Hangman: A Novel (11 page)

A memory came to her, unbidden. She’d come to this neighborhood when she was doing her alumni interview for Yale, her senior year at Mount Mercy Academy in the County. She remembered the outfit she’d worn: a Donegal tweed skirt and a severe black sweater, gray tights and her favorite black pumps, modest but still an extra inch of height when you really needed it. They were her “I’m Getting Out of Buffalo” clothes. She’d driven herself; she didn’t want her father to take her, wanted to start the separation process right then.

For Abbie, the North was lawyers, gated communities, Protestants, schools like the Nardin Academy or Nichols, playing fields full of clean-limbed young people in sweaters playing exotic games like field hockey
or lacrosse, unknown in the football-mad County. When she was growing up, it was a place populated by another race of people—people very much unlike the hot-blooded, quick-to-anger Celts she lived with.

The Yale alum who interviewed her had been a pediatric surgeon with thinning hair and bright, perceptive eyes. He’d taken her through his house, an old Colonial with threadbare Oriental rugs, showing her photos of his college friends he’d kept for forty years, pictures of him rowing lightweight crew on the Charles River when they raced Harvard, his junior year abroad “digs” in Prague, reunions full of men in fitted suits,
another world
. She’d warmed to him in the house, felt like she was being welcomed into a new family. Walking through the hallways lined in hardwood, she’d said to herself:
Yes, please. I’ll take it, all of it. I can move in right away
.

The surgeon had treated her like an equal, like someone who already belonged.

And then at the end, he’d said something odd. “You know,” he’d said while they were sitting on his leather couch with a fire roaring in the overlarge hearth, “when I heard there was a candidate from the County, I thought it was a mistake. I was sure I was going to open the door and …” His eyes opened wide and his face tightened with an expression of mock terror. He threw his hands up.

And Abbie had stared at him with hatred. You expected what, she thought, an animal? Some drunken half-wit? She’d felt a hot surge of loyalty to the County, maybe for the first time in her life.

But she’d swallowed, counted to three, and kept her poise. “What did you expect?” she said brightly.

“Who knows!” he cried out, his hands slapping on his thighs.

And then: “I have to tell you,” he whispered, his hand on the couch between them, leaning toward her. “I double-checked with the SAT people. You know, just in case.”

Abbie hadn’t understood at first, but felt her heart go icy anyway. Something in his tone had changed.

“You checked my SATs?” she said.

The surgeon’s eyes were fish eyes cold now, deepwater fish eyes. He’d called about the SATs to make sure she hadn’t sent another student to take the test instead of her, a Nardin girl or some Jewish whiz
kid from the rich suburbs. Bitterness flooded every cell of her being. Her SAT scores were her ticket out, the most precious things she possessed.

Abbie had hissed at him to go fuck himself, slammed the door behind her, and run to her father’s car, parked at the curb. Then she’d burst into tears. Two weeks later she’d aced the interview for Harvard and never looked back.

Let it go, she thought now. Their kids are dying.

But does the killer feel what I felt toward the North? Envy? Or is it just pure rage?

In the Stoltzes’ backyard, McGonagle appeared at her elbow, still dressed in the leather jacket. She flinched. He was like a ghost, an all-knowing ghost.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Everyone calling me with so many fucking questions, thought I’d come answer them face-to-face.”

Abbie narrowed her eyes. “That’s bullshit.”

He laughed. “Okay, so it’s bullshit.”

“Is there something—”

McGonagle held up both hands in front of him, as if he was trying to calm an angry bear. “I’m here to say that Hangman is an open wound with me and my friends. You understand? He should have died five years ago. We want him caught and put away. Nothing’s more important than that. So anything you want, you come to me and ask. Did you hear what I just said? The word I used was
anything
.”

Abbie couldn’t help herself. Her head tilted back almost luxuriantly and she laughed.

So here it is at last, she thought, the invitation to the shadow force, aka the Murphia, i.e., the Network, that lawless society of cops, ex-cops, and God knew who else that she always knew existed but who everyone denied even hearing about. Cops helping out cops. Favors for the boys. Specializing in everything from parking tickets to, apparently, serial killer investigations. The world her father walked in and was worshipped by.

