Hire a Hangman

by Collin Wilcox

  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.

  4:40 PM

  Dubiously, Friedman shook his head. “I don’t know, Frank. In my experience, loonies don’t make very predictable suspects. Sure, she prayed for Hanchett to die. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t.”

  “If you’d seen her, though …”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t hang in there, keep her talking.”

  “Her husband wouldn’t let me do it. So before he got hot, decided to call a lawyer, whatever, I decided to back off. I’ll wait till the husband’s at work, talk to her again. Why don’t you come along, see what you think?”

  “Fine,” Friedman said. “Incidentally, did you hear about the kid and the gun?”

  “What kid? What gun?” Hastings asked the questions sourly. Friedman was building the suspense, working his audience.

  “A little kid found a gun in some bushes a few hours ago. It was only two blocks from the murder scene. The lab’s doing the ballistics right this minute, and then they’ll do the fingerprints.” Friedman smiled. “The kid fired the goddamn gun. At last report, the mother was still in shock. Not to mention the father, who’s got a hole in the driver’s door of his brand-new Celica.” Friedman’s smile broadened. “Can you imagine the insurance adjuster’s expression?”

  “Was the father inside the car?” Canelli asked.

  “No.”

  As though relieved, Canelli settled back in Hastings’s visitor’s chair. Then, dolefully, Canelli began to shake his head. “Jeez, just think of it. That poor woman. Teresa Bell, I mean, with her kid dead. And now she’ll be locked up, maybe. Sometimes—” Canelli sighed. “Sometimes there’s no justice. None.”

  As Canelli said it, Friedman’s smile faded. For a moment his face remained expressionless. Then, speaking quietly, looking down at his thick hands judiciously folded in his lap, Friedman said, “In this business, Canelli, justice is just a word. Haven’t you figured that one out by now?”

  As always uncertain how he should respond to yet another of Friedman’s homilies, Canelli first shrugged, then shook his head. Finally he ventured an uncertain nod, followed by another shrug. Watching the two of them play their ritual parts in this long-running departmental skit, Hastings was once again struck by the similarities between the two men. Both weighed at least two hundred forty. Both men were swarthy. Their faces were smooth, their lips full, their eyes dark, their hair thick. Canelli’s hair was dark; Friedman’s hair was graying.

  But their personalities differed dramatically. Lieutenant Peter Friedman, senior co-commander of Homicide, seldom revealed his feelings, never allowed himself to be put on the defensive. Hastings had never seen Friedman surprised or disconcerted o
r visibly frightened. First and last, Friedman kept them guessing.

  “I thought,” Canelli said, “that the witnesses both said it was a man.”

  “They said the assailant wore a cap, or a hat,” Hastings said. “And slacks. Given a combination like that, if the light’s bad, most witnesses will say they saw a man commit a crime, not a woman. They seem to be conditioned to think that—”

  Millie Greenberg, Homicide’s long-suffering receptionist, secretary, stenographer, and amiable object of lust, appeared framed in the aluminum-and-glass rectangle of Hastings’s office door. When Hastings beckoned, Millie entered, deposited a sheaf of papers on the desk, and spoke to Friedman.

  “Lab reports and the coroner’s prelims on the Hanchett homicide.” She smiled at the two lieutenants. “Can I leave? My kid’s nursery school phoned. Donnie’s got the shits, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  Saying something sympathetic, both lieutenants nodded in unison.

  “Thanks,” she said. “See you tomorrow.” She flipped her right hand, used her left hand to pat Canelli on top of the head, and left the office. After duly studying the admirable action of Millie’s buttocks and thighs, Friedman picked up the papers, slipped on a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses, and began reading the reports while Canelli asked Hastings whether Millie’s divorce was final.

  “I’m not sure,” Hastings answered. “Why? What about you and Gracie? What’s it been now—eleven years—that you’re engaged?”

  “More like twelve,” Canelli admitted sheepishly.

