Free Hangman: A Novel by Stephan Talty

specks of hot bright light jabbed at her brain. Her breath rasped in through her throat. She couldn’t scream, could barely breathe. The rope was still tight, choking off her oxygen, making her sleepy.
    The red mask came closer. He was kneeling down, studying her face. The eyes were in shadow.
    Martha spit something up. His eyes crinkled in concern and he wiped the spit from her cheek. He turned and she saw he was unzipping the bowling bag; it was an old one, like from the ’50s, pale almost yellow leather with tiny cracks and then red, dirty red leather with a gold zipper. He unzipped it slowly, the two sides of the bag parting like he wanted to make the moment last. Martha stared at the mouth of the bag as it opened. Her mind was dazy.
    What was inside the bag?
    Her head spun, voices singing dreamily to her.
    Hangman, Hangman, where do they go?
    She heard the zipper tugging along the steel teeth. The sound stopped and she stared at the black gaping mouth of the bag. The man’s hand going in.
    Down on the ground
,
    Where the daffodils grow
.

14
    Abbie was running toward the spot where she’d left the van. Cops streamed by her in their long yellow rain slickers, like dusters in the Old West. She dialed a number on the phone.
    Perelli’s number rang three times before he picked it up.
    “Yeah?”
    “I found something at the escape scene,” Abbie said. “I think it comes from Hangman. It’s a brochure for Hoyt Lake. It’s fresh.”
    “Hoyt? Where’d he get it?”
    “Maybe it was in his papers. Maybe the guard brought it to him. But I think it means he’s headed for Buffalo.”
    Silence.
    Abbie took a deep breath. “You need to move the perimeter back to the city limits.”
    Perelli snorted. “Stop traffic coming in from the west? We can’t do it. We’ve all decided to try and trap him up there.”
    “Because you didn’t know where he was heading. Now we know. Roadblock the three exits downtown. It’s the likeliest route.”
    “Not if he comes in on 33. Or on foot. How do you even know the brochure was his?”
    “It came from him. It rained here last night, I just looked it up. Thepaper is dry. No one else comes up here. He’s thinking about Delaware Park.”
    More silence. Abbie knew she only had to think cop-wise. Perelli had to think of the politics of it, of TV stations, of the risk and reward in a larger picture.
    “Fuck, you’re right,” he said. “We’ll put up roadblocks on the three exit ramps off 90. Maybe we can do the same on 33.”
    Abbie waved to the van driver, thirty feet away, smoking by the side of the road. He tossed the cigarette into a ditch and turned back toward the van, with Abbie following.
    “One other thing,” she said. “The murdered guard was talking to Flynn in his cell, asking him about the last girl.”
    “What the hell for?”
    “Not sure yet.”
    “Raymond is on his way up to you. Meet him at the prison.”
    And he was gone.

15
    Abbie heard the Saab before she saw it, the turbo protesting as the driver swung into the parking lot. She swung around. The Saab came whooshing up from between two parked trucks and the brakes shrieked as the driver pulled away at the last minute, missing her thigh by about three feet.
    Raymond nodded at her from behind the windshield.
    She walked to the driver’s door.
    “Move over,” she said.
    “I can drive.”
    “Not my car you can’t. Move over.”
    Abbie got in and shifted into drive. Gravel pelted against the undercarriage as she swerved in the parking lot and headed toward the exit. When they were out on the main road, she took the folded brochure out of her inside pocket and handed it to Raymond.
    “This the brochure?” he said. “Goddamn, you white people know how to enjoy yourselves. I didn’t even know they had rowboats out there.”
    “What’s Perelli doing?”
    Raymond whistled softly.
    “In about twenty-five minutes, there’s going to be the proverbialring of blue steel around the city. Checking every car