Hangman: A Novel

by Stephan Talty

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “Elmwood and Bryant.”

  “Head east,” McGonagle barked.

  “Dispatcher said—”

  “Fuck the dispatcher.”

  She slid into the next intersection and whipped the wheel right. The car shuddered, the engine whining, but she barely made the turn without slamming into the curb.

  “Left on Remsen.”

  There were people on the streets, more than she’d seen in three days. Men running, tilted forward, calling to each other. Were these undercovers, or search team members, or was the whole city coming to watch Hangman go down? She hit Remsen and slammed a left. A whiff of burnt rubber came through the vents.

  A shot rang out. Close by. Abbie felt her heart skip a beat.

  “Get there,” McGonagle said.

  Shouts from ahead of her, a vague commotion of bodies near the corner.

  “I don’t see him!” she cried.

  She saw flashing lights ahead and the hood of the car leapt as she hit the gas.

  “Where is he?” Abbie shouted into the phone.

  “Hold on.”

  She heard a text-buzz on McGonagle’s end. “Left on Delaware.”

  She swung the car and it drifted onto Delaware, nearly hitting a parked SUV. The sound of another shot, and yelling from over the rooftops growing louder.

  A man came tearing out of an alleyway forty feet from the Saab, running breakaway toward Abbie. Abbie saw his eyes, impossibly big beneath a red hood. He ran past the streetlight and broke to the right, between two parked cars, the crimson hood bobbing in the darkness.

  Abbie felt something spring up inside her at the sight: a visceral desire to kill this thing running amok, to stop its motion. She slammed on the brakes, jammed the car into Park and was out of the door and running. There were screams from up ahead, then two more shots. Their concussion reverberated through her chest like a depth charge. Big rounds, .45s.

  Abbie cut a corner and hopped a short hedge that loomed up out of the night. There, twenty yards away, the man lay facedown on the road, the red hood pulled tight around his face. A pale blue Impala was stopped fifteen feet away, its driver door hanging open. A male police officer with a gun held in both hands was approaching the hooded figure, crouched as if he was ready to spring on top of him. A group of men from the neighboring houses was approaching the body from the other side.

  “Back off!” the armed cop called out. He was pointing the gun not at the body but at the group of men.

  It was like when they caught the Night Stalker in L.A., Abbie thought. He’d been recognized and the neighborhood came after him like a mad dog, beating him senseless. The cops hadn’t caught him—they’d saved him from the people. Abbie felt a wildness in the air, a fire ready to ignite.

  The figure was still as Abbie raced toward him.

  “Buffalo PD!” she yelled to the gun-holding cop. He nodded without looking her way, then dropped to his knees by the red-hooded man laid out on the ground. He pulled at the hood, then twisted away. The cop began to talk furiously into a handheld radio.

  As she came closer, she saw the body splayed, arms out. The jacket was denim, black, matching the pants.

  Something was wrong. The body was taller than six foot, maybe six-four. Too tall. The hand that lay palm-down on the tarmac was smooth and the color of caramel.

  Latino, Abbie thought. What the hell.

  Breathing hard, she came up to the man.

  The cop gave her a look of disgust, a look she knew, a cop look that meant I hate this world and everything in it.

  “A fucking kid,” he whispered hoarsely. “I nearly blew his head off.”

  Abbie knelt beside the figure in the black jacket, and bent down to his face. It was a boy, not more than eighteen, curly, close-cropped hair and a high forehead, eyes bugged open, the flesh under the eyes purplish. He wore a red sweatshirt under the black jacket. The cop pulled back the jacket. No bullet holes were visible.

  Abbie bent her head down in relief.

  “They dared me to wear it!” the boy cried.

  “Who did?” Abbie hissed.

  “My boys,” he said, breathing hard. “It was a dare. All it was, I swear.”

  The red hood was attached to a St. Francis sweatshirt—a local Catholic high school. Abbie thought: how many downtown Latino kids made it to St. Frannie’s? Here lying on Elmwood Avenue was some kind of star, the class valedictorian, the neighborhood’s brightest. Inches from a bullet.

