Hangman: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

like a ghost.
    But this killing came with a difference: the first message from the killer. On the palm of Maggie’s left hand was carved a symbol: a capital A inside a square.
    Abbie turned and stared out the window. Capital A, square box. She took out her pen and drew the symbol on the bottom left corner of the manila folder and stared at it. There was something the tiniest bit familiar about the image, and she traced it again slowly.
    Did it have anything to do with the fact that Maggie was Asian? What about the anarchy symbol? No that was an A inside of a circle. Abbie thought back to her Mount Mercy days, reading
The Scarlet Letter
. Hester Prynne had been forced to wear an A, for adultery. Could the killer have been jealous of someone Maggie was seeing? Abbie searched through the interviews but there was no mention of Maggie having a boyfriend.
    But something about the image tantalized her memories. I’ve seen this before, Abbie thought.
    Abbie flipped open the file and checked the date of the murder. December 19, 2007. The first two murders had taken place in mid- and late summer but by December, it would have been frigid in Buffalo, with girls wearing their heaviest winter parkas with the hoods pulled up, plus hats and scarves. What if the killer only wanted white girls? He’d picked up Maggie, thinking she was as pale as the other victims, but found she had typical Asian features and skin tone. What if he’d felt compelled to mark his displeasure in the form of the A, as a rebuke. What else could the A stand for?
    The BPD had publicly denied there was any racial component to the killings, but Abbie could guess that was simply PR. They didn’t want any girl or their family getting complacent. They left the victim profile as wide open as possible, to try and save the next girl.
    Abbie looked up and stared out the van’s fogged windows. Theywere out far past the city limits now, into the farm country that ringed Buffalo on three sides. Working barns, silos, a line of towering wind turbines half-hidden behind rolling hills, tractors, and old Dodge pickups sitting in the enormous front yards of rambling frame houses. Route 20A cut through good dairy country.
    There was one more girl. The missing one, Sandy. The file on her was as thin as a slice of bread. There’d been a huge search effort to try to find Sandy, beginning when her father called in a missing persons report. Hangman had been caught just hours after kidnapping her, but no trace of her had ever been found apart from a red-and-amber silk scarf she’d been wearing when she left her house, retrieved from Flynn’s car. At first, the hope had been that there hadn’t been enough time for Flynn to kill her, and that she’d be found alive. But the years had dimmed that possibility, and most cops who’d looked at the case believed she was buried out near the Warsaw Motel.
    There was another folder attached: a sub-file on the second man theory, the idea that Hangman had a partner in his crimes. It was mostly phone tips: girlfriends calling in boyfriends who’d been acting suspiciously, neighbors snitching on neighbors, bosses ratting on employees who’d called in sick suspiciously often. None of the tips had been substantiated.
    At the end of the file, a handwritten note. “Ex-wife G. Payne suggested p. mot. to SecLD. See folder 3CW attached.”
    “P. mot.” wasn’t standard for anything, but Abbie guessed it meant “possible motive.” SecLD would be “Second Lead Detective.” Abbie looked behind Sandy Riesen’s manila folder but the space was empty. She frowned, and paged through the folder to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, then sighed and was about to stash the entire case file next to her on the bench seat when she noticed something about the manila folder that held all the papers. Abbie brought it closer to the cabin light that shone dully above her.
    There, at the top of the folder, was a thin loop imprinted on the thick paper. Abbie