The Headsman Read online

  Jud felt his gorge rise, but he kept his face from showing it. “Sure, Sam. Very clear.”

  “I hope so,” Melcher said. “My advice to you is to get this terrible thing cleared up fast.” He stopped and looked at the door. “Are Ed and Helen in there?”

  Jud nodded.

  “Anybody with them?”

  “Just one of our police officers.”

  Melcher shook his head. “Poor, poor people.” He shot one more black look at Jud and went into the house.

  The chief glanced over at Pearson, who still seemed pleased by the attention the media people were giving him. Damned if I do, Jud thought, and damned if I don’t. He left the porch and strode down the walk toward his car.

  There were more rubberneckers pressing against the rope than there had been earlier, and a number of cars were driving slowly past the house. The sky had become overcast, and there was almost no wind. It was a sign of snow coming, and Jud hoped fervently they wouldn’t be hit by another storm. Sitting in the middle of the snow belt, Braddock usually caught anything that blew up east of Buffalo, and late winter was the worst time. But maybe they’d have some luck for a change. Then again, squinting up at the leaden clouds, he doubted it.

  “Jud!”

  He turned to see Sally hurrying toward him. Her face was flushed from a combination of the cold air and the excitement, and her dark hair tumbled to her shoulders in loose waves. Her polo coat was open and he could see her breasts bobbing under her white blouse as she half-walked, half-ran to where he was standing. She was, he thought, a very good-looking young woman.

  She put her hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He felt self-conscious again, aware that some of the onlookers were staring at them, and he gently removed her hand. “Yeah, I’m all right. How come you’re on this?”

  “Maxwell told me to cover it.” Ray Maxwell was the owner and publisher as well as the editor of the Braddock Express.

  Jud nodded. “That’s a break for you.”

  “I suppose so. But I feel more like crying than anything else. What a horrible thing to have happen. It’s just ghastly.”

  He thought of what he’d seen on the floor of the bedroom and on top of the dresser. “It is that.”

  She bit her lip. “I’d like to ask you some questions, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think you were favoring me because we’re friends.”

  “No, neither would I.” He suddenly realized this was the first time they’d mixed business into their personal relationship.

  “Maybe I should go to your office when you get back there.”

  “Same problem.”

  “Okay, then—see you tonight?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That would be better. It’ll have to be late, though.”

  “Fine. I’ll come over.” She turned and hurried back toward the other reporters, who were still gathered around Pearson. Watching her go, it occurred to Jud that she looked just as good from this angle as she did from the front.

  He waved to the cop who was holding the crowd back and got into his cruiser. As he started the engine and pulled away, he thought back to how the morning had begun. A quiet Saturday, and now he had a feeling he was in for more problems than he ever could have imagined.

  Three

  FEARFUL IMPACT

  1

  KAREN WILSON AWAKENED at dawn with a blinding headache. The images she’d seen during the night had been burned into her mind, and her sleep had been a jumble of nightmares, giving her no rest. She got out of bed and stumbled into the shower, feeling as if she’d been hit over the head with a hammer. Getting dressed took great effort, and when she left the house the cold outside air only made her feel worse.

  By the time she’d driven to Boggs Ford, the car dealership where she worked as a secretary, she could hardly see. Carrying a paper bag containing coffee and a bran muffin she’d bought at the luncheonette down the street, she picked up the newspaper lying in front of the showroom and unlocked the door. Once inside she turned off the alarm and put her breakfast and the paper on her desk, then took off her coat and hung it in a closet. She returned to her desk and sat down, wishing she could turn around and go home.

  But she couldn’t. She needed this job, and as it was she often had trouble concentrating on her work when she was having one of her bad spells. When that happened she was apt to be forgetful and make mistakes. And when it got really bad, when she was afflicted by one of these migraines—or whatever they were—and she experienced a vision, she could hardly function.

