The Headsman (16 page)

Alice continued to gaze fixedly at the flames. “I wonder what he’s gonna say now.”

“Who?” He moved his hand around the side of her body, continuing the stroking motion as his fingers touched the curve of her breast.

She seemed not to notice the exploring hand. “Hathaway. It’d be just like the jerk to say I told you so.”

“He probably realizes what a horse’s ass he made of himself.”

“Maybe. But I still think it was weird that he was talking about the headsman, and then the same night Marcy was killed.”

“Yeah.” His hand closed gently, and he rubbed his thumb against her nipple. He was aware that he had produced an iron-hard erection.

Alice slowly turned toward him. “You know something?”

“What?”

“You’re getting me excited.”

Jesus, he certainly hoped so. He pulled her tight against him and mashed his mouth against hers. Her tongue was hot and slippery and he felt as if he was ready to explode.

She pulled away a little and there was urgency in her voice. “Come on, Billy. What are you waiting for?”

He fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. The hell with going upstairs. Once again, the sofa would do just fine.

Five

NOT ALWAYS WHAT
THEY SEEM

1

O
N
M
ONDAY THE
Express
ran another front-page story on the case, with a banner headline that read:

TEENAGER’S MURDER FANS HEADSMAN LEGEND

The byline was Sally Benson’s. Jud read the piece and sighed. She’d opened the article with another account of the Dickens killing, and then had gone into the headsman legend and its origins. There were grisly descriptions of how the executioner had lopped his victims’ heads off, interwoven with references to the kinds of crimes that had resulted in such punishment in the old days.

Jud suspected a lot of the story had been created in Sally’s mind; she had no more idea than he did as to what actually had gone on back then. What she had written was largely what she’d imagined it had been like. Or what she thought would most titillate her readers.

The piece also contained quotes from Inspector Pearson but none from Jud, although it did refer to the police picking up vagrants and other suspicious characters and not finding a suspect. And just as in the TV coverage, there were interviews with local citizens, along with their pictures. It seemed to Jud the people interviewed had been chosen on the basis of their absolute belief in the headsman and his guilt in Marcy’s murder.

It also seemed Sally had outdone all the other papers in providing sensational coverage of the case. Job or no job, big opportunity or not, he wished he could put a bag over her head until this damned thing was cleaned up. What was as galling as any of it was that Grady pointedly avoided making any reference to the article. The effect was to make Jud all the more aware that Sally had added fuel to the fire. In that sense, the headline to her story was entirely appropriate.

The telephone rang. He pushed the papers aside and answered it. The voice on the other end had a down-home twang that was deceptive. “’Morning, Chief. George Ternock here.”

“Hello, George.” Jud sat up straight at his desk, as if erect posture would make him more alert. Ternock was a shrewd lawyer, and when you dealt with him you were well advised to pay attention. “What can I do for you?”

“You can stay off Buddy Harper’s back.”

He could picture Ternock sitting with telephone in hand, dark eyes cold beneath his shock of white hair. “Are you representing Buddy, George?”

“The Harper family have been my clients for a long time. Three generations of them. Do you have a charge you want to bring against the boy?”

“He’s not charged with anything. All I did was have him in for a talk. He was one of the last people to see Marcy Dickens alive, which certainly made him important to the case, and maybe a suspect.”

“Ayuh, and that’s reasonable. But now you’ve had two cracks at him, and that’s enough.”

“I had him in once, George.”

“So did Inspector Pearson, which makes two times he was questioned. The boy’s under a lot of strain, without the police adding to it. Marcy’s death was a terrible shock to him.”

“It was to everyone.”

“So if you have anything further you want to ask him about, you better have a good reason.”

“An unsolved homicide’s a good reason, isn’t it?”

“Certainly is. But disrupting the boy’s life amounts to harassment, and you have no right to do that. You have absolutely nothing to indicate he was inside the Dickens house that night, do you?”

