The Headsman (24 page)

At the same time, he was secretly pleased that the car needed work. Getting his hands dirty by grubbing around in the engine’s innards was therapeutic for him, although he wouldn’t have recognized the process by that term. To him the simple fact was that tinkering with the car was one of the few things he could do that could get his mind off Marcy and what had happened to her.

Maybe the only thing.

He pulled the Chevy into the barn and turned on the lights, then closed the sliding door and went about getting the car ready to work on. It was the middle of the evening, and he had plenty of time. He’d raced through his homework after dinner so that he could spend a few hours out here.

First he had to get some heat going. He had two electric heaters in here, and between them they threw out a pretty good blast, but the barn was so big they couldn’t do much more than warm up the immediate vicinity. The old structure had been used for carriages originally, with stalls for horses on one side, and there was even some ancient hay still covering the floor of the loft. The ridge beam was a good twenty feet about the floor, and with all this space it was impossible to heat the place. On winter nights you could freeze your nuts off in here.

On the other hand, it was great to have so much room to work in. Nothing like an ordinary cramped garage, where you couldn’t turn around without bumping into the wall. In here you had as much space as in any repair shop, and probably more than in most. He moved the heaters in close and turned them on. Then he rolled his tool cart over to the car.

Illumination came from an overhead rack of fluorescent bars, which Buddy had rigged so it could be raised or lowered. He brought it down now so that it was about three feet above the front end of the Chevy. There was also a work lamp with a caged bulb that he could place wherever he wanted it.

He removed the hood from the car and set it aside, then attached the work lamp to a radiator support rod. Now came the procedure of working his way into the engine. For somebody with no feel for mechanics the job would have been a bitch, but to Buddy every bit of it was a pleasure. He had his own way of going about it, removing the air filter and the carburetor and laying them out on the bench in a distinct pattern along with the nuts and bolts and washers, all arranged so that he could have put his hands on any of them blindfolded. It was a good system, because it simplified putting the parts back together.

He stopped to light a cigarette, deciding as he did that it was too quiet in here. The only sounds were the wind whispering around the corners of the barn and the occasional rustle of rats’ feet off in the shadows. His tape deck was on the workbench. He went to it and shuffled through his cassettes until he located a U–2, popping it into the machine and rolling up the volume.

He’d hung a pair of speakers on vertical posts about ten feet apart, and when the group’s bass and drums and guitars blew out their big beat it made the tools and the other junk on the bench rattle and buzz. Which was another thing he liked about working out here; it was far enough away from the house so that he could make all the noise he wanted without his mother screaming at him.

She could be a very large pain in the ass at times, and he’d learned long ago that the only hope he had of getting along with her was in staying out of her way. She didn’t approve of his smoking cigarettes—let alone dope—and she didn’t like him spending so much time on his car, and she didn’t like him drinking beer, and she hated his music.

He thought she’d also had a pretty good idea he’d been screwing Marcy, although she’d never challenged him on it. Maybe that was because she did a little messing around herself and suspected that he knew she did. He’d seen her at dances at the country club, flirting with people, dancing with men in a way that wasn’t just being social. And he’d also seen her in unexpected places with some of those same men. Once he’d spotted her in a car with one of them, driving on a country road when she was supposedly out playing bridge, and another time he’d left school early because he’d come down with a stomach virus and just as he arrived home he saw someone pull away from the house. When he walked in she was flustered and he’d known why; guilt was written all over her face.

Nevertheless, most of the time she treated him as if he were a five-year-old who’d pooped in his pants. And he never knew when she might come charging in here, disapproving of whatever he was doing. Which was why sneaking up into the loft with Marcy had been taking a hell of a chance.

It made him sad to think about those times now. Marcy’s death had been a terrible shock, by far the worst experience of his life. He’d seen her in nightmares ever since. In one of them she was naked, carrying her head before her in her hands. Her eyes were staring at him and her voice was a hollow rasp as she accused him of deserting her, leaving her alone to die. In another dream her head floated free in roiling clouds, and that time she had no eyes but only raw empty sockets and when she opened her mouth a snake darted out, its tongue flickering, and hissed at him.

