The Hanged Man

by T. J. MacGregor

  Riddles, Ben always spoke in riddles. “Christ, don’t talk to me in riddles, okay? Give me information I can use.”

  Thunder rolled through the subsequent silence. They stared at each other. Then the phone rang. The noise pinged against the silence like a chunk of hail as it bounced off a tin roof. It didn’t snap Nadine out of trance, Ben simply withdrew, gently.

  Her grandmother blinked and said she would get the phone, said it as though there had been no lapse since she had asked Mira what was wrong. “Nadine, wait.” Mira touched her shoulder. “Ben just came through.”

  Nadine looked surprised. “He did? What’d he say?”

  Mira repeated Ben’s message. “You didn’t realize it, did you, Nadine. Ben was just suddenly there.”

  “Then you’d best heed what he said,” Nadine replied, and shuffled into the office to answer the phone.

  You haven’t seen the last of me. Ed.

  Mira rubbed her hands over her face.

  Utmost caution. Ben.

  I’ll hurt you, too. The caller. “Shit,” she said into her hands.

  Sheppard had spent several hours this afternoon in the county offices, searching for property records on 112 Pirate’s Cove Lane anywhere in Broward County. He found nothing under the address and nothing under Hartmann, the name Mira had come up with.

  But he’d gotten luckier at Steele’s home. He’d found a record on the computer for a property purchase for 112 Pirate’s Cove Lane NE, bought by Rae Hartmant—not Hartmann—three years ago. It was located in a town forty miles west of the Lauderdale airport.

  By the time he called Mira and convinced her to read the cabin for him, the rain had started. Now it swept across Alligator Alley with the fury of a living thing. He couldn’t see a foot in front of him. The Porsche’s headlights bounced off the rain as though it were a giant sheet of aluminum. The wipers whipped across the glass, a monotonous melody.

  They didn’t talk much; the events of Sunday still stood between them. Besides, Sheppard knew she didn’t really want to read the cabin, that she didn’t want any further involvement in the investigation. He believed she’d agreed to do this because of what had happened earlier this evening with Mr. Ed.

  “How much farther?” Mira finally asked.

  “It should be just ahead.”

  Sure enough, half a mile later, he spotted the street sign and swung onto a dirt road. Branches braided overhead, creating a canopy dense enough to shield the car from most of the rain and wind. An eerie quiet closed around the Porsche and seeped into the car with them. When Mira shifted in her seat, the sound seemed abnormally loud, almost abrasive.

  The Porsche hit potholes, bounced through deep puddles. He shifted into first gear. Now the banyans gave way to the scrubby Florida pines Mira had described. He saw A-frames, cottages, snug little cabins nestled in the evergreens. Number 112 stood alone in a cul-de-sac, set back from the road in the dim glow of a single streetlight.

  Sheppard pulled into the driveway, stopped, but kept the headlights on. “Is this the place you saw?”

  She rubbed her hand in small, tight circles against the fogging windshield. “Yeah, I think so. There’s the mailbox.” She sat back, shook her head. “I had absolutely no sense that there were other houses around. My impression was of complete isolation.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  She didn’t exactly break any records getting out of the car. But hell, after what had happened when she’d read Steele’s place, he didn’t blame her. The cabin, locked up tight, had been sealed against whatever Rae Steele had imagined might harm her. In the end, though, locks hadn’t protected her from anything.

  While Mira waited on the front porch, Sheppard went around to the rear of the cabin to find a way in. His flashlight located the pond she’d described, an erratic circle of water in the trees at the foot of the slope. It spooked him, she spooked him, he admitted it. The world she lived in bore no resemblance to his own. He felt like an ill-prepared tourist every time he visited her world.

  None of this stopped him from trying to break in to a place that had been discovered through a psychic channel, not through maps, microfiches, interviews, or any other tangible source. Confronted with the verification of a psychic vision, Sheppard felt a part of himself coming unhinged, swinging in the dark wind like an old, creaking gate.

