Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

One week later, it snowed in Chicago. Being the first really heavy snow of the season, everything traffic on the expressways, schoolbuses picking up the kiddies, pushers going to meet their customers got backed up a couple of hours. In Elmhurst, a man woke up in bed with a woman not his wife and realized that he'd passed out around midnight. He hurried out of his lover's arms so quickly that he tripped going down her icy front steps and broke his leg in two places. In Park Forest, a man who was planning to rob a bank that morning (he had pulled three successful bank robberies in the past two weeks and was beginning to believe this was one easy gig) started shoveling out his driveway and keeled over with a heart attack, dead by the time the wailing ambulance got there. In Lawndale, a hooker finished up the aerobics she always did to her old Jane Fonda videotape, and then went into the bathroom for a leisurely shower. She threw back her shower curtain and promptly screamed. There squatted a rat the size of a grown cat, all black and glistening and red-eyed. Then she remembered the gift her pimp had given her a few months ago. She fled into the bedroom, grabbed something from beneath her bed and returned to the bathroom, her pink fluffy mules going clack clack clack on the shiny hardwood floors as she ran. 'You little shit,' she said. And promptly pumped three armor-piercing rounds into the devil's hairy chest. The rat basically came apart in two big bloody chunks.

Nothing so exciting was going on with Marcy Browne. She was out near the suburb of Northbrook, parked an eighth of a mile from a large hip-roofed ranch house that had no close neighbors. Perfect for a guy who liked to do things he didn't want other people to know about.

She'd had to give up the black pick-up. Too obvious for this kind of work. Instead, she sat in a plain Chevrolet six-cylinder she'd rented for the week. The body shop said it'd take them a month to get her car fixed, what with ordering the parts and all, but that they could recommend a real good rental agency, leading suspicious Marcy to believe that body shop and rental agency were owned by the same people.

It was 7:35 a.m. and still snowing hard and there was virtually no music to be found on the radio. Everything was school closings and traffic reports and warnings to drive safely; everything was stay-tuned-for-further-traffic-and-weather-updates… all delivered in a tone that let you know that these radio station folks were virtual saints. We love your collective asses off, folks. We really do. That's why we're giving you all these groovy facts about the blizzard.

All Marcy wanted was a little music.

Well, and one more thing: she wanted the guy who came out of the ranch house to match the James Coburn lookalike on the photo that Jill had taken.

In the past week, Jose had been able to come up with forty-seven blue Volvos in the Illinois vehicle registration computer. By now, Marcy had visited thirty-nine of the owners. They had been fat, bald, black, crippled, red-haired, brown-haired and shaven-headed… but not one of them had been white-haired and not one of them had borne even a passing resemblance to James Coburn.

She only had eight to go.

Please God, make this the right one.

And please God, while You're at it, could You give us a little respite from traffic reports and all that stuff? You know I don't wake up in the morning unless I have three cups of steaming black coffee and a lot of really loud rock and roll.

The coffee she had. She'd filled a thermos at 7-Eleven.

It was the rock and roll she missed. Unlike her own car, this renter didn't have a tape deck.

She really needed some rock and roll.

Really really.

'Oh, God.'

'What?' Mitch said.

'The alarm. It didn't go off,' Jill said.

'It didn't? I thought you were going to pick up a new one yesterday.'

'I forgot.'

This time, Mitch said it: 'Oh, God.'

And then Mitch, in his subdued mint-green boxer shorts, and Jill in her pink silk pajamas, leapt from bed and got their respective mornings off to a heart-pounding start.

'You take the bathroom first,' Jill said. 'I'll start the coffee.'

'I'll be happy to start the coffee.'

She shook her head. 'I'm so groggy I need the caffeine even before I take a shower.'

Mitch padded into the bathroom and proceeded to perform a couple of really impressive (at least to him) stunts he'd picked up over the years. To wit: Mitch knew how to pee while brushing his teeth with his right hand and using his electric razor with his left.

He was performing this circus act when Jill knocked on the door and said, 'We should've looked out the window.'

Mitch took the toothbrush from his mouth. 'How come?'

'There's three feet of snow on the ground. We're having a blizzard.'

'Oh, God.'

'Everything and everybody's going to be late this morning. We can probably take our time a little more.'

'I'll call the Lieutenant and see how things are stacking up this morning. I still want to check out a few more bars.'

Five days ago, Jill had introduced Mitch to Marcy. They'd agreed that Mitch, with any time he could spare away from his socialite murder case, would check all the bars Eric Brooks had been known to hang out in. Mitch would look for the young woman who'd been in Eric's office. Jill had given him a detailed description of her. In the meantime, Marcy would go through the names and addresses of blue Volvo owners registered in and around Chicago.

During this same time, Jill had virtually shut down her business. The press made it impossible for her to work. Either they were calling her (and getting her answering machine) or they were banging on her door (and getting no reply). Some of the more industrious ones followed her to the supermarket and mall and post office, ambushing her when she emerged from these places.

They played just the angle she'd predicted they would: EX-WIFE OF SERIAL KILLER A KILLER HERSELF?

Hints 'Mystery Woman' Can Prove Her Innocence

It didn't hurt (from their point of view) that she was attractive, single, worked in what was considered a 'fashionable' occupation, and had once been associated with one of the state's wealthiest and most prominent families. All this made it easier to portray her as the femme fatale. They hinted darkly that Jill and Eric had been lovers as well as co-owners of the ad agency; and then there'd been a falling out, leading Jill to murder him. One TV station, in a news segment they called You Be The Judge, asked twenty-five people on the street if they thought that Jill had killed Eric. Twenty-three said yes; one said no; one wasn't sure. Jill had been convicted.

Jill had spent a good portion of each day at her lawyer's, going over and over her story of the night Eric had been murdered. She'd talked about the man in the blue Volvo who'd been watching her house, and she'd talked about the young woman in Eric's office. And she'd talked, over and over again, about how unreal all this seemed. She was plain old Jill Coffey. Anybody who knew her, was aware that she could never kill anybody. Not plain old Jill Coffey.

She eased the bathroom door open and waggled the front page of a morning newspaper at him. 'Guess who's on the front page again?'

He turned, still shaving, toothbrush still in his mouth but finally done tinkling and looked at the story in the upper right-hand section, complete with a close-up shot of Jill that had been taken one

night when she was all dressed up for an AIDS fund-raising ball. She looked beautiful. The headline read: BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WHO KILL

'They've got me in with some good company, anyway. A few actresses remembering Andy Williams' wife who killed that skier she was having an affair with and several prominent society matrons.'