In still another he’d watched as the headsman attacked her. Marcy was screaming in fear, her arms upraised to ward off the blow. The blade had slammed into her flesh, but it failed to cut through her neck and the headsman struck her again and again, hacking at her throat as blood erupted from her wounds. Buddy had awakened then, drenched in sweat, and had spent the rest of the night lying in his bed with the lights turned on, reluctant to go back to sleep for fear of experiencing another nightmare.

He let the cigarette dangle from his mouth as he worked, tilting his face to one side to keep the smoke out of his eyes. He removed both heads from the engine, placing them on the bench with care, and then examined the valves. None of them showed wear or excess carbon, but then he would have been surprised if they had. As he went on with his inspection his mind kept returning to Marcy and he tried to force her out of his thoughts but it was impossible. He kept seeing her face, hearing her voice, remembering the times they spent together, the things they’d done.

How could those dipshit cops think he might have been involved in her death? And as crazy as that was, it was only one part of the humiliation he’d been put through. Chief MacElroy had tricked him into admitting he and Marcy had been making it, and that Buddy and his friends smoked grass.

Well, so what, for Christ’s sake? So did a lot of other people in high school, no doubt in every town in America. People had sex, and people smoked dope. Pussy Forever. In Pot We Trust. With all the crime that went on in the world, was that such a big deal? Marcy had been murdered, and this jerk was pumped up over whether they’d been in the sack together and whether they sometimes shared a joint. What a crock of shit. Why wasn’t the cop out doing what he was supposed to do—tracking down the murderer?

The other guy, Inspector Pearson, had been a lot smoother, but Buddy hadn’t had any trouble with him at all. Buddy had just played the part of the innocent shocked kid when the inspector had questioned him, telling him everything he wanted to know, cooperating to the max and revealing nothing. At least, nothing like what MacElroy had got out of him.

It was odd, but he had a distinct impression that the chief and Pearson were like oil and water. In fact, it seemed as if they didn’t even talk to each other. He wondered why. Was it because one was a local cop and the other was state? Were they jealous of each other? Maybe they were both nuts.

He also wondered if the chief had revealed the substance of their talk to Buddy’s father. MacElroy had assured him that anything Buddy said would remain confidential, but he knew better than to buy that kind of crap. That was what adults always told you when they wanted to screw you over, whether it was Mr. Baxter, the dearly beloved fuckhead principal of Braddock High, or a cop, or anybody else.

The trouble was, if Chief MacElroy revealed their talk to Buddy’s old man it would go straight to his mother, and that would be something to worry about. Her first reaction would be to blow her cork, and then after that to think up ways to make his life miserable. She’d tell him he couldn’t go out, couldn’t drive his car, couldn’t talk on the phone, couldn’t see his friends, couldn’t do any goddamned thing. She was an expert on what Buddy couldn’t do. And learning that Braddock’s chief of police had pried an admission out of him concerning his sexual and pot-smoking habits would be all she’d need.

She’d known the chief had questioned him, of course. After all, Buddy had been with Marcy that night, had been one of the last people to see her alive. In fact, his mother had actually shown some sympathy toward him, which certainly had been out of character for her. But if she ever found out what he’d admitted to MacElroy they’d have to scrape her off the ceiling.

So the chances were the chief had kept his word—for the time being, anyway. If he hadn’t, Buddy would have heard about it by now. There was no way his father could have kept it to himself if he’d learned about it; Buddy’s mother had the poor bastard trained so that he was afraid to take a leak without her okay. The old man was so pussy-whipped it was pitiful. If Buddy ever got married he’d be damned sure it would never happen to him—you could bet on that.

When he finished going over the valves, he took another look at the open block, and there, by God, was the problem. The head gasket on the right bank of cylinders was blown. No wonder the engine had been running like shit. He stamped out his cigarette and worked the gasket loose with a screwdriver. He grinned to himself, feeling a small sense of triumph at having located the trouble.

