Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

  She just hoped that the killer watched enough TV to know he shouldn't be hanging around up there.

  CHAPTER 23

  'I don't suppose it matters that I'm sorry.'

  'Not anymore it doesn't, Mitch.'

  'You wouldn't take any of my calls.'

  'There wasn't anything to say. You were a married man, and I don't go out with married men.'

  'I made a mistake.'

  'Yes, I think you did.'

  'And it's too late to do anything about it?'

  'God, Mitch, what did you expect I'd do when you came over here tonight? Welcome you with open arms? Ask you to move in? Call up all my friends and tell them I'm having a party for the man I love?'

  'I really do love you, Jill.'

  'I thought that before. And then you went right back to your wife.'

  'It didn't work out.'

  'She found somebody else again, didn't she?'

  'Well…'

  'Oh great, Mitch. You're on the rebound a second time?'

  'Not on the rebound. It's done, it really is. I don't love her: I love you.'

  'I need some more wine.'

  'So do I.'

  'This really makes me mad, Mitch, you coming up here this way. ''Good old Jill. She'll be there."'

  'It isn't like that at all.'

  'Oh no? Then why didn't you call before you came? I'll tell you why. Because I wouldn't have let you in, that's why. Right?'

  'Well…'

  'Right?'

  'I suppose.'

  'It just really makes me mad.'

  'You said that.'

  'Yeah, well, I'll probably say it a few more times before I kick you out.'

  'I wish you'd calm down.'

  'You do, huh?'

  'Yeah, I do.'

  'Well, I'm not going to calm down.'

  'Oh, no?'

  And that was when he took her in his arms.

  And that was when he kissed her.

  And that was when she felt all sorts of things she'd hoped she'd never feel again. At least, not with Mitch Ayers.

  ***

  'You did a nice job.'

  'Thanks.'

  'It's really attractive up here. Looks like you've changed everything.'

  'Just about.'

  This was half an hour after their first kiss and twenty minutes after their second kiss and ten minutes after their third kiss.

  She'd be all right for a little while, thinking how good it felt to be in his arms again and to kiss him, and then she'd erupt once more, think of how he'd dumped her, and then she'd go across the room and sit in the big armchair alone, which was where she was now. Mitch was across the room on the couch.

  'So where's your wife now?'

  'Ex-wife.'

  'You're divorced?'

  'We will be.'

  'Just like last time.'

  'You're not very good with sarcasm, Jill. A little heavy-handed.'

  'You're not very good at keeping your promises. Maybe that makes us even.' She shook her head. 'God, I hate it when I sound like this. The Victim. I'm not a victim.'

  'I know you're not.'

  'I'm an intelligent woman perfectly capable of running her own life.'

  'I love you, Jill.'

  'The next time you say that, I'm going to get some kitchen matches and set your tie on fire.'

  He laughed. 'Still crazy, I see.'

  'Look who's talking!'

  'I'm really nervous. Are you really nervous?'

  'I'm beyond really nervous. I need a couple boxes of Prozac.'

  'Even if you won't ever see me again, I'm glad I came over.'

  'Well, I'm not going to tell you that I'm glad you came over.'

  'You sure?'

  'Positive.'

  He smiled again. 'You're beautiful.'

  'No, I'm not.'

  'Well, you're very pretty then.'

  'Pretty I'll accept. Beautiful, no way.'

  'I prefer pretty.'

  'This isn't working.'

  'What isn't working?'

  'You know, what you're trying to do to me.' She really did feel wretched. She wanted to throw him down the stairsand at the same time she wanted to cling to him, too.

  'What am I trying to do to you?'

  'Make me like you.'

  'You don't like me?'

  'Not anymore.'

  'I'm really not trying to make you like me.'

  'Then how come you keep looking so damned cute?' This time it was Jill who smiled. 'I hate you, Ayers. Do you understand that?'

  'Then how come you're smiling?'

  'Because I'm glad to see you, but that doesn't mean that I don't hate you.'

  He looked down at his big hands. 'I need to ask you something.'

  'Ask me what?'

  He looked up at her. 'To forgive me.'

  The playfulness was over. For both of them.

  'I don't know if I can, Mitch.'

  'Would you be willing to try?'

  'I'd have to think about it. And I'm not just being difficult. I don't know if I could ever trust you again. You've been honest with me, so I'll be honest with you. I love you more than I've ever loved anybody, Mitch, but I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable with you again. I'll always be waiting for you to go back to your wife someday.'

  'That's not going to happen.'

  'Then maybe it'll be somebody else you'll leave me for.'

  'Every relationship has risks, Jill. You know that.'

  'I'd need some time to think. And maybe I won't want to go back, Mitch. Maybe I won't be able to go back.'

  'I know, Jill. All I'm asking you is to think about it for a while.'

  He stood up.

  She felt both relief and panic.

  This apartment was going to be awfully empty without him.

  The way it had been awfully empty the first time he'd walked out on her.

  She went to him and took him to her, hugging him rather than kissing him. She didn't want passion, she wanted tenderness.

  And he seemed to understand that.

  He didn't try to kiss her. He simply held her.

