The Headsman (27 page)

“Were the lights on when you went out there this morning?”

Peter looked at the ceiling, then at Jud. “Come to think of it, yes. I remember turning them out as we left to call you, but when we got there they were on.”

“I’d like to have a look,” Jud said.

“Yes, of course.”

They put on jackets and went out the back door, Peter leading the way, his wife following.

Jud brought up the rear. Walking behind Jean Harper he was again strongly aware of her physical presence. The long legs and the way she had of swinging her hips made it hard not to be. Studying her, he decided that taken individually her features weren’t all that beautiful, but somehow the way she put everything together made her very exciting.

He’d heard the stories about her from time to time, but until he’d seen her slipping into Loring Campbell’s room at the Mayflower Motel he hadn’t paid much attention. He hadn’t known whether the innuendos were based on fact or jealousy. There weren’t many housewives in Braddock who looked that good.

When they got to the barn the Harpers stood aside and let Jud enter first. One glance at the Chevy told him Buddy had indeed been working on it. The hood had been removed and the engine opened up. Both heads were lying on the bench, along with the air filter and the carburetor and other parts. A worklamp with a long cord was hooked into place in the engine compartment. He was about to step closer when he noticed the oil.

There was a large pool of it on the floor beside the vehicle. Or at least there had been. Much of it had soaked into the floorboards, but a viscous residue remained. It reminded Jud of the blood he’d seen on the floor of Marcy Dickens’ bedroom and the living room of Art Ballard’s house.

It was odd, but the mess seemed out of place here. The rest of the area was reasonably clean and the workbench was well organized. Tools were hanging in neat rows on a pegboard, and the engine parts on the bench had been laid out in a pattern. An open toolbox on a cart held a set of socket wrenches. Buddy was obviously the kind of mechanic who liked to keep his tools and his work in order. So why the oil, and where had it come from?

He spotted a can lying on the floor, on the far side of the workbench. It was a five-gallon container of the kind that mechanics used to catch drain oil. This one was on its side, and it was empty. Jud stepped over to it and nudged it with his toe. There had been oil in it recently; some of the stuff was still coating the inside, and a drop hung from the lip of the can. It appeared that someone had knocked the can over, spilling its contents. But if that was what had happened, why was the can lying over here, several feet away? A better explanation would be that someone had poured oil on the floor, either deliberately or by accident, and then had tossed the can aside.

Why?

He walked around the Chevy, opening the doors and peering inside, seeing nothing worth noting. When he came back to where he’d been standing earlier, he noticed a wrench lying under the front end of the car, as if it had been dropped there.

The Harpers had stood quietly by while Jud inspected the area. He turned to them. “Did Buddy always work alone, or did he sometimes have a friend over to help him?”

“No, he did all the work himself,” Peter said.

“He wouldn’t let anyone else touch that car,” his wife added.

Before Jud could probe further, the sound of tires on the driveway reached them from the direction of the house. They looked up to see an unmarked state police Ford come to a stop behind Jud’s car. Inspector Pearson and Corporal Williger got out. The pair came up the drive toward the barn and Jud and the Harpers stepped forward to meet them.

“You must be Mr. and Mrs. Harper,” Pearson said.

They acknowledged that they were.

“I’m Inspector Chester Pearson, New York State Police. I’m heading the investigation of the Dickens homicide. I understand your son is missing.”

“That’s right,” Peter said. “We were just telling Chief MacElroy that he was out here in the barn last night, working on his car. But this morning he was gone.”

Pearson sometimes had a flat way of speaking that Jud suspected was an affectation. “I interviewed your son after the Dickens girl was killed,” the inspector said. “You know that, of course.”

“He told us,” Jean Harper said.

“Do either of you have any idea,” Pearson asked, “where he might have gone, or why he left?”

They said they had none.

“I’m sure you realize,” Pearson went on, “he could be in a lot of trouble if he’s run off someplace. I told him at the very least he could be a material witness in the Dickens homicide.”

Peter Harper cocked his head. “What do you mean, ‘at the very least?’”

