The Headsman (52 page)

A voice came from inside the hood, as cold and flat as a file rasping on metal. “Awake, are you? Good. You’ll be a witness. First for her execution, and then your own.”

The headsman dragged Sally over to the platform. He pulled her up onto it, positioning her face up on the block.

As the headsman prepared her for execution, Jud strained against the bindings on his wrists with all the strength he could muster. He twisted his hands back and forth in a desperate effort to loosen the cord, praying he could break free before it was too late.

Small whimpering sounds were coming from Sally’s mouth. “Please don’t. Oh, God—please don’t.”

The man in black stood over her, looking down at his victim and gripping the ax. He planted his feet in a wide stance, setting himself.

Jud gave a mighty heave, and the bonds seemed to give a little. He heaved again, and this time he was sure of it. Once more he strained and tugged.

The headsman looked across at him. The flat voice sounded again. “Stupid shit.”

Lowering the ax, the executioner leaned it against the wall and stepped off the platform. He crossed the room to where Jud lay, bending down and tightening the bindings. The eyes seemed alight with rage as they stared into his. “You’re next, damn you. And there’s no way you can break loose.”

My God, Jud thought.
I know that voice
.

As if in a gesture of contempt, the headsman slammed the back of his hand across Jud’s jaw.

But disdain had made him careless. He’s close enough, Jud thought. Do it
now
.

He brought his feet up in a savage kick, driving the toes of his hunting boots into the executioner’s groin.

The big man gasped in pain, doubling over and holding his crotch. The motion brought his head down, and with his bound hands Jud made a grab for his throat. He missed, clutching the hood instead. He kicked again, this time driving the other back, and the black cloth of the hood ripped free.

The headsman continued to hold his groin, and then he slowly straightened up.

Jud found himself looking at the face of Emmett Stark.

“You!”

The old chief’s voice was a harsh rasp. “That’s right, me. And now that you know, what good’s it going to do you? You’re dead, you dumb fucker.”

Stark drew his boot back and then kicked Jud in the face, stunning him.

Dazed, Jud shook his head to clear it. One side of his face was numb, and his mouth was filling with blood. He spat, railing at his own stupidity for not having seen the truth before this.

He stared at Stark. “It was all there, if only I’d had brains enough to put it together.”

Stark sneered. “But you didn’t. You never would have known the truth, right up until your head rolled off that block.”

“Maybe so. But I knew there was something wrong with what I was getting from you. I just didn’t pay enough attention to the signals, because I couldn’t imagine your being involved. I was too busy trying to run down other people I thought could be the headsman. But it sure as hell falls into place now.”

“Now that it’s too late.”

“For one thing, the Donovan case wasn’t before your time, the way you said it was. That was just bullshit, a way for you to throw me off. With the number of years you had on the force, you must have been a rookie when it happened. Joan Donovan told me a cop was one of her mother’s lovers. When I showed her Grady’s picture she said she remembered him. But it was easy for her to make a mistake. She was just a little kid when you were coming around. What she actually remembered was the uniform, not the face. You were the one who killed her mother.”

Stark flushed with anger. “Janet Donovan was a slut. A rotten, filthy whore.”

“Why—because she was married and screwing you? Or because she was also screwing a bunch of other guys and you couldn’t stand that idea?”

A strange look came over Stark’s face, and a light appeared in his eyes. “God told me to drive her from His kingdom.”

“I’m right, aren’t I? You were so jealous it made you crazy. But you twisted that up in your mind so that it was all her fault. She was to blame, she was the one who had to be punished. And you figured that for you to become the headsman was the perfect answer. You’d be the executioner, coming back to Braddock to wipe out evil. I’ll bet you were proud of yourself, weren’t you? You passed the sentence, and you carried it out.”

“You’re right about one thing—she got what she deserved.”

“Uh-huh. And it worked just the way you wanted it to. People not only believed the headsman had come back to execute her, but a lot of them figured she was asking for it. She needed to be punished, and the headsman punished her.”

Stark’s eyes gleamed. “It was God’s will.”

