Free Hangman: A Novel by Stephan Talty Page A

coming in. And now it’s your case.”
    Raymond flashed her a smile. Abbie felt her heart sink.
    I’m the last line of defense, Abbie thought. The city was going to lose its collective mind, and she would be the poster girl for the investigation. The quiet life on Elmwood Avenue, her sanctuary, seemed like a tiny black-and-white photo quickly receding into the distance. She thought of Mills, her boyfriend, and wished very badly that he was near her, touchable.
    The traffic was knotted in lines on 20A. She jumped off at an exit and tried the back roads. There the red brake lights winked back at her from the dark lanes. Night was falling. She caught sight of a huge looming shape—all spindly arms—and thought for a moment that an airplane was falling out of the sky and pitching nose-first into the earth, but realized it was a wind turbine. The farmers of Wyoming County were finally getting some return for the lonely windswept acres.
    So Hangman had turned ghost, evading the search parties that were tramping over the corn stubble and gliding past the barricades of the itchy-fingered troopers and town sheriffs. He was resurrecting his legend, turning his image from a pathetic brain-injured gimp that had been nearly forgotten back into what he was. A fiend, a killer of girls.
    They were starting to respect him again. Hangman would enjoy that, she thought.
    “I need you to check the bank accounts for the dead CO, Carlson,” said Abbie. “See if there are any large deposits in the last, say, six months.”
    “Why?”
    “Carlson was asking Hangman about the girls,” she said.
    Raymond’s eyes crinkled up in confusion. “When?”
    “Before he escaped.”
    “
Before
he escaped? That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Sure it does,” Abbie said. “Someone else wants information. And they were willing to pay for it.”
    Raymond hummed. “Getting any financial info right now is gonna be tough. The family and the union won’t like us poking around in his personal life. He’s the only hero we have right now, you know.”
    “I know,” Abbie said, braking to avoid a slow truck, then accelerating along the breakdown lane. “But if we find out how he escaped, we might get accomplices. Hangman eluded capture for months. If he has an accomplice, they’re likely to be less skilled than he is.”
    “Point taken,” said Raymond.
    “Who was the lead on the original Hangman case?”
    Raymond stared off. “Shit, who was it? I can see him.”
    “Big Irish guy?” Abbie said. “Red face?”
    Raymond chuckled.
    “Kearney, you’re bad. But yeah, he was a County product. He’s retired now. What the fuck was his name?”
    He snapped his fingers. “McGonagle. Charlie McGonagle.”
    “Is he in the County?”
    “Yeah, he hangs out at a cop bar on Seneca, last I heard. Del Sasser’s Bar and Grill on Seneca.”
    Abbie handed him her phone.
    “Punch it into Google Maps. I need to talk to him.”

16
    Opening the door sent a wedge of light across the old linoleum flooring. Faces turned from watching the news station where
Hangman: Trail of Terror
ran across the bottom of the screen in red. Three or four of the faces looked vaguely familiar—her father’s old friends, perhaps. She knew what kind of place it would be; the County didn’t have retirement homes for cops, it had bars. One reason she left Raymond outside. A young woman would be startling enough, let alone a black man.
    The bartender, an older man with a short-sleeve dress shirt above a stained apron fraying at the strings nodded.
    “Charlie McGonagle?” Abbie said.
    “Over here,” said a voice.
    He watched her approach, his head tilted back at an angle as if she were poisonous and he didn’t want to set her off. He didn’t put his hand out. Charlie McGonagle was dressed in a black leather jacket, not the motorcycle type but a blazer, a little too big for him. His hands were big and meaty. He had a scar near his left eye, but his face was striking, memorable even,