Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

87

Lundquist looked into the rearview and through the protective Plexiglass at Roscoe Niles slumped against the backseat. He was passed out and snoring. Jesse had let him get dressed in something other than the ratty white bathrobe he’d been wearing, though the too-tight T-shirt, ripped jeans, and sneakers weren’t much of an upgrade. He had also let Niles put his hair back into its usual ponytail.

“I don’t get it,” Lundquist said.

“What?”

“The thing old bikers and old rockers have with ponytails. Do they think it will distract people from noticing their receding hairlines and fat guts hanging over their beltlines?”

“It’s about not letting go.”

“Of what?”

“Their pasts.”

“How did you get him to waive his right to counsel and cooperate?”

“I explained that depending on the way we presented things to the DA, he could do hard time or very hard time.”

“Yeah,” Lundquist said, turning his gaze back to the road. “When you look at it that way, I guess it was an easy choice. But, Jesse, how did you know it was all bullshit?”

“I didn’t know, not for sure, not until Roscoe admitted it to me. I knew something wasn’t right, and then when I noticed the security cameras at the gas station they had me stop at, I realized how I was being played. Last night, after the Vermont cops dropped me back in Paradise, I got hold of the CCTV footage from where the WBMB studios are. The day the poem was allegedly delivered to Roscoe by messenger—”

“There was no messenger.”

“Roscoe knew I would just take his word for it like I took his word for everything else.”

“Good plan.”

“Everybody involved was vouching for everyone else and all of it hinged on my vouching for Roscoe. Stan White’s a sharp guy,” Jesse said. “Except for greed and jealousy, it might’ve worked.”

“But how? When the tape was played, there wouldn’t be anything on it. Then they would all be exposed.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Brian. Even if they didn’t manage to destroy the tape, all of their asses were covered because they set up a fall guy in Evan Updike. If there was nothing on the tape, it would be because Updike had fooled them and had kept the ‘real’ tape and the money. They could all point to the mysterious Evan Updike and say he was the Hangman. He was the recording engineer at the studio. The police believed he had stolen the tape in the first place. The safety-deposit box key was hidden in his aunt’s rooming house. The exchange was made in Vermont, where he was born. We wouldn’t be able to prove he didn’t do it. Can’t prove a negative.

“And even though killing Bascom probably wasn’t part of the original plan — my guess is that was Bella’s idea — Updike still worked as the fall guy because we would assume he and Bascom had been in it together and Updike double-crossed his partner. We would be chasing Updike and our own tails while White, Roscoe, and Bella Lawton were taking baths in ten-dollar bills.”

“But was not seeing the messenger on the security footage enough to convince you it was a scam?”

“I also put in a call to Roscoe’s ex. The story he told me about their divorce was a lie. She divorced him because of his drinking, not because of photos she received in the mail. But White and Roscoe had to play up the feud between them so it would look like Roscoe would have no reason to help White out. It couldn’t look like they were cozy or that Roscoe could somehow benefit. I should have seen it coming. Especially after someone took those shots at me in the woods.”

That refreshed Lundquist’s anger over Jesse not reporting the incident, but he asked why that should have alerted Jesse.

“Because when Roscoe would get really drunk, he would talk about his time in the Marines. ‘I wasn’t always a fat slug,’ he’d say. ‘I could move and I could shoot. They wanted to send me to sniper school, but I was a lover, not a killer.’”

Lundquist shrugged. “If they were all broke, how did they get the money to lease the Wickham place? I hear it costs twenty grand a month to rent.”

“Wickham’s a big Jester fan. He agreed to lower the fee and to let them pay after the party.”

“Was there really going to be a party?”

“No. They were using it as a way to get stories in the paper about Jester’s birthday and rekindle interest in—”

“The missing tape.”

“Exactly.”

“The thing is, Jesse, you’ve got Niles cold for Bascom’s murder and stealing the ransom money, but not much else. You’ve got Niles’s statement and a lot of speculation. You might be able to tie the others to the scam, but not to Bascom’s or Curnutt’s murders. Can you prove any of it?”

“I guess we’re going to find out.”