Hire a Hangman by Collin Wilcox

him. “Teresa, I want you to go to the bedroom.” He shook her. “Close the door. I want you to close the door and lock it. I’ll handle this. You can’t—”
    Suddenly she threw her arms wide and flung him away. Shrieking incoherently, she crossed the living room in three strides to stand beside the fireplace. Hastings saw a large picture of a boy hung above the fireplace. It was a hand-colored photograph, elaborately framed.
    Beneath the picture, on the fireplace’s wooden mantelpiece, a bower of pine boughs was arranged. The arrangement was centered on a small amber-colored onyx urn.
    As suddenly as it had come, Teresa Bell’s agony passed, leaving her leaning with her head pressed against the fireplace’s brick chimney, exhausted, her eyes fixed on the urn.
    Timmy.
    Timmy’s ashes, in the amber onyx urn.
    As the three stood motionless, the silence lengthened. Then, with his eyes still on the woman standing across the room, Hastings spoke softly to Bell.
    “You said you were working last night.” As he asked the question, Hastings half turned toward the man standing beside him. Visibly, Bell was surrendering to despair, shrinking from within. Still fixed on Teresa Bell, who was standing motionless, staring at the urn, Fred Bell’s eyes had gone as hollow as his wife’s.
    “Mr. Bell.” Hastings let a moment pass. “Answer me, please.”
    “Yes,” Bell whispered. “Yes. I worked last night. The eight-to-four shift.”
    “And your wife was alone last night.”
    “She was here. Right here.”
    But the doubt was plainly readable in Bell’s tortured eyes. “Right here,” he repeated as he went to his wife, put his arms around her, let her head fall on his shoulder as she began to sob: deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body.
    Finally her sobs faded to silence, but the grief-frozen tableau held: the woman’s head buried against the man’s shoulder, his arms holding her while her arms hung slack. Then, indistinctly, Hastings heard the woman speak. “I wanted him to die, Fred. I wanted him to die like Timmy died. I wanted it to be slow. Not fast. Slow.” Suddenly she twisted in her husband’s arms. Eyes blazing, she searched his face. “He’s dead, Fred. You didn’t pray for him to die. But I did. I prayed.”
    3:20 PM
    He watched Hastings leave the Bell house, go down the steps to the street, walk to the Ford sedan parked across the street. The detective moved easily, confidently, as if he knew he carried with him the full force of the law, society’s broad-shouldered guardian, the man with the badge and the gun.
    The man who was stalking his prey. Closer—closer.
    Hastings and all the others, searching, tightening the noose. A cliché. A dark, dangerous cliché, a morass. The mind of a murderer, meaningless tangles of insanity and lucidity: his only instrument of survival.
    4:40 PM
    Dubiously, Friedman shook his head. “I don’t know, Frank. In my experience, loonies don’t make very predictable suspects. Sure, she prayed for Hanchett to die. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t.”
    “If you’d seen her, though …”
    “I’m surprised you didn’t hang in there, keep her talking.”
    “Her husband wouldn’t let me do it. So before he got hot, decided to call a lawyer, whatever, I decided to back off. I’ll wait till the husband’s at work, talk to her again. Why don’t you come along, see what you think?”
    “Fine,” Friedman said. “Incidentally, did you hear about the kid and the gun?”
    “What kid? What gun?” Hastings asked the questions sourly. Friedman was building the suspense, working his audience.
    “A little kid found a gun in some bushes a few hours ago. It was only two blocks from the murder scene. The lab’s doing the ballistics right this minute, and then they’ll do the fingerprints.” Friedman smiled. “The kid fired the goddamn gun. At last report, the mother was still in shock. Not to mention the father, who’s got a hole in the driver’s door of