The Headsman (42 page)

“You said there was proof?”

“Yes. This morning Buddy’s head was sent to police headquarters.”

“Oh, my God. How? What—”

“It was in a box, addressed to me. It had been cut off the same way the Dickens girl’s had been. Just the way you told me.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes.” He knew her emotions had to be churning. “I wanted to say how much I appreciated your coming in and telling me what you’d seen. And I thought you’d want to know that it’s been confirmed now.”

“Did you let anyone know you were coming over here to see me?”

“No.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“You can, I give you my word.”

“For what that’s worth.”

“I was hoping you’d be willing to give me some further help.”

Now her eyes met his, and there was defiance in them. “No, I won’t. I can’t help. What I said to you that day was only a coincidence. I had no idea what I was talking about.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know anything, except that I was wrong. The things I told you were all just out of my imagination.”

There was no way he could force her to cooperate. The only way he could enlist her help was by appealing to her as one human being to another. “Look, I promise anything you say will be kept in strict confidence.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t want anything more to do with you or your case or the whole subject of what I saw or didn’t see. If you try to involve me I’ll deny everything. I’ll say you were just trying to get me to talk about things that never happened.”

He felt a sinking sensation. He’d been sure she could help him. Especially now that he was convinced of her visionary powers. “But you know that whoever killed Buddy killed Marcy Dickens as well. The headsman killed them both. And nobody knows what he might do next. Maybe you could help me find him before he goes after someone else. How would you feel if you refused to help and he killed again?”

She was silent for a moment, and then she burst into tears.

He felt awkward, regretting that he’d been so rough on her. He reached out to her, but she shoved his hand away.

“No.” She controlled her sobs with an effort, shuddering as she fought for breath. “I meant what I said. I can’t help you. I just—can’t.”

“At least think about it. Will you do that?”

She shook her head and opened the door.

“Karen—”

She scrambled out of the car. “Tell it to your girlfriend. But don’t call me again.”

The door slammed, and she was gone.

Jud felt like a fool. How could he have been so goddamn blind dumb? She’d learned of his relationship with Sally and had concluded he’d fed her the Mariski story.

He should have figured that out long ago. And yet he hadn’t. Now how was he to repair the damage? Tell her he was sorry—again? Explain that the reporter who had written the story in the
Express
was indeed his girlfriend, but that he hadn’t betrayed Karen’s confidences to her?

Christ, what a mess. No matter which way he looked at it, he was wrong.

But he was certain of one thing: Buddy’s murder had happened the way Karen Wilson had told him it had. And what she claimed to have seen the night Marcy was killed fit as well. Maybe when she cooled off he could get her to come around. Or at least she might be willing to talk about it more rationally. She could help him, he was sure of it.

The photographs
. If he could show them to her, maybe they would trigger something. Which brought something else to mind. Sally had said Maxwell threw a fit when he learned she’d taken them. Why?

In the meantime, there was another angle he wanted to check out. Where did you look for a two-hundred-year-old weapon?

One place was a museum.

He started the Plymouth’s engine and pulled away. The first flakes of snow had started to fall. They were so fine you could hardly see them coming down, and when they touched the windshield they melted instantly.

4

He swung down Main Street and then turned left on Elm, heading for the library. He’d get the keys to the museum from Mulgrave and see what he could find. The curator wouldn’t like the idea of Jud snooping through the moldy old place by himself, but at this point Jud didn’t give a shit what Mulgrave liked or didn’t like.

Both Marcy Dickens and the Harper boy had been killed with an ax, and Doc Reinholtz was sure the weapon had been the same one.

Very sharp, and very heavy
.

And very old? Jesus, could it be?

The snow was heavier now, the wind whipping the shimmering flakes along the surface of the road, some of them collecting in drifts. The temperature was falling, and there had been warnings that a massive storm could be headed toward Braddock. They were about due; for all his bitching about winter, this one had been relatively mild. Not nearly as severe as last year, or the year before.