The tape ended, and the sudden silence was startling. The wind had become stronger, and it was causing some of the old boards and beams in the barn to creak. He wanted to put something else on; music was good company. But he was too busy at the moment, lifting the blown gasket off the studs. His fingers were cold, which wasn’t helping any, and he couldn’t get a decent grip on the greasy metal.

As he fumbled with it he heard a different noise, one he couldn’t identify. He stopped for a moment to listen, and a few seconds later he heard it again.

It was the sound of a heavy foot stepping on one of the floorboards.

He turned, staring out from the cone of light that shone down on the front end of the car, but all he saw were shadows.

2

The headsman stood in one of the old stalls, every nerve attuned to his surroundings. There had been no animals housed in here for many years, and yet his nose detected the faint scent of horses. He smelled other things as well: rodent droppings, hay, rotting wood, the nests of barn swallows, rust on metal hinges. Good smells.

In contrast, the odors emanating from where the boy worked were an abomination, a blend of oil and carbon and gasoline that stung his nostrils like a swarm of nettlesome insects. But far worse than the smell was the insult to his ears—the raucous shrieking that poured from the boxes hanging on the posts. Voices sang childish, monotonous phrases, set to a frenzied rhythm that repeated itself over and over.

He raised the ax, taking pleasure in the feel of its smooth hickory haft, in the weight of its gleaming head and its superb balance. His breath came quicker, and his mouth grew dry from excitement. He slipped out of the stall and stepped slowly toward the boy who was bending over the front end of the car.

As he did, the cacaphony from the speakers suddenly stopped. It left behind a void of silence, disturbed only by the wind. The headsman took another step, and then another. A board creaked underfoot, and the boy looked up, staring in the headsman’s direction. The man in black stood still, knowing the youth’s gaze could not penetrate the shadows. He waited for a time as the boy squinted and finally got up from the car’s fender and wiped his hands with a rag.

Uncertainly, still peering out into the darkness, the youth made his way to the bench. He had a habit of tossing his head to get his long brown hair out of his eyes, and he did it now as he put the rag down and groped among the objects on the bench. When he found what he wanted he went to the tape machine and a moment later a new torrent of sound issued from the speakers.

The headsman watched, giving the boy time to settle down, to resume his work. Minutes passed, as the youth once more draped himself over the fender of the car. He was slender, the type who wouldn’t mature physically for several more years. Not like some of his more athletic friends, who had already grown into robust manhood. His legs were long but thin, and his rump barely filled his faded jeans. Only his hands were man-sized. They were wide and meaty, with long fingers, and they dangled from his wrists like hooks.

It was surprising that such hands could be so deft. And it was unfortunate that this stupid little shit had wasted their potential. He might have become an engineer, or even a surgeon, with hands like those.

The boy was again deeply absorbed with the metal guts of his vehicle. A cigarette was hanging from his lips, and every so often he tossed his head and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke as he worked.

The headsman approached within a few feet of the car and paused, standing just outside the shaft of light. He was balanced on the soles of his feet, aware of the great strength in the muscles of his shoulders and his arms and his back. Behind him the roar from the speakers hammered against his body like a storm, but he ignored it.

As he watched the boy, the headsman planned his moves. It wasn’t enough for a sinner merely to be beheaded. The experience of death would then consist only of the brief shock as the steel severed the neck. Pain would be so short-lived, so closely followed by unconsciousness, as to be almost a non-experience.

Instead it was much better for the guilty one to see death approaching, to imagine how it would feel at that moment when the instrument cut through flesh and nerves and bone, separating not only the head from the shoulders, but the living from the dead. That was why in France, in the old days, a person to be executed by the guillotine was often placed on the block face up, so the blade could be seen falling. It was said that to the subject, the huge knife seemed to take a very long time to travel downward, and that it was impossible not to watch it make its hideous descent.