The Headsman (40 page)

“You ever have Janet Donovan visit you out there?”

Campbell’s features hardened. “No. And I’ve said all I’m going to say. For the last time, I have no idea who killed Janet Donovan.”

Jud stood up. “Thanks for your time. You’ll be hearing from me. I hope what you told me was the truth.”

Campbell stayed in his chair. He looked as if somebody had opened a valve and let out all his air.

On the way back to the lobby Jud waved to Campbell’s secretary, who started to rise from her desk when she saw him. “Don’t get up,” he said. “I know the way.”

Thirteen

AHEAD OF THE GAME

1

I
N THE MORNING
Jud went to the stationhouse feeling like the bear that woke up in mid-winter. The coffee didn’t help; it was thick and bitter and made his mouth taste worse than it had before he drank it.

His visit to Joan Donovan and what he’d learned from her kept turning over in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more he felt she’d put him on a trail that could lead to the man who’d killed her mother. And Marcy Dickens? And perhaps Buddy Harper as well?

Or could it?

The trip to Empex had been galling. Loring Campbell was an arrogant, conceited son of a bitch who thought he could do any thing he pleased in Braddock because he as much as owned the place. It was a fiefdom, a village inhabited by ignorant peasants, and the rules by which he controlled them and lived were his own.

But was he a killer?

Jud didn’t know. And for all his bluster, he wasn’t sure how he would go about finding out. He’d backed Campbell into a corner, but that was yesterday. By now the Empex CEO would have had a discussion with his lawyers about how to deal with this upstart cop who’d had the nerve to threaten him. Jud had left Empex yesterday feeling he’d won a round. But now, in the cold light of dawn, he knew that all he’d really done was to piss in a hornet’s nest.

He had to admit to himself that he’d never been up against anything remotely like this. It wasn’t a vehicular accident, and it wasn’t manslaughter, and it wasn’t even murder in any form he’d ever run into. Nobody had gone into a drunken rage and split somebody else’s face, or had a violent quarrel with a family member and got the shotgun out of the closet or the knife out of the kitchen drawer. Nobody had done anything like what he’d dealt with over the years he’d been a cop.

Face it, you fool. Even when you’re running around playing detective, acting as if you know what you’re doing, you don’t have the faintest fucking idea what you’re up to. You think you’re on to something, sure. But you have no idea what. The only thing you’re sure of is that pretty soon you won’t have a friend left in this town
.

Which reminded him. He flipped through the Rolodex for the card on Armed Services Records and Identification. When he found it he called the number in Washington and spoke to army records, telling them to give his request priority; this was a homicide investigation. The guy he spoke to said he’d send it out in a day or two. Jud told him that wasn’t good enough and to call him back with the information.

He hung up and thought about the other things he wanted to do today, feeling guilty that he’d been neglecting the routine work of the department. He looked at the pile of paper on his desk and wished he could burn it or simply push the whole thing into his wastebasket. Instead, he began going through the stuff resignedly.

An hour later A.S.R. and I. called back and read him the record of Hathaway, Frank L. Hathaway had been inducted into the U.S. Army in November 1964. As he had told Jud, he’d been in the 364th Infantry. He had spent six months in Vietnam. He had not, however, been a lieutenant and he had not been a platoon leader. He was a corporal and a headquarters clerk. And instead of being wounded in action, he had been injured in a jeep accident. He’d spent six weeks in a stateside hospital and was discharged with a twenty-percent disability rating.

Twenty percent?

That meant Hathaway wasn’t just a liar. He was a liar who could walk.

Jud asked the guy at A.S.R. and I. to send him a transcript of the record, thanked him and hung up.

Jesus Christ. What kind of mind would lead its owner to hide himself behind such a mask? Not only had the man assumed this role, but he’d punished himself terribly by doing it. He lived the life of a cripple, a half-man who demanded pity from the members of the community he depended on for a living. Poor Frank Hathaway. Shot to pieces in Vietnam, has to spend his time in a wheelchair. Can’t control his bladder or his bowels, can’t get laid. Fine man, though. Dedicates his life to teaching our kids. Least we can do is appreciate him.

