Hire a Hangman (8 page)

Only a moment after Hastings had pressed the button beside the apartment’s single outside door, the door swung open.

“Mr. Hanchett? John Hanchett?” As he spoke, Hastings offered his gold inspector’s shield.

Staring down at the shield with his fix-focused eyes, Hanchett nodded. It was a rigid, stiff-necked nod, complementing the strange fixity of the eyes.

“I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings, Mr. Hanchett. I’m co-commander of Homicide. And I’m investigating the death of your father. I know it’s a bad time for you. But if you’ve got a few minutes …”

Immediately, Hanchett turned away and walked through the small kitchen to the adjoining living room, with its intimate view of the magnificent garden beyond. Both the kitchen and the living room were littered with the leavings of everyday life: dirty dishes stacked in the sink, food wrappers on the kitchen counters, newspapers and magazines and empty bottles and dirty glasses strewn about the living room, some of the mess on tables and shelving, some on couches and chairs, some on the expensive Oriental rug. The smell went with the litter: musty and pungent, the odor of indifference and defeat.

Hastings pocketed his shield, closed the outside door, and walked into the living room, where Hanchett sat slumped in a saddle-leather sling chair, his back to the view. Without being invited, Hastings cleared magazines and newspapers from one end of the couch and sat down.

“It’s pretty tough,” he offered, adding mechanically, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Sitting with his straightened legs spread wide, his long arms dangling, his head bowed moodily, Hanchett gave no sign of having heard.

“I—uh—I’ve only got a few questions,” Hastings said, “and then I’ll be—”

“He was never a father to me,” Hanchett muttered. “If you know anything about him—about us—then you know that. Even when he was living here, he was never a father, never a husband.” Like his dark, dead eyes, Hanchett’s voice was fixed—a low, leaden monotone.

“I’ve already talked to your mother,” Hastings offered.

“Then you know about him. If you talked to my mother, then you know.”

As Hastings nodded in response, an instant’s flash of memory erupted: his own mother, standing beside the kitchen table, reading the note his father had left propped against the salt cellar. He’d gone away with his girl Friday, his father had written. He was sorry.

Experimenting, Hastings decided to say, “Your father—uh—seems to’ve made a lot of enemies.”

Beyond a sharp, contemptuous grunt, John Hanchett made no reply. His posture remained unchanged: legs spread wide, arms slack, chin resting on his chest. Signifying that, cautiously, Hastings could take the next step: “It’s less than twenty-four hours, but already I’ve talked to several people, and heard about several more, who carried grudges against Dr. Hanchett. Deep grudges. Serious grudges.”

No response.

“What I—uh—the reason I rang your doorbell,” Hastings ventured, “is that I—uh—wondered where you were last night. It’s routine, you see, for us to—”

A harsh laugh suddenly convulsed the long, sprawled body; the legs and arms contracted, the head jerked up. The voice was falsetto-shrill:

“You think I killed him.”

Hastings drew a deep breath. “If I thought you’d killed him,” he said, measuring the words, “I’d’ve given you your Miranda rights. It’s the law.”

“‘You have the right to remain silent—’” It was a manic imitation of the TV-familiar ritual. “‘You have the right to—’
God.”
He interrupted himself. “Give me a break, Lieutenant. I might’ve
thought
about killing him—
fantasized
about killing him—hundreds of times. But—Christ—” Contemptuously, mock-sadly, John Hanchett shook his head. “You must be hallucinating, if you think I killed him.”

“Do you have any idea who might’ve done it?”

John Hanchett’s mouth twisted in a small, bitter smile. But the eyes remained coal-dead, sunken deep in the ravaged, sallow face. “If I had to guess,” he said, “then I’d choose his wife, Barbara. Otherwise known as the Dragon Lady.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“What about Paula Gregg?”

“Why would Paula do it?”

“Because,” Hastings answered, “Hanchett is supposed to have abused her when she was a child.”

“Who told you that?”

“No comment.”

“It was Mother. Wasn’t it?”

“Still no comment.”

“Mother gets fixated on ideas sometimes. That story about my father and Paula is one of her fixations. You have to make allowances. Especially when Mother’s drinking, which is most of the time.”

“Then you wouldn’t say Paula is a suspect.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll stick with Barbara Hanchett.”

“Also right.”

