Steve Hamilton - A Cold Day in Paradise

I sat there thinking about it. There was a long silence. His gun was still aimed at my chest. There was a sudden pop from the fireplace.

Finally, Uttley cleared his throat. “How did you figure it out?”

“The diary,” I said. “It was all wrong. This guy is supposed to be obsessed with me. You’d think he’d be writing pages about me every day. And if he really contacted Rose, there would be lots of details about that. When and where and how. You glossed right over that. But I guess that makes sense. You knew they could check it. They’d find out that he never really talked to him. But so what? They’d just figure he made it up. I was starting to think that myself. Even though there was stuff in those notes that only Rose and I knew. Or so I thought. When I saw him today, he started talking about how he said some things he shouldn’t have. I thought he was just talking about me and Franklin. But now I’m thinking, he must have said some of the same damned things to his defense attorney. I’m sure you had no problem finding out who that was. And I’m sure you had no problem finding him and pretending to be someone else and making up some story about why you wanted to know what he said. What was it? Were you a journalist? Another defense attorney working on a similar case?”

“You’re close,” he said. “I was an editor for one of the law reviews. All I had to do was get him talking. You know how lawyers are.”

“And of course the fact that you didn’t say anything on the telephone that one night. You knew it was being recorded. And that business in the note about knowing the policeman was there. It all makes sense now when I look back on it.”

“I suppose it does,” he said.

“And when I was out looking for Edwin,” I said. “You insisted on helping me, remember? When I was ready to quit, you made me keep driving. I didn’t realize it at the time, but you were leading me right to that boat. You knew that somebody had to find it before the rain washed his blood away. What did he have to do, anyway? Cut his finger?”

“No, he had a whole pint of it in a bag. Rich people like to store up their own blood, you know, in case they ever need a transfusion. They don’t like to use common blood.”

“So what’s in this for you, Uttley? Why did you do all this? No, let me guess. You’ll be working down in Grosse Point now, right? Some nice job at the Fulton Foundation?”

“Something like that,” he said. “No more chasing ambulances in this charming little frozen wasteland.”

“And I get to live with all these wonderful memories, right? Two weeks of terror and then I kill somebody?”

“You get more than that, Alex. You do deserve some compensation, after all.”

“What, are you going to pay me?”

“No,” he said. “You get Sylvia.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Alex. We all know what was going on. Just think, now she’s not married anymore. Edwin is dead. She’s all yours.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “All right, then. I guess I’ll let you finish your packing.” I stood up. The gun barrel followed. “I wish you’d put that gun away. It’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“You’re just going to walk out?”

“What else can I do? Like I said, I can’t touch you. I know what happened, but I can’t prove any of it. So I might as well just leave.”

He seemed at a loss for words. I guess there’s a first time for everything. “Okay then,” he finally said. “I guess this is good-bye.”

“No, not really,” I said. “You’ll be seeing me again.”

“That’s not a good idea,” he said. “As you can see, Mrs. Fulton has a way of making things happen. If she found out that you knew any of this, she would start thinking of you as another loose end. And you know how much she hates loose ends.”

“Yes,” I said. “Which is exactly why you can never tell her about our little chat here. Because then you ’d be a loose end, too. In fact, I’m not so sure you aren’t already.” I let him think about that one for a while. “In the meantime, I’m going to just sit back and wait a while. See how I feel about what’s happened to me. Maybe I’ll just let it go. Or maybe I’ll get more and more upset. Maybe I’ll get so upset I have to come find you one day. No matter what the cost, no matter what Mrs. Fulton can do to me. Maybe one day you’ll open your front door and I’ll be standing there.”

He leveled the gun at me.

“You know what it feels like when somebody shoots you, Lane? When a piece of metal tears right through your body? It’s nothing like what you’d imagine. It doesn’t even hurt that much at first. If I were to shoot you the same way that Rose shot me, you’d be lying there on the ground, wondering what had happened.”

He was holding the gun with both hands.

“Until you saw your own blood,” I said. “Then you’d know.”

His hands were shaking.

I walked out of the room. “Good-bye, Lane,” I said as I left. “Have a nice vacation.”

I drove back to my cabin. I found the bottle in the back of the medicine cabinet. I emptied all the pills into the toilet and then I flushed it.

The fear was gone. I had finally gotten rid of it. Not by destroying it, but by giving it away to someone else.

I splashed cold water on my face and looked in the mirror. What do I do now?

Maybe I should go back to Sylvia. Tonight. Right now. See if maybe we can start over, after all. But I won’t tell her what happened. Let her keep believing that Edwin is dead.

Or hell, maybe I’ll tell her everything. Edwin is still alive somewhere. They played us both for fools. What would that do to her? Maybe we’d both go after them. Sylvia Fulton hot on your trail. Talk about fear.

I didn’t know what to do. I looked at my watch. It was just past midnight. I still had time to stop in at the Glasgow. See if the regular gang was there, see if they still knew how to play poker. Have a couple cold Canadians, think about it. There’s no rush, after all. It’s going to be a long winter.

If you’re really a private investigator, I said to the mirror, then you should be able to find them. Let Edwin think he really has made a new life for himself, wherever he is. Let Mrs. Fulton think she won her little game. Let Uttley have a long winter of restless nights. Let him dream about blood.

And then in the springtime, when the world is new again and the hunters start coming back to the cabins, that’s when you’ll start tracking them down one by one.

Mark it on the calendar, right next to the hunting seasons for rabbit and pheasant and grouse. Make a new category for rich people and their lawyers, with a bag limit of three.