Hire a Hangman

by Collin Wilcox

  “Okay, let’s say they’re related. So tell me how they’re related—why they’re related.”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask that.”

  In spite of himself, Hastings smiled. “Motive.” He pronounced the word solemnly, himself the moment’s Socrates. “That’s what we need for the Bell murder. For the Hanchett murder, we’ve got nothing but motives. For the Bell murder …” He shrugged, spread his hands, and asked, “Have you got a motive?”

  “The only thing that makes sense,” Friedman said, “assuming they are connected, is that someone thought Teresa Bell killed Hanchett, and wanted to wreak vengeance.” He smiled: his pixieish, playful smile superimposed on his broad, swarthy Buddha-face. “How about that?”

  “Except,” Hastings pointed out, “no one cared, apparently, whether Hanchett lived or died. His own flesh and blood didn’t even care.”

  “How about Carla Pfiefer? Maybe she cared.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And, speaking of flesh and blood, what about—” Friedman consulted his notes. “What about Hanchett’s son? John. Have you talked to him?”

  “Briefly. Very briefly.”

  “And?”

  “He’s pretty screwed up, I’d say. Very hostile. Very …” Hastings searched for the word. “Very scattered. Unfocused. All over the place. But if you’re asking whether he killed Teresa Bell because she killed his father, then I’d say the chances are about zero. I could see him killing Hanchett for all the damage Hanchett did to his mother. Or maybe because he wanted his inheritance. But vengeance for his father’s death?” Hastings shook his head. “No way.”

  “So far,” Friedman pronounced, “Fred Bell’s our best bet.”

  Hastings snorted. “If Fred Bell’s the most viable suspect we’ve got, then I’d say we’re in deep, deep shit.”

  “That’s negative thinking.”

  “That’s a carefully considered opinion. I’ve seen them together, Fred and Teresa. And I can tell you, he wasn’t about to murder his wife. Not when I saw them. Besides, he was at work when it happened.”

  “Ah.” Friedman raised a professorial forefinger. Hastings knew that mannerism. Friedman had a surprise for him—a carefully timed surprise. “Ah, but I spent some time checking into that one. Fred Bell is an ink mixer at the Sentinel’s printing plant. And ink mixing, as it turns out, is a very solitary occupation. Typically, Bell arrives on the job at eight, punches in, goes to his ink mixing room, and begins mixing. Then, at about nine o’clock, he begins his rounds, feeding the presses, getting ready for the first printing. So, if he got someone to punch in for him, at eight, then he could easily have killed the missus, right around eight o’clock, and been at his ink-mixing post by eight-thirty. No sweat.”

  “What about eyewitnesses at the Sentinel?”

  “So far, none. I’ve done all this by phone. I’m going to send someone out there, but not till the night shift arrives, obviously.”

  “So what now?”

  “I’d say collect Canelli and Dolores, and start making the rounds of every guy connected with the case who fits Dolores’s description of the guy who bought the two guns.”

  “Considering that the guy was obviously disguised—dark glasses, maybe even a false mustache, I suspect—her description’ll fit almost all of them.”

  “Well,” Friedman observed equably, “it won’t do any harm to plow another furrow, so to speak. By the way, how do you rate Dolores?”

  Hastings considered. “I think she’s okay. I kind of like her, in fact. She’s …” He hesitated. “She’s spunky.”

  “Is she smart? Observant?”

  “Very.”

  “Well, then …” Friedman waved him on his way. “You’d better get to it. Where’ll you start?”

  Hastings knew the approved answer. “With Fred Bell, of course.”

  Gratified, Friedman nodded. “Of course.”

  2:30 PM

  “Listen, Dolores …” Exasperated, Canelli turned to face the woman sitting beside him in the unmarked car. “Listen, this’ll be a whole lot easier on both of us if you’ll just relax and enjoy it, know what I mean?”

  “No,” she answered, her voice icy, her dark eyes flashing Latino fire. “No, Inspector—what do you mean, exactly? Tell me what it is you mean.”

  Belatedly conscious of his remark’s sexual innuendo, Canelli could feel his face growing hot. How long had it been since he’d blushed? During all the years they’d been engaged, had Gracie ever made him blush?