The Network was what the County had instead of money.

“Aren’t you supposed to be wearing a black hood or something, or at least a green silk sash and a shillelagh?” Abbie said.

McGonagle smiled grimly. “Don’t fucking flatter yourself. You’re not wanted.”

“Then what is this?”

McGonagle frowned and gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders.
It means whatever you want it to mean
. “Let’s just call it a seventy-two-hour-pass, huh? You need a phone call made, it will be made. You need a door opened, we’ll make sure it’s unlocked when you get there. When Hangman is found, the pass expires.”

Abbie glowered at him.

“Does the name Stacy Jefferson mean anything to you?”

McGonagle’s face went perfectly still.

Stacy Jefferson had been the first female black detective on the force. She’d been a local girl, from the tough-if-not-lethal Bailey section near downtown Buffalo. She’d had two solid parents with city jobs and she’d made it to the Violent Crimes division in 2004, her childhood dream. She’d won awards for her outreach to the black community, but she wasn’t window dressing. Abbie had heard she was a detective’s detective—a bulldog with skills. Then a year after she joined Violent Crimes, she’d gotten caught driving a Ford Mustang up from South Carolina with a half-kilo of cocaine tucked inside the door panels. She’d fought the charges, claiming a conspiracy. She’d lost badly, been kicked off the force, and was doing serious time downstate.

Abbie had heard the real story from another female detective at a barbecue that summer, after the cop had one too many piña coladas. Stacy Jefferson had caught a case involving the head of the Common Council, Buffalo’s city legislature. It was a corruption case: a black council member who’d arranged for his secretary (“the only thing she could dictate,” said the drunk detective, “was their sexual positions”) to live in one of the new condos being built off of Delaware for needy but worthy families. The white Mercedes convertible parked in the driveway had alerted the secretary’s neighbors that she was hardly
needy, and a quick check of her work record had turned up her connection to the city council. Jefferson was assigned the folder.

Jefferson had the secretary dead to rights, but the detective knew it was the council member who was pulling the strings. As soon as she started down that road, however, she’d been stonewalled. She couldn’t find any paper trail linking the condo to the politician; the wiretap was clean; the secretary teary but silent. So Detective Jefferson had turned to the Network. She’d asked a white detective if he could talk to the donors to the councilman’s campaign, see if they could cull one of them from the pack, get them to admit who was funding the secretary’s lifestyle. That was her guess: a rich donor paying for the condo. It was then that Jefferson’s new boyfriend had turned up in her life, sweet, handsome, and a graduate of the same high school she’d gone to. Jefferson had agreed to drive his car back from South Carolina. She’d been pulled over at the city line for a broken taillight and suddenly Jefferson’s badge didn’t work for getting off minor traffic offenses. The dope was found by a German shepherd, and the boyfriend turned out to be an ex-con released early from Attica. He disappeared, along with the case against the council member.

“What about her?” McGonagle said.

Abbie laughed and shook her head. “What you’re forgetting is that I’m a second-generation cop. Jefferson was naive. I’m not.”

“We didn’t fuck Stacy Jefferson. Her jailbird boyfriend did.”

“Yeah, and I heard he’s working for a construction company in South Carolina owned by a Buffalo cop’s brother.”

McGonagle smiled. “Everyone deserves a second chance, Abbie. This is America.”

Abbie studied McGonagle. “How old is she?”

McGonagle squinted and turned his head. She felt, almost as a physical shock, the potential for violence in him. “How old is who?” he growled.

“The teenage girl who got you to offer me the special member’s pass for blacks and women.”

McGonagle’s face seemed frozen. Then he looked away. “You’re a fucking witch, you know that?” he whispered.

Abbie waited. After a moment, the retired detective spoke again.

“My granddaughter. Moira. She’s fourteen. Red hair, and probably out of Hangman’s demo, but who’s gonna take a fucking chance with that? There are a lot of Moiras out there.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Abbie could tell he was studying her.

“There are things you’re going to understand thirty years from now,” said McGonagle. “The cases you want to solve before you die. I don’t want to go out with Hangman still on the books. He’s unfinished business of the worst kind.”

