Bryan Gruley: The Hanging Tree

Gracie bent and slipped off her left shoe, an ankle-high work boot with a worn hard-rubber sole. She wasn’t wearing a sock. She dangled the boot down by a lace and Felicia took it and stuffed it into one of the flap pockets of her parka. She looked up again and saw Gracie staring down at her.

Felicia closed her eyes. She counted slowly to five, six, seven… She hadn’t known what to expect. Would she feel the weight of the body as the rope unraveled to tautness? Would she open her eyes to a woman struggling against her noose? She felt herself holding her breath, gripping the ladder so hard that her palms hurt. Would she be able to simply slide the ladder back into her SUV and drive home and slip back into the soft leather chair in her living room and pick up her book where she’d left off?

The ladder shook. Felicia felt the rattle, violent and abrupt, from her fingertips to the bottoms of her feet.

“And that was it?”

Felicia shook her head. She held her left arm up in front of me. “Remember, I was wearing a bandage when we last met.”

“So?”

“I tried to grab her. I tried to reach her, pull her back. I tried. But I lost my balance and fell. By the time I got up, it was too late.”

And once Gracie was dead, what choice did Felicia Haskell have but to follow through with their plot?

She let her arm fall to her lap. I stood.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I called her boyfriend. I didn’t have to do that.”

I didn’t care anymore that she was sorry. I didn’t care if she lived out of boxes for the rest of her life.

“All you had to do was tell her you’d share Taylor. But that wouldn’t have solved your husband problem.”

“I think it’s time for you to go.”

“What about Taylor? Is he ever going to get to play hockey again?”

“What difference does it make?”

“He’s a good kid. He might like to play again.”

“You people and your stupid hockey.”

I went to the door. Felicia stayed put. I turned to say good-bye, but before I could, she said, “You still don’t really know her, do you?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I know she loved her son.”

Late that afternoon, I knocked on Parmelee Gilbert’s office door. He was getting ready to call it a day and walk home, but he invited me in.

I repeated for the fifth or sixth time my desire to speak with Gilbert’s client, Laird Haskell. But before Gilbert could again inform me that he would not be trying Mr. Haskell’s case in the media, I told him about my visit to Gracie’s house, about the drawing of the hockey player, the photograph of Gracie with Darlene, the coffee cup in the dish drainer, the implements in the boxes in her dark room.

Only once as I told him did I glance at the picture of Carol Jo, the pigtailed cheerleader Parmelee Gilbert had lost to an unknown killer more than thirty years before. Gilbert listened to me. If the expression on his face changed from its usual flat calm, I didn’t notice. He said he would get back to me.

The next morning, there was a message on my office voice mail: Haskell would see me at one thirty.

Three pickets walked a haphazard circle at the top of the driveway that wound down to Laird Haskell’s house. I parked across the road. A silver mist blurred the edges of the fresh leaves in the trees. On the calendar, spring had come; in the air, it was weeks away.

“Councilman,” I said as I walked past Floyd Kepsel. He was carrying a handmade sign that read, LET THE THIEF PAY FOR HIS THEIVERY. At least one thief was spelled right. “Any news today?”

“Hello, Gus,” Kepsel said. The other pickets, Sally Pearson and Johnny Ford’s mother, Harriet, stopped pacing. “Not a thing, of course,” Kepsel went on. “Lawyers work by the hour, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Lawyers tend to take their time.”

“But this one didn’t take his time raiding our budget, did he?” Mrs. Ford said, jabbing her picket sign in the direction of Haskell’s house. The sign read, FEDS GO HOME-AND TAKE HASKELL WITH YOU. “He ought to be in jail.”

“He ought to be hung in that tree,” Sally said.

Laird Haskell was under house arrest while the various authorities sorted out who was going to prosecute him first. A local judge had decided it might not be safe for him in the Pine County Jail.

Most townspeople hadn’t seemed to mind when Haskell was charged with murdering Gracie, so long as it didn’t hurt the chances of the rink opening for the next season. Even when the seamier charges came down, some seemed willing to forgive so long as rink construction resumed.

Then came the lawsuits from contractors who hadn’t been paid. And the subpoenas to town officials from the U.S. attorney. And the growing likelihood that the town, not Haskell or any of his businesses, would be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, in unpaid bills. Not to mention the property taxes that Haskell wasn’t paying now.

People had packed town hall at an emergency council meeting called to consider budget cuts necessitated by the financial mess Starvation now found itself in. When the clamor grew so loud and angry that it drowned out Elvis Bontrager’s gavel, he stood up, announced he was resigning as council chairman, and walked out. Petitions for a recall election to remove the rest of the council were soon circulating on Main Street. Angry pickets sprung up around town hall, in front of Audrey’s and the Pilot, and finally at Haskell’s home.

Parmelee Gilbert won a restraining order to curb the pickets at the house, but Dingus and his deputies weren’t too aggressive about enforcing it. Too short staffed because of budget cuts, Dingus said. Haskell had hired a pair of security guards. I saw them chatting where the driveway ended at Haskell’s house.

“What are you here for anyway?” Floyd Kepsel said to me now. “Taking him some provisions?”

“If I’m not out in an hour, call Dingus, will you?”

“Haw,” Kepsel said. “Tell Laird I said hello. He ain’t been out of that house in two weeks, so far as I can tell.”

“Will do.”

Kepsel lowered his sign. “Tell me, Gus. Why in heck did the newspaper wait so long to tell us this guy was a damn liar? Why all the happy stories about what a marvel this rink was going to be?”

Floyd Kepsel was not joking. I wasn’t sure how to answer him, though I knew it would be a waste of time to tell him he was full of shit.

“Ask Elvis,” I said.

Laird Haskell stood facing the bay window in his office, hands clasped behind his back. The lake was a flat sheen of blue and purple in the mist. Haskell’s starched denim shirt was untucked.

“Please sit,” he said, without turning around. Parmelee Gilbert and I sat at the table where I’d been with Haskell and Jason Esper when I met Felicia. We waited. Haskell didn’t move or speak for a full minute.

I hadn’t come with a particular plan in mind. I really just wanted to see Haskell and let him see me. It wasn’t quite like lining up to shake hands with the opposing team after a tough game. I didn’t want or need to shake Haskell’s hand, nor did I think he wanted to shake mine. But once I had seen Felicia, I wanted to make sure I saw her husband face-to-face once more to hear what, if anything, he had to say.

I had no such desire to see Vend.

Finally, Haskell said, “I guess I have you to thank, Gus. Is that right?”

“Thank me for what?”

I knew what he meant but wanted to hear him say it. He turned to face us, hands still behind his back. He looked as tired as Felicia had.

“For getting the murder charge removed.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m confident, of course, that my very able attorney would have succeeded in doing the same, but it would have taken a great deal of time and money.”