Hangman: A Novel

by Stephan Talty

  Abbie skipped a paragraph of sociological theory and picked up the narrative again.

  “The rumors vary in details but the main story line is consistent: a young woman named Madeleine arrives in Buffalo to work in one of its shining new factories. Her origins are unclear: usually the Midwest, but sometimes the poor Southern states. She begins talking to her co-workers about a suitor she’s met, a ‘man of some prominence’ in the community, though she won’t tell anyone his name. The woman, though taken with her new lover, appears troubled by his actions. The myth cites his possessiveness in some cases, his capacity for violence in others. She appears with bruises on her face or arms but attributes them to accidents in the factory or at home. Finally, she fails to show up for work one day. A check of her lodgings at the rooming house finds no trace of her. Her best dress is missing. The girl has disappeared without a trace. The last anyone heard of her, she was going rowing on Hoyt Lake.”

  Abbie looked at Ron.

  “Hoyt Lake,” she said.

  “Keep reading,” he answered, with a smile.

  “Hoyt was a popular excursion spot for Buffalonians during this time. On Sundays and holidays, the paths were filled with promenading couples from all over the city. But during the week it was the province of the rich whose mansions backed on the park. Boats could be rented for a nickel an hour. The rumor goes around that Madeleine was taken out on a boat and dumped in the middle of the lake by her powerful lover, who’d grown tired of the girl. Her body was weighted down so that it didn’t float to the surface.

  “If the rumor is to be believed, there is more than one Madeleine in Hoyt Lake. The myth always ends with the same image: if you go out onto Hoyt on a particularly clear night when the moon is full, and you row your boat to the exact center of the lake, you can look down and see a litter of white objects on the lake floor. The bones of the Madeleines, the disposable women of Buffalo’s boom.”

  Abbie flipped over the page and skimmed the rest. It was mostly theories about where the rumor came from.

  “—derives from a shared anxiety about the expendability of workers in the new economic landscape—wealth inequalities spur a reflexive doubt—intentions about those who sit at the pinnacle of power …”

  She folded the pamphlet and put it into her pocket.

  “Is that all there is, rumors?” Abbie said. “Did anyone ever find actual bones in Hoyt Lake?”

  Ron pointed at her, tipping forward. “The exact question I asked Charles. Do you know what he said? That no police in 1910 were going to dredge Hoyt Lake in order to convict a millionaire of murder. So, no real bones.” He walked over to the coffeemaker. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

  “When is Charles home?” asked Abbie.

  “Six o’clock or so. He’ll go to UB first, then come home. I’m making him sea bass. You game?”

  “Can’t,” Abbie said. “I want to have a look at Hoyt Lake.”

  “Don’t fall in,” Ron said cheerfully.

  28

  A freezing mist had moved in from over Lake Erie and she rolled up the window to keep out the cold. The big, two-story houses she passed were swathed in fog, which occasionally parted to reveal a mansion against a backdrop of white. She turned into Delaware Park and drove slowly along the curving road. The park, too, was abandoned, except for an occasional jogger. This is where the local high schools came to practice for their cross-country races, and she saw one group of female students, the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled up over hidden faces, as they whipped by on the right in tight formation. There were no stragglers. On their sweatshirts, just above the heart, she recognized the crest of Nardin Academy, the best girls school in the city.

  Despite her lingering resentment toward the North, Abbie felt the urge to step out of the car and clap for these girls, to be their one-woman cheering section. Good for them, carrying on as if nothing had happened. Stiff upper lips.

  The Saab swept slowly by the backstop of a baseball diamond, only the top of it visible in the whiteness, and then over a bridge, tiny Hoyt Lake on her right, the wind turning the water’s surface rough like a crocodile’s skin. She passed over the bridge and on her right the mist parted and a stand of birches appeared. Birches were rare in this park, and their white thin trunks caught in the mesh of fog always seemed to her like the bones of the local Indian dead, sucked from their burial grounds by the mist and now hanging midair like an accusation.