“I mean he was very close to her and one of the last people to see her alive. He was with her just before she was killed. The fact is, your son could also be a suspect.”

Jean Harper flushed. “That’s ridiculous. Buddy thought the world of Marcy. He was just shattered when she died. The last thing he’d ever have done would be to hurt her.”

“That could be,” Pearson said. “But if he had a clear conscience, why did he take off?”

Her voice rose in anger. “Take off? What makes you think that’s what happened? Our son is
missing
, Inspector. If he wanted to take off, he would have driven his car. Which, as you can see, is right there in the barn.”

Pearson glanced at the Chevy. “Yeah, and out of commission. What other vehicles do you have?”

“A Jaguar and a Ford station wagon,” Peter Harper told him. “They’re both in the garage.”

Pearson turned to the corporal. “Will, go to the car and call Braddock headquarters. Tell ’em to get out an APB with the kid’s description. Have ’em contact the Lincoln barracks, too. We’ll want to get it into NYSPIN. I’ll call Lincoln myself as soon as I get back.”

“Yes sir.” Williger trotted back up the driveway toward the Ford.

“I think we ought to go in the house and talk,” Pearson said to the Harpers. “There’s a lot I want to go over with you.”

Jud noted the inspector had tacitly cut him out of the discussion. Which was okay with him. Pearson was in charge, and besides, listening to him work Buddy’s parents over was an experience Jud would just as soon skip. He told the Harpers the police would do everything possible to locate Buddy. Then he walked back to his car and drove as quickly as he could to headquarters.

3

When he got to the stationhouse, Jud gave Grady a quick recap of what had gone on at the Harper home and then went into his office, where a number of messages were waiting for him.

A reporter from one of the Albany papers had telephoned, requesting an interview. The mayor had called; Jud was to call him back. An attorney had called to register a complaint about the way his client had been treated by the Braddock police.

What client? Jud wondered. Ah, one of the duelists who’d spent the night in the can. Apparently he’d given the cops some shit and they’d slapped him around a little.

And Sally had phoned. That one he’d save until last; it would be the only pleasant one of the bunch.

But before returning any of the calls, he wanted to think for a few minutes. He got out a pad and doodled on it. The way he saw it, there were two possibilities. One was that Buddy Harper had run off, as Pearson seemed to think he had. That would sure as hell make the kid the prime suspect Pearson wanted to think he was. The other possibility was that something had happened to him. But what—an accident? Or worse? Jud decided to consider the runaway theory first.

Suppose Buddy had actually murdered his girlfriend. In the annals of crime there was nothing unusual about that scenario. Lovers had been killing each other forever. Especially males killing females. The Chambers case came to mind, as well as the one involving that asshole on Long Island who’d strangled the girl and claimed it had happened during rough sex, copying Chambers’ defense. So that kind of homicide was possible here, too. And if Buddy had panicked and fled, it was obvious that he was guilty and running away.

Except that with Buddy it was hard to come up with a motive that made sense. Marcy hadn’t been pregnant, and the murder obviously hadn’t taken place in a moment of rage, caused by jealousy or whatever, the way lovers’ killings usually happened. Instead, this one had been thought out in advance. Whoever did it had gone to the Dickens house that night well prepared to carry out a plan. A plan to chop Marcy’s head off.

His phone rang and Jud answered it.

“Chief, this is Brusson, at the desk. Young lady here says she wants to see you. Name is Wilson. Karen Wilson.”

“I’ll be right out.” He hung up, wondering. Then he left his office and went out to the front of the station.

When he got there he was surprised by what he saw. Instead of the pretty young woman who’d joined him for coffee in Olson’s diner, the girl standing at the desk looked worn, haggard. Her face was pale, and there were bluish pouches under her eyes.

Jud approached her. “Karen—you all right?”

“Yes. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Sure. Come this way.” He led her back down the hallway to his office and asked her to sit down. “Sure you’re okay? Want a drink of water or anything?”

She sank into the chair and shook her head. “No, thank you. This is going to be difficult.”

He sat down at his desk. “Take your time.”

