Hangman: A Novel (7 page)

Just like Attica in ’71, Abbie thought. These grim, square-jawed faces, like the ones of soldiers on Russian monuments to World War II, were the same as those cops. From those newsreels, she’d always thought of the men out here as some kind of other species. Killers, really.

“Here you go,” the van driver said as they pulled up to the entrance to a small lane to the left.

“Don’t leave me.”

The driver nodded as Abbie dropped to the street. She let a car pass—behind the wheel, a fat-faced blond woman with eyes wide as she stared at the cops massed by the entrance before speeding off. Abbie hung her badge around her neck and let it rest on her black wool coat, then strode up the lane, her leather boots squelching in the mud. Cops coming the other way glanced briefly at her, some opened their mouths, then spotted the badge and went back to their conversations.
She walked five minutes before the trees to her left and right, which had huddled above her, their branches interweaving, began to space out and then fell away. The ruts of the lane petered out and she walked onto a grassy clearing.

There was a white van with NY STATE CORRECTIONS written in blue on the side. The sliding door was open and men were watching something in the backseat. Abbie walked over.

A sheriff’s deputy turned, feeling her presence as she walked up. He nodded and touched the tip of his wide-brimmed hat. Country manners.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s going on in there?”

“A re-creation,” he said quietly. “Seeing if Hangman could really have gotten out of the restraints. They fixed Williamson up just like he left Auburn and put a key in his mouth. He’s our best tech guy.”

“Our” would refer to the Wyoming County Sheriff’s Department, by the patch on his heavy olive-colored nylon jacket.

“How’d he do?”

“Took him three tries but he got it. The seat belt, believe it or not, played a big part. If it was loose enough for him to lean forward, then Hangman could have gotten the key down to his hands and spit it out. Then he got Fatty Joe’s gun. He was a good guy. I knew him.”

The deputy brought up his iPhone, and stared at it.

“That a picture?” Abbie said.

“Yup.” He handed her the phone. “People’ve been sending it around.”

Fatty Joe Carlson was smiling, standing in front of a late-model Corvette, his arm around a young boy in a football outfit. Abbie peered closely at the image. Carlson was dressed in a richly colored Missoni sweater—the kind with the wavy stripes—and pressed jeans. She spotted the watch on his wrist, which had a distinctive clasp over the crown. A Panerai. She knew the brand, as her ex-husband had bought the classic model for Christmas one year, with Abbie’s money.

Carlson’s son was wearing a forest green football uniform, pads, and a helmet that seemed impossibly large for him. Across the forest front of the uniform, “School Saints” was written in white.

“That his son?” she said.

“Yeah, Joe Jr.”

“He goes to Cortland Christian?”

“Yup. Plays football.”

“That poor boy,” Abbie said. She released the man’s wrist and the phone dropped away.

She meant it. She thought about the boy that Hangman had made an orphan. He’s probably been told something bad had happened to his daddy, and that he wasn’t going to school tomorrow. Later they’d tell him his father was never coming home and he needed to go to the mall to buy a new suit. Black.

“He drove a ’Vette?” Abbie asked.

The cop’s face froze. “What the fuck does it matter what he drove? He’s dead.”

“I’m just wondering if Hangman could have the keys.” No she wasn’t.

“Oh,” the deputy said. “Sorry. No, he left the keys in his locker at Auburn.”

Abbie nodded. She was doing figures in her head. Basic addition. And the figures weren’t adding up.

She circled around the vehicle, then walked past it toward the top of the hill twenty yards away. It was a steep crest that gave way, lower down, to pine trees and scrub that formed a dark belt around the middle of the hill. A couple of deputies were deep in conversation, looking out over the flat valley, the wide brims of their hats tilting like ringed planets as they moved their heads.

The grass swished against her boots as she came up to the edge and looked down. Cars swept by on the road that snaked along the base of the hill. An Amoco gas station to the left was busy; she counted all four pumps occupied by cars, two of them official. Cops would be filling up on their way to manning the roadblocks. She followed the road along to the right and there was the black roof of the Warsaw Motel, missing a few shingles.

