The Headsman Read online

  Still no answer; only the sound of the footsteps reached her ears. She shrank back against the headboard, pulling the covers up around her neck, her heart pounding.

  The footsteps stopped. For an instant she tried to convince herself she’d only been imagining this—that it was the result of that fool Hathaway planting an idea so deep in her mind it wouldn’t leave her alone.

  But then she heard the sound of breathing again, and realized that the reason the footsteps had stopped was because whoever it was had reached the landing and was standing there, just outside her door. She lay trembling, trying desperately to think of some way to protect herself. There was no lock on the door, but maybe she could barricade it. She could slip out of bed and steal across the floor to her dresser and shove that into place.

  Which was foolish. She wasn’t sure she could move the dresser at all; it probably weighed a ton. And even if she could move it the noise would be horrendous and a sure tipoff as to what she was attempting. And how did she know it would keep somebody from forcing the door anyway?

  Maybe her chair would work. It was a plain, straight-backed wooden one, and she had seen people on TV jam a chair like that under a doorknob. She got out of bed without even rustling the sheets and tiptoed toward the chair. It stood on the far side of the room, only a foot or two from the door.

  Once she got hold of the chair she’d have to be quick, she’told herself. Grab it and stick it into position as fast as possible. And then she’d yell her head off. Her father might not hear her, but maybe her mother would.

  A floorboard creaked under her foot. She froze for a moment, biting her lower lip. Then she took another step, praying it wouldn’t create more noise. Only two or three more steps to go.

  The door opened.

  It didn’t swing wide or bang open, but instead opened noiselessly and very slowly. It opened into the room, and because of the angle the landing was in shadow. She couldn’t see who or what was there.

  Her heart was hammering now and she couldn’t breathe.

  And her imagination was playing a horrible trick. It was making her think there was a man standing in the darkness looking in at her—a big man dressed all in black.

  But it was no trick.

  He stepped into the room, and the sight was her worst nightmare come to life. Everything was black, from his head to his feet. The eyeholes in the black hood were cut at an angle, so that his head looked like that of a giant cat. Or a devil. A black tunic covered broad shoulders and a deep chest, and his legs were encased in black tights. On his feet were black boots. And his huge, black-gloved hands grasped the haft of an enormous, double bladed ax.

  Marcy opened her mouth to scream, but her vocal cords seemed paralyzed. As hard as she tried, she could make no sound. Her head was whirling; she was having trouble keeping her balance.

  The man in black stepped toward her, and she raised her arms to ward him off. The back of a gloved hand smashed into her jaw and she sprawled to the floor. She looked up, cringing in terror, and at last she found her voice. A scream came boiling out of her mouth as he raised the ax.

  5

  Four miles northwest of the Dickens house, Karen Wilson stirred in her sleep. An icy wind blew through the open window of her bedroom and the covers were ruffled as if by an unseen hand. She turned and burrowed deeper under the blankets, drawn halfway into consciousness as a series of fragmented images appeared in her mind.

  It was like seeing photographs in a light show, each strobe-burst illuminating a scene or an object, impressions randomly appearing in brilliant flashes and then just as quickly retreating into darkness. She saw a shadowy figure, and after that a woman’s open mouth, lips drawn back in a rictus induced by terror.

  She saw huge hands wearing black gloves, and a black-hooded head. She saw eyeholes in the hood, slanted like the eyes of a demon. She saw thick, black-clad legs, and feet shod in black boots. She saw an ax with glittering double blades. She saw powerful shoulders in a black tunic.

  She saw the ax raised high, saw a young woman scantily clad in a short pink nightgown lying on the floor, one hand raised in a feeble effort to protect herself. She saw the woman’s eyes grow wider, saw the mouth screaming in protest.

  She saw the axhead arc downward with terrible force, saw blood spatter in an explosion of crimson. She saw a black-gloved hand holding aloft the woman’s dripping head as if in triumph. And then she saw the black boots striding away, smaller in each succeeding image, until they were gone.

