The Headsman (36 page)

“Sounds like fun. Do I get a prize?” She made the question sound like a proposition.

Jud held up the first photo. On the back he’d lightly penciled a number, as he had on all of them. This one was a picture of George Demmerle, who currently ran the Gulf station out on Route 23.

She squinted at it. “No.”

He put the picture back into the box and held up the next one.

She shook her head.

They went through a dozen of them before she said, “Wait a minute.”

“Recognize him?”

“No. It’s just that you’re going too fast. You go that fast, it gets confusing. Screws up my memory.”

“Sorry. I’ll show you one, and then we’ll wait a moment. Or if you want to take a break anytime, just say so.”

“Okay.”

He raised the next photo.

“That one.”

“You sure?”

“I think so. Yeah, I’m sure. Let me see.” She took the photo from him and peered at it intently for half a minute or so. When she handed it back she said, “That one used to give me money.”

A slight sensation passed through Jud’s chest. The picture was a head shot of Bill Swanson.

“You remember anything else about him—anything at all?”

“No. Just him giving me money.”

Jud opened his notebook and jotted down the number he’d penciled on the back of the photograph. Then he put the photo back in the box and picked up the next one.

They went through ten more before she hit another. “Yeah. Him.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.” She went through the same routine, staring at the picture. “I remember his face. But that’s all.”

“Okay.” The guy was Mark Stanton, a manager with the telephone company.

They took a few minutes’ break after that, and she asked him how long he’d been a cop.

Eleven years, he told her, counting his MP time.

“You must like it, huh? Or just do it for the money?”

He knew she was needling him. “What money?”

“Only kidding, Chief. Fact is, I know what makes a cop tick.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh. It’s the power, right? You get to carry a big gun, wear a badge that tells the world you’re hot shit. And with you it’s even better, because now you got a gold badge that says you’re the hottest shit of all.”

“That must be it.”

“You married?”

“No.”

“Bet you got a cute girlfriend, though. And I’ll bet she just loves getting that big cop dick shoved into her. See, women are like that too, if you haven’t noticed. Nothing turns them on like power.”

She was stroking again, and he knew it, but for some crazy reason it was having an erotic effect on him, sitting here while she worked on him with that knowing look in her eyes.

He picked up another photo. “How about this one?”

She shook her head.

They kept going, and as the pile dwindled he began to wonder if this would work out. Two hits out of all these pictures wasn’t overly encouraging.

Suddenly she burst out laughing, pointing at the photograph he was holding.

He peered at her, eyebrows raised questioningly.

She laughed again. “Uncle Sam.”

“What?”

“Uncle Sam. That one I even remember his name because it was kind of a joke. He said to call him that, and I used to wonder how he could be Uncle Sam without the whiskers and the top hat. But that’s the guy, all right.”

Jud felt excited and uneasy at the same time. “Anything else on him?”

“No, that’s it. Jesus, that’s funny.”

He said nothing, but wrote down the number and placed the picture in the box. It was a studio portrait of the man who was now mayor of Braddock, Sam Melcher.

A half hour later they were down to the last few photos in the box. The positive pile now had four pictures in it, the maybes were five. Just as the publisher of the
Express
had told him, Janet Donovan had had affairs with many men. And as Jud had guessed, some of those men were now among Braddock’s leading citizens.

Ray Maxwell’s admonition also returned to his mind. Jud was charging into a very sensitive area, and it wouldn’t take much for all this to blow up in his face. He’d already gathered enough information this afternoon to cost him his job if he wasn’t careful.

Donovan stretched, giving him a good view of her breasts. Even in the crummy prison dress, he could see that they were ripe and full. She smiled when she saw him watching her, which had to be why she’d stuck her chest out in the first place.

She said, “You know, Jud, it can get awful lonely in this place.”

“Uh-huh.”

She placed her hand over his. “So I have an idea.”

He said nothing. But he didn’t move his hand, either.