As he spoke, Jud continued to exert as much pressure as he could on the cord binding his hands, hoping Stark wouldn’t notice. He had to keep him talking. “But it wasn’t enough for you, was it? There were still all those other guys she’d been seeing. You knew who they were. All of them were young hotshots around Braddock. Ed Dickens, Peter Harper, Sam Melcher, Charley Boggs, Loring Campbell and Bill Swanson. You hated them for it. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Stark spoke through clenched teeth. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? You also hated them because they were all better off than you were. Came from rich families, went on to run the town while you were just a cop. Then you got to be chief of the department, and you thought that made you important.”

“Shut your ignorant mouth, asshole.”

“But then what happened? A lot of those same guys became members of the Town Council. And last year they shoved you out of your job. You didn’t retire—they fired you.”

“They’re scumbags, every one of them.”

“So all that hatred that was inside you for so many years, all of it came to a boil. You figured the way to get back at them, the way to hurt them the most, was to strike at their kids. And that’s what you did.”

“Those little shits were no better than their fucking parents. They were dirty, dopesmoking filth. That’s all they thought about—dope and sex.”

“You decided to start with Marcy, because she was so vulnerable, so easy to get to. An only child living in a big house with a room at the opposite end from her parents’. Getting in would have been easy, especially for a cop. Come to think of it, you didn’t even have to jimmy your way in. Ed Dickens told me about a bolt that was sticking on one of the doors. All you had to do was depress the tongue with a piece of plastic and then walk right in.”

“It might have been like that.”

“Might have been? That’s exactly what happened. And instead of taking her head with you, the way you did with all the others, you left it there on the dresser. You
wanted
it to be found, because you knew it would scare the shit out of everyone in this town. You
wanted
them to know the headsman was back, and you wanted the message to be as bad as you could make it.”

“They deserved to suffer.”

“Buddy, on the other hand, you took out of that barn after you killed him. Because you knew his disappearance would throw the investigation off, give the cops more blind alleys to run down. You figured he’d be blamed for Marcy’s murder, and you were right. So you cleaned the blood off the floor, and then just to be sure there’d be nothing left to trace, you dumped that five-gallon can of oil onto the floorboards. All Grady could find was old wood soaked in drain oil.”

“Grady was another dumb shit.”

“Was he? I don’t think so. And by the way, he was the one you wanted for your job, not me. But he wasn’t so dumb at all. He figured it out, didn’t he?”

“He was a disloyal prick. Came after me.”

“And you killed him. What’d you do with his body?”

The corners of Stark’s mouth curved in a cynical smile. “By now it’s nothing but a pile of dogshit.”

A picture of the snarling hounds in the pen behind Stark’s house came into Jud’s mind. “That’s what you did with the rest of Buddy’s body too, wasn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“But you sent the head to me because you knew it would make more trouble for me, didn’t you? You knew how casual those young cops often were, so you just watched and waited until Ostheimer left the desk for coffee, and then you slipped in and left the package on the desk. For it to come to me would be just one more reason for the council members to distrust me.”

“They would have fired you too, MacElroy. You would’ve known what it felt like.”

“And speaking of evidence disappearing, you were the one who took those old police records, of course. I was suspicious a cop might have done it, but I was looking at the wrong cop. I bought that crap about your health problems, too. The bullshit about taking nitro for your heart. What was it—aspirin?”

Stark grinned.

“In fact, your police background made everything easy for you. It was you who rammed me earlier tonight. You’d left the Boggs house in your Jeep, and you were monitoring police transmissions on your radio. When you ran that snowplow into me you thought that would take me out of it. And those shots I fired at you just now. They didn’t stop you because you’re wearing a vest, right? Police-issue Kevlar. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“The Lord protects me.”

“Really? They’ll get you, you know. Sooner or later the cops’ll get you.”

Stark grunted in contempt. “The hell they will. I forgot more about police work than those fuckers ever learned. Get me? Never. And you know why, asshole? Because after this the headsman’ll be gone without a trace. And everybody in Braddock will say, yes, he came back and killed the ones that deserved it. And then he disappeared again. Just the way he’s been doing for over two hundred years.”

