Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

“Then we’re good. We’ll get the money outta him.”

“How we gonna do that, King?”

“You let me worry about that, okay?”

“I always do. So when they find the old woman, what are they gonna do to us?”

King snorted. “They gotta catch us first.”

“I mean, it’s not like we really killed her or nothin’. She just kinda died.”

“I’m not a lawyer, Hump, but I don’t think the cops’ll see it like that.”

Hump got agitated, jumping off the bed. “But we didn’t try to kill her. And if she woulda just kept her yap shut, we wouldn’ta had to put nothin’ in her mouth.”

“Who you trying to convince?”

Hump didn’t like that, balling his huge hands into fists so tight the blood seemed to drain out of them. The veins in his thick neck popped out.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Relax, pal. Go back to watching your preacher and finish your food,” King said, finishing off his beer and popping open a second one. “When I’m done reading the papers, I’m going over to the office and see if they have a business center with a computer. This way I can find out up-to-the-minute stuff about if they found the body and what’s goin’ on.”

Hump calmed almost as quickly as he had gotten riled. He unmuted the TV, opened up the wrapper on his third cheeseburger, and took a bite.

“Let us, brothers and sisters, turn to Leviticus 24:17–21 for an answer to the question of vengeance and repayment for our most egregious of earthly sins. ‘If a man takes the life of any human being, he shall surely be put to death.’ Notice there’s no equivocation. No if, ands, or buts. No excuses. No guilty with an explanation. Now, what of a man at war as opposed to the greedy man who murders in—”

Hump couldn’t shut off the TV fast enough. His bite of cheeseburger went down hard. He took a big swallow of Coke. He stood up from the bed, looked in the mirror, and quickly headed for the door.

King was confused. “What’s up? I thought you liked the burgers.”

“I lost my appetite. I’m goin’ for a walk. I can’t breathe in here no more.”

King rubbed the stubble on his cheeks as he considered the danger of Hump leaving the room. He decided not to try to stop him. He knew he couldn’t have stopped him anyhow. Hump wasn’t an easy man to stop once he got an idea in his head. Ideas weren’t his strong suit, but when he got them, he hung on to them.

“Stay close. It’s gonna take a few days to play our hand. We don’t wanna attract attention.”

But Hump was already out the door, heading to the office to ask about local churches.

12

Tamara Elkin was leaning over the body when Jesse stepped into the bedroom. He winced at the sour background odor of vomit. He’d been to countless crime scenes and witnessed bodies in all manner of decay, but rarely had he been as hungover as he was just then. Tamara turned to him, saw the look on his face, and smiled.

“What’s the deal?”

“I can’t say much without opening her up, but she definitely didn’t die in this bed.”

“Anything you can say other than that so we can get started? Right now, I’ll settle for an educated guess.”

“There’s what looks like tape residue around her mouth, wrists, and ankles. There are some fibers stuck to the adhesive on the dermas proximate to her mouth, so if I had to venture a guess, I’d say whoever ransacked the house shoved some kind of gag in her mouth, then taped over it. She most likely vomited into the gag, but I can’t say now whether that led directly to her death. She does have a split lip, which she received premortem. See the bruising there.” Tamara pointed her gloved index finger at Maude Cain’s face.

“Was she beaten or—”

“I can’t be sure, but it doesn’t look as if she was sexually assaulted and the bruising there around her mouth seems to be the only apparent damage. There’s one other strange thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Someone cleaned her up a little and changed her clothes before placing her in here like this.”

“Cleaned her up. Maybe to cover an assault?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll know for sure when I get her on the table.”

Jesse considered the things Tamara had just told him. Some killers, most often serial killers, presented bodies in certain ways either to satisfy some fantasy or obsession or as a display for the police. Sometimes it was a function of remorse. At this point, before the autopsy and forensic results were in, it was unwise to draw conclusions about motive. But Jesse knew his own gut, and what his gut told him was that this was more of a train wreck than the handiwork of some Hannibal Lecter wannabe. He was thinking it through when he heard heavy footfalls on the staircase.