Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

Mitch watched the day begin as he sat nervously at his desk, waiting his chance with Sievers. Roll call over, the sixteen detectives filling the sixteen desks that were sprawled across the big dusty room now worked the phones, lining up witnesses and suspects to hit for information on their various cases.

O'Mally didn't wrap up for another twenty minutes.

When Lieutenant Sievers' door finally came open, O'Mally, a lean man in the expensive gray suit of a banker, was saying. 'He's done a lot for this community, Lieutenant and this girl well, she isn't exactly from a real good family.'

'That's supposed to convince me she didn't get raped, is itthat she isn't from a real good family?'

'No, but it does bring her motives into question.'

'Oh yeah?'

O'Mally sighed, a thirtyish man with the faint air of weariness that touches all public officials after a few years. 'I think so. Here's a girl who hasn't had much in life. She sees the nice home he lives in, the nice car he drives her home in… and she gets resentful.'

'So she accuses him of rape?'

'That's how I see it.' O'Mally put out his hand. 'I hope you'll give it a little more thought.'

Lieutenant Sievers frowned. 'I just wish she'd gotten in here sooner. Too late for any kind of DNA evidence or anything like that.'

'I'm not even sure the DA'll want to press charges.'

'No?' Lieutenant Sievers said, irritated. 'You talk to him, did you?'

O'Mally's cheeks turned red. 'I just meant that he tends not to go ahead unless a case is very strong'

Lieutenant Sievers was still angry. 'You leave the DA to me, all right, O'Mally?'

'Yessir.'

'Now get the hell out of here.'

O'Mally looked as if he wanted to protest at the Lieutenant's manner but then he thought better of it. He nodded to the Lieutenant and left.

'Jerk,' Sievers said to O'Mally's back. He was talking to Mitch. 'O'Mally wants me to drop the charges because this guy's a good friend of the Cardinal's and used to be some kind of Catholic Man of the Year.'

Then Sievers stood back, waved Mitch into his office, and closed the door behind them.

'You want the bad news first?' he said as he walked around behind his desk and sat down again. His desk was always orderly. He had his secretary come in twice a day and haul out all papers that weren't absolutely necessary.

'You seem eager to give it to me.'

'I'm not in the business of painting pretty pictures, Mitch. You came up here to find out how the Eric Brooks case was doing so I'm going to tell you how it's doing.'

'Fair enough.'

'Your friend Jill Coffey is starting to look awfully good for this.'

Mitch began to say something but Sievers raised his hand. 'I like you, Mitch. Believe me, I don't take any pleasure in telling you that your friend may be involved in a murder.'

'She didn't kill him.'

Lieutenant Sievers sat back. Shook his head. 'Mitch, this is an ongoing homicide investigation. I don't have to tell you that I don't want you interfering. Anyway, I can't afford to spare youyou've got to stay on the Allbright case sixteen hours a day.'

'I'm not interfering, Lieutenant, I'm just trying to help you get to know Jill the same way I do.'

'And she couldn't possibly kill anybody?'

'Right. Except maybe in self-defense.'

'Remember the Sister Rosemary case?'

'Oh God, Lieutenant, you always roll that one out.'

'You remember it or not?'

'Yes, I remember the Sister Rosemary case.'

'A nun for thirty-five years. A damned good one, too. When she wasn't working with orphans, she was helping feed the homeless. Who could ask for a better human being than that?'

'I know the punchline, Lieutenant.'

But the Lieutenant would not be rushed through the story. 'But one day we find this eighteen-year-old kid dead in the alley behind the school where Sister Rosemary teaches. And we find out that Sister Rosemary had just had a terrible argument with this kid because he wouldn't marry the nice little Catholic girl he'd just knocked up. Hit over the head with a brick, from behind. Skull crushed. And I say to my detectivesgrown men who've had a lot of training and should be able to keep an open mind about thingsI say, "Men, I kind've like this nun for the killer." And you know what my detectives said to me?'

Mitch grumpily played along. 'They said that a sweet old nun couldn't possibly pick up a brick and crush somebody's skull like that.'

'That's exactly what they said. Oh, and they said one other thing, too. They said: "Lieutenant, you always pick the first suspect you find. That's your fatal flaw, Lieutenant, always picking the first suspect." And you know what I told them?'

'You told them about your conviction rate.'

'Exactly, Mitch. I told them about my conviction rate. And what is that rate?'

'Over eighty per cent.'

'Wrong. These days, it's over eighty-five.'

'She didn't do it, Lieutenant.'

'Weren't you working for me back in the days of Sister Rosemary?'

'You know I was.'

'And weren't you one of the detectives who insisted that a sweet little old nun like Sister Rosemary couldn't possibly have'

'She didn't do it, Lieutenant.'

'She certainly did, Mitch. In fact, she confessed.'

'Sister Rosemary confessed. Not Jill Coffey.'

'But Jill's going to confess, Mitch. Because I honestly believe that she's the killer.'

'There's no proof.'

Lieutenant Sievers opened the wide center drawer of his desk and took out three pages of a report. He dropped the report directly in front of Mitch.

'I need to go empty my bladder. You read through that while I'm gone.'

The Lieutenant was back in four minutes.

'You read it?' he said, sitting down again.

'Yes.'

'Would you say that was incriminatingher blood-soaked blouse and skirt found in a dumpster in the alley next to her place?'

'She didn't do it.'

'You ask me for evidence, I show you evidence, and all you can say is, "She didn't do it." Mitch, you've got to be a pro here. This is a murder investigation. We have to find out what happened and we can't let personal matters get in the way.'

The Lieutenant sat back, steepled his fingers. 'There's one more thing.'

'What?'

'The murder weapon.'

'Which is?'

'Which is a pair of scissors.'

'You found them at the scene?'

The Lieutenant nodded. 'Lots of prints on them, Mitch. Lots. I'm asking her to come in this afternoon to be printed.'

'You called her yet?'

'Not yet. But I will in the next half hour or so.'

'She'll be scared.'

'She can bring her lawyer if she wants to.'

'You sound as if you plan to charge her.'

'It's crossed my mind.'

'She didn't kill him.'

'I believe you told me that already.'

Mitch stood up. He felt a kind of panic, wanted to burst from this office, go for a long fast walk, or maybe even a run. He saw what was shaping up heresaw what was ahead for Jilland he feared for her.

'I'd like to call you late this afternoon,' he said.

'About the fingerprints?'

'Yes.'

Lieutenant Sievers smiled sadly. 'I guess I could handle that all right.'

He stood up and came around the desk and put his hand on Mitch's shoulder. He was not a physical man, the Lieutenant, and so the gesture startled Mitch.

'I'm sorry, Mitch.'

'Thanks.'

'Maybe this'll have a happy ending yet.'

Now it was Mitch's turn to smile sadly. 'I sure hope so, Lieutenant. I sure hope so.'

Sievers nodded and slid his arm around Mitch's shoulder, walking the younger man out of the room. 'Just hang in there, Mitch. See how it goes.'

'Thanks. I appreciate it.'

He left.

This was the sort of day on which Marcy wanted to stay home in her little two-room apartment, clad only in her faded old red bathrobe. Watch the Sci-Fi Channel (they were doing a 'Salute to Mutant Rodents' this week, including her all-time favorite 'Them', about these giant spiders), eat a little Orville Redenbacher Gourmet-Style popcorn, and wriggle her toes inside the bunny slippers (with bushy tails yet) she'd gotten for Christmas six years ago, and that still fit her.