Hangman: A Novel

by Stephan Talty

  A thick-bodied redhead pushed a stroller down Chapin Parkway, one of those thousand-dollar contraptions that looked like they’d been engineered by NASA. They walked slowly. Abbie watched them go. Something tingled along her spine, a feeling not a thought. She shivered.

  She drove down Delaware Avenue, swung a left onto Sycamore Street. She pulled up in front of 76, a small ’20s-era stone cottage trimmed in white, with a black-and-white out front. A cop car out front had steam wafting out of its muffler.

  A car door clunked three doors down. Abbie saw a woman dressed in a Burberry coat ferrying three small children toward a Honda minivan. There was no one else on the street.

  Abbie got out, grabbed the Danishes and bagels she’d picked up at a Tim Horton’s, and walked to the black-and-white. When she was even with the passenger door, she tapped on the window.

  The cop in the front seat had a napkin on his lap and, balanced on top, a donut with a dab of gleaming jelly at its side. He jerked away from the window, startled by Abbie’s sudden appearance. Abbie read the nameplate. Shaney.

  He rolled down the window. “Kearney,” he said, a little abashed.

  Abbie had gotten used to being recognized by people she didn’t know, especially cops. “Anything interesting?” She ducked down to nod at the uniform in the driver’s side. He held a cup of coffee and raised it to her. His nameplate read Markowitz.

  “Channel 7 was by a couple of hours ago,” Markowitz said. “Besides that? Nothing.”

  “How is Ms. Payne?”

  Shaney shrugged. “She’s up and she’s down. Looking out the window every five seconds. Her daughter’s twenty now, she thinks maybe Hangman got out to take a shot at her. Which makes no sense. The girl’s away at college.”

  “You haven’t gotten on the radio about my visit, right?”

  “Right,” Markowitz said. He had a mustache that looked like a high school boy’s first attempt at facial hair.

  “Good,” Abbie said. “I’ll be out in a little while.”

  “Those Danishes?” Shaney said.

  “Yeah,” Abbie replied, walking away. “They are.”

  26

  When she answered the door, Ginnie Payne was showing the strain. Her face was powder-white, her eyebrows and hair stark black. She resembled a bird, one of the predators, a hawk or a falcon. Even her sweater was the deepest black. The tendons on her neck strained through the flesh like smooth rope. She looked at Abbie with a pulsing intensity, then pushed the door open.

  “Detective Kearney.”

  Abbie walked in, following the trim woman into a small living room. The TV was on, tuned to one of the local channels. Abbie saw that they, too, were doing live Hangman coverage.

  “Thanks for talking with me,” Abbie said.

  “I hope it helps,” Ginnie said, turning as she sat on the cream-colored leather couch. “At least more than talking with the other idiots they’ve sent over.”

  Abbie sat across from her on a matching seat. The room was tastefully done up in sleek, leather-and-steel furniture. It looked like a showroom and smelled like a lemony cleaner. Obsessive dusting was clearly Ginnie Payne’s release.

  “I hope it will.”

  Ginnie Payne tilted her chin up, her eyes dropping to take Abbie in from head to toe. “You look better than you did six months ago.”

  Abbie smiled ruefully. “Thanks. I guess.”

  “I thought you handled it … well. That’s why I agreed to talk to you.”

  “Your situation is even more difficult, I’d imagine,” Abbie said.

  Ginnie made a face. “It is. I won’t deny it. To be the ex-wife of a serial killer is something I never prepared myself for.” She tucked her chin in toward her chest, and looked down at the floor.

  “The dreaded Hangman,” Ginnie whispered bitterly. Her lips curled around the words, as if they were rotten, soured. She thought for a moment. “And now he’s brought it all back, as if the first time wasn’t enough.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance he’ll come here?” Abbie asked. “Do you feel threatened?”

  “I do. I didn’t the first time, obviously, because I didn’t think Marcus was the killer. I never even suspected. I was an observer like everyone else until he was caught. And then the inquisition began.”

  “You were separated from Marcus, divorced, for what, three years before the killings started,” Abbie asked. “Why an inquisition?”