  He broke in, finally, through a kitchen window, and crawled over the sink. The air, wet and intrusively cold, the way cold could be only in a temperate zone, smelled stale, shuttered, of some secret hidden in an attic in a Gothic novel. The electricity worked and he turned on lights as he made his way up the hall to the front door.

  Compared to Steele’s beach mansion, the decor here was bare bones: a worn couch with an afghan thrown over the back of it, a faded recliner in front of the TV, a cheap, nicked coffee table. The stone fireplace, with its broad hearth and pine mantel, held ashes and a partially burned log. He noted the photos on the mantel, but didn’t pause long enough to look closely at them. He wanted to get Mira inside before she bolted.

  She unzipped her raincoat as she stepped inside. Raindrops glistened and winked like sequins against her dark hair. Her eyes darted around the front room, then she took a long, deep breath, exhaled slowly and said, “She used to meet a man here…I don’t get a name.”

  Off came her shoes. She swiveled her bare feet against the old wooden floor and moved toward the fireplace. “They made love there.” She pointed at a throw rug in front of the fireplace. “When it was cold outside.” She rubbed her hands over her arms and stood for a few minutes, staring into the empty fireplace.

  It had begun so quickly, it took Sheppard a few minutes to get the recorder on. He moved closer to her and asked her to describe the man.

  “I can only see the back of his head.” She looked at the rug, as though she could actually see Rae and this man making love there. “His hair is going gray.”

  “Is it Steele?”

  “No, definitely not Steele. The energy pattern isn’t the same.” She rubbed her hands over her arms. “It’s really cold in here.”

  “I’ll make a fire.” Sheppard set the recorder on an end table, knelt in front of the fireplace, and began sweeping the ashes to one side. He found the butt of a cigar and the blackened remains of a photograph. The only visible image on the photo showed Rae. He put the cigar butt and the piece of photo into an evidence bag; he figured the butt belonged to whoever Rae had been seeing. He pocketed the bag, then pulled logs and twigs from the basket next to the fireplace. “What else do you pick up?”

  “This is her refuge.” Mira turned right, toward the hallway, but she didn’t move toward it. “Her private space. She wanted to divorce Steele.”

  He made a Boy Scout’s fire, a nest of twigs, burning hot and bright, then several logs. “How long ago was this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  You’ve got to know, he thought. “Years? Months? Two weeks ago? What?”

  “Months, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was months.”

  Now she stepped forward, her feet seeming to glide over the floors, into the kitchen. Sheppard, recorder in hand, trotted after her, noting the sweet curve of her denim hips. Sunday seemed like lifetimes ago, but it had been only two days. His memory remained so vivid he could still feel her skin under his hands, could still taste her.

  Can’t sleep with you… Why not? Why the fuck not? He was in love with this woman, he—

  In love?

  Not likely, not damn likely. Hormones had loud, noisy voices that insisted on being heard and yes, the chemistry between them bristled and yes, she was…

  paradise

  Ridiculous. She was difficult. She was weird…

  and…

  “… stood here in front of the window,” she was saying, standing at the very spot she referred to. “He was weeping, she didn’t know it.”

  I’m weeping, I’m weeping, Sheppard thought, and moved closer to her
. The warmth of the fire didn’t reach into the kitchen. He knew she was cold, chilled, he could see it in the press of her lips, in the way she tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her raincoat.

  “They were standing here when she told him she couldn’t see him anymore.” She walked over to the rear door, unfastened the chain, opened it, stepped onto the small porch. “She stood out here after he left that night.”

  Sheppard came up behind her, listening to the rain falling through the trees, to the wild beat of his own heart. He reached out to touch her hair, but she turned abruptly and moved back into the cabin. He followed, shut the door, fastened the chain again, and hurried after her, into the front room.

  The fire had caught, a delicious warmth suffused the damp air. Mira stopped in front of the fireplace, lifting the framed photos, searching for something. “There should be a key here somewhere. He returned the key she’d left him.”