  Abbie saw Hoyt Lake emerge to her left, slate blue under the white clouds. It was small, a modest lake for a modest city. She parked and opened the door of the Saab, stepping out into the cold. She leaned against the car’s curved hood. Where would Hangman go? Where the girls were, obviously. What if the girls were all being kept inside? He’d have to find a stray, or he’d eventually have to get inside a house. He hadn’t escaped from Auburn to keep his head low and go live under a false identity in the Midwest. He’d escaped to kill in the place he’d most likely be caught. He was here.

  From what she could see, there were very few unescorted girls in the city of Buffalo. There would be even fewer after everyone absorbed the news of the Martha Stoltz murder. Some girls would be going to school Monday morning. If I was the parent of a teenage girl, Abbie thought, a fifteen-year-old brunette, what would I do? Keep her at home and skip work to watch over her? Escort her to school and believe there was safety in numbers?

  The sound of footfalls and bird cries emerged from fog, sharp and distinct, but the runners and the starlings that gave them off passed by unseen. It was impossible even to judge how far away the things making the sounds were. There was only a shifting white curtain, sweeping ahead and back as the wind swept it along.

  Two minutes later, Raymond’s black Ford Crown Victoria rolled out of the mist like a dark-hulled Viking ship. He stepped out of the car in a black-and-yellow-checked sports coat and wide, mustard-colored slacks. He pulled the sports coat’s wide lapels up around his chin.

  “Next time, I’m choosing the meet-up spot. Some nice jazz—”

  Abbie smiled. “I was thinking about something my father said one time. He told me there are really only two classifications for murder. Normal or abnormal.”

  Raymond sighed.

  “Class in session now?”

  “Shut up, you might learn something,” Abbie said in her best imitation of a County detective.

  Raymond looked away, stared at the white mist for a moment. “Okay,” he said.

  “The normal murder means that you tailor your investigation by what you see. Say you have the body of a man with a necklace clutched in his hand. He’s been stabbed multiple times, several times in the face and eyes. Some checking reveals he’s been divorced twice and his friends report that he and his current wife have been having problems. He lives in the suburbs but he was found downtown in the Chippewa district, where every other establishment is a bar, many of them frequented by college students from UB or Buff State.”

  Raymond’s eyes were thoughtful.

  “So the necklace belongs to some chick,” he said. “Some chick the vic knew. He gave her the necklace, most likely. There was some kind of argument …”

  “And he snatched the necklace back. And the woman stabbed him. Assume the wounds to his face were not accidental but were inflicted because the killer wanted to disfigure the man, make him unattractive to other females. Assume stabbing at the eyes meant that he’d been looking at those other women and this was the killer’s revenge.”

  Raymond nodded. “I got you.”

  “You focus on the single most likely reason for the things you see: jealousy. The killer would be found somewhere in his romantic history. Do that first. Focus on the most obvious explanation.”

  “That’s eighty percent of my caseload.”

  Abbie nodded. “But an abnormal murder, that’s different. Here it’s the clues that don’t make sense that are the important ones. The weird signs, the outliers.”

  Raymond watched a male jogger appear out of
the mist and trudge by, puffing like a train. The man passed without a nod. “So what is Hangman?”

  “Well, the escape has a bunch of normal elements. Marcus Flynn was a prisoner and all prisoners want to escape. He saw a chance and took it. He was a serial killer who started killing as soon as he’d escaped and in the same MO as before he’d escaped. He’d been successful at not getting caught, and they’d been unable to catch him in the hours since his run began. All to be expected.”

  “But what you’re saying is that the abnormal things, they interest you more?”

  “They do,” said Abbie. “I think that’s how we’ll catch him. Someone was paying Joe Carlson to find out what Hangman knew. That’s odd. Think about the facts connected to that piece of abnormal information.”

  Abbie held up her hand, then uncurled the index finger.