“Long as we’re alone and we know it’s gonna be private—” her voice dropped into a still lower register “—why don’t we take advantage of it?” Her tongue moved slowly across her upper lip. “I’ll give you the best head you ever had.”

For one insane moment, he felt himself respond. And then he took his hand away. “Knock it off, Joan.”

Her eyes flashed. “You chickenshit prick.”

He smiled. “I thought we were friends.”

That made her laugh. And just as quickly as the anger had appeared, she slipped back into her seductress role. “Hey, baby, you know it’d be fun.”

“Yeah.” He lifted one of the last photos out of the box and glanced at it, then held it up to her.

She looked at the picture and her expression hardened. “Yeah. That’s a definite.”

In disbelief he turned the photo over and again looked at the man in the shot. When he glanced back at her he saw she was wearing the familiar half-smile, a cynical glint in her eyes.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. How could I forget a cop?”

Jud studied the photograph of Joseph Grady. He wondered if she was merely being spiteful, getting back at him because he’d turned her down. Or if maybe it was a way of jeering at him, telling him cops were no different from other men when it came right down to it. Maybe it was all of those.

Or maybe she was telling the truth.

“You remember anything else about him?”

She shook her head.

He wrote down the number in his notebook and held up the last photo in the box.

She barely glanced at it. “No.”

He put the stack of photos back in the box and replaced the cover. She stretched again, this time even more suggestively.

But he ignored her movements. “When your mother died—”

“Mm?”

“Were you questioned at the time?”

“Oh, yeah. For about two minutes. Nobody paid much attention to me.”

“Who did the questioning, do you remember that?”

“A cop. I don’t know who he was.”

“But not the same one that had been seeing your mother?”

“No. This guy was old, and he smelled of booze. He talked right in my face and he stank.”

“Where were you when she died?”

“In bed.”

“You were in the
house
when it happened?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you remember of it.”

“My father was out. My mother gave me supper and put me to bed early. I guess I went to sleep. The next thing I knew, there was a lot of commotion downstairs. I heard her screaming. Then it was quiet, and I got out of bed and went to the head of the stairs. I was scared, of course, so I kind of peeked down there. I could see somebody moving in the living room. I looked, and … there was my mother’s body laying on the floor, with no head.” She shuddered.

“Did you see anything else?”

“I’ll say I did. I saw this big man, all in black. He turned, and then I saw he was holding her head by the hair. He had an ax in his other hand.”

“Could you see anything more about him?”

“No. There wasn’t much light in the room, and right after that he left the house. I just remember that big black shape. And he was wearing a hood. Later on I heard all those stories about the headsman.”

“What did you do after he was gone?”

“Got back in bed and shivered until my father came home. I was scared out of my mind.”

“And your father called the police?”

“I guess. I heard him yelling, and he came running into my room and he grabbed me and held me. It was about the only time I ever remember him hugging me. He told me to stay in bed, and then in a little while the house was full of cops.”

“When you were questioned, you didn’t tell what you’d seen?”

“No. Christ, no. When the cop talked to me—the boozy one—I just said I was asleep the whole time. I was afraid if I said anything that spook with the ax would come back and get me. I had nightmares about it for years. Once in a while I still do.”

He leaned back in his chair. A moment later her bare foot came up between his legs and brushed his crotch.

He pushed the foot down gently. “You never give up, do you?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Where there’s cock there’s hope.”

He stood up. “You’ve been a lot of help, Joan. I really appreciate it.”

“Just don’t forget our deal.”

“I won’t. I promised to help you, and I will.”

He put away his notebook and picked up the box of photographs and his cap. Then he went to the door and told C.O. Geraldi his visit was over.

Twelve

A GHOSTLY TRAIL

1

K
AREN
W
ILSON TWISTED
and turned in her bed. Light flashed before her eyes, as startlingly bright as if she were in the midst of a summer thunderstorm. An instant later there was another burst, and then another. In the lightning streaks she saw black boots and a black hood with slanted eyeholes. She saw a man’s hands encased in black gloves. She saw a hulking form moving about in an area that appeared to be surrounded by walls built of stone.