  It wasn’t Hangman, just a stupid innocent kid in a red sweatshirt. Abbie felt the desire to turn, walk away, and never return.

  46

  The voice had gone silent hours ago. Katrina had crawled back to the corner of the stone room and was sitting, knees up, her taped hands folded across her knees.

  From the other direction, footsteps. The hairs on Katrina’s arm rose and her heart went ice-cold as she heard someone walking in the room beyond.

  The footsteps stopped. There was a distinct metal click, and a light buzzed on. Slivers of its hard white glow reached through the crack at the bottom of the door.

  The footsteps resumed and got closer.

  The door rattled in its hinges and a shadow moved through the slits between the boards. He was fiddling with the lock, grunting, trying to get the key to work.

  The door screeched open and Katrina stifled a scream.

  Hangman. A key was hanging down, clutched in his hand. “Out,” he said.

  Katrina crouched down and stumbled toward the light. It was to her right, throwing shadows onto the wall near Hangman as he stood in the dank corridor waiting for her. She sniffed stale water and a mossy smell. Gross.

  She passed by the mask. She wouldn’t put it on. When I put that on, I’ll be ready to die, she thought, and I’ll never be ready to die.

  “I want you to see something,” he said.

  Katrina glanced at him, and she couldn’t disguise the hatred. “Katrina,” she hissed at him. “My name is Katrina Lamb.”

  He reached down and grabbed the tape stretched between her hands and pulled up. Katrina rose unsteadily, nearly tipping over, before she stumbled forward and followed him. As she was pulled out of the stone room, Katrina turned and glanced back at the inky corridor to the left. But it was swathed in blackness. She could hear and see nothing. No cell doors, no one slumped in the shadows. It was as dark as a well.

  Hangman shoved her past him with a grunt. The corridor led to a series of steps going up. They were covered with green slime, water trickling down the cement and running over the vines or moss or whatever the hell it was.

  “Up,” he ordered.

  She put her foot on the first step, her nose wrinkling, and started climbing. There was no door at the top, just an empty doorway into some kind of high-ceilinged hall. Chunks of the wall were missing, with riblike pieces of wood behind it. A light burned brightly. She reached the top and turned into the room, stirring up clouds of fine dust with her feet as she shuffled forward. Katrina choked as it was sucked into her lungs. She stopped and bent over, coughing, her throat on fire.

  Gloom, darkness to her left. It was nighttime. To her right, a bright spotlight turned upward, sending a beam of intense light to the high ceiling twelve feet above. Trash, wrecked things thrown around. She spotted an old-fashioned wheelchair—the wooden kind that looked like a dining chair on wheels—and an old bedpan, its metal surface turned green.

  Two windows covered with rough planks of wood nailed over them from outside, a roof open to the sky in the far corner, stars visible through the holes. The only illumination came from the spotlight. In the gloom it threw into the rest of the room, Katrina saw old wooden boxes with faded writing on the side amid piles of broken plaster.

  “Where am I?” she said to Hangman as he came up behind her.

  I’m doing what the other girls did, she thought, and he’s going to kill me. Think, Katrina, think, you stupid little girl.

  What did the other g
irls say, Katrina asked, panicked. I have to say something different. Maybe there’s a word, a sentence, that will get me out of here.

  But all she could say was “Where am I?” She repeated it again, her mind whirring.

  He turned. The mask, it rippled when he turned, the material bunching at the neck.

  Katrina wriggled her hands. “I’m scared, really I am. Please tell me. Am I still in Buffalo?” She felt danger with every word.

  “This is where they kept her,” he said.

  “Kept who?” she managed to ask.

  He pushed her again and she stumbled toward the right-hand boarded-up window. A piece of one of the boards, gray with age, had been hacked away at the bottom right corner. She saw a faint gleam of moonlight illuminating something out there.