  Karen sat up in bed and turned on her reading lamp. Her heart was pounding and her breath came in shallow gasps, and her flannel pajamas were damp with perspiration. She looked quickly around the room, as if to reassure herself that she was where she should be, and that nothing was amiss. In the lamplight she made out her chair and her desk, its surface covered with knickknacks. The door of her tiny closet was open, revealing its overstuffed contents, her clothing jammed into every available inch. On the walls her posters were soft dabs of color, illustrations of Chamonix and Capri and Cap-Ferrat.

  She glanced at the clock on the table. A little after one. She shivered, and after her gaze swept the room once more she turned off the lamp and slid back down under the covers.

  Would she be able to sleep again tonight? Probably not. She didn’t know what the images meant, or where they had come from, or where the action they revealed had taken place. But she knew that the horror she had seen was real. For a time she fought to keep the impressions from reappearing in her mind, but she remembered too vividly what she had seen.

  Would she ever know what the images meant? It was impossible to say. Maybe what she had witnessed was not of the present, but had taken place a long time ago. She hoped fervently this would be the end of it, and that she’d be left in peace. Hours later she fell into a restless sleep, disturbed by dreams of a looming, black-clad shape, and an ax, and a young woman’s head floating in space, the sightless eyes frozen wide in fear.

  6

  The blade gleamed softly in the lamplight. Only a few drops of blood still clung to its surface, standing in tiny crimson beads. He had always taken great care of the instrument, sharpening it until its edges were as fine as a razor’s, polishing it for hours, and then covering it with the thinnest coating of oil. He wiped it now with a rag, restoring it to pristine cleanliness. Then he gripped the haft in both hands, turning the ax slowly, inspecting every inch of its great steel head.

  What a work of art this was. Perfectly symmetrical, each of its blades the mirror image of the other. And balanced exactly, so that it didn’t matter which edge struck when the ax was put to use. Both blades were equally efficient, equally capable of cleaving even the thickest, most muscular neck with a single stroke.

  More than two hundred years old, the ax had been forged by a master craftsman in Hounslow, just west of London. No clumsy smithy that one, no heavy-handed forger of farm tools. On the contrary, its maker was an armorer who fashioned swords and daggers for noblemen, and pikes for the soldiers they led into battle.

  As did a fine sculpture, the ax pleased the eye no matter from what perspective you studied it. The edges of its twin blades each described a gentle parabola, like the curves of a woman’s breasts, or her buttocks. The mere sight of them never failed to produce a sexual response in the headsman, a stirring of desire.

  As his fingers moved over the steel the feeling intensified, recreating some of the pleasure he had felt when he carried out tonight’s execution. Once again he saw the terror in the girl’s eyes, saw her mouth agape as cries of fear issued from her throat.

  Ah, her throat. That slender column, white and delicate, with its arteries pulsing and its flesh heaving as it alternated between gasping for air and expelling screams. And the power he had felt when he looked down on it—as if he owned all the world and controlled every living creature in it. With his unerring eye perfectly coordinated with the massive muscles of his shoulders and his arms and his back, he had swung the ax with explosive for
ce. And at the exact instant the blade struck, precisely when that exquisitely honed steel carried out the sentence, rending flesh and tissue and bone and tendons, spraying blood so that for a fleeting instant the air had been infused with a pink cloud, that was when his orgasm had burst.

  And then he had been physically drained, but left with the deep satisfaction of knowing justice had been done. He had lifted the severed head with a sense of joy that was no longer hot and savage, but as cold as death itself.

  He gazed at the ax fondly for a long time, losing himself in its beauty. Then through the window he saw that the night sky was turning gray; it would be dawn soon. With a feeling almost of regret that his work was done, he oiled down the steel with loving care and put the instrument away.

  Two

  A STATE OF SHOCK

  1

  CHIEF OF POLICE Jud MacElroy pulled the patrol car out of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and turned into Water Street, driving slowly and carefully so as not to spill coffee from the Styrofoam cup in his right hand. He was a tall man, big-boned and rangy, and with his fleece-lined leather jacket he was a little cramped in the Plymouth. His cap was pushed back on his head, revealing closely trimmed black hair, and his ice-blue eyes swept the street as he drove.