Jud wondered if Ternock was probing and decided he wasn’t. The lawyer didn’t bluff, and he didn’t operate on hunches. “Like I said, George, we’re not charging him with anything.”

“Of course you’re not. There’s nothing to charge him with.”

“That’s true for the moment, anyway. But even if it is, we may need him as a material witness at some point.”

“That’ll be up to the county attorney,” Ternock said. “Not you. First a case has to be presented to a grand jury.”

“I understand that.”

“In the meantime, I’ll expect you to let the boy get on with his life. His parents are quite upset with all this, as you’d imagine they would be.”

“I know they are. I’ve spoken with his father.”

“So he told me. Let me point something out to you, Jud. You should keep in mind that after you break this case, if you do, you’ll want to go on being an important part of the community. Wouldn’t do to rub people the wrong way. Braddock is a small town.”

There it was again. Ternock was being more subtle than the group at Sam Melcher’s home had been yesterday, but not much. Certainly the message was the same.
Do your job, solve this dirty problem, but respect the station of those above you
.

“Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, George. You do.”

“Good. I wish you luck in your investigation.” There was a click and then the hum of the dial tone in Jud’s ear.

2

In the afternoon Jud drove over to Dr. Reinholtz’s office for a copy of the coroner’s report and also one on the autopsy, which had been conducted that morning. The doctor was brisk and businesslike, but despite his manner and his jaunty bowtie there was a touch of sadness about him that Jud caught. Which was certainly understandable. Reinholtz had been a doctor in this town for decades; there was hardly anyone he didn’t know, and a great many of the locals were his patients. That probably had included Marcy Dickens.

Reinholtz confirmed it. “I delivered her, you know.”

“No,” Jud said. “I didn’t know.”

“Oh, yes. Saw her through measles and flu, and a broken wrist when she fell off her bike. She was about seven when that happened. Great kid. Had her whole life ahead of her.”

“You confirm what killed her?”

“I’d say a blow from an ax, just as we suspected.”

“Couldn’t have been from some other kind of weapon?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t know what it would have been. Had to be very sharp and very heavy. Sliced her larynx and severed her spine at the fifth cervical vertebra. Death was almost instantaneous.”

“What do you mean,
almost
instantaneous?”

Reinholtz shrugged. “When someone’s decapitated, the brain stays alive for a few more seconds.”

Jud felt a crawling sensation at the back of his neck. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying she was conscious
afterward
?”

“Probably. But only until the blood drained away and the brain was deprived of oxygen. That would have been just a moment or two later.”

“So in other words, she could have thought about what had happened to her? After her head was separated from her body?”

“She could have had an impression, yes.”

“Holy Christ.”

The doctor waved a hand impatiently. “For all practical purposes, she died instantly.”

Not quite, Jud thought. Not quite. He was silent for a minute or so, numbed by what he’d learned. Then he shook himself out of it. “You find any sign of a struggle?”

“Just one. There was a bruise on the underside of her jaw.”

Jud hadn’t noticed it when he saw the body, but that probably was because of the way the head had been sitting on the dresser. “What caused it, could you tell?”

“Could have been a lot of things. A club, or a fist.”

“But fresh?”

“Yes. Inflicted at the same time.”

Jud tried to picture it. “Sounds as if he knocked her down, then swung the ax.”

“Probably, yes.”

“What about time of death?”

“Between midnight and two
A.M.”

“You find anything else?”

“There was semen in her vagina. We don’t have a lab report on that yet, but I expect it’ll be confirmed. She must have had intercourse not long before she died.”

Jud thought of his talk with Buddy Harper, and another idea came into his mind. “You think she was raped?”

“No, although it’s hard to say, under the circumstances. Wasn’t forcible rape, anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“Condition of the mucous membranes in the vaginal tract. When a woman is sexually excited in a normal situation, she’s lubricious. The juices flow, the penis slides. But when she’s frightened and angry, as in a rape, she’s dry. Even if the rapist uses some kind of lubricant, which would be unlikely, there can be damage. So what happens is, there are abrasions and sometimes even tears in the tissue. I found no evidence of anything like that.”