  “What I meant was …” But why was he explaining? He was a policeman—a detective, with a gold shield. She was a self-admitted fence, a hustler.

  But she was a hustler with a small, compact body, rounded to perfection.

  Making love, she could send a man sky high, light him off like a Roman candle, take him soaring.

  Had he ever had a Latino girl?

  Had he ever—?

  Ahead, Lieutenant Hastings’s brown Honda station wagon was turning the corner, pulling to the curb. Time to go to work.

  “What I meant was, you got to do this, do this stakeout number for us. So why make it harder for yourself?” As he spoke, Canelli was conscious that, yes, he had a partial erection. What was it about Dolores? He cleared his throat, saying, “You’ve got to—”

  “What I got to do,” she said, “is work so I can get money so I can raise my kid, buy him clothes, pay the rent. I spend all day doing this for you guys, I lose a day’s pay. It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not fair that a couple people were killed with guns you fenced, either, Dolores. You got to think about that.”

  “I said okay, I’d do the stakeout thing. But not when I’m supposed to work. Nobody told me about that—about taking time from work.”

  “In this business it’s pretty tough to make plans, Dolores.” He tripped the door handle, swung the driver’s door open. “I got to talk to the lieutenant. Wait here.” As he strode toward Hastings, he surreptitiously dropped his hands to his crotch, arranging himself.

  What would she be like in bed? He could imagine her dark, vivid eyes gone wild with passion, her breasts alive to his touch.

  He strode to meet Hastings, who had already locked his car.

  “Is he in there, do you know?” Hastings moved his head toward the Bell house. In the double front windows, the Venetian blinds were blanked out.

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. Me and Dolores, we just got here.”

  Hastings smiled. “‘Me and Dolores,’ eh? What’s that mean?”

  “Huh?” As if he were puzzled, Canelli frowned. But, once more, he felt his face grow warm.

  What was happening to him?

  Even as a boy, a teenager, he’d never—

  “Is she giving you any trouble?” Hastings asked. “She’s a hothead, I imagine, if she gets you going.”

  Gets you going …

  Yes, oh, yes—get him going. All the way home, he and Dolores.

  “No—no—” He waved a deprecating hand. “No problem, Lieutenant.”

  “Good. Well …” Once more, Hastings gestured toward the Bell house. “Here I go. Keep your radio on. I told Dispatch you’d be catching for me.”

  “Oh. Right. Sure.” Canelli nodded, watching Hastings stride toward the small stucco house—the house that probably still had blood on the floor.

  2:40 PM

  Carefully, Hastings stepped around the edges of the opaque plastic sheeting that covered the hallway floor and concealed the bloodstains and the chalked outline of Teresa Bell’s body.

  Had it only been yesterday—last night—that he’d entered this same hallway, to find himself staring into Teresa Bell’s dead eyes?

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Bell, at a time like this. But there’re a few things I’ve got to clear up. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Bell had turned his back and was already in the living room, sitting on a lumpy sofa. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He sat slumped on his spine, his body
slack.

  “I’ve just come from the morgue,” Bell said. “I had to—to identify her.”

  “Ah.” Hastings nodded. “Yes. Did one of our people take you down, bring you back?”

  Bell nodded.

  “Is there anything else we can do for you? Anything at all?”

  “No. Nothing. The funeral home, they’re taking care of it. There’s—” Bell swallowed painfully. “There’s an autopsy first.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s hard to think of it—think of them …” Bell shook his head sharply.

  “I’m glad you have a good funeral home. That means a lot at a time like this.”

  The other man gave no sign that he’d heard. Hastings let a moment pass, then began, “The first thing I want to ask you, Mr. Bell, is whether you have any idea who killed her—why someone killed her.”

  For a long, inert moment, Bell made no response. His deeply etched face was hollow-eyed, ravaged by constant psychic pain. A son who’d died a lingering death—a half-demented wife who’d died in a pool of blood in the house they’d shared—all of it, and something more, was tearing at the tortured face.

  Finally Bell shrugged, a meaningless movement, without definition or hope. “No,” he answered, “I can’t—I don’t—” As if confused, he frowned, shook his head.