  “Fact: Hangman was drawing pictures of Sandy, which were displayed on the walls of his cell.

  “Fact: The drawings were getting more and more detailed, indicating his memory was coming back. Flynn’s drawings could be seen by anyone in the prison. Like Joe Carlson. Who was being paid by someone to watch him.

  “Fact: Just as Hangman was beginning to get his memory back, he escaped.”

  “The timing,” Raymond said.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Abbie said.

  “So you think there was a second man, who paid Carlson to keep an eye on Hangman.”

  “I do.”

  “Who?” Raymond asked.

  “No idea. But the important thing is to think of this as an abnormal case. The clues that are in plain sight are what Hangman knows we know. The clues that someone attempted to hide, those are the ones that matter.”

  “The second man has money,” Raymond said. “So who does that point to?”

  “It’s a pretty short list. The victims’ families. The people in the North.”

  Somehow, as the rest of Buffalo was ravaged by layoffs and foreclosures, the North had remained a green oasis where the residents made their fortunes by mysterious means. Few people in the County or anywhere else had the cash to buy $80,000 Corvettes. The second man had to be from the North, or the richer suburbs. Amherst, Williamsville.

  “Who do we start with?” Raymond said.

  “There’s a lot of things happening around Sandy. The missing girl. Her father’s rich and he was Hangman’s uncle. There’s one other thing—his home backs up on Hoyt Lake.”

  Raymond shot her a bug-eyed look. “Stop playin’.”

  “It’s true,” Abbie said. “So I’m going to have a talk with Frank Riesen. He’s a twofer—he might have information on his daughter’s disappearance, and he might be the second man. Then I’m going to talk to Walter Myeong, Maggie’s father. Less tantalizing, but still rich.”

  Abbie nodded to Raymond, who popped off the hood of the Saab and walked toward the Crown Vic. Abbie jumped in her car, did a slow U-turn, watching for more joggers, then whipped the Saab into a straight line and drove through the park, the white mist parting in front of her and whipping over the windshield as she pressed the gas. She exited the park and took Delaware Avenue downtown, drove eight minutes before finding Riesen’s business address.

  29

  Abbie stared at the low-slung building, sleek and metallic-looking, that housed Riesen Properties, LLC. It looked like a just surfaced submarine, with rivulets of rain sliding over the surface. She parked across from the building, hustled across the street, pulled open the dark glass door and strode in.

  There was a hush to the building, accentuated by low-burning golden lights set low into the dark walls. A feeling that made you want to whisper. In Abbie’s experience, that meant money.

  No directory was posted in the entrance, just a smoked glass door to the left. Pulling it open, she found herself in a wide reception room with padded leather benches along one wall and a glass-and-metal desk straight ahead. A young woman glanced up from a shiny Apple laptop and smiled.

  The receptionist had light brown hair streaked with gold pulled back in a bun, a tailored business suit in cream, and a black silk blouse. Strangely tanned for the season, she wore scalloped gold earrings, a plain gold chain necklace tucked behind the silk collar, and no wedding ring. Her green eyes were appraising, noncommittal.

  Abbie walked toward the desk, pulling out her ID as she went. “I’m Detective Kearney from the Buffalo Police Department,” she said as the woman glanced at the badge. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Riesen.”

  The receptionist nodded, smiling. “He’s not available,” she said in a faintly accented voice. Abbie couldn’t locate the origin. Boston? London, a long time ago?

  “When might he be available?” Abbie said. “It’s urgent.”

  There was a leather appointment book at the corner of the desk. Abbie looked at it, but the woman only leaned back in her chair. She was in terrific shape, you could see by the way she held herself. “He’s in a business meeting with a client. I couldn’t say when he’d be available to talk. His schedule is very tight these days.”

  Abbie took that in. “I’m investigating the Hangman case.”

  Abbie couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the street. It really was like being in a submarine a hundred yards underwater. “You heard he escaped?”

