The Hanging

by Wendy Hornsby

  Thornbury suddenly looked tired. He turned his shoulder to exclude Max. “Miss MacGowen, did you take pictures of Park Holloway when you found him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He sighed, shook his head as if to say that I was something akin to a boil on his skinny butt, and then, slowly, as if addressing an idiot, “You told us Friday night that you had gone to the administration building to shoot footage of the stairwell because that kid’s artwork was going to be hung there.”

  “Is going to be hung there. True.”

  “So you must have taken a camera with you.”

  “There you are, a fine example of deductive reasoning, Detective,” Max proffered. Thornbury hadn’t taken his eyes off me. When I turned my focus back to him, he said, “So?”

  “Yes, I had a camera.”

  “And you took pictures?”

  When Max nodded I said, “I shot some footage, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us that when we spoke to you earlier?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “We asked if you had any further information and you said no.”

  “You asked what I knew about the murder,” I said. “I knew—I know—nothing about the murder.”

  “Those pictures are evidence in a murder investigation.”

  “Doubtful,” Max said. “I saw the footage. Might be useful in court to establish the scene of the crime for a jury, if you ever get a case filed. But otherwise? Maggie filmed nothing that the responding police and paramedics didn’t see for themselves, or the technicians photograph. And I’m sure you heard everything you needed to hear on the 911 tape.”

  “Let us be the judge of that, Counselor. We need to see that film.”

  Omitting Roger’s role in filming that night before the coroner and the detectives arrived, I said, “The photo card was given to the people from Scientific Services Bureau before you arrived Friday night.”

  Thornbury wheeled on Weber. “Why don’t we know that?”

  Weber held up his hands: he didn’t have an answer.

  “But I made a copy first,” I said.

  “We need to see it,” Thornbury said, doing the human version of eyes popping out of his head and steam coming out of his ears.

  “Sure. Why not?” Max said with faux enthusiasm, as if the idea was wonderful and original. To me he said, “It’s movie time, honey. Where’s the popcorn machine?”

  “In my classroom.”

  Someone had traded the big black umbrella I’d left dripping in a bucket near the door for a tattered flowery affair with several broken ribs. Not a collegial thing to do, I groused to myself. Didn’t matter, though. Gusting wind made umbrellas useless. All of us were drenched by the time we walked across campus and reached the arts complex.

  In the studio classroom, while the others found chairs, I booted the footage I shot before Roger sent me upstairs to take pictures of the body.

  Detective Weber, who had let Thornbury do most of the talking so far, watched with interest as the big projection screen dropped electronically from the ceiling.

  Blue light filled the screen, and then the card with time, date, place, and the project name, SLY: THE ARTIST AND HIS WORK, faded in. The unedited footage followed.

  On that eventful Friday afternoon, I started filming as I approached the administration building. Reflected in the tall glass doors were the campus quad and the buildings on the opposite side. Out of camera range, I tapped the automatic door opener that was there to accommodate the disabled, and two of the tall doors slowly opened outward.

  Immediately, the screen went white.

  “What did you do there?” Thornbury demanded, sitting up straight. “Did you fool around with the film here? You cut something out?”

  “It’s just flare,” I said. “When the door opened, sunlight bounced off the marble floor and hit the camera lens. Same thing that happens to your eyes when there’s a flash of light. Hang on, give it a minute.”

  Details of the administration building lobby began to emerge as if out of a fog as I walked with the camera further into the room, away from the tall front windows and the glare on the floor in front of them. First, details of the teak-paneled walls could be discerned, and then a granite-top reception counter and the broad, graceful sweep of the stairway behind it became clear.

  Thornbury grunted something that I took to be the Oh yeah moment, acknowledgment that if I had cut the footage I had cut it elsewhere.

  I nodded toward the screen. “Here comes your money shot, detectives.”

  Standing in the middle of the stairwell, I raised the camera lens straight up toward the ceiling and found the soles of Holloway’s shoes. The recorder picked up a noise that sounded like someone choking. It was me, realizing what I was seeing.

  I turned up the sound: “This is 911. What is your emergency?”

  They listened to the 911 call, though I knew they had heard it already, as they watched the film.

  The only new information to them was the call I had placed to Roger from the phone on the reception desk while I waited for the paramedics.

  When the paramedics rattled the front doors, I put the camera inside my bag because I didn’t want them to think that the camera with its long lens could be a lethal weapon. The camera continued to record sound, but from that point there was nothing to see.

  We heard a confusion of voices, then I said, “He’s in the stairwell,” and five sets of footsteps could be heard crossing the polished floor.

  I turned to Detective Thornbury as I pushed Pause. “That’s it. The rest you know.”

  “You made another call when you were on with 911. Who was it?” he asked.

  “Chief Tejeda, of course. There was a dead man.”

  “Tejeda?” He glanced at Weber as if this was somehow significant. “How well do you know Tejeda?”

  I shrugged. “Well enough.”

  “You sounded like you were talking to an old friend.”

  “We’re friendly. It’s a small town.”

