Read Online Hangman by Michael Slade - Free Book Online

trouble.”
    “Are you going to guess in the papers?”
    “Yes,” said Maddy. “If only to throw the husband off guard. But as you warned, if the game is real, we can’t afford not to.”
    “I get the scoop?”
    “Of course, Justin. The best first guess must be a vowel.”
    “I read somewhere it’s a consonant.”
    “Which one?”
    “Don’t recall.”
    “You’re a big help.”
    “Which vowel?”
    “Start at the start.”
    “ A ,” said Justin.
    “ A as in abattoir,” said the detective.

The Wolf Man
    Seattle
    October 31
     
    “You missed your flight,” said Maddy.
    “I lost track of time.”
    “There’s a couch at my place.”
    “Thanks,” said Zinc. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll tag along. This case has its hook through my cheek.”
    “Mind?” said Maddy. “You put me at ease. Without Ralph, I’m minus a partner tonight. You’ll do fine if Dag gets rough.”
    “I’ll stay in the background. It’s your show.”
    “A Horseman for backup. That’s real cavalry.”
    They parked the unmarked car within a block of the address Justin had provided. Dag Konrad was living in a four-floor, rundown, red brick walk-up in an older part of Seattle. A “Monster Mash” was well under way on one of the upper stories, judging from the boisterous drunks who staggered down the stairs as the cops went up. While Bobby “Boris” Pickett sang about a “graveyard smash,” a smashed Dracula slopping a Bloody Mary almost pitched headfirst down the steps, but with his other hand he managed to grasp the bodice of the Vampirella with him, liberating both breasts as he passed out at her feet.
    The cops stepped over him.
    “My dress!” cried the vamp.
    “His slip’s showing,” Maddy said as they brushed by.
    The party was in the apartment registered to Dag Konrad, husband of the vic. Out of the flat too, for it had spilled into the hall. Dag, it seemed, was not crying in his beer over breaking up with his wife. If he knew Mary Konrad was dead, it appeared to be cause to celebrate, for the Wolf Man who was pointed out to them as the fellow they sought was dancing wildly to the tune after “Monster Mash.” Crowding the dance floor was an array of monsters old and new, with classics like the Phantom of the Opera and twin brothers dressed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bumping butts with a pantheon of modern mutants, Jason, Freddy, and the ghostly one out of Scream. “Wild Thing” brought forth the wolfishness in Dag, for as he guzzled beer so foam frothed around his hairy mouth like rabies, his wayward hand pinched bottoms and he dry-humped passing thighs.
    A man that oversexed, thought Maddy, undoubtedly has hair on his palms.
    A wife gone fat would be a real-life monster for a sexist like Dag.
    Chandler stood ready at the door while the Homicide detective entered the apartment. Maddy gradually worked her way through the gyrating masquerade toward the werewolf, wondering if she’d need to load her gun with silver bullets. She inched between the Frankenstein monster and the Fly, around Pinhead and the Creature from the Black Lagoon; the closer she got to the Wolf Man, the bigger he loomed. Dag was a hairy and muscular man in his own right, his bare torso darkened with a matting of macho fur, the jeans below torn calf-high like the ones Lon Chaney, Jr., wore in the film. The hair on his head was combed back in a pompadour. Black eye pencil was smudged around his bleary eyes. Adhesive attached unraveled spun yarn to his face, slanting up from the point of his jaw to his sideburns, and from where his eyebrows joined to his receding temples, and then straight up from the bridge of his nose to his widow’s peak. A line of false teeth spiked up from his lower lip, the canine fangs dripping froth down his jutting chin. As Maddy jostled toward him, she was stripped by his squinty eyes. Then, with a thumb covering the mouth of the bottle in his grasp, Dag gave the beer a shake to fizz it up, gripped the bottle