3:00
PM

As Hastings turned in to the 600 block of Moraga, the predictable happened: a bittersweet pang of recall. It was here, in San Francisco’s Sunset District, that he’d grown up. At the turn of the century the Sunset had been nothing more than sand dunes rolling gently down from the highlands of Twin Peaks to the ocean, with only an occasional house dotting the dunes. In the 1920s the dunes had been subdivided, and in the thirties the real-estate developers began covering the sand with small stucco row houses, affordable housing for the workingman.

Hastings parked the cruiser and consulted the slip of paper attached to the dashboard by a small magnet: Fred and Teresa Bell, 643 Moraga. The house was exactly what he’d known he would find: a small stucco house, attached on both sides. Like most houses in the 600 block of Moraga, the Bell house was adorned with a few terra-cotta roof tiles and hand-hewn timbers meant to suggest a Spanish influence. The house looked freshly painted; the small front garden was well tended.

Hastings cleared his unit with Communications, switched off the radio, locked the car, and began walking toward the Bell house. As he drew closer, a sense of reluctance compounded his previous nostalgia. Interrogating the victim’s widow and his ex-wife was part of the homicide detective’s standard job description. Coping with parents who’d watched their child slowly die of liver failure was something else.

In response to a loud buzzer, the front door opened promptly. A bald, slightly built man stood in the doorway. His face was pale and narrow, his mouth permanently drawn, as if he’d always been in pain. When he looked down at the badge Hastings held in his hand, the man’s eyes widened. It was a common response. A response of the timid—

Or the guilty.

“Mr. Bell?”

A nervous tongue-tip touched pale lips. “Yes. Fred Bell.” He continued to stare down at the badge.

“I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings, Mr. Bell. I’m in charge of the investigation into the death of Dr. Brice Hanchett.” He spoke flatly, matter-of-factly, as if he assumed that Bell already knew Hanchett had been murdered.

Bell’s instantaneous reaction was shock—sharp, stunned, spontaneous shock. The reaction was unmistakable, more revealing than the results of any polygraph. Until that moment, Fred Bell hadn’t known of the murder.

But, just as certainly, just as irrevocably, Bell possessed guilty knowledge.

Susan Parrish hadn’t spoken of Fred Bell, the husband, but only of the dead child’s mother.

Instinctively taking a single step backward as he covertly unbuttoned his jacket and inched his right hand closer to the .38 holstered at his belt, Hastings drew a long, measured breath. It was important, he’d learned, never to reveal the excitement of the hunter at the first sight of his prey. Therefore, he must control both his facial expression and his speech. Thus the deep breath. Thus the carefully neutral voice as he asked, “Can we step inside, Mr. Bell?”

“Oh.
Oh.
Yes. Sure. Please.” Anxiously, Bell stepped back, waited for Hastings to enter the hallway. Then Bell closed the door—and locked it.

For Hastings, the house’s interior and its furnishings evoked another pang of recollection and recall. The narrow entry hallway, the crocheted antimacassars pinned to the overstuffed furniture, the ruffled curtains at the windows and the ruffled shades on the lamps, all of it was there. All carefully cared for, each item of furniture precisely placed, each dust-free surface gleaming.

As they sat down facing each other, Hastings said, “You didn’t know about Dr. Hanchett’s death.”

Quickly, anxiously, Bell shook his head. “No. I—” He faltered. “I work nights, you see, and I sleep during the day. So I never hear the news. Not until later in the day.”

“Ah.” As if he were satisfied, Hastings nodded. “Yes, I see. But you knew him, of course.”

“Oh, yes. I—”

From the hallway behind his chair, Hastings sensed movement, confirmed by the shift of Fred Bell’s eyes, tracking the movement. Turning, Hastings saw a woman standing silently in the archway. The instant’s evocation was of stark black-and-white photographs documenting the Great Depression. One of those photographs, Hastings vividly remembered, showed an emaciated, hollow-eyed woman standing in the doorway of a sharecropper’s shack. The woman’s face was wasted, a haunted mask of utter despair.

But Teresa Bell’s eyes, abnormally large in her thin, ravaged face, burned with an emotion more desperate than despair. Plainly, Teresa Bell was deranged.

Instantly, Fred Bell was on his feet and at her side, his hand touching her arm as if to turn her aside, to deflect her. As though seeking some terrible truth, Bell’s eyes searched her face as he moved protectively between his wife and Hastings, who was also on his feet.

“Teresa, this—this doesn’t concern you. It’s—please—” Bell increased the pressure on her arm, half turning her away.