There was a group of teenage boys, two of them on ten-speed bicycles, gathered in the early evening light out in front of the motel. They
were crouched over the handlebars, whispering together and glancing occasionally at the place. Maybe they thought the killer was coming back to the scene of his last crime. Right now, this must be the most famous place in Wyoming County.

So why did the Corrections officer bring Hangman to a spot overlooking the motel where he’d been captured?

Abbie felt the breeze steady on her face, running up the slope and cresting over, a clean fall wind that smelled faintly of pine.

Abbie looked down. Hangman knew we’d find the van eventually. But what if there was something he didn’t want us to see?

She sighed and stepped down the steep bluff. A flat rock buckled under her boot heel and went slapping down the hillside, picking up speed.

“Hey,” one of the deputies called. “What the hell you doing?”

“Investigating,” she called back, turning quickly to place her hands on the grassy slope. She began to crawl down the hill, like a backward crab, eyes darting left and right. Loose rocks went spilling down, sending up little trails of airborne dust.

The two men were looking down at her, their hats appearing as dark saucers against the dying sun.

The hill was covered with scrub and shallow-rooted grass that tore away in her hands. Ten feet down, her left foot slipped back dangerously and Abbie dug the toe of the right one in.

The ground leveled out a bit and she was able to stand. She looked back up the hill. No garbage or trash—it didn’t appear the hill was a lookout or a lovers’ hideout. The grass waved back and forth, and a small contrail of dust lingered where she’d come sliding down. Abbie turned and surveyed below her. The gradient got even steeper before it flattened out about thirty yards below.

She spotted something shiny five feet to her left and up a bit. She scrambled along the little ledge until she reached it. Shotgun shell, half-planted in the dirt, already rusting, the brass base shining slightly. Abbie tossed it down the hill.

She was turning to assume the crab position when she saw something else. It was down eight or nine feet, a ball of something blue
caught in the root of a scraggly purple flower. Abbie’s brow creased as she walked carefully toward it. She slid, catching plants with her hand to keep her from tumbling down the slope. A yellow-topped weed came away in her hand and she swung away from the hill, feeling herself tip backward. She went with the momentum and turned all the way over, collapsing onto the hill on her back.

“Careful now,” someone cried from up top.

If you were so concerned, she thought, you’d throw down a rope.

Abbie took a breath and turned her head to the left. There it was, rocking slightly in the wind. The glossy blue surface shone in the sun. Paper.

Abbie inched over, her throat dry from the dust. She crouched, her fingers scrabbling in the weeds, inching toward the blue ball. Another couple of inches. Her rib cage felt like it was going to separate at the breastbone. She lunged the extra two inches and felt the thing in her hands. She breathed out, tucked it into her lapel pocket, and began the laborious climb upward.

One of the deputies was waiting at the edge. He bent at the knees and offered her his hand.

“Long way to go for a piece of trash,” he said.

Abbie took his hand and he pulled her up with a strong tug. She vaulted up to the top of the hill and almost went tumbling the other way.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Might be something better than garbage,” she said. “Thanks.”

She pulled it out of her pocket and put her thumbs into the center of the ball, then carefully pulled it flat. A glossy photo, ripped along the left side. A line of rowboats was tied to a pier with dark blue water lapping at their gunwales. A man pulling the oars of a rowboat while a woman leaned back on the front wooden seat, a look of rapture on her face.

“Like I said, trash,” the man said, then walked off toward the Corrections van.

Something far off rang in Abbie’s mind, like a bell. Have I been there, she thought, the place in the picture?

Abbie smoothed the paper out against her palm. The paper crinkled as it unfolded. It was crisp, hadn’t been down there in the weeds for long.

Not a photo. A brochure. And she’d seen this brochure, years before. But what was it for?

“Wherewherewhere …” Abbie whispered.

Rowing a boat on a lake during the summer. She’d always wanted to do that, had asked her father once, but he said it was for the swells. She didn’t get it at the time—“swells,” like waves in the water. And rich people.

Abbie whipped out her phone, clicked on the web browser, and typed in “Hoyt Lake boat” in the search box. A website came up. “See the city in a whole new way!” said the banner headline. Underneath the picture unfolded slowly. The same skyline, the same tied-up boats. The same doofy couple.

