Ed Gorman: Cold Blue Midnight

He hadn't mentioned the women he'd killed. He never did. That was how she'd known, in the days following the police first coming to the mansion and questioning him, that he was a sociopath. He felt no guilt for what he'd done, merely a kind of ironic anger that he'd been caught. Ted Bundy had been very much like that.

'Why have you come, Jill?'

She'd known he would ask this. She wished she had an answer. 'Oh, I suppose because we were in love once, and had such high fine dreams together for our future, and because you'll always be a part of meeven after everything that happened.'

'The women, you mean?'

She nodded. Could he just once say how sorry he was for what he'd done?

He said, 'You know, I never would've killed them if you hadn't gone back to work.'

She waited for the grin. He had always been good at mocking his mother. Wasn't he mocking her now, her absurd notion of somehow blaming Jill for the murders?

'You went bitch on me, Jill. Just like a woman.'

They were standing barely inches apart. He took his finger and jabbed it angrily at her breastbone. 'You had to have a job. Had to get back into the Chicago thing. How many of those guys were you screwing on the side, anyway?'

She didn't know what to say. But that was all right, because he wasn't done.

His face was a mask of rage, of dark frantic eyes that bulged, of lips frothy with spittle, of cheeks flushed with crimson.

'When I was cutting those women up, I was thinking of you, Jill. I really was.'

The grin again, but this time she saw the insanity in it.

She started backing toward the door.

Preparing herself to call out for the guard in case he wasn't looking through the observation window.

'I could've saved myself a lot of hassle, couldn't I? I should've just killed you. You were the one I wanted: you and all the guys in Chicago you used to shack up with.'

She'd always known he was jealous. But not like this.

He sprang.

She was shocked by both his speed and strength as his hands took her throat and he slammed her back into the wall.

She had time for a single, muffled scream.

He went to serious work on her. She could feel the anger increasing in his iron hands and fingers.

And then the door was bursting open.

And two guards were grabbing him.

And tearing him away from her.

And one guard was bringing his wooden baton down hard across the back of Peter's skull.

And another guard was leading her, dazed and shocked and terrified, from the room to the assistant warden's office around the corner.

She didn't see Evelyn or Doris again that day.

After a long, rambling and apologetic speech from the assistant warden, she was taken out the back way, put into the rear of a panel truck so the press couldn't see her, and driven back to her motel.

There was a bar adjacent to the motel. Though she was not especially fond of alcohol, she had two very stiff drinks of whisky and then went back to her room, taking a turkey sandwich and a small bag of potato chips with her.

Without quite knowing why, she spent several minutes checking the locks on the doors and windows.

She had this image of Peter. She'd never known how much he hated her, how much he'd wanted to kill her.

But checking the locks…

Did she think he was going to somehow escape prison tonight and come kill her?

She took a long, hot, relaxing shower.

When she was toweled dry and ensconced in her favorite pink cotton pajamasshe had never forgotten her sweet mother's advice that dark-haired girls always looked good in pinkshe slid between the covers, clicking on the TV remote as she did so.

She hoped there was some kind of mindless comedy on tonight. She needed that kind of escape.

She wished she'd never come up here now.

She wished she'd never seen Peter as she'd seen him just a few hours ago.

This was how she'd remember him. For ever.

The motel didn't have cable, just the three networkswhich meant that she didn't have much choice as to programing.

She ate her sandwich and half the chips, and occupied herself with a rerun of a wooden romantic comedy.

But at least no women were being ripped apart in it.

At least no sociopath's face was filling the screen as he screamed the word 'bitch' over and over again.

She drifted in and out of sleep several times.

Thunder woke her.

Thunder had always scared her. As a child, she'd seen a Disney movie in which a little girl was lost in a vast and terrifying forest. Thunder and lightning had stalked the girl like the wrath of a dark and disapproving god.

A moment of disorientation: a motel room that still managed to look like 1958 right down to the pressed-wood blond furnishings.

Where was she?

Who was she?

Peter's face. Shrieking at her.

His hands. On her throat.

Guards racing in

Homely, familiar images now: the potato-chip sack on the night-table next to her; her rain-speckled tan suede car coat hung to dry over the back of the desk chair; a bit of brown paper bag sticking up from the small waste-can to the left of the front door.

Her eyes moved to the dark TV. She needed some human contact, even if it was secondhand.

She found the remote and thumbed it to ON.

A newsman standing in front of the prison. Night. Rain. The reporter huddled beneath his umbrella, speaking into the microphone in his right hand. He wore a trench coat and looked suitably grim, especially under the stark TV lights.

'Unless there's a last-minute reprieve, Bev, the execution is scheduled to take place just about one hour from now. At midnight.'

An off-camera voice: 'Michael, why don't you tell our viewers how a prisoner is prepared for execution?'

The reporter nodded. 'Well, there really isn't anything remarkable about it, Bev. Most of the day, the prisoner spends with his loved ones. Then, after they're escorted out, the chaplain comes in and remains for some time with the prisoner. And then the prisoner is showered and shaved for the execution.'

'I'm not sure what ''shaved" means in this context, Michael.'

'Well, execution by electrocution means that electricity is conveyed into the body at specific points. They shave an area on the prisoner's left knee, so the electrode will fit nice and tight, and then they shave a five-inch circle on the crown of his head so the metal cap will fit. By the way, he's given special trousers with the left seam cut from cuff to knee so they can place the electrode with no problem.'

'Then he's ready to be executed?'

'Just about. They take him to the execution chamber and sit him in the chair and get him ready and then the assistant warden comes in and reads the prisoner the death warrant. And then the assistant warden makes a final call to the Attorney General to see if there's been a last-minute reprieve of any kind. And if not… Well, if not, Bev, the prisoner receives approximately two thousand seven hundred volts AC and five amperes of electrical currentand he usually dies within a few minutes.'

'Usually but not always?'

'Well, there was a case last year in New York where the electrodes weren't fitted snugly and it took the prisoner more than twelve minutes to dieand he was crying out for help all the time. I'm told it was a pretty grisly'

'Hold on, Michael. They're telling me something in my ear.'

The camera held on the trench-coated reporter. You could hear the protestors chanting off-camera.

Then: 'Michael, we've just been informed that the Governor's officeand this is official as of 11:07 p.m. will not (repeat: will not) issue a stay of execution. So Peter Emerson Tappley will be put to death in the electric chair tonight in, according to the studio clock, just fifty-three minutes.'