  He wants me to scream, Katrina thought. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

  The room was filled with junk, untouched for years. There was nothing in here, no knives, no guns she could see that would help her get away. And clearly no one except Hangman came to visit. They were alone.

  She was going to die.

  Pretend he’s someone else. Pretend he’s a boy having problems with his girlfriend, some geek like Harry Jacobson next door. Harry with the bad posture and addiction to World of Warcraft, which he talked about constantly. You became his friend. You knew how to talk to him. Do the same thing here.

  “What did she do to you, the girl they kept here?” she said, as she walked slowly forward.

  He coughed out a dry laugh. “Why do you think she did something to me?”

  “Because … because you killed all those girls. Someone must have done something to you to want to hurt us.”

  He pushed her, a painful shove in the small of the back. “She didn’t do anything to me. People did things to her.”

  Katrina nodded, turning toward the red mask. The eyes darted at hers, then away.

  “Your name’s Marcus, right? Can I call you that?”

  He stopped. The broken plaster and dust under her feet crunched as she stopped, too. He shoved again, a little more gently this time, and her foot slid into the base of the black wood. They were at the window.

  “Look,” he said.

  Katrina hesitated.

  “Look!” he cried, and the violence in his voice made her legs tremble. She bent and peeked outside.

  Trees. A grove of dark-limbed trees.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  The rain had stopped. The moon was behind the trees and their branches were lit up, snarled and black as charcoal.

  He pushed her head roughly to the left, but there was nothing there, only twisted branches and black sky.

  “Where?” she cried.

  Then she saw it. It was the only thing moving out there. A rope, hanging from a thick tree. At the end of it hung a noose in the shape of a teardrop.

  Katrina’s head jerked violently back. She was breathing fast.

  “Do you remember my name?” she said between breaths. “It’s Katrina.”

  He put his hand on her neck and squeezed. Katrina gasped and struggled to get away. She didn’t want to look again. But he forced her head down to the hole. She saw the rope swaying slightly, a ripple of movement sliding up its neck as the noose jerked back and forth in the wind.

  “You’re a smart girl, Katrina. Too bad for you.”

  He stopped, and Katrina looked up, meeting his gaze. His eyes looked like he was balanced up high and he was afraid of heights. His eyes were full of fear.

  “What was the girl’s name?” Katrina said. “The one they did stuff to.”

  He mumbled something, but she couldn’t understand. It was dangerous, but it was the only way. She heard him breathe. He could lunge forward and choke her in ten seconds. She felt if she said the wrong word, he’d explode.

  “What … did … they do to her?”

  He studied the floor, then looked up. Some kind of magic trick. The fear was gone—or else he’d been faking it—and now he looked at her, confident, smiling. Predator eyes. “Thank you, Katrina. That was very good. We’re going back now.”

  Katrina nodded. Be on his side. She turned, her heart beating like crazy.

  “I want to understand. Please. You’re doing this to get back at … who?”

  He pushed her again, not so roughly this time. She didn’t want to go back in the hole. Up here, there was the chance of escape. Downstairs was a tomb.

  “When I kill you, you won’t be you. You’ll be their children, all of them. They think I’m crazy but I’m not.”

  Whose children? But something told her not to ask. “Of course you’re not,” she said. “You’re just angry. Really angry. I know what that’s like.”

  He laughed.

  “I have an idea,” she said, quickly. He grabbed her taped hands and pushed her forward.

  I will be brave now, she thought, and then I won’t have to be brave for a very long time.

  The voice from behind the mask was snide. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear it. Rich girls always have ideas.”

  Rich? Was she even rich? Her mother was always complaining about the dry cleaning bills and last year they’d never even gone on vacation. She stood there, confused.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. Don’t worry about him, worry about you. “We go after the people who did this to the girl,” Katrina said, and she was proud of her voice, how steady it was. “We find them and … and punish them. I can help you with that.”

  He stiffened. “You can?”

  She nodded, looking down at the swirls of dust on her shoes. They were halfway across the room. She couldn’t hear traffic or airplanes or anything. Where in God’s name was she?