The Plymouth was a clunker. It had a limited-slip differential like the regulation police cruisers, but that wouldn’t mean much if the snow got really deep. At some point he’d switch over to his Blazer. There was a lot he needed to do, and the last thing he wanted to contend with was getting stuck.

The library looked lonely in the swirling snow, its lights gleaming weakly through the tall windows. Jud parked the car in front of the building and made his way up the walk. The snow was sticking; it would be deeper than his shoetops in another hour or so.

To his surprise, the door was locked. He knocked on it, but got no response. That the library had closed with a storm coming was understandable, but why had the lights been left on?

He knocked again, pounding on the door with his fist.

Nothing.

Somebody had to be here. He raised his hand to strike the door once more when he heard the lock being turned from inside. The door opened a crack and one of the librarians squinted out at him.

Jud touched a finger to his cap. “Afternoon, ma’am.”

This was the ancient one who’d been at the desk the last time he was here. The expression on her thin features was no warmer than the outside air. “Library’s closed,” she sniffed. “Come back tomorrow, if the roads are plowed by then.”

She pushed on the door, but before she could shut it Jud wedged it open with his foot. “This is official police business,” he said.

She swung the door open and he stepped into the vestibule. He took off his cap. “I want to see Paul Mulgrave. Is he in?”

“No, he’s not.”

“Did he leave early? Not that I blame him—this storm’s getting worse by the minute.”

“Mr. Mulgrave didn’t come in today. We haven’t heard from him.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Yes, very. He always comes here first thing, no matter what. When we didn’t hear we thought he might be sick, so we called his home. But there was no answer.”

“May I use your phone? I’ll try to reach him.”

She glanced with distaste at the melted snow dripping from his cap and his jacket, but then said, “Very well. If you’ll follow me, please.”

She led him to a cubbyhole office under the stairs. There was a telephone on the desk, and she gave him Mulgrave’s number. He dialed it, and stood there listening to it ring. The librarian stayed in the doorway, watching him. After a dozen rings and no answer, he put the phone back onto its cradle.

He looked at the old woman. “Did he have an appointment or anything you can think of that might have detained him?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you know where he keeps the keys to the museum? There’s something I need to see over there.”

She stiffened at the question. “I have no idea, and I wouldn’t give them to you if I did. That’s Mr. Mulgrave’s business.”

The fact that Jud was a cop, and the chief of the Braddock force at that, didn’t seem to go very far with her. But it wasn’t worth an argument. He’d get the keys when he located Mulgrave. “Can you suggest anyplace he might be?”

“No. And now if you don’t mind, I want to lock up and go home. The other librarian left just before you came, and I’m alone. I’m afraid if I don’t go soon I could be stuck here.”

“You have snow tires on your car?”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You mean you’re going to walk—in this?”

“That’s correct, officer. I live only a mile from here, and I walk it every day, rain or shine.”

“Not today, you won’t. Get your coat and I’ll drop you off.”

“Young man, I’m quite capable—”

“Get your coat, ma’am. Now.”

She did as she was told, and a few minutes later Jud deposited her in front of a tiny frame house.

He waited until she went inside and turned the lights on before he pulled away.

As he did the radio crackled, and Jud heard Tony Stanis calling him. He reached under the dash and picked the mike off its hook. “MacElroy.”

“Chief, Inspector Pearson wants you to come to the stationhouse right away. And there’s an urgent message here for you from the mayor.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s in a sealed envelope. But I was told to contact you and say it was important that you get it as soon as possible.”

Jud broke off the call and swung the Plymouth into a U-turn. He had a feeling there was another storm on its way and that this one would be a lot tougher than a blizzard.

5

As he approached police headquarters, Jud saw that the word was out. Among the cars parked in front of the town hall were several vans with TV station call letters painted on them. Once again they had to have set speed records to get here from Albany or Syracuse or wherever, but any break in this case would draw them like flies. They’d be expecting to hear that Buddy Harper had been apprehended, as Pearson had all but promised the kid soon would be. What they’d hear instead would be a bombshell.

