Free The Hanging Judge by Michael Ponsor

Claire said carefully, “that might be a little too soon.”
    “No, no,” David said. “I didn’t mean that. That would be too much.”
    “ ‘Too soon’ is what I said.”
    “I just wanted to rescue my poor dog.” He rocked back into his seat, trying discreetly and without success to arrange his erection at a more comfortable angle.
    “Uh-huh.” She glanced down and looked up at him with her eyes crinkling. “Go release your animal. This will do for now.”
    As David swung his legs around to get out of the car, he was finally able to reposition himself and stand up with reasonable ease. The blowing rain on his face felt terrific.
    “Don’t worry about my car,” he said, bending down.
    “Oh, I won’t.” She lowered her window. “I did that on purpose, you know.” Her voice began to fade into the wind as she drove off. “Just kidding! Maybe. Now call me, you jerk!”
    Back in his home, safe out of the weather, David’s yellow Lab was waiting; she banged her thick tail against the doorframe and pushed her nose into his knees in greeting.
    “Marlene,” David said, “we really need to talk.”

9
    A fter they took Moon Hudson away, Holyoke Police Captain Sean Daley spent a few minutes checking out the mess inside the apartment. Then he gave Jack O’Connor a call and asked if he could come over and talk to him and the boys. It was late, he said, so he’d only take a minute.
    Daley had never married; instead, he’d poured his life into his job. He’d been hospitalized twice for stab wounds and nearly killed when a .38 round struck his “bulletproof” vest. Two civilians and a fellow officer were still alive because of his quick action, and he had four commendations for bravery. On duty, Daley’s views on discipline made him as unbendable as a tire iron, but in the supermarket he might easily have been mistaken for a bookkeeper or an introverted shop foreman.
    Daley’s habit of passing out peppermint balls and telling hair-raising stories about the criminals he’d caught made him a favorite among his nieces and nephews. He loved to recount the tale of the family’s great-great-grandfather Dominic Daley, hanged in Northampton in 1806, supposedly for a murder but, in fact, for the crime of being an Irish Catholic passing through town when a local Protestant turned up with his head bashed in.
    Of all the adoring younger generation, his niece Ginger Daley O’Connor had been Captain Daley’s secret pet. In fact, when she’d been a nursing student and he’d been in his mid-thirties, he’d had half, and maybe more than half, a crush on her, though of course he never let anyone know. He still remembered how radiant she looked at her graduation from Holyoke Community College, and how jealous he was of that big sap Jack O’Connor. At her wedding, Ginger’s were the prettiest brown eyes he’d ever seen and her young spirit the most luminous.
    In his decades as a police officer, Daley had looked on death many times, but he had never dreamed that any loss would tear out his heart like this one. It had been Daley who, to spare Jack, had formally identified Ginger’s graying body at the morgue for the medical examiner’s staff.
    Jack was standing on the porch, waiting with his arms crossed, oblivious to the blowing rain as Daley parked his Crown Victoria cruiser. The two men nodded, and Jack pushed the door open for him.
    The boys were waiting in the kitchen in their pajamas and bathrobes, looking mussed and sleepy. It was a school night, and already after midnight. Jack Jr., the oldest and handsomest, was at the far end of the kitchen table, sitting like the image of his father with his arms folded. Ed, the middle child, the only one in the family who’d had the poise to speak at his mother’s memorial service, was to Jack Jr.’s left with his head resting on his arms, half asleep. Michael, the eleven-year-old, was sitting on the counter next to the flour and sugar canisters. His dark, wide-awake