“The end?”
“When I killed him,” DeBeque said.
Kaprelian’s neck went cold. “Killed him? Fred, you can’t be serious! You didn’t actually kill him—”
“Don’t sound so shocked,” DeBeque said. “What else could I do? I had no evidence, I couldn’t take him to the police. But neither could I allow him to get away with what he’d done to Karen. You understand that, don’t you? I had no choice. I took out the gun I’d picked up in a pawnshop, and I shot him with it — right through the heart.”
“Jeez,” Kaprelian said. “Jeez.”
DeBeque stopped smiling then and frowned down into his ginger ale; he was silent, kind of moody all of a sudden. Kaprelian became aware of how quiet it was and flipped on the TV. While he was doing that the two workers got up from their stools at the other end of the bar, waved at him, and went on out.
DeBeque said suddenly, “Only then I realized he couldn’t have been the one.”
Kaprelian turned from the TV. “What?”
“It couldn’t have been the mailman,” DeBeque said. “He was left-handed, and the police established that the killer was probably right-handed. Something about the angle of the blow that killed Karen. So I started thinking who else it could have been, and then I knew: the grocery delivery boy. Except we used two groceries, two delivery boys, and it turned out both of them were right-handed. I talked to the first and I was sure he was the one. I shot him. Then I knew I’d been wrong, it was the other one. I shot him too.”
“Hey,” Kaprelian said. “Hey, Fred, what’re you saying?”
“But it wasn’t the delivery boys either.” DeBeque’s eyes were very bright. “Who, then? Somebody else from the neighborhood... and it came to me, I knew who it had to be.”
Kaprelian still didn’t quite grasp what he was hearing. It was all coming too fast. “Who?” he said.
“You,” DeBeque said, and it wasn’t until he pulled the gun that Kaprelian finally understood what was happening, what DeBeque had really turned into after those three grieving, alcoholic months. Only by then it was too late.
The last thing he heard was voices on the television — a crime drama, one of those where the guy’s wife is murdered and he goes out and finds the real killer and ends up a hero in time for the last commercial...
The Arrowmont Prison Riddle
I first met the man who called himself by the unlikely name of Buckmaster Gilloon in the late summer of 1916, my second year as warden of Arrowmont Prison. There were no living quarters within the old brick walls of the prison, which was situated on a promontory overlooking a small winding river two miles north of Arrowmont Village, so I had rented a cottage in the village proper, not far from a tavern known as Hallahan’s Irish Inn. It was in this tavern, and as a result of a mutual passion for Guinness stout and the game of darts, that Gilloon and I became acquainted.
As a man he was every bit as unlikely as his name. He was in his late thirties, short and almost painfully thin; he had a glass eye and a drooping and incongruous Oriental-style mustache, wore English tweeds, gaudy Albert watch chains and plaid Scotch caps, and always carried half a dozen loose-leaf notebooks in which he perpetually and secretively jotted things. He was well read and erudite, had a repertoire of bawdy stories to rival any vaudevillian in the country, and never seemed to lack ready cash. He lived in a boarding house in the center of the village and claimed to be a writer for the pulp magazines — Argosy, Adventure, All-Story Weekly, Munsey’s.Perhaps he was, but he steadfastly refused to discuss any of his fiction, or to divulge his pseudonym or pseudonyms.
He was reticent about divulging any personal information. When personal questions arose, he deftly changed the subject. Since he did not speak with an accent, I took him to be American-born. I was able to learn, from occasional comments and observations, that he had traveled extensively throughout the world.
In my nine decades on this earth I have never encountered a more fascinating or troubling enigma than this man whose path crossed mine for a few short weeks in 1916.
Who and what was Buckmaster Gilloon? Is it possible for one enigma to be attracted and motivated by another enigma? Can that which seems natural and coincidental be the result instead of preternatural forces? These questions have plagued me in the sixty years since Gilloon and I became involved in what appeared to be an utterly enigmatic crime.
It all began on September 26, 1916 — the day of the scheduled execution at Arrowmont Prison of a condemned murderer named Arthur Teasdale...
Shortly before noon of that day a thunderstorm struck without warning. Rain pelted down from a black sky, and lightning crackled in low jagged blazes that gave the illusion of striking unseen objects just beyond the prison walls. I was already suffering from nervous tension, as was always the case on the day of an execution, and the storm added to my discomfort. I passed the early afternoon sitting at my desk, staring out the window, listening to the inexorable ticking of my Seth Thomas, wishing the execution was done with and it was eight o’clock, when I was due to meet Gilloon at Hallahan’s for Guinness and darts.
At 3:30 the two civilians who had volunteered to act as witnesses to the hanging arrived. I ushered them into a waiting room and asked them to wait until they were summoned. Then I donned a slicker and stopped by the office of Rogers, the chief guard, and asked him to accompany me to the execution shed.
The shed was relatively small, constructed of brick with a tin roof, and sat in a corner of the prison between the textile mill and the iron foundry. It was lighted by lanterns hung from the walls and the rafters and contained only a row of witness chairs and a high permanent gallows at the far end. Attached to the shed’s north wall was an annex in which the death cell was located. As was customary, Teasdale had been transported there five days earlier to await due process.
He was a particularly vicious and evil man, Teasdale. He had cold-bloodedly murdered three people during an abortive robbery attempt in the state capital, and had been anything but a model prisoner during his month’s confinement at Arrowmont. As a rule I had a certain compassion for those condemned to hang under my jurisdiction, and in two cases I had spoken to the governor in favor of clemency. In Teasdale’s case, however, I had conceded that a continuance of his life would serve no good purpose.
When I had visited him the previous night to ask if he wished to see a clergyman or to order anything special for his last meal, he had cursed me and Rogers and the entire prison personnel with an almost maniacal intensity, vowing vengeance on us all from the grave.
I rather expected, as Rogers and I entered the death cell at ten minutes of four, to find Teasdale in much the same state. However, he had fallen instead into an acute melancholia; he lay on his cot with his knees drawn up and his eyes staring blankly at the opposite wall. The two guards assigned to him, Hollowell and Granger (Granger was also the state-appointed hangman), told us he had been like that for several hours. I spoke to him, asking again if he wished to confer with a clergyman. He did not answer, did not move. I inquired if he had any last requests, and if it was his wish to wear a hood for his final walk to the gallows and for the execution. He did not respond.
I took Hollowell aside. “Perhaps it would be better to use the hood,” I said. “It will make it easier for all of us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rogers and I left the annex, accompanied by Granger, for a final examination of the gallows. The rope had already been hung and the hangman’s knot tied. While Granger made certain they were secure I unlocked the door beneath the platform, which opened into a short passage that ended in a narrow cubicle beneath the trap. The platform had been built eight feet off the floor, so that the death throes of the condemned man would be concealed from the witnesses — a humane gesture which was not observed by all prisons in our state, and for which I was grateful.