  Knowing that Friedman could listen to their conversation while he read the reports, Hastings said, “So what about Hanchett’s stepdaughter, Paula Gregg? Did you talk to her?” As he asked the question, Hastings experienced a momentary pang of guilt. She’s wild, Fiona Hanchett had said. She’s wild, and she’s dangerous. Meaning that he should have told Friedman, should have cautioned Friedman not to send Canelli alone to interrogate Paula Gregg. But Friedman had been harassed, working the telephones.

  “Boy—” Canelli nodded enthusiastically. “Did I ever talk to her.” Wonderingly, he shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Lieutenant, too bad you weren’t there. I mean, talk about a looker.” Once more, Canelli shook his head. “I’ll tell you, she’s something else. She’s one of those—you know—natural beauties.”

  “So what’s her story?”

  “Well …” Canelli took out his notebook, thumbed the pages back and forth, frowned, riffled the pages again. Finally finding his place, he began again: “Well, she lives in one of those old loading sheds down at the piers that’s been converted into apartments. Nice place. Far out, but nice. You know—trendy. Funky, I’d call it. But anyhow, I got there a little after two, I guess. And, Jesus, it looked like she and some big black guy were just getting out of the sack.”

  Friedman laid the reports aside, took off his glasses, and studied Canelli as he continued. “The black guy took off, though. I mean, he took one look at the badge and he split. But the lady—Paula Gregg—it didn’t faze her. She’s like, you know, one of those real wild-looking types you see in the TV ads for perfume or something. Real long and lanky, with this real thick hair that’s all over the place. You know, ‘Jungle Passion,’ like that. And, in fact, it turns out that’s what she does. Models, I mean. She’s got big blowups of herself on her walls, from magazine ads.”

  Marveling, Friedman shook his head. “You’ve got a gift, Canelli. A real flair.”

  Canelli’s reaction was speculative. For as long as he’d been in Homicide, he’d never quite been able to divine Friedman’s true motives.

  “So what’d she say about Hanchett?” Hastings asked. “You did mention the murder, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. And, boy, she didn’t make any bones about it. She hated him. She’s only twenty years old, but she’s already been on her own for three years. As soon as she could get out of the house, she split. And before that—she doesn’t make any bones about this, either—she was a ward of the juvenile court, and spent some time at that place in Idaho. That custody farm for rich kids, I forget the name.”

  “It’s Orchard Lake.” Friedman spoke quietly, thoughtfully. A suspect with a record—any record—was always taken seriously.

  “What about last night?” Hastings asked. “An alibi?”

  Canelli shrugged. “She was with that black guy, she says. I’ve got his name, but I haven’t checked him out yet.”

  “Well”—Friedman gestured to the lab reports—“there’s a little nugget here for us.”

  Canelli’s reaction was an expression of hope; Hastings simply waited through the pause that always preceded something of substance from Friedman.

  “It turns out,” Friedman said, gesturing to the printouts he’d just scanned, “that the gun the kid found was the gun that did the job, no question. I had C. J. check the gun through Sacramento, and it was registered to a guy in Los Angeles. Then C. J. ran the guy.” Friedman consulted one of the printouts. “His name is Foster Crowe, and he lives in Beverly Hills. A high roller, apparently, very big in Dun & Bradstreet. So I decided, what the hell, I’d give Foster Crowe a call. And it turns out that the gun was part of his gun collection. Which figures. I forgot to mention that the gun is a Llama, which is a Spanish automatic. Actually, I happen to know that, as a gun, the Llama is the shits. But this one is engraved, has carved grips, the whole thing. It turns out that part of the collection was ripped off a year ago. So I called old John Farrell, down at LAPD. John, it happens, owes me at least three favors, from that Custance homicide a few months ago. So he’s going to see what he can do about tracking down the gun after it was stolen.”

  “What about the rest of it?” Hastings pointed to the other reports.

  Friedman shrugged. “Not much we don’t already know. There were two shots that did the damage. Your reports say three shots were fired, so one went wild. One bullet severed the aorta, which was fatal. That one went right through. The second shot punctured the lower abdomen and lodged in the buttocks. It’s a seven-millimeter bullet, incidentally.”

