Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

After a quick round of handshakes and hot air from the mayor, she turned the floor over to Jesse. Stan White wasn’t the kind of man interested in Robert’s Rules of Order.

“Do you think this guy,” White said before Jesse opened his mouth, “this Hangman character, really has the tape?”

Jesse answered White’s question with one of his own. “If he does, how much would it be worth?”

“Millions,” he said, parroting Roscoe Niles’s answer to the same question. “Five, maybe six million. Maybe more. Who knows? It’s one of the last few great mysteries of Baby Boomer rock, along with whether or not the Beatles intentionally fueled the Paul-is-dead rumor and what really happened to Bobby Fuller. The difference is that this one really might get solved.”

Both Nita Thompson and Bella Lawton looked at Stan White as if he had just sprouted a second head.

“Bobby Fuller?” Bella said, almost unaware the words had actually come out of her mouth. “Who’s Bobby Fuller?”

The mayor sang. “I fought the law and the law won...”

“I thought that was a Green Day song,” Nita said.

Stan White threw his hands up. “Please! The song was written by Sonny Curtis, who was in the Crickets, but the Bobby Fuller Four made it a hit in the mid-sixties.”

“Thanks for the lesson in rock history, Stan,” Jesse said. “But here’s the deal. You have a few days at most to prepare for the media blitz that’s bound to come if this guy can prove he really does have the tape. The tape isn’t my concern. My job is to bring this guy in to see if he was the person who hired Curnutt and Bolton to break into Maude Cain’s house, and to find out if he was the person who murdered Curnutt.”

Nita was still unconvinced. “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? With all due respect, what if Jesse is wrong about this? We’re operating on the basis of a big if here.”

But the others in the room acted as if they hadn’t heard her or as if they had fully bought into Jesse’s theory.

“No,” Stan White said, a hint of desperation in his voice. “Jesse’s right. He’s got to be.”

The mayor asked. “If you are right, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that the man with the tape and the man you should be focusing on is Humphrey Bolton?”

“Assumptions are never safe, Your Honor. Especially not in police work.”

57

Getting together at Daisy’s was usually something Molly and Jesse enjoyed, but Molly looked worn-out from all the overtime she’d been putting in. At least the more difficult of the two meetings, though there were no unexpected guests. She picked at her eggs as Jesse explained the situation to her. Not even the smell of freshly ground coffee or the sweetly sulphurous aroma of the frying onions and peppers on the griddle lifted her spirits.

“Two people dead, another in the hospital... All this over a stupid record album?” she said, staring at her food.

Before Jesse could answer, Daisy came by to refill their cups. “You look like you lost your best friend, there, Molly Crane.”

“Just lost sleep,” Jesse answered for her.

Daisy wagged her finger at him. “Well, stop working her so hard, Jesse. You two need a refill, just wave.”

When Daisy moved on to the next table, Molly repeated her question about the missing tape.

“I do, Molly. It’s got to be. Nothing else makes much sense.”

“I hate how this makes Paradise look.”

Jesse nodded. “I do, too, but if Stan White and Roscoe Niles are right about how much the missing tape is worth, no one will really be focused on the murders or on Paradise. The tape and the money will be what everyone is talking about. And that may even help us catch this guy. It’s what he’ll be thinking about, too.”

“I guess.” Molly, like Nita Thompson, seemed less than sold. “But if it’s about that, why kill Curnutt? Why not let him just disappear?”

“This Hangman guy, whether he was the one to actually kill Curnutt or not, is trying to get as much attention as he can and he doesn’t seem to care what he has to do to get it.”

“What’s he going to do with the media attention? I don’t see the point.”

“The Hangman, if he’s really got the tape, is whetting bidders’ appetites and driving up the price.”

“What do you mean, ‘if he has the tape’?”

“So far, he hasn’t proved a thing. He hasn’t even really claimed to have the tape, not yet, but he will. He’s going to have to prove he has it, or why go through all of this? There’s already a trail of bodies. If he didn’t have the tape, he’d get as far away from the press and the cops as possible instead of waving at us and calling attention to himself.”

“And he thinks he’s going to get away with this?”