Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

The very first thing Rick did once they were inside the house, not more than three steps inside the house, was to take his. 45 from his topcoat pocket and bring it down across the back of Adam's head.

Adam always boasted how tough he was. Sure. As soon as the butt of the gun struck his head, he made a whimpering sound, tried to turn around to grab Rick, and then collapsed on the floor of the kitchen.

Rick had hit him good and hard.

Just the way he deserved, the unfaithful bastard.

Rick reached down to take him by the collar of his coat. He was going to drag him downstairs. Wouldn't be any trouble carrying him Rick was actually quite strong but Adam would get nice and bruised (maybe even a little bloody) bumping down the stairs.

And then the blackness overwhelmed him once again, this time with no warning, and then came the headache, like a broadsword cleaving his skull.

Then the voice.

The voice that was always inside him, lurking.

He could never quite tell what the voice was saying. It spoke in this faint whisper. But whatever it said always upset Rick. And he wasn't even sure why.

For some reason, he tried real hard not to think of what Adam had said that Rick was really this Peter Tappley.

How could you be two people? Rick was Rick and Peter Tappley was Peter Tappley. Right?

The headache got so bad that Peter gripped his head in his hands and staggered over to the shiny twin sinks and turned the cold water on full force.

He put his head beneath the fall and began to massage the water into his head.

He screamed.

He could hear himself scream.

That should shake up the little guy sitting inside his mind, the way he'd just screamed. Between the cold cold water and the scream, the little guy didn't have a chance.

He'd never whisper to Rick again.

Never.

He whispered to Rick.

He was still in there.

Rick, enraged, slammed his head against the edge of the sink hard enough that he left a small dent.

But he didn't even feel it, he was so intent on getting rid of the little man who whispered to him all the time.

Bastard.

Little bastard.

I'll show you.

And then the darkness was gone. And the headache.

And he was left to feel the pain he had inflicted on himself when he'd slammed his head against the edge of the sink.

He laughed about it. 'Real bright, Rick. Why don't you stick your tongue in an electrical outlet next time?'

He was all right now. Just fine. He needed a couple aspirins, was all.

And how did you get your headache, Mr Corday?

Well, I pounded my head against the edge of the sink.

I see, Mr Corday. Why don't you not do that for a few days and see if the headache goes away?

It really was pretty funny.

He stepped over the unconscious form of Adam Morrow and walked into the bathroom and got himself two buffered aspirin. The regular kind always gave him heartburn.

He swallowed the aspirins and then walked back to the kitchen.

All he thought about now was how sweet that axe-handle was going to feel in his hands.

Yes indeedy.

Daniel Ransom was a thing of beauty, scrubbed, shined, moussed, teased and polished to perfection. He was Hunk Among Hunks of the local news-teams and he was best buds with a certain Fitzsimmons in the DA's office and Mich had no doubt that it was that same Mr Fitzsimmons who had sicced Ransom on Mitch this late cold November afternoon.

They were on the elevator, Ransom and his cameraman, and they were taping and Ransom, in his white trenchcoat with the collar up and his dark locks fashionably askew, said: 'You sound a little cavalier to me, if you'll forgive me saying so, Inspector.'

'There were two little black girls killed in front of a school last week. Why aren't you asking me about them?'

Daniel Ransom was programmed to look gorgeous, he was not programmed to think quickly. 'Well, you know'

'Sure, I know, pretty-boy. Because those two little black girls don't matter to you or your moron station manager or all those stupid whores who peddle time for your station.

You can't sell much advertising when two little black girls die. But let a rich white socialite die and you get all worked up.' He made a big thing of peering closely at Ransom's face. 'Your lipstick is crooked, you know that?'

'Turn that fucking camera off!' Ransom snapped.

"Hey, you asked me to say something on camera, and I did. So what're you so steamed up about?'

'You could always lose your job, you know.'

'So could you, sweetheart, if they ever make reporters take an IQ test.'

They rode the rest of the floors in silence.

When he stepped off the elevator, Mitch made sure that he trod painfully on the instep of the Hunk of Hunks.

Cheating was what she was doing. If you were going to make cookies you should go out and get all the makings the flour, the brown sugar, the chocolate chips you should not buy one of those frozen dough dealies and slice it all up and pop it in the oven and pretend that you were making homemade cookies.

But the smells were good and that's all that mattered this late and gloomy afternoon.

Maybe they weren't as good as the smells of her mother's old kitchen but, Jill thought, they were close enough.

She got out a festively-colored heating glove and extracted the cookie sheet from the oven.

She set them on the stove and stood there with her eyes closed, imagining herself eight or nine again, and her mother inviting her into the kitchen to clean out the bowl with a big spoon. Jill had loved the taste of the uncooked cookie dough. Childhood was so sweet; you had no idea how sweet until you were in your thirties.

She thought of Mitch and of how things were going to go well. She was sure of it now.

It was all like one of those improbable romance movies of her youth. Cini coming forward, clearing Jill's name. Mitch and Jill marrying, say a year later. A kitchen very much like her mother's a few years later still and Jill's own daughter sampling some of the cookies Jill had made. It was all going to be so good, so very good.

She wished Mitch were here now, holding her…

Marcy wondered how long she could survive this way, naked, trussed, shivering in the cold of the basement.

For the first hour or so, she'd been able to amuse herself with thoughts of all the great publicity this little turn of events would bring her.

WOMAN PI FOILS KILLER

That's how it would read in the respectable press, anyway. In the disreputable press it would probably be: NAKED GAL PI LURES KILLER

The naked part would really freak her dad out, even though it hadn't been her fault.

'A daughter of mine naked in some stranger's basement!' Imagine.

But after several hours she quit thinking about publicity and her dad and started thinking about herself. For one thing, she was really getting cold. She was sneezing all the time now. And her throat was definitely raw. And she couldn't quit shivering.

For another thing, the bare mattress on which she lay was starting to chafe her skin. No matter which way she moved, it scratched at her like a thousand tiny invisible fingers.

She had wet herself twice. The first time she'd been ashamed and self-conscious. God, couldn't she hold it any longer than this?

But the second time she made telepathic contact with her bladder and simply opened the floodgates.

The only problem now was the smell.

Pretty darn bad.

But not bad enough, unfortunately, to cover up the other smell she'd noticed when she'd first stepped inside the house upstairs.

By now, she knew that the stench emanated from the square wooden room at the far end of the basement. The door was ajar. The odor, even from here, was almost suffocating.