  It was Saturday morning, and he was restless. The previous night had been relatively quiet: a fender bender at the intersection of Main and South streets; a fight in the Pine Tree Inn that had resulted in a drunk spending the night in Braddock’s jail; a domestic argument in a house on Belden Street. And that was it. Usually there was more action than that on Fridays.

  Not that he consciously hoped for trouble. On the contrary, Jud was easygoing and friendly by nature, and he sincerely believed a cop’s job was to keep the peace. Violence was to be avoided if possible, and mediation was better than hard-assed confrontation anytime. He knew his attitude didn’t square with that of some of the men under his command, who liked to see themselves as Rambos in a war on crime. But at far as he was concerned, there were enough problems in running the department and coping with whatever mischief came along without stirring up more.

  On the other hand, there was also a desire to prove himself. He’d been on the force eight years, having joined directly after a hitch in the army, where he’d risen to the rank of sergeant in the MPs. A year ago he’d become chief when his predecessor, Emmett Stark, had retired. That was just after Jud’s thirtieth birthday, and his elevation to the top job had caused envy and even outright jealousy among a few of the other cops, some of whom were senior to him by many years.

  But what the hell, that was human nature, wasn’t it? So he could live with it, and in the meantime he’d try to justify the town fathers’ faith in him by doing as good a job as possible, and by making improvements in the operation without alienating anybody in the BPD.

  From Water Street he turned into Maple Avenue, and as he tooled along in the blue-and-white he noted the traffic seemed a touch heavier than usual. But that was typical of a Saturday, he reminded himself, with people shopping and running errands.

  As he approached a corner he saw two black guys moving around a car parked on the opposite side of the street. He eased over to the curb and sat watching them, sipping his coffee. There weren’t many blacks in Braddock, and those who did live there were mostly hardworking citizens who kept their noses clean. There was a fair amount of grass trade among them, but probably no more than what went on with the whites, especially the high school kids. At least there was no crack problem. Not yet, anyway.

  The black men seemed young, in their early twenties, he would guess. Both wore windbreakers, and one of them had a flattop haircut. The other guy had on a baseball cap. Neither of them paid any attention to him, and he couldn’t tell whether they knew he was there or not. The car was an older sedan, a grayish Pontiac. As he watched, the one wearing the cap walked around to the rear of the car, digging into his pants pocket and pulling out a set of keys. Then he bent over and opened the trunk.

  So it was nothing, Jud thought. Car thieves do not use keys, nor do they mess with aging clunkers. He continued to sit there with his engine running, however, as the two guys went about getting a jack and a spare out of the trunk.

  And now what? Watch people change a tire? He knew the truth was that he was just dragging his feet, delaying going on in to his desk at the stationhouse and facing the stack of paperwork that inevitably waited there to greet him. Maybe it was just habit ingrained by years of patrolling the streets and roads that ran through and around Braddock, maybe not. But he had to admit he missed this part of the job. Reluctantly he swallowed the last of his coffee and stuffed the cup into the small plastic garbage bag on the floor. Then he dropped the Plymouth into gear and slipped out into the stream of traffic.

  He’d gone about a block when the radio came to life. The dispatcher was Tony Stanis, whose style was usually a bored monotone. This morning, however, Stanis sounded so excited he could hardly get the words out. “Car Five, Car Five, go to Three-twenty Ridgeview Drive on a Code One. Repeat, Three-twenty Ridgeview Drive on a Code One.”

  MacElroy snapped to full alert. Code One? That was a homicide. He snatched up the mike and waited as Five—driven by Bob Kramer—acknowledged. Then he hit the key. “Tony, Chief MacElroy. Code One?”

  “Affirmative, Chief. Just came in.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s a kid—uh, seventeen-year-old female. Name, Marcy Dickens.”

  “That Ed Dickens’ daughter?”

  “Right.”

  “Perpetrator?”