  Ginnie Payne studied Abbie’s face, her eyes aggrieved. She stood up and walked to the window, pulling the drapes apart to stare at the street. She shook her head in disgust. “I saw three of my neighbors loading their families into their cars this morning. They don’t want their precious daughters to even be close to Hangman’s wife while he’s out there.” She turned back to Abbie. “Buffalo is in many ways a very—how shall I put it—old-fashioned place. Old-fashioned as in medieval. I once loved the killer, so I must have loved that part of him that killed the girls. It’s unimaginable that I didn’t know he was capable of these things. And then there’s Nicole.”

  “What about her?” asked Abbie.

  “I won custody in the divorce. Marcus had threatened me several times and grabbed me violently one night around Christmas, when I’d spent too much on a gift apparently. My lawyers convinced the judge that he wasn’t stable enough to share custody. So when it was revealed that he was Hangman, a rumor went around. He killed those girls because he was angry at not seeing his daughter. He couldn’t reach Nicole so he strangled …” She stopped. “I still have Nicole. I shouldn’t be bitter. There are four …” She looked up. “No, five families without their children today. I shouldn’t be bitter. But I am.”

  “People blamed you for the murders because you won custody?” Abbie said.

  “Yes. They did.” Ginnie Payne’s eyes met Abbie’s. “You stopped your brother from killing, Detective Kearney, and so they forgive you. But I created mine. That’s what they think. So I must suffer.”

  “When it comes to their children, people aren’t rational,” Abbie said. “They think of curses and blood and fate. But Ms. Payne—”

  “Ginnie. Please.”

  “Ginnie, time is short. You know that. Is there anything you can tell me? I’ve read the files, I’ve gone through your interviews. Do you have any idea where Marcus is going?”

  A look of exhaustion swept over Ginnie’s face. “None. Is Marcus angry enough with me to try something? I don’t know. We got divorced for the most boring and normal reasons. We married too young, we were incompatible, there were money pressures, and he lost his temper and got physical with me. But I didn’t divorce him because I saw the potential for him to kill young girls. I just didn’t. Why can’t anyone understand that?” Her mouth twisted into an ugly grimace.

  “Did you have any communications with him when he was in prison?”

  Ginnie shook her head. “None.”

  “What about friends that might be helping him now?”

  “I can’t think of one. They all abandoned him after he was caught.”

  Abbie frowned. “There was no one who might have come around in the years since? A close friend?”

  Ginnie shook her head. “I’m telling you—”

  “Think, Ginnie. Forget the stock answers that I know you’ve been giving.”

  Ginnie put her fingers to her temples and pressed. “Oh, God. He had a couple of friends from UB that would look him up when they passed through town. They were nice guys, I liked them. Unlike his high school friends, you could hold a conversation with them.”

  Abbie remembered them from the files. Both living out of town during the original murder spree. They’d been checked out thoroughly.

  “Was there anyone else?” she asked.

  Ginnie closed her eyes. “No.”

  Abbie blew out a breath. “What about Sandy? Did he ever talk about her?”

  Ginnie tilted her head, frowned. “Yes. Toward the end, before he got caught, he did. He was strange, really animated.”<
br />
  This was the first time Abbie had heard it. The file mentioned nothing about a close connection between the killer and his cousin. “What did Marcus say?”

  “He’d gotten into his head that she was being abused. That’s all he cared about in the week before she disappeared.”

  Abbie felt as if she’d stepped on a high-voltage wire. Abused? Was that what Lipschitz was referring to when he said Hangman was saving his victims from a worse fate?

  Ginnie went on, “He would mutter these dark things about protecting Sandy.”

  “Who did he think was abusing her?”

