Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

King stared intently at the index card and spoke aloud the name of the bank that held the box as he read it off the card: “First Paradise Union Trust.” He tried hard to decipher the age-faded numbers scrawled on the index card alongside the key. He thought he could make out most of them. He was unsure of one or two numbers in the middle and one at the very end. He wasn’t particularly worried about the numbers, though, because it was the three capital letters handwritten in big block letters that had provided the magic. Tomorrow, before the meeting, he’d make an enlarged photocopy of the key and card and buy a magnifying glass. Then he would definitely be able to read the numbers. But if things went the way he hoped, the way they should, deciphering the numbers and getting access to the deposit box would be someone else’s headache. If things went smoothly, his only problem would be figuring out how to carry his money and where to stash it.

King would make sure Hump got his share, not the pot-of-gold share. He’d pay him his half of the ten grand they’d been promised to do the job. He owed that much to his ex-cellmate. Poor, dumb Hump, he had no clue that King had found the key taped to the underside of a dresser in a second-floor bedroom. Good thing Hump had missed it on his first pass. Truth was that until King had scanned the papers looking for word on whether the cops had found the old lady, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to squeeze the original ten grand out of the guy who’d hired them to search the house. The old lady dying on them the way she had put them in a weak bargaining position. It was one thing for the cops to want you for assault and breaking and entering. Murder was a different beast altogether.

King was no lawyer, but he knew that even if they got it knocked down to manslaughter, the two of them were looking at a long bid. King didn’t think he could deal with even another year back inside. Anything longer and he’d hang himself with a bedsheet or just cut his own throat. He’d thought about suicide many times during his life inside, but he was never more serious about it than he was right then. He’d already spent too much of his life in concrete-and-steel boxes, already depleted most of whatever soul he’d come into the world with.

He laughed at himself for his dark thoughts, given his turn of good fortune. He pushed the image of himself hanging from a makeshift noose out of his head. If he hadn’t stumbled across the piece in the paper, King might’ve been willing to throw Hump to the wolves and barter the key away for a few grand and help getting out of the state. But now he didn’t have to worry about sacrificing Hump to the cops or begging for scraps from his employer. His begging-for-scraps days were over.

King stood up and slid the index card into his back pocket. He ripped the article out of the paper, the one that answered his decades of unanswered prayers, and folded it into a neat little square. He put that in his other back pocket. He popped open another can of Coors, stared at it, and smiled. Before sucking it down, he thought, No more Coors for me. No more Coors for the King. Then he scooped up all the papers and went to find the Dumpster. Hump wasn’t usually the newspaper-reading type, but King wasn’t going to take any chances, not when he could almost feel the wind blowing through the new hair he would have transplanted with the money left over from the blondes and the Porsche.

After the papers were disposed of, King headed to the motel office as Hump had done not a half-hour earlier. Only he wasn’t going there to Google local churches. He was going to Google blond girls and German sports cars. He imagined the price of both had gone up since the last time he’d thought there was a serious chance he might get close to either one.

Just as he got back to the room, his cell phone rang. The man on the other end was anxious.

“Write down this number.”

King found the motel notepad and pencil and wrote the number down. “I got the number.”

“How did it go?” the man asked. “Did you locate the package?”

But King didn’t answer. He hung up. The Porsche and the blondes were now almost close enough to touch.

14

As Jesse passed Molly on the way out of the house, he told her to have someone start looking into locating the next of kin.

“She didn’t have any family left that I know of, Jesse. She might have had an older sister, but she’s probably dead, I’m thinking. Maude was in her nineties. Her husband died a long time ago. They never had any kids.”

“We’ve got to try.”

“Can’t we officially ID her with dental records if we have to?”

“True, but we can’t ask her dentist what the guys who wrecked the house were looking for. Maybe there’s a relative who can shed some light on it.”

“I never thought of that. I guess that’s why they pay you the big money and you get to wear that fancy uniform.”