It wasn’t only nauseating—there was something dark and evil going on here.

Jud sat back in his chair, thinking about what he’d do next. Confronting Hathaway before he had a plan would be a mistake. But he sure as hell would do some more checking into this guy, and he’d do it right away. Even though Joan Donovan hadn’t identified him as one of her mother’s lovers, the bearded teacher with the cold eyes and the condescending manner had taken on a whole new dimension—one that was staggering to contemplate.

Jud got up and left his office, going down the hall to the squad room for a fresh mug of coffee. Maybe this batch would be better than the last. When he returned he saw that the mail had arrived. A stack of it had been deposited on his desk, a bundle of envelopes and some circulars and a package.

The package was about fourteen inches square, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with tape. His name was printed on top in black marker. As he glanced at it, two things went through his mind. The first was that it looked like the kind of thing someone would send a cake in, which was a silly idea he immediately dismissed. The second was that it contained something he’d ordered from L. L. Bean or Eddie Bauer. But that didn’t make sense either; he’d have had anything like that sent to his home, not here. And besides, this apparently hadn’t come through the mail.

Curious now, he took a jackknife out of a drawer of his desk and cut away the paper, revealing a cardboard box. He pulled open the flaps and peered down at the contents.

What he saw inside was Buddy Harper’s head.

2

It was lying so that the face was looking up at him, the eyes wide open and staring, the lips parted. The color of the skin was bluish white, and the lips were gray. The neck had been severed across the larynx, and the tissues and the tendons and the shattered vertebra were visible in the raw wound. The expression on the boy’s features was a mixture of fear and horror, the bulging eyes conveying the terror he must have experienced as he saw the blade whistling down to chop away his life.

Jud felt as if he’d been slugged. His pulse quickened and the rush of blood pounded in his temples. At the same time, there was a dull pain in the pit of his stomach. He had to force himself to remain calm, to keep from yelling, to keep from shoving the hideous thing away from him.

It took several seconds for him to get himself together. Then he took a deep breath and examined what lay in front of him.

The box was lined with waxy white paper, the kind a butcher would use, and there were splotches of dried blood on it. Jud reached in to lift out the head, then thought better of it. He’d want others to see this just as it was, just as he himself had first discovered the box and what it contained.

He looked at the cardboard and at the outside wrapping. There were no markings on any of it, with the exception of the crudely printed block letters of his name. The state police would examine these materials in the lab, but Jud’s instincts told him they’d have a tough time tracing any of it. And how the hell had the thing gotten here?

Again he peered into the box. Buddy’s face looked so ghastly, and yet so pitiable. It was apparent that the boy had been dead for some time; the sickly stench of putrefaction attested to that. And from the appearance of the wound, the fatal blow had been delivered in exactly the same way as the one that had killed Marcy.

Jud pictured the scene Karen Wilson had described to him. What she had seen in her vision was almost surely how it had happened. He felt strongly about that now. She was no fake, no sicko who wanted to involve herself in whatever tragedy she could talk her way into.

No. Karen Wilson and her strange powers were for real.

But why had this been sent to him?

Jud could guess the answer. The severed head was a warning made because someone knew of his poking around in the dusty corners and the back rooms and the closets of Braddock. Someone was sending a message that he should have kept his curiosity to himself.

But why had Buddy been killed? What could motivate anyone to murder a teenage kid?

Madness, of course. The murders were the actions of a diseased mind. No other answer was plausible.

The phone rang. He answered it and was told Sally Benson was on the line. He took the call, and her voice was a barely audible whisper. “Maxwell found out about the pictures and went crazy. I wanted to warn you. I’ll try to call you later.” She hung up.

Jud put the phone down. He looked at the revolting thing on his desk, thinking that trouble was coming in waves. He left his office, shutting the door behind him, and walked down the hall to where Chester Pearson was sitting.