  “You don’t live in Anacapa,” he said, scowling, challenging me. “So how did you get so close to the police chief?”

  “His wife was my college roommate,” I said.

  “Yeah? She works here, doesn’t she? Some sort of teacher? She get you this temp job?”

  Max leaned past me to address Thornbury. “Ms MacGowen’s network of friends and her work history are germane to this event how, Detective? Or are you working up the courage to ask her for a date?”

  Weber, straddling a chair next to Thornbury, chortled. Thornbury, knocked off guard by the question, turned bright red—a flare of another sort. Point, Max.

  I reached over, paused the disk and turned off the projector.

  Thornbury, normal color slowly returning, said, “No more pictures?”

  Point, Thornbury, I thought as I glanced at Max. When he nodded, I said there were, and showed them, close-ups of Holloway, close-ups of me, no sound recorded.

  “Who shot the film of you?” Thornbury asked.

  “Chief Tejeda.”

  The two detectives exchanged glances: angry, dismayed?

  “I don’t understand you people.” Thornbury held out his hand for the disk, which I gave him—it was a copy. “We’re trying to investigate a murder here. Don’t you understand that? What else are you withholding?”

  I thought about that as I shut down the computer. I glanced at Max, but the smug look on his face told me he was leaving an answer to me.

  I said, “My uncle isn’t going to help you out, because not helping you is in his job description. But me? The only thing I’m withholding is friendship.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Why don’t you dial back the attitude?” I said. “It can only work in your favor.”

  He let out a bark of a laugh. “You telling us how to do our job?”

  “Wouldn’t presume to,” I said. “If you weren’t up to the job you wouldn’t have made it to the Homicide Bureau.

&nb
sp; He flicked the disk. “Then what is all this shit about?”

  “Trust. Respect.”

  “Come again?”

  “You don’t respect us. We don’t trust you. We tell you something, you dismiss it, you dismiss us. If I knew anything, I would tell Chief Tejeda or one of your colleagues before I would tell you.”

  Thornbury dropped his head, sighed, stole a glance at his partner. After a moment he addressed Max.

  “We met before,” he said.

  “The State of California versus Micah Murray,” Max said. “You were lead investigator. Did a good job. Too bad you lost that one.”

  “That time, yes, Counselor.” Thornbury managed a smile. “But we got Murray on his next bounce through the system.”

  “Murray drew fifty-to-life on that one, didn’t he?”

  “Something like that. They never know when to quit, do they, Counselor?”

  “Job security for me,” Max said, smiling.

  “So,” Thornbury said, turning his attention back to me. “What makes you think we don’t respect you?”

  “Attitude. In front of me, as if neither of us counted, you called Chief Tejeda ‘Opie,’ and that’s how you treat him. Do you know anything about him?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “You should. Before he came here, he put in more years working big-city homicides than the two of you combined.”

  Thornbury rubbed his head as if it hurt, but he kept his eyes on me.

  “It’s your investigation,” I said. “But it’s his community. He tells me you shut him out because he’s hard-wired into the campus. Don’t you think you could use that to your advantage? You might start by paying attention when he tells you something.”

  “Like, what haven’t we paid attention to?”

  “Did he tell you that a woman named Joan Givens has a file of letters from donors who are angry with Holloway?”

  The two detectives exchanged looks again before Thornbury nodded.

  “We’ll get to her,” he said.

  “But you haven’t contacted her,” I said. “You should know from Holloway’s daily schedule that she was at a meeting with him a few hours before he died. And you should know from speaking with the people who were at that meeting that she stayed behind to confront him with that file, privately.”

  “How do you know that?” Thornbury asked.

  “I was at the meeting.”

  “Your name wasn’t on his calendar.”

  “But I was there just the same. You haven’t spoken to anyone who was at that meeting.”

  “There were two meetings after that one, and we have spoken with those people.”

  “Hiram Chin and who else?” I asked.

  “Were you with Chin, too?”

  “No. Hiram told me he last saw Holloway at about three. Did someone come in later?”

  “Couple of members of the Board of Trustees,” he said. “They left at about four. Together. Went out for drinks.”

  “Marino and Juarequi?”

  “I think that’s their names.”

  “When I found Holloway at five, the blood on his head was already dark and congealing.”

  “Everyone’s an expert now,” Weber said with a smirk on his face. “You get that from watching TV?”

  Max was having too much fun. “Detective, do you have any idea who my niece is or what she does?”

  “I know she was married to a cop once, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It is not. What do you know about Maggie herself?”

  He lifted one shoulder, frowned. “Part-time teacher who worked in TV.”

  “I would never go into an interrogation without at least Googling the other person. You should try it.”

  Just for show, Weber took out his BlackBerry and started tapping keys. Something came up that caught his attention. He showed Thornbury, who wheeled on me.

  “You’re making some kind of movie about Holloway?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re hoping, what, this could be your big break, I mean because you found the body and all, you have the inside scoop on it?”

  Weber hit a key and I heard the familiar voice of Kelly Lopez from the news broadcast the night before:

  “Maggie MacGowen, welcome back to the network. Congratulations for signing on for a new project. Being with us again must feel like déjà vu.”