Abbie thought about it. “No thanks,” she said finally.

McGonagle folded his arms. “I understand where you’re coming from, but this isn’t the time to be all lily-white about things. We don’t have time on this one.”

“I’m not being lily-white. And ‘we’ doesn’t exist. This is my investigation.”

She heard his voice drop. “Abbie?” he said.

McGonagle had taken a step or two toward her and the streetlight behind him threw his face into shadow. He moved chest-first, like a soldier.

“You’d call the shots,” he said. “We can do it clean, too.”

“Go home, McGonagle.”

He stood there, looming, dark-faced, then turned on his heel and walked away.

Abbie saw Raymond leading a band of men—deputies
, uniforms, detectives—through the gate, lining up at the back edge of the deck. The faces were turned her way, anxious, noses chapped red from the wind, eyes solemn. They were going to walk the yard looking for clues.

Raymond sidled up to her. “Gonna fuck up my Ferragamos.”

Abbie grimaced. “Why’d you dress for a first date anyway?”

Raymond looked at the line of men, still forming up. “You wanna know why black detectives dress nice? Because when one of you ofays sees me running down the street with a gun, I want you to think, ‘Was that Billy Dee Williams I just saw?’ That way, I don’t get shot, see? Cuz who’s gonna shoot Billy Dee?”

Abbie smiled. “I want you to go slow back there. Got it?”

Raymond nodded, then turned and called out, “Gentlemen, listen up. We’re going shoulder to shoulder …”

She moved away, toward Martha. There was something she wanted to look at before the techs arrived. The right hand. It bothered her.

Abbie found a heavy wooden box, an old apple crate with metal corners pounded into the wood, lying upside-down at the base of a
moss-covered tree. She hefted it and carried it to the body, swaying in the wind. She put it down at Martha’s feet.

Abbie gently held Martha’s right arm as she stepped up, to keep the body from twirling away from her. When she was steady on the box, Abbie reached out and felt in the girl’s pockets, her fingers swishing inside until she felt the seam at the bottom. The left pocket yielded a Starbucks receipt from 12:14 that afternoon. Abbie pulled out an evidence bag and slipped it inside, then placed the bag in her front pocket. But it was the right hand that intrigued her. She cupped it in hers. The fingers were curled inward. Abbie brought the hand up and looked at the fingernails. A little blood under fingers two and three, possibly some skin cells mixed in—that would be for the techs to decide. Was Martha trying to grab her attacker, was that why the hand was curled like this? The hand had been doing something at the time of death. But what?

The hand was empty. Abbie looked around the ground in a circle. Nothing but dry leaves and broken twigs.

The scratches above Martha’s left breast would correspond with the right hand reaching up. Maybe she was clawing at the rope, a natural response to being strangled.

Abbie reached forward and began to pat the body. The sweater was light wool and she could feel Martha’s cold skin beneath. Nothing around the back. She moved her hands to the front of the body and felt the outline of a bra. Abbie tried not to look at Martha’s eyes.

Her hands descended toward the girl’s waist. As it moved down, Abbie felt something clumped under the material. She looked around and saw the line of cops moving toward her. She waited until it passed, the men parting on the left and right of her, and moved on. Then she lifted the hem of the sailor’s sweater and placed her hand underneath. Cold flesh. And then, to the right, something else. Paper.

She pulled it out.

A crumpled piece of paper, torn in half. A vein beat in Abbie’s neck; she took a deep breath. She stepped off the apple box, the wind ruffling in her ears. The paper was wrinkled, lined in blue like school loose-leaf, no punched holes. The writing was in black ink. She spotted five letters as the wind lifted the top flap of the paper.
ished
.

She took the corner and slowly unfolded it.

Three and a half lines in a haggard scrawl.

This life is so terrible
.

Darkness is everywhere. The evil-doers are not punished
.

They are not your children
.

I live where

The last line was cut off.

Abbie stood, her mouth slightly open. Then she took her phone out and took a photograph of the note.

Raymond had spotted her. He came walking back as the line of men trudged through the undergrowth. “Two Frito-Lay bags and some empty Jack Daniel’s wine cooler bottles so far. Not much of a party.”