Free Hire a Hangman by Collin Wilcox Page A

killed him.”
    “Do you have any idea who might’ve done it?”
    John Hanchett’s mouth twisted in a small, bitter smile. But the eyes remained coal-dead, sunken deep in the ravaged, sallow face. “If I had to guess,” he said, “then I’d choose his wife, Barbara. Otherwise known as the Dragon Lady.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “No.”
    “What about Paula Gregg?”
    “Why would Paula do it?”
    “Because,” Hastings answered, “Hanchett is supposed to have abused her when she was a child.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “No comment.”
    “It was Mother. Wasn’t it?”
    “Still no comment.”
    “Mother gets fixated on ideas sometimes. That story about my father and Paula is one of her fixations. You have to make allowances. Especially when Mother’s drinking, which is most of the time.”
    “Then you wouldn’t say Paula is a suspect.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You’ll stick with Barbara Hanchett.”
    “Also right.”
    3:00 PM
    As Hastings turned in to the 600 block of Moraga, the predictable happened: a bittersweet pang of recall. It was here, in San Francisco’s Sunset District, that he’d grown up. At the turn of the century the Sunset had been nothing more than sand dunes rolling gently down from the highlands of Twin Peaks to the ocean, with only an occasional house dotting the dunes. In the 1920s the dunes had been subdivided, and in the thirties the real-estate developers began covering the sand with small stucco row houses, affordable housing for the workingman.
    Hastings parked the cruiser and consulted the slip of paper attached to the dashboard by a small magnet: Fred and Teresa Bell, 643 Moraga. The house was exactly what he’d known he would find: a small stucco house, attached on both sides. Like most houses in the 600 block of Moraga, the Bell house was adorned with a few terra-cotta roof tiles and hand-hewn timbers meant to suggest a Spanish influence. The house looked freshly painted; the small front garden was well tended.
    Hastings cleared his unit with Communications, switched off the radio, locked the car, and began walking toward the Bell house. As he drew closer, a sense of reluctance compounded his previous nostalgia. Interrogating the victim’s widow and his ex-wife was part of the homicide detective’s standard job description. Coping with parents who’d watched their child slowly die of liver failure was something else.
    In response to a loud buzzer, the front door opened promptly. A bald, slightly built man stood in the doorway. His face was pale and narrow, his mouth permanently drawn, as if he’d always been in pain. When he looked down at the badge Hastings held in his hand, the man’s eyes widened. It was a common response. A response of the timid—
    Or the guilty.
    “Mr. Bell?”
    A nervous tongue-tip touched pale lips. “Yes. Fred Bell.” He continued to stare down at the badge.
    “I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings, Mr. Bell. I’m in charge of the investigation into the death of Dr. Brice Hanchett.” He spoke flatly, matter-of-factly, as if he assumed that Bell already knew Hanchett had been murdered.
    Bell’s instantaneous reaction was shock—sharp, stunned, spontaneous shock. The reaction was unmistakable, more revealing than the results of any polygraph. Until that moment, Fred Bell hadn’t known of the murder.
    But, just as certainly, just as irrevocably, Bell possessed guilty knowledge.
    Susan Parrish hadn’t spoken of Fred Bell, the husband, but only of the dead child’s mother.
    Instinctively taking a single step backward as he covertly unbuttoned his jacket and inched his right hand closer to the .38 holstered at his belt, Hastings drew a long, measured breath. It was important, he’d learned, never to reveal the excitement of the hunter at the first sight of his prey. Therefore, he must control both his facial expression and his speech. Thus the deep breath. Thus the carefully neutral voice as he asked, “Can we step inside, Mr.