  “He didn’t say. Marcus—well, he had a savior complex since he was a boy, as far as I can tell. He wanted to be out rescuing the innocents of the world, starting with animals when he was a boy, then moving on … to girls. That was his cover, I think. He could quote you statistics about thirty percent of young girls experience some form of abuse by the time they reach sixteen, blah blah blah. He even wanted to home-school Nicole. But all along, he wasn’t rescuing them, he was getting them for himself. It’s so diabolical I can’t even …” She reached up her hand and covered her mouth for a moment, then dropped it. “Marcus kept parts of himself hidden. When I first met him, I thought he was an open person, like me, someone who was looking to get away from a difficult childhood. His was difficult because his father was a drunk and his mother was a cold woman who died and left him alone in the world. But what I learned is there’s always some kind of inheritance; you never escape the people that your parents were. Marcus was secretive.” Ginnie shook her head, then rose off the couch and walked to the window. Her voice grew scornful as she looked out. “Is this a joke or something? Performance art? How many donuts can two cops eat?”

  Abbie got up and stood behind her. She saw Shaney lifting what looked like a bear claw to his mouth.

  “If you were Marcus, where would you go?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask me that.”

  Abbie grabbed her arm and turned her slowly. The woman was sleepwalking. She had to wake her up. “Right now Marcus is out there and by now he’s probably found another girl. He’s studying her habits. He’s writing down the times she leaves the house and when she gets back and how many people are with her each time and what she weighs, because he’s going to put her on the end of a rope. Do you understand, Ginnie?”

  Ginnie made a sick sound in her throat. “I didn’t sleep last night because I understand.”

  As Abbie watched her, Ginnie walked slowly back to the couch and slumped onto it, bringing her hand up to rub her temple. “For six years, I lived with this animal.”

  “And my brother skinned a man alive.”

  Ginnie looked up, searching Abbie’s face.

  “We’ve both been close to horrible things,” said Abbie. “And we will never be the same. Never.”

  Ginnie nodded.

  Abbie took out a card and a pen from her bag and circled the cell phone number on it. She laid it on the table by the window. “This is my number. If you have any kind of feeling, any memory that comes to you in the next few hours, I want you to call me. I will not be doing anything except looking for Marcus until he’s back in prison. Anything.”

  Ginnie grabbed Abbie’s fingers with her two hands and squeezed them. Her face looked gaunt. “Please catch him. Just not for that girl, but for me and Nicole, too. We’re not going to make it. Please, Detective.”

  Abbie felt the woman’s hands shake in her own. Just make it stop. Give me back my life.

  She knew how that went.

  Abbie’s mind was on Sandy Riesen. Why had no one told her about the abuse?

  She left the Danishes and bagels for the cops upstairs, and headed back outside.

  27

  Leaving Maggie Payne’s house, Abbie’s mind was churning. She drove home slowly. The Saab was making a funny noise again, a whirring coming from the engine. Not now, please, not now.

  Abbie climbed the stairs of her Victorian and slid the key in the lock, but the door just opened without her turning it. That Mills, Abbie thought. He acted like he lived in some Canadian fishing village where you could leave your doors open and only baby seals would come walking through to nestle in your spare bed.

  Mills was splayed out on their leather couch watching an English soccer game. Arsenal against somebody else. Mills loved Arsenal.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “What’s going on, babe?”

  Abbie sighed. She wanted to tell someone about the case and about McGonagle’s offer to help, unofficially. No, she wanted to tell her boyfriend. But her boyfriend was also a cop.

  “Did you eat?” he said. “I brought you a gyro.”

  Abbie smiled. “Thanks, Mills.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Why do you still call me Mills?”

  Abbie squinched up her eyes. “Because that’s what I called you when we first met, dummy. I’m sentimental.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I am. Really I am.”

  She walked over, sat on the couch, and leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. He reached around and gave her a squeeze that left her breathless for a second.

  “This case …” she said.

  “I wish I could be out there with you.”

  Abbie smiled. “Headline in The Buffalo News: ‘Detective’s Hunky Boyfriend Helps Her Catch Hangman.’ Thanks but no.”

  “It’d be good for my career,” Mills said. “And my chick options.”

  She gave him a kidney punch, and locked eyes with him. Her eyes slowly grew more troubled.

  “What is it, Abbie?” Mills said.

  She pulled away and relocated to the other end of the couch. She watched the soccer game in silence for a few minutes.

  “So there’s this cop named McGonagle,” she said finally, feeling tense as a coiled rattlesnake. “He’s in touch with the Network.”