  The woman’s eyebrows raised briefly, and the smile stayed steady on the lips. “I did.”

  “Every piece of information helps in these kinds of investigations.”

  “Mr. Riesen’s involvement with the case happened a long time ago.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Abbie said, eying the woman. “And you are?”

  “I’m Katie Siegel, Mr. Riesen’s personal assistant.”

  “Ms. Siegel.”

  “Katie, please.”

  Abbie almost laughed. She found herself in some kind of duel.

  “Katie. Mr. Riesen seems to have given you a lot of leeway in deciding whether he talks to certain people. Like the police searching for his daughter’s killer, for instance.”

  Katie’s face hardened. “He—”

  “And it seems you’ve been told beforehand to brush us off.”

  Katie’s eyes were unreadable. It struck Abbie that she was good at her job, and that job involved saying no a lot. “I have been given instructions on how to handle Mr. Riesen’s time, yes.”

  “And I didn’t make the cut?”

  Katie smiled and shook her head softly. Her politeness was exquisite.

  “Can I ask what kind of deal he’s negotiating?” Abbie said.

  “It involves a commercial property in Toronto, but I don’t see how that can possibly matter.”

  “I’m trying to see what the stakes are. How much he might possibly make in the deal. I’d like to measure that against the chance that he might help me save a girl in the next couple of days, see what the current price of a teenage girl is these days. Or does it fluctuate due to market conditions?”

  The smile was gone now. “Mr. Riesen lost his daughter, Detective.”

  Abbie leaned across the desk. “Yes, I know. Which makes me wonder why I’m talking to you and not him right now.”

  Up close, Katie’s eyes were extraordinary, a kind of luminescent green flecked with gold. “Perhaps it’s painful, Detective Kearney. Perhaps he doesn’t see what’s to be gained by going through it again.”

  “What’s to be gained is saving another father from going through the same thing.”

  Abbie thought she detected a flicker of worry or sympathy in the eyes, but it came and went so fast it was hard to tell.

  “I’ll tell Mr. Riesen you came by.”

  “I’ll tell him myself,” Abbie said. “I will be speaking with him.” She placed her card down on the leather appointment book and turned to leave.

  Abbie drove toward Niagara Square, thinking of the image from this morning that wouldn’t leave her. The redheaded woman pushing the stroller. It was back again. She could see the woman leaning into the wind, the stroller’s big, ten-inch back wheels tu
rning as if in slow motion.

  Was it the stroller? No, there were no strollers or prams or rocking cribs in the case. But there were children. The North’s next generation was being killed off.

  What did the note say? “They are not your children.”

  When she’d thought of children, she’d thought of teenagers. Their habits, their clothes—Martha’s raw-skinned hand sticking out of the blue-striped sailor’s shirt—their vulnerabilities. But these teenagers had once been infants. Is that what stuck with her about the baby in the stroller—their innocence?

  No, it wasn’t anything so airy-fairy. It was something concrete.

  Okay, it wasn’t the stroller. What else went with babies? Diapers. Onesies.

  Abbie pulled to the curb, pulled the trunk release button, and got out of the Saab. She walked back and heaved the hatchback open. There was the case file where she’d left it. She pulled it out and flipped to the evidence pictures as traffic whipped by on her left.

  Sandy’s silk scarf, shiny in the photographer’s flash.

  Charlotte Breen’s green wool V-neck sweater.

  Maggie’s rumpled Guess jeans.

  No, no, and no. There’s nothing in this case that is even tangentially infant-related.

  She shuffled impatiently to the next page. It was a close-up of Maggie Myeong’s hand, the inside left palm.

  The A inside the square had been crudely carved, the cross-line of the letter going outside the box. Drawn hurriedly, even frantically.

  Abbie’s eyes fluttered. Her body felt light, as it always did when a piece of the puzzle fit into place.

  The A inside the square. The infant in the stroller.

  The two images seemed to align in her mind. The second unlocked the first.

  It was a baby’s block. It had to be.