  My own voice: “It does a bit, yes. It’s nice to be back working with old friends.”

  “You have reported major news events from all over the world—”

  Weber turned it off.

  “I used to work at that network,” I said. “I had my own investigative series until December.”

  Thornbury dropped his head, muttered something under his breath before he raised his chin and looked at me.

  “Okay, yeah, I dismissed you. I thought, when you said you were a temp and your husband died recently, that you might be, well, out on the edge of things, taking any kind of job you could. I got it wrong, huh?”

  “Not entirely, but I wouldn’t describe myself as out on the edge.”

  “Can we start over?” He offered his hand. “Hello, I’m Detective Kevin Thornbury.”

  “I’m Maggie MacGowen. I’m researching a documentary about Park Holloway under the aegis of one of the big three television networks.”

  “I’m trying to find a murderer.”

  “I’m looking for interesting material. I think we can help each other.”

  “Maybe we can,” he said. I gave him a plastic sleeve for the photo disk and he slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Maybe you and I have been looking at things from different angles.”

  “We haven’t seen much of you on campus,” I said.

  “We poked around here, found a lot of people who are pissed off, but none of their issues seem to have enough heat behind them to make someone do what was done to Holloway. The man was a congressman for twenty years. You don’t think he might have acquired some enemies with a higher proclivity for violence than a bunch of academics?”

  “I’ve wondered if an argument got out of hand,” I said. “If someone maybe took an angry swing at Holloway, he fell back, hit his head, and died.”

  “Then what?” Thornbury asked. “That someone was still angry enough to string him up?”

  I shook my head. “Panicked enough to try to cover up what happened.”

  “In that scenario, a fight and an accident, the doer would panic—you’re right about that—and run,” he said. “Do you know what the coroner says?”

  “I don’t. I put in a call to a contact at the morgue, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  He furrowed his brow, apparently not happy with that last answer. “This a good enough contact that he’d get you a copy of the autopsy report?”

  “Sure. With photos, if I ask. I’ve been busy, haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Jeez. You try to keep a lid on things....”

  He took a breath, made a decision, and leveled his gaze on me.

  “Coroner says Holloway was clocked from behind hard enough to crush his skull. There’s a corresponding bruise on his forehead, so the coroner suspects he fell forward with the blow. The initial blow was hard enough to do real damage, but that isn’t what killed him.”

  I waited through his dramatic pause, hoped I’d be able to talk him into letting me get him on camera.

  “Holloway was alive when he was hanged,” he said, finally.

  I was still thinking that through when Max said, “He was executed.”

  “You could say that,” Thornbury said. “Know anyone around here who could pull that off?”

  “I don’t,” I said, but heard again Jean-Paul’s little bell. “But...”

  This time he waited for me.

  “A friend of mine told me recently that most thefts of major artwork are done by organized crime.”

  “Was something stolen?”

  “Not from the college,” I said. “And maybe from nowhere. But the
re may be a connection between Holloway and the realm of shady art collecting.”

  “Art collecting?” He seemed to stop himself mid-smirk and regroup. Sounding sincerely curious, he asked, “Have you found something?”

  “Nothing concrete. On a hunch, I had my uncle look into a court case for me.” Max was grinning like a proud papa. I mentioned the name of the deposed dictator and almost lost Thornbury again; Weber dropped his head, clearly uninterested. When Max nodded at me, I went on.

  “A federal court awarded a group of creditors the art collection that belonged to the dictator. But when they tried to sell the collection, it turned out that all of the premier works were fakes.”

  “Copies?” Thornbury asked.

  “No. They were original fakes. The style of artists like, say Rembrandt or Van Gogh, was copied, but the works themselves were originals. If Van Gogh painted a red chair and yellow table, the fake might have a very similar table set at a different angle, leave out the chair and add a blue teacup. They were good fakes, but fakes nonetheless.”

  “Was Holloway involved with that somehow?”

  “That’s the question of the hour,” I said. “Hiram Chin and Holloway were on a museum committee together several years ago, looking into questions about the authenticity of a Rembrandt painting owned by the National Gallery. Chin was the expert, and it was Chin who helped put the dictator’s collection together, meaning he’s either incompetent or corrupt.”

  “And?”

  “And, a Mr. and Mrs. Francis Weidermeyer were listed among the creditors who brought the suit. According to Holloway’s wife, Weidermeyer was an acquaintance of your victim. You want bigger fish than a bunch of academics, you might look into that.”

  When he shrugged, I added, “Holloway raised money from college donors to buy a sculpture by Franz von Wilde, AKA Frank Weidermeyer, perhaps the son of Francis. A woman named Clarice Snow presents herself as the mother of young Frank; they were at the memorial together this morning. She owns an art gallery in Santa Barbara.”

  “You think someone in that deal sent out a goon squad?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “I’m looking into the life of the murdered man and I found something interesting. The murder is your problem. But you might look into young Frank Weidermeyer’s role in a campus shooting yesterday.”