The bursts of light continued, and in their blue-tinged incandescence she saw the hands pick up a wooden block that was worn and stained. The hands set the block down on a low platform, as if placing it into position. Then they lifted a great double-bladed ax and held it up as the eyes within the black hood inspected its razor edges.

The headsman stepped down from the platform and, holding the ax in one hand, went to where the figure of a man lay on the raw earth. He bent down and grasped the man by the arm and then half-dragged him to the platform. The man’s face was contorted by pain and fear, and in the brief moment Karen saw it she realized the man was unfamiliar to her; it was the face of a stranger.

The headsman pushed his victim down onto the platform and rolled him over onto his back, setting his head into place on the block. Then the hooded executioner raised the ax.

There was another burst of light, and the images were suddenly gone.

Karen sat up, gasping.

God
. Had this been a dream—a nightmare? Or was it another vision? And if it was, what did it mean? Who was the man the headsman was about to execute? Where was this happening, and when was it taking place?

Her skin crawled as she realized what she had seen. The headsman had been readying the man for a ritual beheading. He’d set the block into position and forced the condemned man down onto it, preparing him to receive that awful ax.

And then, unlike what she’d seen the other times, when he’d lopped off the heads of the teenage girl and boy, the images had suddenly stopped. What did that mean?

She jammed her fists against her mouth to keep from crying out again.

The house was small; as she forced herself to be quiet she worried about having disturbed her grandmother, but no sound came from the old lady’s bedroom, which was next to hers. For a moment Karen tried to settle down under the covers, but that was like risking a journey back into that awful set of images that had rocked her mind. Instead she got out of bed and put on a robe, then left her room and went downstairs.

In the kitchen she rummaged around in a cupboard until she found the bottle of brandy her grandmother kept there. For medicinal purposes, the old lady said. But Karen had noticed that the contents dwindled rapidly and then the bottle was replaced by another every couple of days.

She opened it and poured herself a stiff drink. The stuff was like liquid fire. It burned its way down her throat and she choked and her eyes watered, and yet by the time it reached her stomach it became only pleasantly warm. She poured another, and this time it wasn’t nearly as fiery, only soothing. She sat down at the table and again filled her glass, her mind returning inevitably to the terrible impressions she’d seen earlier.

As much as she wanted to deny them, as much as she longed to push the images away from herself, she knew she couldn’t. They were there and they were real.

And face it, she told herself. A big part of this is guilt. You know that thing is out there somewhere, and that he’s going to do the same hideous thing again. He was getting ready for it—you saw him. So you can’t just keep your mouth shut, you
can’t
. No matter how you feel about staying out of it, no matter how you’ve been used, you can’t just let him kill again without trying to warn somebody.

A further realization suddenly struck her. She hadn’t known where the headsman was in the images, hadn’t been able to identify a place or even understand what kind of location he had been in. But now she understood that those images were exactly like the ones in the old painting the chief of police had shown her. There was the low platform and the block on which the victim’s head would rest as the ax hurtled downward. Even the stone walls seemed the same.

You’ve got to go to Chief MacElroy and tell him what you’ve seen
.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t go back into the police station and open up to that man. He’d lied to her, misled her, tricked her. He’d pretended to understand, given her his word she could trust him. And like the fool she was, she’d believed him. She’d told him things she’d never admitted to another human being in her life, and all the while he’d been sneering at her from behind that calm face.

Maybe that was what was so hard to take. He’d seemed so
decent
. But in the end he’d turned out to be no different from any other deceitful bastard. Not only had he betrayed her, but he’d done it in the worst possible way. He’d given her story to a newspaper reporter—a reporter who just happened to be his girlfriend. Karen could imagine the pair of them, the ruggedly good-looking cop and his pretty girlfriend, lying in bed together and laughing about the weirdo who worked at Boggs Ford. She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her robe and wiped her eyes, then sipped some of the brandy.