think the owner owed his father some favors, something like that. I heard he remarried, and after that I lost track of him.”

“I see.”

“And now tell me, Chief. What’s this about? You think there’s a connection between the two cases, or have you started believing in the headsman too?”

“What I see is that there were two homicides, years apart. In both of them the killer used the identical M.O. The victims were beheaded with an ax. The chances of that being a coincidence are pretty remote. As you’ve said yourself, the Donovan case was never properly investigated. I wanted to learn more about it.”

As Maxwell drank his whiskey his face became flushed. “If I were you, I’d be careful. There are some sleeping dogs there, and you know the old saying.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You want to tread softly, that’s all. Remember this isn’t New York, or Philadelphia, or some other big city. You were made chief of police because you were a bright, energetic young cop. The town fathers believed you’d be hardworking and reasonably honest.”

“Yes?”

“But they also believed you’d be smart enough to understand that a police force in a small community is a service organization. Your job is to keep the peace. Protect homes, fight drugs, drive out any bad elements that might spring up here. If a crime occurs, you’re to run down the offender so that he’s punished.”

“Which is what I’m trying to do now.”

“And that’s fine. I’m just telling you to be careful while you’re doing it.”

Jud finished his beer and shook his head when Maxwell pointed to his glass to suggest another. “Let me ask you about something else, Ray. I heard a big company might be moving to Braddock. You know anything about it?”

Maxwell’s eyebrows raised. “Where did you hear that?”

“Let’s just say I picked it up. Anything to it?”

“I don’t know. But if I were you I might consider that sensitive information. Speaking of politicians.”

The implication was clear enough; Jud dropped the subject. “You said Janet Donovan had a number of lovers.”

“She certainly did.”

“Are any of them still living in Braddock?”

All jocularity disappeared from Maxwell’s expression. “Jud, I told you—”

“Yeah, but are there?”

Maxwell drained his whiskey and set his glass down with an air of finality. “Not as far as I know. And now I’d better get back to work. I have tomorrow’s edition to get out.”

The drive back was pleasant enough. They talked about the weather and how the winter hadn’t been too bad after all.

2

When Jud got back to the stationhouse the afternoon was nearly over. The days were getting longer now; it wouldn’t be dark for another hour at least. Spring wasn’t in the air exactly, but it was no longer so far off. He thought of Emmett Stark and his trout flies. The old chief was right; the season would be here before you knew it.

There was a ruckus of some kind at the front desk. A fat, red-faced man wearing a sheepskin coat was yelling something at a cop, and Grady was telling him to calm down. They were trying to get information from him, but all the guy wanted to do was argue. Jud moved closer to the group. Brusson was on the desk and Bob Kramer apparently had brought the guy in.

“Fucking police brutality,” the guy yelled. Jud saw that he was holding a handkerchief with blood on it. Under his left eye was a welt the size of a walnut, and he kept touching it with the handkerchief. There was a bluish cut in the welt, and after each dab with the handkerchief it would start to leak again.

When the guy caught sight of Jud he said, “You in charge here?”

“I’m Chief of Police MacElroy,” Jud said. “What’s the problem?”

Kramer said, “This man was—”

“Goddamn it,” the guy yelled, “he asked
me
.”

“Let him talk,” Jud said.

Redface reduced his volume by a few decibels. “I was driving through town here and this dummy stopped me. Gave me some bullshit story about an accident. I wasn’t in no accident. Then he hit me. He
hit
me, for Christ’s sake.”

Jud looked at Kramer. “What happened?”

Redface was yelling again. “Listen, are you going to pay attention to what I’m telling you, or—”

Jud turned to him and raised his hand, palm up. “Now
you
shut up, mister. I want to hear the officer’s explanation.” His gaze swung back to Kramer.

The cop said, “I got a radio call there was a hit and run on South Main. Late-model white Cadillac. Hit a kid on a bike and left the scene, headed north. I was on Route Five. I started down toward there and spotted the car. I chased it maybe a mile before I could pull it over. This character was driving. When I told him I was taking him in he resisted.”

“Punched me in the fucking eye,” Redface shouted. “Then he pulled a gun on me.”

“We got a witness,” Grady said. “Saw the accident.” He turned around. “Would you come over here, please, ma’am?”

A woman was sitting on a bench. Jud hadn’t noticed her when he came in. She was bundled up in a heavy brown coat and had a babushka tied around her head. She got up and came forward hesitantly, a frightened look on her face. Grady took her arm and guided her to where the others were standing.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” Grady asked her.

“Doris Banazak.”

“You live in Braddock?”

“Yes, on Birch Street.”

“Where were you this afternoon, and what did you see?”

“I was on my way to the store. On South Main Street.”

“Where exactly?”

“On the corner by Hillside Avenue. I seen a white car hit a boy on a bike. It was almost right in front of me. The car kept going a ways and it was dragging the boy and the bike. Then it stopped and this man got out.” She pointed at Redface. “He pushed the bike and the kid off the bumper of his car and then he got back in and drove away.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the guy said. “That’s crazy. I never hit no kid.”

“What’s your name?” Jud asked him.

“Victor Scalzo. I live in Ithaca and I was on my way there. This is all bullshit.”

Jud looked at Grady. “What about the kid?”

“Ambulance took him to Memorial. He’s busted up, but they think he’ll make it.”

“Who is he?”

“Name’s Eddie Marcus. Father works for Purdy’s Heating Oil.”

“Yeah,” Jud said. “I know the family. You notify them?”

“Yes. They’re at Memorial now.”

Jud then spoke to the woman. “Thank you, Mrs. Banazak. You’ve been a real help. The officers will want to get a statement from you.”

He turned to Scalzo. “You better hope that kid is all right. As it is you’ve got endangering lives with a vehicle, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and resisting arrest.”

“How about assault on a police officer?” Kramer said. “He took a swing at me.”

“Sure,” Jud said. “Write that up, too.” He left them, walking toward his office.

Behind him he heard Scalzo yell, “This is all bullshit, I’m telling you. Wait ’til I call my lawyer. It’s bullshit, you hear me?”

And then Grady’s voice: “You don’t shut up I’ll bust your other eye.”

When he got to his office Jud hung up his cap and jacket and sat down at his desk, sliding the Rolodex over in front of him. He found the number for the Binghamton Police Department and dialed it. A cop answered and Jud told him who he was and asked to be connected to Chief Broadhurst.

When the chief came on the line he asked Jud how the Dickens case was doing. Jud told him about the Harper kid’s disappearance, knowing Broadhurst would be seeing the APB on it anyway. Then he asked the chief if he could have somebody do a rundown on a family named Donovan. Jud told him about the earlier homicide, explaining that John Donovan had gone to Binghamton afterward. He’d worked for an insurance agency there but Jud didn’t know which one. Broadhurst said he’d do what he could and that he’d call back as soon as he had something. Jud thanked him and hung up.

3

Billy Swanson put on his varsity sweater and drove the Bronco to the Boggs house to pick up Alice. Her parents were at home, and so was her brother, so Billy had no intention of staying there. The plan was to go over to Pat Campbell’s. Pat’s folks were out for the evening and her kid sister was spending the night at a friend’s, which would give them the run of the Campbell house. Pat had called Alice earlier to give her the word, and between them they had hatched the program. Jeff Peterson would be coming over, and so would Johnny Lombardi and Betty Melcher.