  She couldn’t find it. Mira held her hands up to the fire, rubbed them.

  “Anything else?” Sheppard prodded.

  She shook her head.

  “Would you mind helping me out with something?” he asked.

  She turned, hand on one hip. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?”

  “I don’t mean with this. I need to test a, uh, theory.”

  “A theory. Okay, what’s the theory?”

  He reached into his pocket and felt the ELF device. He flicked the switch on. “Try to read me.”

  “I don’t have my cards with me.”

  “Clairvoyantly.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Let me have your hand.”

  Mira took his hand and began to breathe deeply. He sensed the moment when her consciousness shifted. She started to frown. “Weird. I can sense the feeling tones that are yours, but I’m not picking up anything.”

  Sheppard turned off the device. “Now try it.”

  Mira altered her breathing, deepened it, and ran her thumb slowly over his knuckles, the back of his hand. She suddenly smiled. “I’m picking up something, but I don’t know how to interpret it. It sort of looks like a TV clicker. A remote control thing.’

  “Like this?” Sheppard removed the device from his pocket.

  “Yes.”

  “Now watch. I’m hitting the ON switch. Now try to read me again.”

  She took his hand once more, altered her breathing, and after a few moments shook her head. “Static, a wall of static. That’s all I get. What the hell is that thing?”

  “This was found on Steele.” He explained the rest.

  “You’re talking way over my head, Shep. But there was a definite difference. I went from a complete blockage to a bright, vivid image.”

  “You prove the theory. Now if I can just figure out what he was using it for, I’ll be in good shape. Let’s try it once more.” He turned it off, Mira took his hand again, and this time he visualized the two of them making love here in front of the fire.

  Mira suddenly laughed and dropped his hand. “So embarrass me some more, Sheppard.”

  He put the device in his pocket again, slipped his arms around her waist, and pressed his face into her hair. She didn’t do anything, didn’t move or speak or return his embrace. Then her arms came up around his neck. Firelight flickered across the planes and angles of her face, rendering her features in a surreal, breathtaking beauty.

  “That London life ended badly,” she said softly. “I don’t want to repeat those patterns.”

  Of all the things she might have said, he hadn’t anticipated this remark. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think I was the wife you were always running from.”

  “I’m not running now.”

  Her features softened, she laughed. “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “Give it a chance, Mira. That’s all I’m asking. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about the goddamn shoelaces, but I honestly didn’t know how to say it.”

  She touched her finger to his mouth, whispered, “It’s okay,” and kissed him.

  And then they, like Rae and her mysterious lover, sank to the rug in front of the fireplace. Sheppard’s heart soared.

  Fletcher huddled beneath the pines in the dark on the other side of the road, watching their shadows against the blinds. When the shadows sank from sight, she tightened the hood of her rain slicker and resigned herself to the wait.

  The cop and the psychic, she thought. Goddamn fools. Had they really believed she wouldn’t put two and two together? No one pulled anything over on Lenora Fletcher, at least not for any length of time.

  She lit a cigarette and crouched down behind a clump of palmetto bushes, her patience like some sort of penance that she had to endure to get what she wanted. But it would pay off, it had to. In the end, one way or another, even Hal would get his due.

  Chapter 20

  As soon as Hal walked into the bar at Pier 66, he spotted Manacas and Indrio seated at a back table. They blended with the rest of the crowd, an ability they’d learned in prison, where you never wanted to be singled out.

  Indrio, smoking furiously, looked as nervous and uptight as a bird that expected to be stalked. Manacas, who had always been the calmer of the two, sucked on a slice of orange from whatever he was drinking.

  Male bonding, Hal thought. They expected him to sit down and go through the macho shit that would renew their collective commitment to The Plan. But Manacas and Indrio had bonded years ago, in the joint, and even after all these years, Hal knew that he remained the third wheel. They already had decided on whatever scheme they would present to him. His acceptance or rejection of that scheme would make little difference unless they needed him to pull it off.