  That was when she fully expected Charley Boggs, who owned the dealership, to fire her. But he’d always looked the other way when she had her problems. Which wasn’t so hard to understand, as she thought about it. She was an attractive young woman with an exceptional body, and although Boggs had never come right out and made a direct pass, Karen had caught him staring at her often enough, when he hadn’t thought anyone would notice. She had no illusions about him; he was undoubtedly just biding his time.

  She opened the bag and took out the container of coffee and the muffin. After removing the cap from the Styrofoam cup she sipped the black liquid, finding it still steaming hot. She closed her eyes, and despite her resolve not to let the images return to her consciousness, she suddenly recalled them once more: the black hood, the glittering ax, the woman’s face contorted by fear. And finally the dripping head held high in a black-gloved hand.

  She shuddered, and opening a drawer got out a bottle of aspirin. She shook two tablets out of the bottle and stepped over to the water cooler, where she swallowed the aspirin and chased the tablets with a cup of water.

  Back at her desk she seemed to feel a little better. It was just after eight o’clock, her usual arrival time, and she always enjoyed these few minutes of peace before the day’s activities began. This was Saturday, the busiest day of the week. But she’d have enough time to eat her breakfast and glance through the morning edition of the Express.

  As it had been recently, the news was mostly bad. The front page carried a story about a running battle between Moslems and Christians in Lebanon, and another about a train wreck in China that had killed more than a hundred people. Still another reported that the U.S. economy was in decline. That one took the view that the president was to blame, which irritated her. The problems went back years. Was the president supposed to just wave a magic wand and make everything wonderful again?

  There was also a story about another B–1 bomber crashing in Nevada with the loss of five crew members. This was the second fatal crash of an air force jet in the past month.

  She turned the page. A semitrailer had overturned on the interstate. The truck had been carrying crates of oranges from Florida, and the cargo had scattered all over the highway, causing cars to slip and slide as they ran over the fruit. Some of the vehicles had collided as drivers lost control. But the damage was relatively minor, and the truck driver was only slightly bruised. ORANGE CRUSH, the headline said. Karen smiled and turned to an article about the town’s plans for issuing municipal bonds to finance an overhaul of the water system. She finished her muffin as she glanced through the story.

  And then she saw the piece on a missing child.

  At first she tried to skip over it, deluding herself that she hadn’t really noticed it, that it didn’t concern her. But her gaze was drawn to the story as if by a magnet. Resignedly, she read the article.

  The boy was eight, the oldest of three children in a family that lived out on the Norrisville road. Their name was Mariski. The father was a machinist. The boy, Michael, had been missing since Thursday afternoon, when he hadn’t returned from school. He’d gotten off the bus at the usual stop, and the driver recalled seeing him trudge up the hill toward his home. He never arrived, his mother said. No one had seen him since, and there was no clue as to his whereabouts. A search party had combed the area Thursday night and again on Friday, with no success.

  Karen sighed. It was a sad story, and she could imagine how frant
ic that poor family felt. But it was with a sense of relief that she finished the piece and turned her attention elsewhere. At least it hadn’t reached out to her, as those things sometimes did, projecting images, terrible revelations she wanted not to know about.

  The ability to receive those messages in the form of a vision had been a curse since childhood. Sometimes the images were as plain and clear as photographs in an album, leaving no doubt whatever as to who was involved and what had happened. And at other times she saw only unexplainable fragments, as with the hooded man with the ax. And at still other times, such as in the case of little Michael Mariski, she received nothing at all.

  Where the vision came from, or why she had been singled out to carry this awful burden, she had no idea. But it haunted her, and sometimes tortured her, and she’d been trying to escape from it all her life.

  Her eyes focused on an announcement that the Jaycees were giving a dinner dance three weeks from now. Maybe Ted would ask her to go. And then again, maybe he wouldn’t. The relationship had been so strong for a time, but then she’d gone through one of her spells, and her dark moods and her withdrawal and her headaches had presented a side of her Ted didn’t understand and that she couldn’t explain.

  “Hi, Karen.”