  “It wasn’t robbery,” Hastings prompted. “And since the door wasn’t forced, we have to assume the murderer was known to her.”

  With great effort, Bell raised his eyes, focused on the detective’s face. “Known to her?”

  “Sure. She wouldn’t’ve opened the door to a stranger. Would she?”

  “No …”

  “Was she careful about the door—about keeping it locked, using the peephole?”

  “Yes.” As he said it, Bell lapsed into his previous posture, his body slack, nervelessly slumped on the ragtag sofa, legs spread, heels on the floor. It was the posture of a man without hope, without the will to live.

  A homicide and a suicide? A death pact?

  Had Bell lost his nerve last night? Had he killed her and then been unable to kill himself?

  “Mr. Bell.” Deliberately, Hastings put an edge on the question. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Someone murdered your wife last night. And it’s up to us—you and me—to find whoever did it, and put him in jail. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I—I don’t know anymore. I just—” Helpless, exhausted, Bell broke off.

  “Mr. Bell—” The edge in Hastings’s voice was sharper now. “You’ll have to answer these questions. Now or later, you’re going to have to answer. I realize that you’ve had a terrible shock. But I’ve got a job to do. And I want to do it.”

  A job to do—God, how empty it sounded, how self-serving.

  No response.

  Sighing deeply, regretfully, Hastings said, “Your wife hated Dr. Hanchett because of—of your son. Isn’t that so?” As he spoke, Hastings’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to the small onyx urn in its pine-bough niche atop the fireplace mantel. Then he continued doggedly, “It became an obsession with her, isn’t that what happened? She couldn’t go on—not when your son was dead, and Hanchett was still alive. So—” Looking for some reaction, some sign, he stopped. Then, very softly: “So she killed Hanchett. That’s all she could do. There wasn’t anything left for her, except to kill Hanchett. Because he’d taken her sanity.”

  At the final words, as if he were coming faintly awake after a deep sleep, Bell began to stir, to blink, to half-flex his fingers.

  “You bought the guns,” Hastings said, feeling his way. “You gave one to her, and you kept one for yourself. You had to keep one for yourself, because you didn’t know whether your wife would—”

  “Guns?” Bell drew his feet inward, drew himself straighter on the sofa. In response, instinctively, Hastings gathered himself, surreptitiously shifting in his chair to make his revolver more accessible.

  “Guns?”

  “The Llama and the nickel-plated Colt automatic. You bought them from the woman at the bar. Dolores, the Latino woman.”

  As if he were perplexed—genuinely perplexed—Bell frowned. Assessing the frown, Hastings felt his conviction draining away as Bell shook his head, saying, “I didn’t buy any guns.”

  “Two pistols. Two automatics. One with pearl grips.”

  Causing Bell simply to frown again, shake his head again. With his eyes fixed on Hastings, Bell was more alert now, more responsive. “But I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mr. Bell, when I was here on Tuesday—the day after Hanchett was killed—when I talked to your wife, I had the very strong feeling that she’d killed Doctor Hanchett. And I think you suspected she did it, too. Isn’t that so?”

  “I …” Bell shook his head again. But now the gesture signified both desperation and despair, no longer denial. Yes, Bell suspected his wife had killed Hanchett, perhaps even knew she’d done it. But, no, he hadn’t bought the two automatics.

  Was there another link in the chain? Had the two guns gone from Charlie Ross to Dolores to another fence, who’d then sold the Llama to Teresa Bell, and the .45 to someone else, to the person who’d murdered Teresa Bell two days after she’d murdered Hanchett?

  It was the kind of puzzle that endlessly intrigued Friedman—and endlessly frustrated Hastings.

  But the guns were secondary. First the murderers, then their tools.

  “She killed Hanchett.” Hastings spoke softly, simulating a sympathy that, yes, he felt for this sad, cowed man who’d lost his son to disease and his wife to a murderer. “Didn’t she?”

  “I—” Bell nodded once. Then, as if it had suddenly grown too heavy to support, Bell’s head dropped until, once again, his chin rested on his chest.

  “Didn’t she?”