  'Is it all right to tell you I love you?'

  'It's all right if you want me to set your tie on fire.'

  He eased away from her. 'I guess I'll just have to take that chance.' He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the forehead. 'I love you, Jill.'

  And then he was nothing more than retreating footsteps down the dark stairs, and out into the noisy night.

  CHAPTER 24

  Cini put her fingers on the fine curved metal handle of the fire door. All she had to do was pull it open, step out into the corridor, walk down to the Eric Brooks agency, go inside and get her purse.

  What could be simpler?

  The killer was still here. She just knew it. Could feel it.

  This was what half her mind told her. The scaredy-cat half. The half that had always gotten her laughed at by more adventurous girls. This was the Cini who was afraid of swimming, flying, fast bicycle-riding, thunderstorms and dogs any bigger than a small poodle. And these were only a few of the things she was afraid of.

  Then there was the other half of her mind or, more precisely, personality. This half told her she was being silly. No competent killer would hang around after murdering somebody. And from her look at himshe would not forget his face even if she lived to be 108 and was brain deadhe certainly appeared competent. Slash slash slash. He had used those scissors with terrifying virtuosity.

  All she had to do was-

  - take hold of the handle-

  - and-

  - open the door-

  - and-

  A noise. An echo.

  Her first impression was that it was on this same floor, but when she heard the voices distinctly, followed by the roar of the industrial-size carpet cleaner, she realized that the noise was coming from the floor directly below.

  An office building like this one would have several cleaning crews working simultaneously.
This crew probably worked the top three or four floors, which meant they'd be up here not too long from now.

  She had to hurry.

  Get into Eric's office, get out.

  Before the cleaning crew saw her.

  Cini took a deep breath. She told herself she was being perfectly silly about the killer. Her fingers formed a claw on the curved handle of the door. She opened it and stepped out into the corridor.

  Empty.

  Never before had emptiness struck her as such a beautiful and glorious sight.

  No scouter-ahead for the cleaning crew.

  No killer coming at her with bloody scissors.

  She turned right, straight down the hall. Walking fast.

  She opened the front door to the advertising agency and went inside.

  This time the silence, the emptiness came at her in a rush. Thrum of electricity. Rapping of skittering October wind on windows. Rumbling thunder, faint down the dark sky.

  Past the reception desk, she went. Down the proper corridor to the proper office. Pausing now at the small reception area in front of Eric's office.

  He was going to be in there, Eric was. All bloody. All dead.

  She needed to tap into the strong, confident part of herself. The part that had only emerged when she lost all that weight following her accident.

  A deep breath. Tightening her hands into fists.

  Dead. She was strong enough to deal with dead. Even stabbed-dead. Even bloody-dead.

  She marched promptly into Eric Brooks' office, saw him lying on the floor and then clamped a hand hard over her mouth so she wouldn't scream.

  Oh my God.

  He lay sprawled face up, a dozen or more slashes and cuts on his face and hands alone. In the torso, he must have been stabbed maybe two dozen times. His clothes were soaked with blood, dark and gooey in some places, shiny and almost pink in places where the bleeding was more superficial. The killer had even slashed Eric's cheeks, defacing him. The odors were awful. She remembered reading an Ed McBain novel about how murder victims frequently emptied themselves in the course of their violent death.

  She made a Sign of the Cross.

  She hadn't liked himand liked herself in relation to him even lessbut she knew he had a family and so it was really for them that she was crossing herself.

  And then she had a terrible thought: What if he wasn't actually dead? What if he had survived all the wounds and still enjoyed faint life?

  She didn't want to touch him in any way, that was for sure.

  She didn't even want to place the 911 call in case it would somehow be traced back to her.

  But she didn't want to leave here without at least having tried to determine if he was truly dead.

  She did the only thing she could think of.

  She sort of tiptoed over to him and said, in a voice little more than a whisper, 'Eric, are you dead?'

  Nothing.

  She leaned down. 'Eric, are you dead?'

  Nothing.

  She listened for any faint exhalation.

  Nothing.

  She watched his eyelids for a full minute.

  Not a flutter.

  She watched the bloodiest part of his entire torso, his belly.

  It did not move.

  'Eric, are you sure you're dead?'

  Nothing nothing nothing.

  'God, Eric, are you absolutely sure?'

  The stench was really starting to sicken her.

  She took one last look at him, decided that he was really truly absolutely dead, and then started searching around for her purse.

  She found it on the far side of the couch. She remembered she had put it on the arm: it must have fallen off.

  She walked quickly out of the office, angling her head so that she did not have to see Eric.

  She wanted to forget this night completely. And forever.

  CHAPTER 25

  Doris always felt the need to apologize for the mansion.

  While she didn't have a job, she did go to the city frequently for her charity work, where she was inevitably asked to dinner by handsome bachelors intrigued by the lovely, somewhat frail, dark-haired woman who would someday come into the entire Tappley fortune.

  Occasionally, though she knew her mother would disapprove, she accepted their invitations, allowing herself to try out the restaurant of the moment.

  Inevitably, the subject of the manor house came up, the manor house that had fascinated Chicago for nearly four decades.