  “Unknown. Not at the scene.”

  Jud switched on the cruiser’s flasher and siren and skidded the car into a U-turn, scaring the shit out of the driver of a van in the oncoming lane. Jud could see the guy’s eyes popping as he jammed on the van’s brakes.

  Jesus Christ. Dickens was president of the Braddock National Bank. His daughter was an only child. Jud felt heat course through his neck and shoulders as his body pumped adrenalin. He whipped the car in and out of the stream of traffic until he came to Pemberton Road, a narrow blacktop that would take him to the Ridgecrest area. He turned into Pemberton and increased his speed.

  He pressed the transmitter button again. “Tony, Chief MacElroy. Who called it in?”

  “A neighbor. Mrs. Keevis.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. The neighbor said the girl was dead and Mrs. Dickens was hysterical.”

  “Her husband wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Call the bank. See if he’s in his office. If he is, tell him to get home. And send an ambulance to the house.”

  “Right, Chief. Wilco.”

  “I’m on my way there now. Also send another car.” He dropped the mike back onto its hook and tried to concentrate on his driving.

  A homicide.

  And the daughter of one of the town’s leading citizens.

  Killings were rare in Braddock, and when they did occur it was usually when somebody got into a bar brawl and ended up with a knife or maybe a bullet in his chest. Or now and then a family dispute went over the edge. A few months ago a carpenter who lived out toward Norristown had come home drunk and punched his wife around. When he finally wound down and flopped into bed she got out his 12-gauge and shoved it into his ear, giving him both barrels. The case had not yet been tried; maybe it never would be. Meanwhile she was free on bail and living at home.

  But more often sudden death in these parts was the result of an accident. People would smash themselves up in cars, and farm workers would get tangled up in their machines. Tractors were especially lethal, with a nasty way of flipping over backward and crushing careless drivers. And just the previous fall a fourteen-year-old boy had fallen into a grain loader and suffocated. Accidents happened all the time, and the cops went out and swept up the mess.

  But homicide was something else again.

  The Plymouth’s speedometer needle was touching eighty
. Jud passed another car, just getting back into his own lane before a stakebed loaded with logs blew by in the opposite direction. You better back off, he told himself, or they’ll be shoveling you into a body bag. But he didn’t. Instead, he squeezed a little more out of the cruiser, until he was barely able to hold it on a sweeping left-hand curve, the tires squealing over the howl of the siren and the suspension chattering on the rough surface of the road. He went over the brow of a hill, and when he got to the bottom and the road flattened out Ridgecrest lay just ahead of him. He slowed down and made the turn into Ridgeview Drive.

  As he approached the Dickenses’ home he saw Five parked in front of it. The house was painted white and was set back between a pair of towering oaks. It was a big place for a family of three, but then Ed Dickens was a prominent man in Braddock and appearances were no doubt important to him.

  When Jud drew closer he saw a half-dozen people gathered together on the front walk. Neighbors, probably. A couple of the women seemed to be crying. He slid to a stop behind the other patrol car and turned off his engine and the siren and lights, then climbed out and hurried up the walk.

  He recognized several of the onlookers, knowing them by sight if not by name. One was an old man who’d worked for years in Swanson’s hardware store, and that one’s name he did know. It was Art Ballard. They made way for him, and as he passed they stared at him with that dumb, frightened look people get when there’s some kind of big trouble—an automobile accident or a drowning or a fire.

  He went up the front steps and across the porch to the front door, rapping on the knocker and then trying the doorknob. The door was unlocked; he opened it and walked in. From somewhere inside he could hear a woman sobbing.

  Jud had never been in the house before, but he’d passed it often enough. Braddock had no really elegant section, just a few big places like this one scattered through it, some of them built a hundred years ago or more, in the days when a sawmill and paper manufacturing business had flourished just outside the town on the banks of the Nepawa River. He was standing now in a wide hallway with deep carpeting and blue-and-white papered walls. A stairway led to the floor above, but the sobs seemed to be coming from down here, from one of the rooms off the hall. He went into the room.