Hire a Hangman by Collin Wilcox

Author:Collin Wilcox [Wilcox, Collin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-4688-5
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

Friday, September 14

9:15 AM

“IT’S OCCURRING TO ME that maybe we’re letting our imaginations run away with us in this Hanchett thing.” As Friedman spoke, he began unwrapping a cigar, his first of the day.

Riffling through the paper in his In basket, the stack that never quite disappeared, Hastings decided not to comment. When Friedman had gotten the cigar lit to his satisfaction, and sailed the smoking match into Hastings’s wastebasket, and blown a series of smoke rings on a quartering angle across Hastings’s desk, he would elaborate.

“We talk about revenge and insanity,” Friedman intoned, “and jealousy in high places, all that fancy stuff. But we haven’t paid much attention to greed. And greed, after all, is behind most murders. Or, at least, most premeditated murders.”

“Has the DA requested the probate court to supply a digest of the will?”

Friedman nodded, blew another series of smoke rings. “But, as of yesterday, the will hadn’t been submitted for probate.”

“Can’t you get the name of his lawyer?”

“I’ve got it, and I called him. But he hasn’t called back.”

“When’d you call him?”

“The day after the murder. Tuesday.”

“Well, this is only Friday.”

“True. I’ll call him later today.” Friedman sighed, yawned, flicked his cigar ash into Hastings’s wastebasket. Then: “What about you?”

“I’m going to see a man about his beard.”

“Jason Pfiefer.”

“Right. Jason Pfiefer.”

10:40 AM

Hastings shifted in the chair, glanced at his watch, tried unsuccessfully to catch the nurse’s eye as she stood at the reception desk studying a computer monitor. In the past fifteen minutes she’d seemed to tantalize him, sending her cool, practiced glance within inches of his own. It was, Hastings realized, an expertise that receptionists and maître d’s and department-store clerks must either cultivate or else change jobs. But the realization did nothing to ease his impatience.

“Dr. Pfiefer says to tell you he’s got five minutes at about ten-thirty,” the nurse had said, elaborately loading the statement with weary condescension. Clearly, to her, Hastings was nothing more than a common nuisance. Only the gold badge had saved him from an instant brush-off.

Across the vast lobby of the Barrington Medical Center, a marvel of modern architecture, Canelli and Dolores Chavez sat in adjoining chairs. Plainly irritated, Dolores was flipping through the pages of a woman’s magazine. From a distance of thirty-five feet, Hastings could hear the magazine pages crack as Dolores’s quick-moving fingers snapped them open. Beside her, Canelli shrugged sheepishly as he met Hastings’s gaze. Did Canelli realize that the bold, sexy, willful Chicano with the close-cut back hair and the flashing black eyes and the small, exciting body was systematically pussy-whipping him? To what purpose? Would she use her body to make a fool of a cop—any cop? Or was she drawn to Canelli? Did the big, amiable, cheerfully innocent detective have something she needed—or wanted—or thought she could use? For as long as squad-room memory went back, Canelli had been engaged to Gracie, the X-ray technician who was Canelli’s mirror image. Gracie, too, was overweight and amiable and anxious to please. Both Canelli and Gracie, in their late twenties or early thirties, still lived at home.

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