Ed Gorman: Cold Blue Midnight

The reporters went back to their own vans and trucks and cars to wait out the rest of the long day.

Only the protestors were dutiful. They had been marching with their picket signs since just after dawn.

ONLY GOD SHOULD TAKE A LIFE

– was typical of the placards they carried. For some reason, all the protestors, at least half of whom were clergy of one kind or another, were fat. And that gave them a certain pathetic, almost comic look as they strode up and down the parking lot adjacent to the institution in their dark, bulky rainclothes. They looked like a species of animal that had been neither clever enough nor strong enough to survive.

The printing on their placards began to run with rainwater. One of them read:

ONL G D CA JUDG A SOUL

Many of the reporters had taken to betting. A thirty-two-year-old rich boy like Peter Emerson Tappley was probably going to get a reprieve. True, all the lower courts had ruled against Tappley. And true, the Supreme Court had decided just this morning not to grant a stay. But Governor Edmondseven given the tight race he was in against a very tough law-and-order candidateowed the Tappley family a lot. Some said he even owed them the Governor's mansion. So the bets were that he'd draw it out as long as possible and then say, at the very last moment, that he'd wrestled with his soul (the Governor actually said things like that) and concluded that there was enough evidence to grant a stay.

Maybe Peter Emerson Tappley really hadn't raped and cut up those three women seven years ago.

An hour after the van entered the prison grounds, a pool was started. People bet on various times that the Governor would order the stay.

The ritual for execution was unvarying, even for a prominent inmate like Peter Tappley. He was given the breakfast of his choice (oatmeal and wheat toast with strawberry jam and a large glass of orange juice and two cups of coffee) served to him in the privacy of his death row cell.

Then he was moved down the hall to a special visiting room where he began receiving a succession of guests, all emerging from the expensive van that belonged to his mother.

First came his sister Doris, who spent half an hour with him; and then his beloved mother. White-haired, handsome and matriarchal as ever, Evelyn Daye Tappley spent three hours alone with her son. She even shared a few bites of the club steak he was brought for his lunch. It was quite good, actually.

In the afternoon, Doris came back, joining her mother and brother. There was a great deal of tension, as one might expect, but there were more than a few smiles and laughs as they all remembered long-ago days when (or so it seemed) the sun had always beamed, the sky was a beautiful cornflower blue, and life was filled with puppy dogs and croquet games on the lawn and dips in the family pool. Tears merged with laughter, and Evelyn and Doris seemed to be constantly hugging Peter.

All this stopped at 3:07 p.m., when Jill Coffey was let into the room by a guard.

Jill, dark-haired, blue-eyed, pretty in a casual and freckled way, was Peter's wife. Or had been up until the divorce two years ago, just at the time Peter began exhausting the last rounds of his appeals.

The Tappley family ceased talking.

They all stared at Jill.

'It wasn't necessary for you to be here,' Evelyn said.

'I wanted to be,' Jill told her.

She knew how much they despised her, and always had. For one thing, while her father had been a prominent banker in a small downstate Illinois town, Jill had hardly been the social equal of the Tappley family. For another, she had not hesitated to tell Peter how much she disapproved of his family.

'I don't want you here,' Evelyn said.

'Mother,' Doris said, embarrassed. 'She has a right to be here if she wants to be.'

Jill had always felt that Doris was her secret friend. Doris could never be demonstrative about this because her mother would get angry, but during the roughest spots in Jill's marriage, Doris had always been there to comfort her. Jill and Peter had lived in the family mansion ninety miles due west of Chicago. Doris was an inmate in the same prison. She still lived there, though her nervous little husband had moved out long ago.

Evelyn was too angry to control herself. 'If she'd been a decent wife to my son, he wouldn't be here today. I blame that damned job of hers'

Doris blushed, her angular but pretty face touched by tiny red spots on her cheeks. Even for Evelyn, this was an irrational outburst. Both Peter and Doris had fought Jill's determination to keep taking photography assignments in

Chicago. To satisfy themEvelyn felt that a woman who worked was unseemly, overlooking the fact that she herself commanded an empire, and frequently put in twelve-hour days six days a weekJill had quit for nearly a year but she missed the work too much to stay away from it any longer. And as soon as she'd started taking assignments again, driving in from the mansion to Chicago a few days a week, her marriage had gone into a steep decline. Peter had been so threatened by her job that he became impotent.

And apparently, about the same time, he also began stalking and murdering women.

'I don't want you here,' Evelyn hissed. 'You wait out in the hall till Doris and I are finished.'

Jill looked at Peter and Doris. As usual, they were clearly intimidated by their mother.

Peter especially seemed resentful of Evelyn. But he nodded quietly, a somewhat frail man now, the old handsomeness gaunted out of him, in a prison uniform as gray and cold as the rainy sky outside.

'I'll be back,' Jill said to Peter.

She waited forty-five minutes in the hall. A guard brought her bitter black coffee. The assistant warden showed up once and asked her if she wouldn't be more comfortable in the lounge. She thanked him but said no.

The prison was an echo chamber of hard harsh noises, gates slamming shut, prisoners shouting at each other, footsteps marching down vast hollow corridors. In some ways, the noises frightened Jill as much as the walls themselves, as much as the armed guards in the towers. In prison, there would be no true silence in which to think and be alone. Ever.

Evelyn made a point of ignoring Jill as the assistant warden led the two women from the visiting room.

A guard took Jill in, shutting the door behind her.

Peter stood at a barred window, staring out.

'It's a good day for it, anyway,' he said, turning back to her and smiling. 'I mean, I'd be really pissed off if the sun was shining and everybody was outdoors having a good time. If I have to suffer, they should suffer, too.'

She said nothing. Just watched him.

The room was small. Dusty. It contained an overstuffed couch and two overstuffed chairs. Two empty Diet Coca-Cola cans sat on the floor next to the couch. The floor had been waxed, but more than anything the room smelled of strong disinfectant. She was sure this would be the dominant smell of the prison.

'Any particular reason you came to see me?' Peter enquired, his grin making him suddenly handsome again. She remembered what it had been like to be in love with him. He'd been a lot of fun, he really had. God, she'd loved him so deeply and truly it had been almost painful. And it had certainly been scary. Neither before nor since, had she been able to give herself to a man with such abandon. 'You didn't bring me a cake with a file in it or anything, did you?' he went on.

She smiled. 'Afraid not.'

His grin faded. 'Evelyn still thinks there's going to be a reprieve.'

He'd always called her Evelyn as a way of proving to himself that he had some distance on her.

'But there isn't,' he said. 'The public likes the idea that a rich guy is going to get fried. They think it proves that this is a democratic country, after all.' The smile again, sad this time. 'What a way to prove it, huh?'