“So rape is out.”

“Not altogether. She could have been threatened, and then submitted without putting up resistance. But I don’t think so. She had intercourse, but in my opinion she wasn’t raped.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She had a boyfriend, right? The Harper kid?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so that could explain the semen. Inspector Pearson said they’d want a DNA analysis, and that’ll give us the answer.”

“How reliable is that?”

“Very. Before we had it, all the lab could tell you about a semen sample was blood type. Which made it pretty general. But now semen’s as good as a fingerprint, because the DNA can be identified. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid—the basic chromosonal material that reveals somebody’s hereditary pattern. Chances are something like one in ten billion that any two people would have the same DNA fragments. So you can positively identify somebody a female had sex with.”

Jud again thought of Buddy. The boy had admitted that he’d made it with Marcy that night, so the test would only confirm what Jud already knew. But what if she’d been raped after that?

“Let me ask you, Doc. This DNA test—would it work if she’d had intercourse with two guys?”

“You mean if there was semen from two different people?”

“Yes.”

“Sure it would. The test would distinguish between them and still identify both. What made you ask that?”

“Nothing, I was just curious. When will you have the results?”

“Tomorrow morning. I’ll call you as soon as I get them.”

Jud thanked him and went back to his own office. What he wanted to get going on now was questioning more of Marcy’s friends. One of the unfortunate side effects of trying to conduct an investigation in a small town was that you couldn’t say good morning to someone without everybody else knowing all about it, but that couldn’t be helped. A little later on he’d go over to the high school. He looked at his watch. It was still early; he flicked through the reports on his desk.

One of them caught his eye. Philip Mariski had called yesterday and insisted the cops drag Kretchmer’s pond. Jud wondered why that had come up now. He noted that Grady had agreed to look into it. Jud made a mental note to stop by the pond before going to the high school.

3

An ambulance and a police car and three other vehicles were parked beside the road when Jud arrived. He pulled up behind the cruiser and got out, looking across the snow-covered field at Kretchmer’s pond. He could see a boat on the pond with several occupants in it and a small group of people standing at the water’s edge.

He trudged through the snow to where the onlookers were gathered. When he got there he saw that the men in the boat had used poles to break up the ice on the pond. He recognized Philip Mariski among the people in the group on the shore and nodded to him. Overhead the sky had turned leaden once again and there was a threat of more snow in the air. A slight wind was blowing out of the east and it was raw and cold and Jud turned up the collar of his jacket.

As he watched, the men in the boat poled the vessel toward the shore. One of them was a cop, Charley Ostheimer. The other two were men who worked for Braddock’s department of public works. They were silent and grim-faced, and as they came closer Jud saw something lying on the bottom of the boat, covered by a blanket. When they reached land the men got out and lifted the bundle from the boat. An ambulance attendant raised one corner of the blanket.

The boy’s face was bloated, but not as much as it would have been, Jud realized, if the water had been warmer. The skin was pasty white, the lips blue. His eyes were half-opened slits in the swollen face. Philip Mariski pushed close and groaned, then turned away. The men carried the small body to the ambulance.

Mariski walked alone to his car, a battered Chevy sedan. He bent over the roof of the vehicle and buried his face in his arms, his shoulders shaking. Jud went to him and stood by, wishing there was something he could do to ease the man’s pain and knowing there wasn’t.

After a minute or two Mariski pulled himself erect. He got a bandanna out of the back pocket of his blue work pants and blew his nose loudly. He noticed Jud standing near him and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” Jud said. “I’m really sorry.”

Mariski’s eyes were redrimmed in his dark face. He wiped them with the bandanna, then blew his nose again. “She knew,” he said. “She
knew
.”

“Who knew what?”

“That woman. That goddamn woman. She knew where he was. She knew he was drowned in there. She knew right where to look.”

“What woman?”

“Said her name’s Karen Wilson. Works at Boggs Ford. I’m telling you, she
knew
.”