Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

The man doing the calling was a dapper yuppie from the DA's office named Fitzsimmons. Twice in the conversation he managed to sneak in the fact that he was a Yale alumnus, and three times he mentioned that he'd been on a Barbara Walters Special about crime prevention in the United States.

Nobody on the planet was half as cool as Robert D. Fitzsimmons imagined himself to be.

'I belong to the same club,' he said toward the end of the conversation.

'Club?' Mitch said.

'Country club.'

'Ah.'

Fitzsimmons studied him a moment, looking for any signs of irony in Mitch's face. He then glanced at Lieutenant Sievers as if he expected Sievers to reprimand Mitch in some way. They were in Sievers' office and had been for better than an hour.

'What I'm saying,' Fitzsimmons said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his vest and strutting around the office as if he were presenting a case to a jury, 'is that this should be your one and only case, Mitch. No other cases until this one is solved. I thought we had an understanding.'

'I'm not working on any other cases.'

'Of course you are.' He shook his head. 'I have my spies in the department, Mitch. I know what's going on. You're concerned about your lady friend.'

'I don't know why I would be,' Mitch said, letting a nasty edge come into his voice. 'She's only being charged with murder.'

Fitzsimmons of the seventy-five-dollar haircut addressed Sievers directly. 'I see two things wrong with Mitch working on his lady friend's case.'

'I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't call her my ''lady friend." Her name is Jill.'

Fitzsimmons paused a moment and pursed his lips, as if pondering a vast and deep philosophical issue.

'All right, then. Jill it is.'

He still looked directly at Sievers. 'There are two things wrong with Mitch working on Jill's case. One, it takes him away from the case we want him working on; and two, it's hardly professional for a detective to work on a case involving somebody he's in love with.'

Sievers said, 'He isn't spending much time on it, Bob. Just an odd hour here and there. Most of the time he's working on your case.'

Fitzsimmons burst into rage, slamming his fist on the desk and spearing a long finger in Sievers' face. 'I told you I don't want him working on anything except my case! Do we understand each other!'

He had shouted so loudly that the cops outside the glass-walled office looked in.

Sievers sat there, eyes downcast, humiliated.

Mitch wanted to grab this candy-ass by the throat and throw him out the fourth-floor window.

'We understand each other,' Sievers said meekly. 'Mitch works on your case.'

'And I'm holding you personally responsible, Lieutenant, to see that he does.'

He was still angry. His neck was red behind his white collar. Spittle covered his lower lip. His parents had perhaps given him a little too much self-esteem.

He picked up his topcoat, which he'd laid neatly across the back of a chair, and his briefcase, which appeared to have cost about as much as Sievers made in a week.

'I don't like pulling rank but sometimes it's necessary,' he said.

Mitch wondered if this was a clumsy attempt at apologizing. Not that it would change his opinion of this jerk, even if it were.

Fitzsimmons walked to the door, opened it slightly. The collective noise of phones, computers, faxes and voices invaded Sievers' tiny domain.

Sievers still looked humiliated and whipped. When somebody this rich was murdered, there was always a lot of heat, especially when the DA put a country-clubber like Fitzsimmons in charge of the case.

Fitzsimmons said, 'I'm going to trust you'll do your job as I've outlined it, Lieutenant.'

He still wasn't favoring Mitch with any eye contact.

He left.

The asshole.

Mitch said, 'You OK?'

Sievers smiled sadly. 'You ever see that John Wayne picture She Wore A Yellow Ribbon?'

'Sure. It's one of my favorites.'

'You know how Wayne had this big calendar hanging on his wall and he checked off every day till he retired?' He smiled. Sievers was always good at bouncing back. 'I think I'm going to get myself a calendar. And meanwhile, go call that Cini girl. Keep the heat on her.'

'What about Fitzsimmons?'

'Screw him.'

'Thanks, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.'

Mitch went back to his desk.

Doris slept.

Just as she was drifting off, she realized how odd this was. She'd never been able to nap, not even as a small child.

But todaypossibly because of her anxiety over meeting Jill tomorrowshe fell into a fast and deep slumber.

So she was not aware when her door crept open

Not aware when her mother entered the room bearing a needle and syringe

Not aware when Evelyn sat down next to her on the bed and pulled up the hem of her dress so she could find a good and true place to administer the shot

Not aware

But then she was aware.

Mother. Needle in her hand. Injecting the fluid into Doris' thigh. Pain.

'Don't worry, dear. This is just the sedative Dr Steiner has me give myself. I'm letting you have a triple dose, is all.'

Shrieking, grabbing her mother. 'Why are you doing this?'

'I want you to be sensible about Jill, dear, that's all. I want you to see that you shouldn't be talking to anybody who betrayed our trust and our family the way she did.'

Triple dose. Feeling the effects already. A darkness pulling her downward…

'You shouldn't talk to her, dear. Not ever.'

Her mother's face blurring. Her voice faint.

'She betrayed our family, dear. Every one of us. I'm just trying to protect you from doing something you'll regret.'

The darkness pulling Doris down…

Down…

Marcy had to give Rick Corday one thing: he was real good at tying people up. He was also good at taking their clothes off.

Marcy lay naked and trussed on a dusty single bed in the east corner of the very cold basement. Rick Corday's basement. She was already sneezing. And her throat was already raw.

Actually, she tried not to think about her throat.

Before he'd left this morningright before, at the last moment, almost as an afterthought, he'd tied a gag across her mouthhe took his axe and he gave Marcy a little demonstration.

It had been truly weird. Rick brought out this simple wooden X made of two-by-fours. He'd set the log in the crook of the X and then chop away.

He could cut a log in violent half with a single swing.

Impressive.

She tried real hard not to think of what would happen to her head if he ever rested her neck on the log-holder.

But that wasn't the weird part.

All the time he split logsand he must have split around thirty of themhe told her about axes.

It was as if he were doing a TV infommercial and she was the audience at home.

'Don't buy a long handle just because it looks more powerful. Always get a handle you feel comfortable with.'

And then he'd rend another log in two.

'Always treat your axe like your best friend. If it's been stored away for some time and the socket at the head of the handle isn't snug around the axe, soak the handle in water and then later on treat it with linseed oil.'

Another log would shatter.

'Be sure to be careful in winter weather, especially when you're outside. Axes can break sometimes. It's a good practice to warm the axe first over a stove or fire.'

'Enough already!' she was shouting inside her mind. Too bad she couldn't shout it out loud. Maybe then he'd take the hint.

She tried for a time to will herself out of this basement. She'd read somewhere that during great periods of stress in World War Two some soldiers had been able to will themselves out of their bodies.

But it proved impossible to do this feat with a four-inch-thick piece of wood clattering to the concrete floor every few minutes. Sawdust and chips and chunks of bark littered the floor around the X.