“You son of a bitch.”

Stark stared at him. “You still don’t understand, do you? The truth is right in front of you, and you don’t understand at all. What you don’t see, you stupid bastard, is that all this is not what you think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?
Think
, goddamn you. Can’t you see it?”

“See what—what is it?”

His eyes were glowing. “I
am
the headsman. I am the headsman of Hounslow, come to the colonies on HMS
New Hope
in 1705. I am in Emmett Stark’s body now, as I have been in the bodies of other hosts many times. Whenever God has commanded me to serve the people of Braddock, I have returned.”

He’s totally mad, Jud thought. Straight-out fucking crazy.

“Watch closely, MacElroy. I told you, you’ll be a witness. Twice.”

He stepped back to the platform and picked up the ax.

Sally had been silent throughout the exchange between Stark and Jud. The beating she’d taken had left her unable to move. Now she looked up at Stark. “Please don’t. I’m begging you—don’t do it.”

For answer he bent over her and held the axhead close to her face. “Don’t worry, you’ll hardly feel a thing.” He grinned. “Not after a few seconds, anyway.”

She moaned, closing her eyes, her mouth trembling.

Stark straightened and looked over at Jud. “Takes skill, you know that? You want the ax to hit right there on the adam’s apple. That’s the aiming point. You do it right, the blade goes through like the neck was warm butter.”

Sally was gulping air in shallow gasps. “Oh, God. Please.”

Jud had to keep him talking, had to slow him down. “Where did the ax come from?”

“Where? From England, of course.”

“You mean that’s the
original
?”

“Of course it is. Forged by a master armorer in sixteen-ninety.”

“Did Mulgrave know it was here?”

“Sure he did. But he didn’t know who was using it. He was scared shitless it’d be found and he’d be implicated somehow. Or he’d lose his pissant curator job. So he came here thinking he’d get rid of it.”

“And found you.”

“Found me, found the ax. And then justice found him.” He raised the ax once more.

Jud gave another violent tug at the cord binding his wrists, but it held fast. Desperate, he struggled to his feet.

Stark looked at him in surprise, the expression on his harsh features rapidly turning to rage. He stepped down from the platform, holding the ax ready.

Jud half-staggered toward him. As Stark lifted the weapon to strike, Jud dropped into a crouch, then propelled himself at the big man’s midsection. Stark swung the ax, but he was a second too late.

Jud barreled into him, ramming his head into Stark’s gut. Stark stumbled against the edge of the platform and went over backward, losing his grip on the ax. As he scrambled to regain his feet, Jud snapped the top of his head up as hard as he could, smashing Stark’s mouth and nose.

The big man cursed and slammed a clublike fist against the side of Jud’s jaw.

Half-dazed, Jud turned and snatched up the ax with his bound hands. He swung the heavy weapon with all his strength, driving the huge blade into the center of Stark’s face, splitting it open like a rotten melon.

Stark fell onto his back, the axhead buried in his shattered features. His hands and feet twitched, and then he was still.

Jud struggled until he got a hand free, then bent down and untied the cord binding his legs. He pulled Sally to her feet and freed her as well.

They stood huddled together for a long time, holding onto each other for support, both physical and emotional.

“You all right?” Jud gasped.

She was trembling, her body shaking. “Yes … I think so. Are you?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He’d never experienced anything like this, a feeling of having been totally drained, his mind still reeling from the shock of what had happened. The only thing remotely comparable to it was coming out of the fever when he’d been wounded in combat.

He was drenched in sweat, and becoming aware of his cuts and bruises. A terrible headache was pounding the top of his head.

Sally shuddered. “Please take me out of this awful place.”

“Yeah, come on.”

He turned, and guided her out the door of the chamber. There was a stairway just beyond it. He could feel her continuing to tremble, and thought he might have to carry her. How he’d manage that he had no idea. But she kept going, and he stepped behind her, supporting her as she put a foot on the stairs.