Hoyt Lake Boat Rentals
, Abbie read. Hoyt Lake, in the middle of Delaware Park. In the North.

A surge of panic went through her as she stared at the image.

Martha Stoltz slammed the front door of her house on
Mill Lane, slung her schoolbag onto the leather couch, and headed straight upstairs. Her mother had asked her, no not asked,
ordered
Martha to scrub the tub the first thing after getting home from school. Martha was determined to get it done so she could have a text-storm with Jenn about what happened in Gym that morning. But first, chores. They were studying Italian fascism in History, and Martha had slowly come to the belief that her mother would have fit right in with Mussolini.

The tub had been a problem ever since her mother had ordered it last fall. It had looked white and shiny when the workmen installed it but it was just about the hardest thing on earth to keep clean. The pebbly surface of the bottom seemed to grip the dirt, and her mother hated dirt. Martha was beginning to think that her mother had OCD or something. She couldn’t stand to see a drop of maple syrup on the counter or a streak of dirt—plain, normal old dirt—in the bathroom. She’d even been rehanging the clothes in Martha’s closet so that they looked perfect.

The woman needed a vacation, or a boyfriend. A boyfriend would be
more fun. Maybe she could go to his house and straighten the clothes in
his
closets and give Martha a break.

Martha flicked on the bathroom light, sighed deeply at the sight of the dingy tub floor, then ducked down to the cabinet under the sink and found the Comet. Her mother would use only Comet, even though Martha told her the spray-and-wait cleaners worked just as well. She peeled back the label and breathed in. It was like sniffing glue, that first rush.

The pseudo-high lasted about ten seconds, then the smell began to turn her stomach. Martha turned back, rooted under the sink for a scrubbing brush, found one beneath a box of tampons, and turned on the bath tap, soaking the sponge as she sprinkled the Comet liberally across the tub’s floor.

Martha heard something, like a muffled shout. She paused for a second, but there was only silence and the wind rattling the electricity wires that attached to the house. She bent down and started to scrub.

She worked the brush vigorously, determined to get the cleaning done fast. The sides were easy but soon she was despairing at the ridges between the tiny bumps. Her triceps muscle began to ache, and the tendons in her wrist soon followed. She switched the brush to the other hand with a sigh.

Damn, damn, damn this tub, she thought.

She heard the sound again. Was someone shouting?

Martha spritzed the tub with water through her hand, spraying it to get the foamy residue, the color of sea foam, down the drain. She paused. That sound again. An echo of an echo.

She turned off the water and cocked her head.

The noise, now clearer. It was a dog barking.

“Oh, that bitch,” Martha said out loud. She pulled a towel from the rack, rubbed her hands on it quickly, and walked toward the stairs.

“Rufus?” she called out, her voice charged with concern.

Rufus was her dog and he was afraid of the dark. He literally shook when you put him in the closet for ten seconds. Any longer than that he would turn into a writhing ball of terror. It was
unconscionable
to put him in a dark place. But she heard the dog’s muffled barking,
which could only mean one thing: her mother had put Rufus in the basement again.

Martha charged down the stairs, whipped around and headed for the kitchen. “Damnherdamnherdamn—”

She slid into the kitchen and stopped. The sound was only slightly louder in here. Still an echo. Still far away. Was Rufus trapped down near the hot water boiler?

“Ruf—” she said, yanking back the basement door. A clammy smell came wafting up toward her, and she peered into the darkness framed by the door. She felt a small tremor of fear. The basement had always repulsed her. It was like some kind of tunnel to the middle of the earth. She was always afraid things were going to crawl up into the darkness through a pipe, giant earthworms or eyeless slugs. She knew it was ridiculous, but it didn’t stop the feelings.

The sound again, behind her. The barking wasn’t coming from down here. Rufus was outside.

She heard her phone buzz in her schoolbag. Mom, for sure, wanting to check on the progress of the tub. God, that woman.

She went to the back door and opened it and looked out over their enormous, overgrown backyard. Rufus had probably caught himself on the fence again, trying to shimmy underneath the chain link and catch one of the skinny rabbits that lived in the brush. His barking, though, was … hysterical. Nonstop.