  “I—yes—I think she did. I—I’m afraid she did it.”

  “Where did she get the gun—the pistol she tried to ditch?”

  “I—I have no idea.” Bell’s voice was hardly audible.

  “Did you know she had a gun?”

  “No.” With great effort, he shook his head, repeating, “No.” Then, after a moment, speaking in a low, bemused monotone, he said, “We haven’t had guns in the house for a long time. I used to have a rifle—a twenty-two that my father gave me, kind of a keepsake. But when we had Timmy, Teresa insisted that—” Suddenly, as if his throat had convulsed, he broke off. Then, mumbling, he began shaking his head.

  “But she knew how to shoot,” Hastings pressed. “Handling an automatic takes practice. It’s not like a revolver. You don’t just pull the trigger. Even after an automatic is loaded—the clip in the handle—you’ve got to pull back the slide, jack a cartridge into the chamber. Then you’ve got to set the safety, and lower the hammer when you carry it. Otherwise, it could discharge accidentally. And you’ve got to take the safety off and cock the gun before you can fire. It’s not simple. It takes instruction to fire a gun like the one that killed Hanchett.”

  During the time Hastings had been speaking, Bell had remained motionless, eyes fixed on the floor, the incarnation of despair. With an effort, Hastings dropped his voice to an authoritative, uncompromising note as he said, “Did you teach your wife to shoot, Mr. Bell?”

  No response.

  “Mr. Bell.” Hastings moved forward in his chair, spoke sternly: “Answer the question.”

  Finally, Bell shook his head. “No.” His voice was a whisper. “No. I’ve already told you, I never—” His voice died.

  “Someone taught her. Who?”

  Bell shook his head. Letting his exasperation show, his body still angled forward, a confrontation, Hastings drew a long, deep breath. “Why do you think she was killed, Mr. Bell? Who do you think killed her?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Was it the same person who taught her to shoot a Llama semiautomatic pistol?”

  “I—” Bell raised his eyes, haunted eyes, shadowed by a vision of endless pain. “I—I can’t
tell you, Lieutenant. There’s—there’s nothing I can tell you. Nothing more.”

  After a long, inscrutable moment, studying the other man, Hastings finally nodded, rose to his feet, and crossed the room. Walking carefully around the plastic sheeting, he opened the front door, stepped out on the tiny porch, and beckoned to Canelli, who pointed inquiringly to Dolores. When Hastings nodded, Canelli and Dolores left Canelli’s cruiser and came up the front steps. With the three of them standing crowded together on the porch, Hastings was about to instruct Dolores when he sensed movement behind him. Turning, he saw Bell standing in the interior hallway, with the plastic sheeting between them. Hastings turned to Dolores, nodding covertly. She nodded in return—

  Then she shook her head.

  4:15 PM

  “What’s a house like that sell for, anyhow?” Dolores pointed to the three-story house with its carefully tended hedges and the Japanese maples growing in a small front garden. “A million dollars, maybe?”

  “More,” Canelli said. “San Francisco real estate—” In wonderment, he shook his head. “It’s out of sight.”

  “Earthquakes, taxes, drugs—nothing keeps it down, they say.”

  “It’s space,” Canelli said. “There’s no more space. San Francisco’s like New York—Manhattan, anyhow. A friend of mine went to real-estate school, and that’s what they told him. There’s the harbor. That’s how it started, with the harbor. But then San Francisco’s so small—just a peninsula, like Manhattan’s an island, you know. So that’s why all the lots in San Francisco are so small. Ninety-five percent of them, the residential lots, anyhow, they’re only twenty-five feet wide. So that’s why property values keep going up.” He spread his hands. “It’s supply and demand. Everyone wants to be here, and there’s no more land. So real estate goes up.”

  “You lived here all your life, it sounds like.”

  Canelli turned to face her. She kept her eyes forward, staring moodily through the cruiser’s windshield at Fiona Hanchett’s million-dollar town house with its view of San Francisco Bay. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “You just talk like you were born here—just a feeling.”

  “Well, you’re right. I was born out in the Sunset. In fact, Lieutenant Hastings and me, we grew up not so far from each other. Except that he’s older.”