  She pulled up to the looming iron gates now, the house hidden behind shag pine and oak and birch, and thumbed the opener for passage.

  She swept up the half-mile curving drive and there, sprawling on forty-seven acres of starry prairie night, was the spectacular Georgian brick home of gracious living room, formal dining room, state-of-the-art kitchen, paneled library and family room with fireplace and French doors to the terrace and pool. In all, the house had a dozen bathrooms, eight fireplaces, a sauna, and servants' quarters that were very nearly as well-appointed as the manor house itself.

  She took her parking place in the garage and then stood for a moment staring out at the night. Every few weeks she vowed to start hiking again. For her, hiking was peace. No one to feel beholden to, not even Mother.

  She immediately felt guilty.

  This was not a time when her mother needed bad thoughts circulating in the air.

  Tomorrow was 14 October, the night her brother Peter had been put to death in the electric chair. Six years ago tomorrow night.

  Whenever the date approached, her mother became almost frenzied with her grief and melancholy, shutting herself off in the den where she watched old family films of Peter. A bitterness came up in her mother that almost made her a stranger. She went from a sleek older woman gracious and tutored in the best of society to a haggard and angry crone.

  Doris might have been more understanding if only her mother could have accepted a simple factthat Peter was guilty. Doris had fought this truth, too, for nearly two years. But during the trial it became apparent that Peter had indeed murdered those girls. She did not want to see him dieshe knew by now that he was insane and could not hold out against his compulsionsbut nor did she want him set free, as her mother so devoutly wished. Not that Evelyn Tappley didn't have suspicions; sometimes she bitterly blamed Jill Coffey for what Peter had done, inherently admitting at these moments that Peter had killed those girls. She went back and forth in a kind of delirium about the subject. All that mattered to her was that, guilty or not, her son, her beloved son, had been stolen from her. And Jill Coffey was somehow responsible.

  Doris looked up at the wheeling stars, and inhaled the last of dying summer on this autumn night, and listened to the horses down by the barn neigh as night rolled on. Life had become so strange over the past six years. Her two-year marriage had faded now and she was so accustomed to being defensive about her occasional date'Maybe somebody actually likes me for myself, Mother, instead of my money: have you ever considered that possibility?'that she'd given up even those. Now it was just her charities and her three horses and the house and the two annual three-week vacations she took with her mother to Europe. By now, Doris had made her peace with loneliness. The morning mirror, the light that never lied, told her she was becoming gray of hair and fat-cheeked and lined. Her beauty, which had been considerable, was sliding into a mere memory of beauty, a kind of matronly hint of better days. There were times when she wanted to complain to someone about her life, but who could listen without laughing? No matter what she said, they would remind her of the manor house, of the servants and gardeners, of the family empire that grew ever more vast, and of the fact that she would someday own it all.

  There was an owl on the night suddenly, and it sounded just as isolated as she felt. She listened to it for a long moment, one lonely being recognizing another, and then she went inside.

  ***

  'How long has she been in there?'

  'A little over two hours.'

  '
Did she have any dinner?'

  The maid shook her head. 'I tried.'

  'I'm sure you did, Martha.'

  'Those films, you know. The old ones.' Martha was sixty, stout, gray-haired, gray-uniformed. She was always touching the small silver cross at her neck. Perhaps there were vampires in this house that needed warding off.

  'You want me to try her again with some dinner, miss?'

  'No thanks, Martha. I'll try her myself.'

  'Yes, miss. Good luck.'

  This was a house of high ceilings, two sweeping staircases, spectacular decorative moldings, carved mantels and arched windows. It was also a house of vast and intricate echoes; as Martha walked away in her sensible brown oxfords, the high hollow echoes of her passage filled the air.

  Doris knocked on the double mahogany doors leading to the den. From inside, she could hear her mother crying softly as the videotape unspooled.

  Doris went inside, stood in silhouette in the doorway.

  'Hello, Mother.'

  Evelyn looked up, daubing tears with a lace handkerchief. 'Remember this?'

  Peter was not quite ten when this footage was taken of them in the family swimming pool on a hot July day. The remembered smell of chlorine filled Doris' nostrils. And then the smell of scorching sunlight.

  On screen were Doris and Peter, both skinny, somewhat gangly, both grinning into the camera. There was a fairy-tale aura about thisa better time in a far land where fathers lived for ever and sweet little boys did not grow up to become killers.

  For a moment, Doris felt the same kind of suffocating melancholy her mother must experience whenever she watched these old films. But instead of letting it smother her, Doris escaped from it, came back to the present.

  'Martha told me you didn't eat any supper.'

  'I'm not hungry, dear. It's nothing to worry about.'

  'Well, you're wrong, Mother. It is something to worry about. You didn't eat lunch, either, as I recall.'

  On screen now, Peter was riding his bike down the sweeping driveway, sunlight dappling through the summer trees.

  'He was so handsome.'

  'Yes, he was, Mother.'

  'This is all her fault. I know you don't like me to say that, but it's true. If he'd never met her, Peter would be living in this house with you and me today.'