  Hangman stopped, and Katrina stood there, waiting. He leaned toward her. “Would you really do that?” She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her.

  Katrina looked down. Hangman was looking up at her, but the spotlight threw crazy shadows across the mask and it looked like he had no eyes at all.

  “Yes. I really would,” she said. And then she added, “I swear.”

  Hangman nodded, the mask wrinkling as his head bent up and then down. Then he reached up and grabbed her hair, pulling her toward him. Katrina closed her eyes, feeling his breath on her lips.

  “I have a better idea,” he whispered. “You die.”

  47

  Abbie was parked in front of City Hall. Night had fallen on Lake Erie, and the yellow lights that lit up the old Depression-era building glowed softly on the old stone.

  She didn’t want to go home. She had NPR on low in the background, letting her thoughts float with the news and the small bits of music. She was trying not to think about Katrina, to let something float in, like a bottle on a tide. Something she didn’t expect.

  A car rolled up to her left. Abbie shifted away, her hand dropping to the Glock in the holster. A door slammed and she saw McGonagle walking around the front of the car. He waved to the driver and the car moved off a few lengths ahead and parked, engine still running.

  “How’d you know I was here?” Abbie said.

  He got in, collapsing into the passenger seat. McGonagle ignored the question and she didn’t press. Her eyelids were heavy. She felt her body wanting to sleep.

  “I got to Riesen. He’ll talk to you.”

  She sat straight up, her jacket squealing on the Saab’s worn leather. “God bless you,” she said. “Who’s your contact?”

  McGonagle chuckled. “No, you don’t get that. Someone he trusts, okay?”

  Abbie frowned. The Network moved in its own mysterious ways.

  “He won’t deal with Buffalo PD, not officially,” said McGonagle. “Still has a bad taste in his mouth from ’07, the arrogant fuck. I told him you’re different, that you could act on your own if necessary. And I told him you had new theories on the case that might interest him.”

  “That’s dangerous,” she said.

  “It’s what got him to agree. No promises. He wants to meet you face-to-face, and hear
what you have to say. But it has to be somewhere out of sight.”

  “Wait,” Abbie said. “Does Riesen think Hangman is watching him?”

  “I have no idea. He’s skittish. He feels he’s under surveillance by somebody, that’s what I got from him.”

  Or he’s involved in the murders. Abbie thought of the signet ring. How had he gotten it?

  Abbie’s eyes swept Niagara Square. There were a few college students, two guys and a girl, wandering over from the direction of Chippewa Street, the nightlife strip where bars stood shoulder to shoulder. The students swayed, laughing. They were too old for Hangman. Like immune people during a plague, tipsy and free.

  “How do we do that?” she said.

  “Fucked if I know.”

  Abbie chewed on her bottom lip. “Parking garage?”

  “There’s none that you can drive in and drive out without the attendant seeing. I checked. No automatic ones in Buffalo that aren’t on main drags. And why would he be going into a parking garage and then coming out a few minutes later?”

  The girl, in a colorful knit hat, balanced on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the square and tried to walk the edge. Drunk, without a care in the world. Abbie felt like she was observing another species.

  “How about under a bridge?” she suggested.

  McGonagle breathed out. “Yeah, that could work.”

  “Something in Black Rock,” she said. “You know Austin Street?”

  It was an old railroad trestle in the industrial part of town, with little traffic or street life. It was in darkness all night, no fluorescents on the struts underneath. Perpetual shadows. The BPD had tried to have the Streets Department install lights underneath it for years, to scare away the vagrants and the drug dealers that sometimes hunkered there, but budgets were tight.

  “What time does he want to do it?” asked Abbie.

  “Ten o’clock.”

  She checked her watch.

  “Forty minutes. Fine. I’ll park nearby and walk in. He pulls under the bridge with a driver. If anyone’s tailing him, he stays in the car. Even if he thinks someone is watching from a ways off, he can get out and we talk without anyone spotting him, unless they’re close. The car can head off for a few minutes and circle back.”