  She looked up to see Ed McCarthy approaching, pulling off his heavy tweed overcoat, his face ruddy from the cold outside air. “Oh, good morning, Ed. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Geez, if I’d known that I would’ve snuck up on you.”

  She laughed. He was a good guy, friendly and open, easily the best salesman Boggs had. He was always leering at her and making suggestive remarks, but she knew it was nothing but a good-natured running joke between them. Ed was happily married, the father of two little girls, and Karen considered him a friend.

  He hung up his coat and then came over to half-sit on the edge of her desk. “How you doing?”

  “Not bad for a Saturday morning.” Which was the truth. Her headache was easing up, and with any luck the spell would be leaving her. Just the thought of that buoyed her spirits. “How about you?”

  “Terrific. I sold two cars yesterday, and I think I’m gonna close another one today. That’s if I can get this guy off his ass. He’s one of these fence-straddlers. His old car is a ’seventy-five Dodge and it’s falling apart, but you’d think buying a new one was gonna cost him a million bucks. He’s been hemming and hawing for a month. Can you believe it?”

  “What makes you think he’ll come through today?”

  “His old lady’s coming with him, that’s why. He wouldn’t be bringing her along unless he was ready to move. I’m gonna sell him that metallic blue Taurus four-door. It’s loaded, and I’m giving him a good deal. And besides, ladies like blue.”

  “Good. Hope you sell him.”

  “Can’t miss.”

  It must be great, Karen thought, always to be that optimistic. “How’s everybody at your house?”

  “They’re fine. Jenny’s got a cold, but outside of that they’re okay. Few more weeks and the kids’ll have spring vacation. I’m gonna drive us to Florida, to see my mother in Tampa.”

  “Wonderful. Wish I were going down there.”

  “Hey, you mean it? I’ll leave Jenny home, take you instead.”

  She smiled. “When I go to Florida, it won’t be with you and a car full of kids.”

  A booming voice said, “Well, everybody looks bright and chipper this morning.”

  They turned to see Charley Boggs walking toward them from the showroom. Boggs was short and overweight, and as usual he was wearing one of his garish sports jackets, this one a bilious green plaid. He was carrying his topcoat over his arm. They said good morning to him as he approached.

  Boggs glanced at his watch. “Where’s Morrow and Guzik? It’s after eight-thirty.”

  Jack Morrow and Fred Guzik were the other two salesmen. “Should be here any minute,” McCarthy said.

  “Better be,” Boggs muttered darkly. “I’m not running this place for the fun of it. Those two clowns want to work for Boggs Ford, they better get humping.”

  He’s in his executive mood, Karen thought. Ready to pound the desk and kick ass. The jerk.

  Boggs pointed to the overflowing in-box on her desk. “Gotta get to those invoices there, Karen. And the customer orders. Also I want the repair bills to go out. Bookkeeping was late getting ’em ready, damn it.”

  Karen looked at the box. As if she didn’t know what her job was, or that she had to get this work out today. “Sure, I’ll take care of it.”

  He marched through the outer area and into his office, closing the door behind him. Ed McCarthy glanced at Karen and rolled his eyes, holding his hands palms-up.

  The front door opened and a middle-aged couple stepped into the showroom.

  McCarthy jumped to his feet and hurried toward them, beaming. “Ah, Mr. Colvis. Good morning. And this must be Mrs. Colvis. How are you, ma’am? I’m Ed McCarthy. It’s nice to see you both.”

  Colvis was a little guy, wearing a tan storm coat and a cap. His wife was about twice his size, and she squinted at Ed through eyes narrowed to slits. She had on a woolly coat that made her look as if she were inflated.

  Just behind them came Morrow and Guzik, the errant salesmen. They’d probably been sitting around in some diner together, having breakfast and shooting the breeze, Karen thought. And now the day was underway; it was time to go to work.

  There were some factory orders she’d finished typing yesterday that needed Boggs’s signature. She might as well get those out of the way. Picking up the stack of papers, she left her desk and went to his office, knocking on the door.

