Hangman Read Online Free PDF Page B

note and put it in his pocket, sitting back with a look of forthcoming satisfaction.
    Sometimes I’d ride the bus to New Westminster so I could watch a yee-haw case from the rural Bible belt up the Fraser valley.
    My favorite was the farmer who was charged with bestiality after he got amorous with one of his cows. The offense was witnessed by the preacher next door. Testimony was that the farmer placed a milk stool behind the cow, then he stood on it to perform the act. Coitus interruptus was the result when the cow kicked over the stool to knock her lover on his ass.
    A farmer in the jury box slapped his knee.
    “They’ll do that every time!” he chortled.
    Ah, yes, juries.
    Those flickering lamps of freedom.
    Who can put it better than Britain’s Lord Devlin? “No tyrant could afford to leave a subject’s freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen. So that trial by jury,” wrote the law lord, “is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.”
    The trouble with flickering lamps is that some snuff out.
    And that, truth be known, is what led to my breakthrough murder case.
    When you think about it, is trial by jury not an anachronism in this technical age? Twelve—why twelve?—folks are chosen at random to try an accused. Weighing evidence is new to them, and some—as a wag once delicately put it—are “unaccustomed to severe intellectual exercise or to protracted thought.” Yet these twelve act as the sole judges of the facts, and they need give no reasons for what they decide.
    In the beginning, a juror was a man compelled by the king to take an oath. The Normans brought the procedure to England in 1066. At first, a juror was a man who knew the facts, and the oath compelled him to tell the king the truth on penalty of damnation. King Henry II turned jurors into a jury, for if there was a dispute over land, the first man to get twelve oaths in his favor won. That was the origin of trial by jury, including the rule that the verdict of twelve must be unanimous. Later, juries evolved from facts known to evidence received.
    So why twelve?
    Why not eleven or thirteen?
    Because there were twelve Apostles?
    The twelve disciples of Jesus Christ?
    And does it not follow, if that’s so, that there may be a Judas in the jury room?
    Looking back on my breakthrough murder case, I see that anachronism is how it all began. Like I said, the case began with two hangings: the hanging of Haddon back in 1993 and the hanging of Mary Konrad in Seattle last Halloween.
    Lawyers are like vultures. We circle overhead, watching the legal landscape for bones of the dead to pick. Our picking ground is the arena of the courtroom, where, if you’re on the defense side of the bar, those trying to deny you a good feast are the guardians of the law. With meaty bones to pick and a worthy player on the other side to defeat, there is no greater thrill than a big win!
    Sixteen days ago, last Halloween, I was a hungry vulture circling on the fringe.
    Soon there would be gruesome bones to pick on the picking ground, guarded by a worthy player on the other side.
    Though neither of us knew it then, Inspector Zinc Chandler and I were on a collision course, and the outcome of our courtroom battle would focus the Hangman’s rage on me.
    Is the handle turning?
    Or am I seeing things?
    Is this the climax of the case?
    Is the psycho creeping in …?

Gallows Game
    Seattle
    October 31 (Sixteen days ago)
     
    Inspector Zinc Chandler of Special X was standing at the curb in front of the hotel, waiting for Detective Ralph Stein to arrive, when a car pulled up and a tough, good-looking woman gave him the eye. Leaning over from the wheel, she rolled down the curb-side window. “Zinc Chandler, I presume?”
    “And who are you?”
    “Detective Maddy Thorne. I’m your date instead of Ralph.”
    A taxi honked behind her.
    “Climb in. I don’t bite.”
    The Mountie opened