Hangman: A Novel (13 page)

Don’t do this, Abbie thought. Don’t ambush the dead girls’ families and ask them how they’re feeling.

Abbie caught the bartender’s eye and quickly ordered a turkey club and a Diet Coke to go.

Somehow the TV reporter had found the father of Maggie Myeong, the third victim. He hadn’t been ambushed, though. Walter was standing next to her, his hands by his side.

The noise dropped an octave. Abbie glanced down the bar. Most people had turned to the TV.

Walter Myeong was a short Asian man with a long, broad, saturnine face. Abbie would have put him in his late fifties, but in her experience, grief can age you fast. He had thinning black hair and long sideburns going gray at the bottom. He was dressed in a black overcoat and white striped shirt and striped red tie. The only people in Buffalo who wore ties when they didn’t have to were people in the North.

The reporter asked him how he was holding up.

Myeong’s eyes were small and nervous, darting here and there, first looking into the camera and then away. “My family is doing as well as they can. There’s nothing Marcus Flynn can do to us that he hasn’t done already. We do want to know how he got away and why we weren’t informed that he was being moved from Auburn.”

“You weren’t notified?”

“No. No phone call.” A vague clunkiness with the English language.

He turned to look into the camera, squinting at the bright light. His gaze was odd, lost, almost childlike.

The reporter pulled back the microphone. “Mr. Myeong, there have always been rumors that the fourth victim, Sandy Riesen, might still be alive. As painful as those are, do you think there’s any chance that Mr. Flynn might now lead authorities to where …?” She paused.

“To her body, you mean,” he said softly.

She felt the people around her take a half-breath.

“You believe Sandy is dead?” the reporter asked. My God, what a she-wolf, Abbie thought.

“Of course she’s fucking dead,” said an old woman next to Abbie who was wearing a faded green raincoat.

“I don’t know,” said Myeong. “But I can tell you one thing. I don’t want Mr. Flynn killed. If this escape proves anything, it shows that his cognitive abilities, they are returning. Perhaps the memory, too. We’ve never believed that he was unable to remember what he did to our daughter.”

“Why does he want him taken alive?” the bartender said, shaking his head. “I hope they shoot Hangman like a rabid dog.”

The older woman worked over a plate of chicken wings and spoke between bites.

“If she was your girl, Jack, you’d do just what he’s doing. He wants to know details, and so would you.”

The bartender frowned and looked down at the ground, thinking. Abbie looked along the bar at the rapt faces, their skin shining slightly in the glow of the TV. The city was just now reentering the tragedy that Hangman had visited upon them, fitting back into the paranoia that only a killer on the loose can create. But Walter Myeong had never left it.

Abbie’s eyes went back to the TV.

“—the prison was responsible?” the reporter asked. “Do you think the authorities at Auburn were negligent in letting him escape?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Myeong said tiredly. He turned to the camera. “But when they catch him again, I want him interrogated about my daughter and the others. To find out the truth once and for all. I want to emphasize this. We want Hangman captured alive. A dead man won’t do anything to ease my family’s pain.”

Abbie studied Myeong’s face. Why was he insisting on Hangman being captured alive? Either Myeong was a Christian to the marrow of his bones or he really believed that the killer was withholding information.

“That poor man,” whispered the old woman to Abbie, bumping her elbow gently. “Can you just imagine?”

“There you have it,” the reporter said, turning back toward the camera. Abbie’s eyes lingered on the father of the dead girl. He looked down at the ground, but at the last moment he tilted his chin up and stared into the camera, his eyes filled with pain. And just before it cut away to the anchor, Abbie swore she saw Walter Myeong nod.

She wanted to ask the bartender to rewind the video, but it was live and the crowd would have probably lynched her.

“I know where that girl is,” said the old woman.

The bartender eyed her.

“Margaret,” he said, and there was a warning in the gravelly voice. He was carrying a turkey club stacked high on a thick white plate. He set it in front of Abbie.

“Actually,” Abbie said, “it’s to go.”

The bartender’s eyebrows tilted up. He left the plate on the bar. “You sure about that?” he said, leaning in. “We’re going to stay open as long as it takes. Dollar shots at midnight.”

Abbie smiled. Was it a pass? Or a warning?

“I’m sure,” she said.