  “So.” Hastings spread his hands, glanced at his wristwatch. “So what we’ve got so far is zero.”

  “The game’s just started.”

  “I don’t know.” Hastings shook his head. “Something about this case doesn’t add up.”

  “Don’t let me talk you out of Teresa Bell,” Friedman said, “just because she’s a loony.”

  “Her husband works nights, eight to four,” Hastings said. “Tomorrow night, let’s talk to her.”

  “Not tonight?”

  Hastings shook his head. “I’m going to talk to Jason Pfiefer tonight. He’s the estranged husband of Carla Pfiefer, Hanchett’s girlfriend. “He’s also a surgeon at BMC, and he was apparently very, very jealous.”

  “Ah.” Friedman nodded puckish approval. “The jealous husband. Right.” He smiled. It was the habitual Friedman smile: elliptical, inscrutable, knowing. “The case is assuming dimension. Who else’ve we got that hasn’t been interviewed?”

  “We’ve got a guy named Clayton Vance, who’s Barbara Hanchett’s boyfriend, at least according to Fiona Hanchett. Then there’s Edward Gregg, Paula Gregg’s father.” He turned to Canelli. “Why don’t you talk to him, since you’ve already talked to Paula? He lives in Pacific Heights. Meanwhile, after I talk to Pfiefer, I’ll talk to Vance, hear what he has to say about Barbara Hanchett and her husband.”

  Canelli brightened visibly. “Maybe Vance and Barbara murdered Hanchett so she could get the inheritance and marry Vance.”

  “I think I saw that movie the other night on ‘Golden Oldies,’” Friedman said. “Wasn’t that John Garfield and Lana Turner?”

  As Canelli was considering his response, Hastings spoke to Friedman. “So what about you?”

  “I,” Friedman answered, “will stick with the Llama. In fact”—he consulted his own watch—“in fact, I think I’ll put in a call to the LAPD, see what they’ve found out. Also, I’m going to talk t
o a couple of police reporters.” He glanced at notes he’d scrawled on the back of a printout. “All we really know for sure is that the assailant—man or woman—killed Hanchett at about ten-fifteen P.M. last night, at the eleven-hundred block of Green Street. Carrying the gun, he walked down the hill to Hyde Street, where he—or she—probably turned left. Then he probably turned right, on Vallejo. He walked a block and a half—probably—and then he dumped the gun in a hedge. Now Hyde Street between Green and Vallejo, I happen to know, is well traveled, even at that hour. There’s the cable car, for one thing, and at least one restaurant on the block. So my plan is to give out that route to the newspapers and TV, see what we get.”

  “What we’ll get,” Hastings said, “is a lot of nuts calling up. You know that, Pete. It’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s always more trouble than it’s worth.”

  Dark, heavily lidded, almond-shaped eyes hooded, swarthy face expressionless, Friedman studied his co-lieutenant. “Well, how about giving out the block where the crime was committed, and the block where the murder weapon was found?”

  “And let them figure out the route for themselves,” Hastings objected. “It comes to the same thing. There’s only one route from the murder scene to the place where the gun was found.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Hmmm …”

  7:10 PM

  “Frank.” It was a woman’s voice.

  Hastings turned to see Susan Parrish—and her husband Arnie, reminding him again of the distant past, memories fugitive from the old neighborhood, half-forgotten high school days.

  Arnie, in his forties now. Paunchy. Balding. Wearing a three-piece suit and an executive tie.

  Arnie, who’d always been so skinny, so shrill. So pushy.

  Still so shrill: “Hey, Frank. My God, all these years in the same city, Frank.”

  Followed by a hard, competitive handshake. Still pushy.

  “Hello, Arnie. How’ve you been?”

  “Never better. I’m in real estate, you know. Just like your dad. Only—” The smile, too, was competitive. The new Arnie now, condescending: “Only a little more successful, I guess you’d have to say. But, still—” A good-old-boy blow on the shoulder. “Still, I don’t get on the six-o’clock news, like you do.”