  They’d discussed the Network before. There was a version of it in most decent-sized cities in the Northeast, but nothing like the octopus-like organization that seemed to infiltrate every corner of her hometown. Mills had been fascinated. They had nothing like it in Niagara Falls, just a couple of corrupt state reps whose crimes basically added up to free rent for their relatives.

  “Uh-huh,” Mills said uncertainly.

  “He offered to help on Hangman.”

  Mills went still for a second, then blew out a breath and slumped back into the leather couch. He stared at her, his tousled hair low over his eyes.

  “You can’t.”

  Abbie hugged her arms closer. “I know that. But maybe there’s a way to get the information without …”

  “There’s no such thing as an experienced virgin,” Mills said matter-of-factly.

  “Don’t be gross,” Abbie said.

  “You know what I mean. Either you are or you aren’t. Either you’re with them or you’re not.”

  “I guess.”

  She frowned. Seconds ticked by, filled with silence. Abbie swung her legs up on his lap. “Rub my feet?” she said.

  “Gladly,” he said, and his smile was instant and warm. Abbie reminded herself for the thousandth time to keep this one around.

  “Just the feet, mister.”

  Mills laughed and slipped her foot out of the black Tory Burch flats she was wearing. Abbie smiled and sank further into the leather. She wanted to sink into the couch, to disappear from the world for ten or twenty minutes. She reached over and pulled one of her fancy throw pillows over and pressed her face into it. She could feel Mills’s thumb press the arch of her foot, a known trouble spot, pushing right up to the edge of pain, and she groaned slightly.

  Strong hands on a boyfriend are worth one million dollars, she thought. But there was something she was trying to blot out, to not think about, and of course it came welling up to her out of the darkness of the pillow. The redheaded woman pushing the stroller. The image floated into her brain and stayed there.

  What do you want, Abbie thought sl
eepily. Babies have nothing to do with this case. Go away, go away.

  But the image was trapped in the front of her brain. She couldn’t get rid of it, as much as she tried to focus on the foot rub.

  Did it have something to do with the note she found on Martha Stoltz—They are not your children? Or the original crime spree? Or …

  Abbie’s mind churned. The image refused to disappear. It was unwavering. Persistent.

  After enjoying the foot rub and hurriedly eating half the gyro, Abbie hurried next door and knocked on Ron’s door. Her watch read 1:45. Something stirred above. She heard feet on the stairs, soft crumps growing louder.

  “Abbie,” Ron said, pulling the door open.

  “Is Charles home?”

  Ron glanced at his watch.

  “He’s on a plane, coming home from a conference in Chicago. Some retarded—”

  “Have you ever heard of something or someone called the Madeleines?”

  “Not the cookie, right?” Ron said dubiously.

  “Not the cookie. Something to do with Hoyt Lake.”

  “Oh, that,” Ron said tiredly. “You’ve come to the right place.” He pulled the door full open. “Come on in.”

  Abbie followed him across the small foyer and down a dark hallway into the kitchen.

  “Wait here, hon,” Ron said before disappearing into a back office.

  They’d had the kitchen redone in old French country style. As Abbie waited, she turned on the coffeemaker and heard the water begin to circulate.

  Two minutes later, Ron emerged from the office with a pamphlet.

  “Found it,” he said.

  “What is this?” Abbie said, looking at the unadorned cover, which read Legends of North Buffalo.

  “Charles gives it out on his North Buffalo tour. The Madeleines is on page 3. I remember because it’s one of the only juicy pieces of gossip in there.”

  Abbie opened the booklet and flipped to page 3, “The Myth of the Madeleines” printed in bold at the top of the page. She began to read to herself.

  “At the turn of the twentieth century, as Buffalo approached its apogee of mercantile power, local historians began to record a series of rumors that appear connected to the unease the new riches brought. Thousands of young men and women were flocking to the Buffalo area from all over the country, to work in the factories, restaurants, and stores that were the inevitable result of the city’s new prosperity. In a striking past echo of the American situation today, the sudden influx of wealth produced a socio-psychological unease about the men who possessed it. The Madeleine stories were one of the results …”