He shook his head once and took the plate back.

The old woman next to her. “I wouldn’t go out there,” she said, “for a million fucking dollars.”

Abbie turned to her.

“I get paid to,” she said. “Where do you think Sandy is?”

The woman’s eyes were milky and she studied Abbie’s face, as if trying to recognize her.

“Don’t be telling stories, Margaret,” the bartender said as he wrapped up Abbie’s order.

Abbie looked to the old woman. She seemed fearful, but there was a glint of defiance in her eyes.

“Where?” Abbie said.

“Hoyt,” the old woman said softly.

“Hoyt Lake?” Abbie said, feeling a thrill of fear. “Why there?”

The bartender set a plastic bag on the counter. “She’s senile, don’t listen—”

“Shush,” Abbie said. “Why Hoyt?”

The old woman looked at her hands, studying them. Then she looked up again.

“Don’t you know the story of the Madeleines?”

“No,” said Abbie. “I don’t.”

The old woman smiled.

“It’s happened here before.”

“Horseshit,” said the bartender.

“It’s happened,” said the woman.

That’s all the woman would say.

Abbie ate half the sandwich and a few French fries in
her car before hurrying back to the Stoltzes’ backyard. Two thickset men in forest green windbreakers, the one turned away from her with “Erie County Medical Examiner” written on the back, were wheeling a gurney ahead of her, and the wheels kept getting stuck in the mud.

“Pick it up, gentlemen,” she said.

The man turned. “Excuse me?”

“I said,
pick it up
. People are getting home and I don’t want the whole neighborhood seeing that poor girl hung up in the tree.”

The far worker—mustache, flushed cheeks, flannel under the windbreaker—made a face.

“I don’t work for you, lady.”

Abbie stopped. “If you make me do your job, you’re not going to have one tomorrow. Pick … it … up.”

They picked it up.

Raymond came hustling up behind her and pointed his left arm straight out. He was wearing a trench coat now—fitted to his lean body—and the arm was spattered with rain.

“Second house from the back. It’s got a vinyl fence, tan and white,
only one over there. There’s a gate you can go through. She said it’d be unlocked.”

“Got it,” Abbie said.

“One more thing. Chopin doesn’t want her name on any radio calls or on reports. Like I said, preconditions. Shit, you might find Johnnie Cochran waiting for you when they open the door.”

Abbie made a face and headed toward the gate. She could only see the second story of the house over the level top of the newish fence. She half-ran through the layers of leaves and twigs and reached the gate a little out of breath. The latch was a lift-and-pull device in black steel. She lifted it and the gate drifted toward her.

The yard was neat. A trampoline cloaked in black netting sat at the center, and there was a slide-and-swing set dead center, the colors on the plastic beginning to fade from exposure to Buffalo winters.

Young kids, Abbie thought. I’ll bet that’s why we’re going through the cloak-and-dagger routine. She hurried around the swing set and glanced at the house.

A woman stood behind the gray-green glass of a set of French doors, her arms folded tight over her chest. She was watching Abbie, the first floor in darkness behind her. Her face was ghostly, unreadable behind the shimmering reflection of the lights on the glass.

The door moaned as she approached and there was Mrs. Chopin, dressed in a charcoal pantsuit, an ivory silk shirt at the neck, holding it open.

“Mrs. Chopin?”

“Yes. Detective Kearney?”

“That’s right. May I come in?”

Melissa Chopin hesitated. Her lips were pressed so tight that they were nearly white. “I guess.”

Abbie nodded and entered the darkened dining room. The floor was hardwood, broad planks, expensive. The dining set was sleek metal with thin-backed leather chairs. There were soft footsteps from the floor above.

“My husband is upstairs packing,” Chopin said, her arms still crossed over her chest. “The patrolman told you about our conditions for talking?”

“Yes, I wanted to—”

“They’re nonnegotiable. Let’s get that straight from the beginning.”

“If I can save a girl’s life, do they become negotiable? You have a child. I would hope they would.”

Vertical lines at the corner of the woman’s mouth. A woman with barely an ounce of fat on her. Burned away in vitality or anxiety or whatever.

“That’s a very manipulative way of putting things.”

“No, that’s my job,” Abbie replied. “But tell me what happened and I’ll see what I can do.”