3

The inspector was alone, leaning back in the chair behind the desk and reading that morning’s edition of the
Braddock Express
. He looked up as Jud stepped into the office, and frowned. “What happened to you? Look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You’re close,” Jud replied. “Come on back here with me.”

His face registering puzzlement, Pearson got up and followed MacElroy back to his own office.

Jud pointed at the package, and the inspector stepped over to the desk and looked down into the box.

“Jesus Christ.” Pearson’s mouth dropped open and his eyes grew wide. He stared into the box and then at Jud. “It’s the Harper kid.”

“That’s correct.”

“Where did it come from—how’d you get this?”

“It was on my desk when I got back here a few minutes ago.”

“It was on your desk? You mean just sitting here like some fucking Christmas present? So how’d it get here? Who brought it?”

“I don’t know.”

The inspector looked down again, peering into the box for several seconds, the shocked expression still on his face. When he brought his gaze up this time he said, “I don’t believe it.”

Jud could guess what was going through the detective’s mind. The fact that the boy had been killed, and especially the
way
he’d been killed, blew all of Pearson’s pet theories out the window. The inspector had been made a fool of, proven totally wrong in all his smug conclusions. How was he going to take it?

“This may not be what it looks like,” Pearson said.

“What?”

“Regardless of this, I’m not ready to say Harper didn’t kill his girlfriend.”

Jud kept his mouth shut, but it took an effort.

Pearson must have realized how foolish he sounded. He tugged at his shirt collar. “It could have happened a lot of different ways. Could’ve been some kind of a triangle.”

This was too much. “You know what everybody else’ll say happened.”

Pearson slammed his fist down onto the desk. “Shit! Why did this have to—” He looked at the box once more, and then turned to Jud. “You better call the coroner. And I don’t want anybody else knowing about what’s in there until I’ve had time to notify state police headquarters. I want to think this out.”

He strode out of the office, saying to no one in particular, “God damn it. God
damn
it. And where the fuck is Williger when I need him?”

Jud stepped to his desk. He used a ruler to push the top of the box closed, then picked up the telephone and called Dr. Reinholtz. After that he left his office and went out to the front desk.

4

The cop on duty was Brusson. He said he didn’t know how the package had arrived. It had been there along with the mail when he got to the stationhouse to start his shift. The guy Brusson had relieved was Charley Ostheimer, who didn’t know either. Ostheimer said he’d been in the squad room for awhile, drinking coffee and shooting the shit with other cops, and when he came back it was there. He figured it was something personal that had been dropped off for the chief. Later Brusson had taken the package along with the mail and some reports into Jud’s office and put them on the desk. Nobody else knew anything about it.

Goddamn strange, Jud thought. The thing hadn’t just floated into the place; somebody had
brought
it. How was it possible they’d done it without being seen? It was because Ostheimer had broken a regulation by wandering off and leaving the desk unattended while he made a coffee run, that was how. And yet …

“You ever leave this desk again without somebody covering, I’ll fire your ass right off the force,” Jud told him.

The young cop flushed. He looked at the floor and mumbled an apology.

Jud didn’t say what the package had contained, but within minutes every man in the stationhouse knew something big was up and that it had to do with a box wrapped in brown paper that had been sent to Chief MacElroy. Grady asked him what was going on but Jud told him he couldn’t say until Pearson gave the word. That didn’t improve the relationship between Jud and the sergeant any; he could see that Grady was resentful at not being let in on it.

When Reinholtz arrived, Pearson led him into Jud’s office, taking care to permit no one in there but the three of them. He shut the door, and Jud told the doctor what had happened.

Reinholtz’s expression first registered astonishment, then anguish. Jud understood that; Buddy had probably been another of the Doc’s kids.

There was a moment’s silence, and Reinholtz’s shoulders sagged. Then he straightened up and approached the desk, looking at the package, his manner turning brisk and businesslike. Jud pushed open the flaps with the ruler, and Reinholtz peered inside. He said nothing, but a low groan sounded in his throat. The stink from the open box drifted out like an invisible presence, permeating the room.