  “Come in.”

  She went inside and closed the door behind her. Boggs always insisted on that, saying his office was private and that he didn’t want customers to think they could just go barging in on him whenever they might feel like it. She stepped over to his desk and put the orders down in front of him. “Would you sign these, please?”

  While he busied himself with the stack Karen stood beside his chair and looked around the office. The wall behind him was covered with pictures of Boggs with celebrities of one kind or another. There was one of him with Senator D’Amato, and another of him with Senator Moynihan. There was one with Cardinal O’Connor, and one with some New York Mets player, and one with Governor Cuomo. There was also one of him with a woman who looked like Faye Dunaway, but Karen wasn’t sure. How had a sleaze like Boggs managed to get his picture taken with people like that? It was amazing. And it was also a clue as to why he thought so highly of himself. To him, the photos would be proof that he was a man of importance.

  She glanced at his desk. There was a portrait of him there with his family, in a silver frame. His wife looked very much like Charley, round-faced and impressed with herself, and there were his two teenaged kids, a boy and a girl. Her gaze drifted to Boggs, and to her surprise he wasn’t looking at the papers she’d given him, but at her.

  He smiled. “How’s it going with you, Karen honey?”

  The smile was oily, and it made her uncomfortable. “Fine. It’s going fine. They all signed?”

  He ignored the question. “You know, I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Uh-huh. I like you, Karen. And I’m real pleased with your work.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad you are.” Her instincts told her to just scoop up the orders and get out of there. But she didn’t.

  “Yeah. I think you’re a great gal. And you know, you could have a real good future here. You could move up, see? Get to be like my assistant.”

  She made no reply, which Boggs apparently misunderstood. The smile widened. “That’d mean a big jump in salary, lots of perks. Why don’t we have dinner some night soon, talk it over, hmm?”

  She froze. His hand had slid up under her skirt and was stroking the back of her thigh. Before she could yell or run or belt him it moved higher and squeezed her buttock.

 
Now she did move. As hard as she could, she chopped the edge of her left hand against the inside of his arm. With her other hand she slapped his face. The blow knocked him back in his chair, his cheek reddening, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. She left the orders where they were and hurried out the door, slamming it behind her.

  There were more people in the showroom now; all three salesmen were busy with customers. But no one seemed to notice her. Which was a good thing; her face was burning with anger and embarrassment. She went back to her desk and sat down, struggling to get her emotions under control.

  Damn that fat fool anyway. Why the hell couldn’t he leave her alone? After this fracas he’d be sure to fire her. And then what? She’d have to go job-hunting again, start all over somewhere else.

  It wasn’t that jobs were so hard to find—especially for a good-looking girl with a college degree who didn’t want a high-level position. It was just that she felt so different from other people—and so vulnerable. She’d been through a whole string of jobs since she’d graduated from Shippensburg, usually losing them when one of her spells came over her. And now the thought of going through the process again was depressing. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Whatever would happen would happen. She’d just have to cope with it. For now she’d do her work as well as she could, and if Boggs fired her, so be it.

  The morning newspaper was still lying open on her desk. She picked it up and was about to toss it into the wastebasket when her gaze fixed on the story of the missing Mariski boy. As she looked at the words they blurred, and then the newspaper and the desk seemed to dissolve away, and she was no longer sitting at her desk at Boggs Ford, but was somewhere suspended in space, in a place without walls or dimensions, as if she were floating in limbo.

  A series of images appeared. She saw a pond with marshy edges, grayish brown cattails rising from the spongy ground. The water of the pond was a dirty iron color and there was a thin sheet of ice covering part of the surface. A stone wall ran along one side of the pond, and beyond the wall was an old barn, its red paint weathered and one of its walls collapsed from rot. She saw a brown corduroy jacket and a mop of brown hair and battered high-top shoes. She saw pale flesh and staring opaque eyes.