“Can it stay between us? I wouldn’t want anything I say to get out. There’s my job, among other things.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

She took a deep breath. “When I saw you in the diner the other morning? I didn’t tell you everything.”

He waited.

“Those … mental images you asked me about. It’s true. There are things I see, somehow, just the way you guessed. They’re like pictures or scenes that come into my mind. It’s happened for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was a small child.”

“And that’s how you knew where the Mariski boy was.”

“Yes. I was very upset over that. On one hand I wanted to help that poor family. And on the other I didn’t want to be involved. I didn’t want anyone to know this thing about me.”

“You were embarrassed by it.”

“More than that. A lot more. It’s been like a curse, always. Or not always. Sometimes I didn’t see the images for years at a time. I’d think it was over, I didn’t have them anymore. The visions, or whatever they are. But then they would come back. I’d see things again.”

He sat quietly, listening.

“Sometimes they’d be just flashes. Most of the time I never understood them, couldn’t connect them to anything or anyone I knew. I’d just—see something. And then it would be gone. But then there were other times, not very often, when I’d see someone I did know. And it was always—bad.”

“You mean you’d see someone you knew in a bad situation?”

“Yes. Although sometimes I didn’t know them. That little boy. I read the story in the newspaper, and then … I saw him.”

“You saw him—how? What did you see?”

She looked down at her lap, and then back at Jud, the strain now more evident on her face. “I saw him as he was at that moment. Under the ice. Dead.”

Jud felt an odd sensation, as if he’d been touched by a chill wind. “But how did you know where—”

“I saw the pond, and there was a stone wall and an old barn. When the boy’s father took me to Kretchmer’s, there they were. The pond, and the wall and the barn. Just as I’d seen them.”

“And you’d never been there before—never driven by the pond before that?”

“Never.” She was silent for a moment. “You should have seen how the Mariskis treated me. As if I were a freak.”

“They were distraught,” Jud said. “They didn’t want that kind of information. They were still hoping.”

“Yes, I understand. But anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”

From the hallway came the bustle of the station’s activities, cops and others talking, moving about. But in Jud’s office it had grown very still. He sensed what she was going to tell him next.

“The headsman,” he said.

“Yes.”

“What did you see?”

She clenched her teeth, and then seemed to force herself to speak. “I saw him. The night the girl died, I saw him. I saw him kill her.”

He continued to sit quietly, watching her. But he could feel the electricity. He leaned forward, forearms on his desk. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

Again she breathed deeply. “There was this man. Huge. Dressed all in black. A black top, like a tunic. Black pants, black gloves, and a hood with slanted eyeholes in it. And he was carrying this big ax. It had a double head, with blades on both sides. Then I saw—it’s hard to explain, but these things appear in flashes. I see these … pictures. Some of them aren’t even complete. Just—pieces.”

“It’s okay, just go on.”

“And I saw the girl. She was on the floor, screaming. The man stood over her and she was screaming and then he swung the ax.” She shuddered. “Afterward he—”

“Yes?”

“He held up her head and put it down on something. A table top, or a dresser.”

Jud tensed. Except for the cops and the coroner—and the girl’s mother—no one had known that detail. Marcy Dickens’ head had been placed on the dresser, all right; Jud would see it there, with the eyes staring at him, for as long as he lived. What this woman was telling him now was proof that she’d seen what had happened. It hadn’t been an illusion formed in her mind by all the publicity the case had generated. And it wasn’t something she’d made up, either as a result of hysteria or because, as Phil Mariski suspected, she was drawn to events like these by some macabre desire to be involved. She had
seen
what took place that night.

He continued to hold her in a steady gaze. “Then what?”

“Then nothing. It was gone. Afterward, the next day, I tried to convince myself it was nonsense, just another one of my creepy episodes. But then the story was in all the papers and on TV.”

“At the same time you were struggling with the vision you’d had of the Mariski boy.”

“Yes. And that made it worse. It convinced me that what I saw with the headsman was true. Not that I didn’t know it was. But I realized I’d been trying to talk myself out of it.” She dug a tissue out of her bag and blew her nose.