Jud knew how much the media loved a murder case—especially one with bizarre overtones—and from the start the legend of the headsman had been a bonanza for them. Now this second ax killing would be a lot more than conjecture about some dusty ghost story in a small town. And it wouldn’t be merely regional news, either.

He parked the Plymouth in the lot behind the building then trudged through the drifting snow to the back door of the stationhouse. As soon as he walked in, a swarm of reporters descended on him, poking microphones into his face, shouting questions, firing flash cameras. He pushed through them, heading for his office.

Before he got there Chester Pearson grabbed his arm. “Been waiting for you. I promised these people a press conference, and I wanted you to be here for it.”

He wanted to protest, but he never got the chance. He and Pearson became surrounded by reporters and cameramen, and it took several minutes before the inspector could quiet them down enough to make a statement.

“A couple of hours ago,” Pearson told them, “the young man we’ve been looking for was found. At least, part of him was. Buddy Harper was decapitated, and we have recovered his head.”

That triggered an uproar, and again Pearson had to wait for the crowd to let him continue. “The severed head was sent here, to Chief MacElroy. Maybe he can tell you why it was sent to him.”

For the second time that day, Jud felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He stood there like a fool as the wave of shouted questions washed over him, not knowing how he was going to handle this, his anger surging over the way he’d been set up. Pearson had sidestepped the issue of why the investigation had focused on the Harper boy as the killer of Marcy Dickens and was dumping the responsibility for this new development onto Jud.

“Why you, Chief?”

“What did you know about this kid?”

“Where’s the rest of the body?”

“What haven’t you told us about Harper and the Dickens girl?”

Jud fumbled his way through it, trying to answer above the noise, mouthing platitudes that made him sound as silly as he felt. “We have no information at this time.” And “We don’t know why it was sent here.” And “We have no further leads at present.” Until he wished he could find a hole and crawl into it.

Finally he held up his hands and said, “That’s all we can say until we get reports from the lab.” He turned and shoved his way through the mob, making his way down the hall toward his office. When he got there he went inside and shut the door behind him.

The paper and the cardboard box had been removed, presumably by the state police investigators. In the center of his desk there was now an envelope with his name on it. That had to be the message Stanis had told him about. He tore it open and withdrew a sheet of stationery with an Office of the Mayor letterhead. He scanned the contents.

A meeting of the Braddock Town Council had been scheduled for five o’clock that afternoon, it said. It was mandatory that Chief MacElroy attend.

His watch told him that was ten minutes from now. He wasn’t sure what was on the agenda, but he knew that whatever it was, from his standpoint it wouldn’t be good.

6

The fact that Sally was a woman meant nothing. Reporters stepped on her feet and elbowed her out of their way in their efforts to get closer to the inspector and the chief of police. Her reaction was to stomp, shove and elbow back.

Taking notes would be impossible; she’d just have to do the best she could to remember what was being said—or shouted—in this melee. Compared to this one, the earlier press conferences had been love-ins.

Which was understandable. The announcement that Buddy Harper’s head had been found was a tremendous shock. It meant that all the smug state police assumptions had been total nonsense. Not only had Harper not been Marcy Dickens’ murderer, but he had become a victim himself. And who—or what—had killed him? No wonder the inspector seemed shaken. After only a few terse words, just enough to state what had happened, he’d turned the floor over to Jud.

As much as she wanted this story, she felt pity as she watched Jud stand there and take it. The reporters were howling for blood, demanding to know why the Harper kid’s head had been sent to the chief of police and why he hadn’t leveled with them about what was really going on.

And he had no answers for them. At least none that were acceptable. He simply mumbled a bunch of cliches that added up to an admission that the police didn’t know what to do next. It was awful.