Hangman by Michael Slade Page B

bug-eyed blue face?
    Beam me up, Scotty, Alex thought.
    What brought her down to earth wasn’t the grisly grab of the crime. Having survived that charnel house on Deadman’s Island, Alex was as baptized in blood as any morgue attendant. Instead, what yanked her back to reality was Rachel and Gill.
    “Who tampered with the body?” asked Gill Macbeth. The forensic pathologist was standing on a ladder with her profile to Alex, examining the face of the hanging corpse.
    “I did,” replied Rachel Kidd. The sergeant gazed up from the foot of the ladder, where she sidestepped the pool of blood on the floor.
    “Something covered her face.”
    “A mask,” said the Mountie.
    “Why did you remove it before I arrived?”
    “To see who she was.”
    “That couldn’t wait?”
    “Not if the victim was who we thought. If so, we had a suspect to find at once. Before the Lady-Killer could alibi up.”
    “Well, the effect is you interfered with my job. Asphyxia may result from suffocation. Or from gagging or choking. Or from constriction of the neck. Or from compression of the chest. Or from suspension. A cover blocking the airways of a hanging victim must be seen in situ .”
    “Get off your high horse, Gill,” said Kidd.
    Macbeth glared down at the sergeant. “You seem to make a habit of messing up cases, Rachel.”
    Kidd shot daggers up at the pathologist. “If the cause of death has you baffled, Gill, I feel confident it wasn’t suicide. Blue face. Bugged eyes. Reddened whites. Purple lips. Clenched fists. And discolored nails. It looks like asphyxia by hanging to me. As for the mask, that came later. After the killer slashed her stuck-out tongue.”
    “What mask?” Zinc said, playing the lightning rod to draw attention to him.
    The social dynamics in this room were tainted by estrogen turned toxic. Gill Macbeth, in her forties, resembled Candice Bergen. Having spent her fertile years building a career, she had turned her mind to motherhood as her clock ticked down. Gill was pregnant by Corporal Nick Craven of Special X when Rachel Kidd arrested him for murdering his mother. Younger, prettier, and the first black promoted up the ranks, Rachel, it turned out, had charged the wrong man. That freed the killer to bomb the cruise ship on which the Mounties held their Red Serge Ball. Gill lost her last chance to have a child when the explosion dumped her into a cold sea, the shock of which caused her to abort. Alex wrote about the case in her third book, which Rachel viewed as a tandem attempt by Gill and Alex to undermine her career. So while the others around the body focused on Zinc, the sergeant cast a look that could kill at the writer.
    Men find it more therapeutic to kick each other in the balls.
    “Chandler!” effused the coroner, a portly, hard-drinking sot. Custer would not have looked more relieved had reinforcements arrived.
    The constable serving as exhibit man held up a plastic pouch.
    The mask within was this:

     
    “ The Scream, ” said Alex.
    “By Edvard Munch,” said Gill.
    “That’s not The Scream I know,” said Zinc.
    “Munch did a lithograph and an oil. This is the lithograph,” Gill replied as she descended the ladder to join the others at ground level.
    Zinc took the pouch from the exhibit man, reversing the mask to see the blood smeared around the mouth inside.
    “This was on her face?”
    “Yeah, when I arrived. One reason,” Rachel said, “why I called you. It’s like the mask Seattle police say the Hangman wore.”
    “Who found the body?”
    “A neighbor walking his dog. The front door was blown open by the storm. He called in, got no answer, and took a peek.”
    “Looks like a sex crime.”
    “I doubt it,” said Gill. “Unless the killer has a fetish for underwear. The victim soiled herself when she was hanged, caking her panties to her buttocks. If she was raped, why’s she wearing them?”
    “The setup is definitely a puzzle,” Rachel said. “Got to be careful. Nothing