“Wait.” Hastings stepped forward. “It’s all right, Mr. Bell. I’d like to talk to both of you.”

“But—”

Preempting a response, Hastings gestured to the woman, inviting her into the living room. But, shaking off her husband’s hand, she stood motionless, her dark, manic eyes fixed on Hastings.

“Teresa. Please. You—”

Sharply raising his hand to cut off the husband, Hastings spoke directly to the woman: “Dr. Hanchett was killed last night, Mrs. Bell.” It was a statement, not a question. It was an accusation.

Still staring, she made no response. Resigned, Fred Bell took his hand from her arm, stepped back. Hastings could hear Bell’s breathing, shallow and rigid, as if an anxiety attack were imminent.

“You knew Hanchett was dead.” It was another statement.

Slowly, gravely, she nodded. “Oh, yes. I knew.” A pause. Then: “He killed Timothy, you know. Timmy died because of Dr. Hanchett.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. She wore a shapeless housedress and run-over fuzzy house slippers adorned with felt rabbits. The dress revealed nothing of the woman’s body beneath. Her short dark hair was hardly combed.

“I know about Timmy.” Holding her feverish gaze, Hastings spoke softly. “It was terrible, about Timmy.”

“But now Dr. Hanchett is dead.”

“Yes,” he answered. “Dr. Hanchett is dead.” He spoke slowly, leadenly, in cadence with her.

“Teresa, I don’t want you to—”

Hastings gripped Bell’s arm hard enough to silence the smaller man. For a long moment there was no sound. As Teresa Bell’s eyes slowly wandered far away, both Hastings and Bell stared at her with gathering intensity. Then the woman focused her gaze on Hastings as she said, “He’s here, you know.” She gestured vaguely. “Would you—”

“Teresa, for God’s sake.” Bell twisted away, broke Hastings’s grip, went to his wife, and took rough hold of her arms as he forced her to look at him. “Teresa, I want you to go to the bedroom.” He shook her. “Close the door. I want you to close the door and lock it. I’ll handle this. You can’t—”

Suddenly she threw her arms wide and flung him away. Shrieking incoherently, she crossed the living room in three strides to stand beside the fireplace. Hastings saw a large picture of a boy hung above the fireplace. It was a hand-colored photograph, elaborately framed.

Beneath the picture, on the fireplace’s wooden mantelpiece, a bower of pine boughs was arranged. The arrangement was centered on a small amber-colored onyx urn.

As suddenly as it had come, Teresa Bell’s agony passed, leaving her leaning with her head pressed against the fireplace’s brick chimney, exhausted, her eyes fixed on the urn.

Timmy.

Timmy’s ashes, in the amber onyx urn.

As the three stood motionless, the silence lengthened. Then, with his eyes still on the woman standing across the room, Hastings spoke softly to Bell.

“You said you were working last night.” As he asked the question, Hastings half turned toward the man standing beside him. Visibly, Bell was surrendering to despair, shrinking from within. Still fixed on Teresa Bell, who was standing motionless, staring at the urn, Fred Bell’s eyes had gone as hollow as his wife’s.

“Mr. Bell.” Hastings let a moment pass. “Answer me, please.”

“Yes,” Bell whispered. “Yes. I worked last night. The eight-to-four shift.”

“And your wife was alone last night.”

“She was here. Right here.”

But the doubt was plainly readable in Bell’s tortured eyes. “Right here,” he repeated as he went to his wife, put his arms around her, let her head fall on his shoulder as she began to sob: deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body.

Finally her sobs faded to silence, but the grief-frozen tableau held: the woman’s head buried against the man’s shoulder, his arms holding her while her arms hung slack. Then, indistinctly, Hastings heard the woman speak. “I wanted him to die, Fred. I wanted him to die like Timmy died. I wanted it to be slow. Not fast. Slow.” Suddenly she twisted in her husband’s arms. Eyes blazing, she searched his face. “He’s dead, Fred. You didn’t pray for him to die. But I did. I prayed.”

3:20
PM

He watched Hastings leave the Bell house, go down the steps to the street, walk to the Ford sedan parked across the street. The detective moved easily, confidently, as if he knew he carried with him the full force of the law, society’s broad-shouldered guardian, the man with the badge and the gun.

The man who was stalking his prey. Closer—closer.

Hastings and all the others, searching, tightening the noose. A cliché. A dark, dangerous cliché, a morass. The mind of a murderer, meaningless tangles of insanity and lucidity: his only instrument of survival.