The woman was tight roping the line between civility and barely controlled hysteria. Abbie wanted to keep her this side of the border for as long as she could, but she couldn’t let witnesses dictate the terms of the interview.

The woman nodded once and turned toward the dining table. Chopin pulled a chair back and sat down, putting her head in her hands. Abbie went around the other side and slipped into the chair facing her.

“My son,” Chopin said from inside her cupped hands, and that was all for a few seconds.

“Yes?” Abbie said.

Chopin turned her head up and her eyes drilled down into Abbie’s. “He stayed home sick today. Croup or something that sounded like it. I had meetings downtown, I couldn’t stay with him. Maria, our maid, was baby-sitting.”

Abbie nodded. She wouldn’t even ask the boy’s name. That would set the woman off like a pin pulled from a grenade. “How old is your son?”

Chopin opened her mouth, then closed it. “Seven,” she whispered. “Only seven.”

“Go on.”

“He was upstairs in bed, for most of the day. I was checking in about every other hour.”

I’m a good mother, Chopin’s body English practically screamed. But I wasn’t here. How could I not be here?

“He got a little restless, so he got out of bed to play.”

“Upstairs in his bedroom?” Abbie prodded gently.

Tiny nod.

“Does his bedroom look out over your backyard?” she asked.

Same again.

Twenty yards, Abbie had counted off on her walk over, counting one stride per yard. Add in another ten yards for the Chopins’ backyard. The boy had been thirty yards away from Hangman putting Martha Stoltz up in the tree.

“Did he see something at the Stoltzes’?”

“Ye-es.”

“Can I talk to him about it?”

“No.”

Abbie frowned. “Mrs. Chopin, I know what you’re thinking. Your boy saw something horrible and, what’s worse, you weren’t here to explain it to him …”

“He thinks it was Halloween.”

“Excuse me?”

“My son, Ja—” She stopped. “He loves Halloween. He’s had his costume for a month now. He’s going as Ben 10.”

“Okay,” Abbie said. “I don’t want to hurry you, but every second helps us—”

“He thinks everyone loves Halloween as much as he does. That’s what he believes. So he thinks what he saw was someone practicing for it.”

“What did he see?”

“A man in a red mask walking through the leaves. He was carrying a bag. J-j—”

“Let’s call him John,” Abbie said.

The woman nodded gratefully. She listened for a moment to the sounds of movement upstairs, her face lost in thought. Then she looked at Abbie. “John called it his medical bag. He thought the man was playing Dr. Frankenstein. And he watched. He watched very closely.”

“Because he loves Halloween.”

“That’s right.”

“He saw the man dig a hole?” asked Abbie.

“Dig a hole? No. He didn’t mention that. He saw the man waiting in the trees and there was a rope tied in the tree above him.”

So the hole was already dug, and little Johnny witnessed what happened afterward.

“And the girl came out of the house?”

“I know the family. I never much liked them, but I know the mother over there and Martha was a nice girl.”

Abbie nodded soothingly. “So Martha came out,” she said again.

Melissa Chopin closed her eyes and made a hissing noise between her teeth. When she looked at Abbie, the veins in her eyes had turned crimson. She brought her hand up to her mouth and pressed her fingers to her lips.

“Ma’am?” Abbie said.

“Yes. And the man played a trick on her, is how John put it. He caught her in the noose and pulled her up. He held her there for a few seconds and then he let the rope out and …”

After twenty seconds of oxygen, the brain is stunned, Abbie thought. Martha was basically incapacitated.

“He talked to the girl. She was grabbing at the rope. The masked man turned away and got his bag. The girl …”

Abbie waited.

“She was dancing on her toes. That’s what J-j— … John said. And then the man pulled something out of the bag.”

“What was it?”

“A book. And a mask. That’s when he got scared.”

“I’ll bet.”

Abbie frowned.

“Your boy didn’t call for the baby-sitter, Maria? Did she witness any of this?”

A fast shake of the head. “No, that little bitch didn’t see a thing. That’s why I just fired her.”

“What did Hangman do with the mask?” Abbie said.

“He put it on Martha. Then the man opened the book and showed her a page.”

The note, Abbie thought. It was ripped out of a book. It was part of the ritual, not meant to be seen by us.