  He also knew that bonding had little to do with tonight’s meeting. This centered on commitment to The Plan. He didn’t have to reach into them to know that.

  Five years ago, he had backed out of a scheme the three of them had concocted to pull off a bank heist using their combined talents. Their intention had been to practice on several convenience stores first, to see if they could make the clerk walk away from the register without locking it.

  In the first store they’d targeted, a 7-Eleven in a suburban Miami neighborhood, they’d succeeded in getting the clerk to leave the room without locking the register. Indrio had monitored the operation, Manacas had taken the money, and Hal had succeeded in keeping the clerk away from the front room for eleven-and-a half minutes.

  They had pulled two similar jobs after that, failed at one, and succeeded at the other. After that, Indrio and Manacas were ready to move on the bank. But Hal had put them off for a while so that he could test himself, alone.

  He knew they couldn’t pull the heist without him. Neither of them had the ability to force the clerk to do anything. And yet, he wasn’t sure that he could pull a heist alone, either. It required enormous concentration to reach deeply and to hold the reach for any length of time. It meant that while he reached, he didn’t have much energy left over to be consciously alert to danger; he needed someone to watch his ass. So the solo job had been intended to define his own limits.

  He targeted a L’il General here in Lauderdale and it bombed big time. Yes, he got the clerk to leave the register unlocked and walk out of the room. And yes, he had held her away. But he’d been so focused on the clerk, he’d failed to realized that two customers had come in.

  He’d killed them both. One had been Mira’s husband.

  The incident freaked Hal and he backed out of the heist. He hadn’t seen Manacas and Indrio for a long time after that, several years. Then he and Manacas had run into each other one day at the beach and that meeting eventually led to a reconciliation with Indrio. Hal wasn’t sure when they had started talking about killing Steele and Fletcher. Maybe the obvious had simply become more so, that they wouldn’t be completely free to pull any sort of job, much less get on with their lives, unless Steele and Fletcher were dead.

  So here they met, a trio of misfits
bound by their personal history and little else. As soon as he joined them at the table, he felt their suspicion, a rippling undercurrent that he could practically taste and feel, a fourth presence here at the table.

  “I checked her out,” Manacas said without preface.

  “Checked who out?”

  “The psychic, man. Mira. Nice-looking woman. And she’s no phony.”

  Then he proceeded to relate his experience with the psychic, at her bookstore. Hal felt like choking the asshole, shaking some sense into him. When Manacas had mentioned Mira earlier today on the phone, Hal hadn’t suspected he would do something like this. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It seemed so obvious to Hal; how could it not be obvious to Manacas?

  “Let’s worry about Fletcher right now,” Indrio said.

  He puffed furiously on his cigarette; a cloud of smoke hovered around his head. Hal coughed and waved at the smoke with his hand; Indrio didn’t get the fucking hint. He glared at Hal and said, “We didn’t think you were going to show, Hal.” Hostility radiated like an odor from him.

  “Chill out, Vic. I’m not that late.”

  Indrio tapped the face of his watch. “Forty minutes.”

  Manacas rolled his eyes. “Cut the shit, man. He’s here. It’s a waste of time to argue about it. Fletcher’s in a penthouse suite, Hal. When I scanned the place, I got the sense that hers is one of the two that faces the canal.”

  “You don’t know which one?”

  “I will once we’re up there. The door I saw has some sort of gold-plated object on the knocker.”

  “She’s not up there now,” Indrio said. “Or if she is, she isn’t answering the phone.”

  Hal wanted to be done with this, to get back to the chickee, to Rae. She’d been sleeping when he’d left and rather than drugging her, he had padlocked the door to the chickee’s main room. “So what’s the plan?”

  Indrio snickered. “We break in and leave her a calling card. This would all be much easier if you’d just give her head a good squeeze, Hal.”