Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

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.

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.'