Ed Gorman: Cold Blue Midnight

He checked out the apartment for anything else of note.

He wasn't whistling now.

Why had he ever been such a dumb sonofabitch as to whistle in the first place?

He went to the phone, even with gloves careful of touching the receiver, and called for the crime lab.

The gates had been left open.

The gates were never left open.

Jill's headlights shone on the darkness beyond the parted gates, the darkness that led up the winding drive to the even greater darkness of the great dark mansion.

She wanted to turn back. She wanted to be safe in the cozy warmth of her home.

But she had to talk to Doris, had to find out what Doris knew about Eric's murder.

She put the car in gear and started up the curving drive.

As the mansion came into view, she was struck, as she always had been, by how closed and obstinate it appeared, like an angry face. Only once, on Evelyn's fifty-fifth birthday, had the doors ever been flung wide and guests invited in. Japanese lanterns of green and gold and orange had lit the night like giant electric bugs. A small dance orchestra had played. Peter and Doris had acted like perfectly normal people living in a perfectly normal household. Even Evelyn had been kind that night, her smile, for once, seeming almost sincere.

But now the mansion was itself again; closed, hostile, impregnable as it towered against the racing clouds of the quarter moon.

She pulled up in front of the sweeping front steps and shut off lights and engine.

She took her flashlight from the seat, grasping it tightly. It could also be used as a weapon.

She got out of the car. The sub-zero weather attacked her like a hungry beast.

She crunched through the snow up to the steps, clipped on her flashlight, played it across the front of the vast house.

The massive arched front door stood open.

Once again her impulse was to flee, to run back to the safety of her own place.

She tried to convince herself that the girl Cini would tell the police the truth. But what if Cini refused? Then who would Jill turn to?

She needed to go into the house.

She angled the flashlight beam through the open door and walked up the steps.

When she reached the door, she paused, listening.

No lights anywhere inside. No sound.

Moonbeams highlighted the winding staircase that cut through the center of the house.

She walked inside, her footsteps loud and hollow on the parquet floor. She found a light switch, tried it. The electricity was off.

'Doris? Doris?'

But silence was the only response.

She walked deeper into the house, memories returning as she did so. The great stone fireplace; the short hall leading to the servants' small apartment; the den

She stopped, looked in.

At one point, the den had been her only retreat. Peter and Evelyn both displeased that she'd started working again, Jill had shut herself up here, watching the highly improbable romantic adventures of Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue or Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello on the late show. A prisoner is what she'd been; a prisoner.

The den had been changed, the style of furnishings more modern now. To double-check herself, she turned the lamp switch to On. No lights came. The power really was out. She lifted the receiver of the telephone to her ear. Somebody had also cut off the phone.

The smell came to her, then.

She knew instinctively what the odor was, but consciously wanted to deny it.

She stepped over to the desk and trained her light on the floor.

Puddles and splotches and puddings of dark fresh blood covered the Persian rug.

She raised the beam of the light and followed the trail of blood behind the desk, back of the couch, along the built-in bookcase and right up to the closet.

The brass doorknob of the closet was smeared with blood.

She played the light along the bottom of the closet door. A small river of dark blood was flowing from inside.

She had never heard her heart pound so loud.

Once more, her impulse was to flee.

But now she had to knowhad to see for herselfwhat lay inside the closet.

She put her finger on the blood-sticky doorknob and started to turn.

'You really don't want to see what's in there. Take my word for it, Toots.'

Peter. He'd always called her Toots.

She froze there for a long and disbelieving moment. She couldn't mistake the voice of the man she'd loved for so many yearsPeter. She was afraid to turn around and see who had spoken.

But how could it be Peter?

He was dead, executed in the electric chair.

This had to be some kind of memory trick. Being in the mansion again had made her think that the man was

She turned slowly around.

The man with the white hair and the James Coburn face stood in the den's doorway, looking at her.

He walked out of the shadow and into the moonlight. He wore a light gray expensive suit. The jacket was soaked with dark spots. His hands were bright red. She didn't have to wonder what it was.

'You look a little shocked, Toots. Like you're surprised I'm alive or something.'

He kept coming, slowly, closer, closer.

'If you're worried about Doris, she's fine. I just sort of tied her up so she couldn't call anybody.' He gave her a little-boy mock frown. 'I guess she wasn't very happy about what I did to poor old Mom. I thought she might be grateful. You know, given what that bitch did to us all our lives.'

He was close enough to put his hand on the flashlight and try to tug it away from her.

She held on tight.

He slapped her.

Very fast and so hard that her eyes teared and for a moment everything went dark.

'One thing you'll have to get used to now, Jill. I'm not the nice old easy-going Peter I used to be. Now when I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. You understand?'

She didn't say anything.

He slapped her again, so hard that he rocked her back on her heels.

'You understand?'

'Yes,' she whispered.

'Good. Very good.'

He turned her gently around so that she was facing the closet.

'You never did like my mother, did you?' He laughed.

'Now don't lie. We're too old to lie to each other anymore. You couldn't stand her and she couldn't stand you. Wellmaybe you'll be a little more appreciative than Doris was.'

He opened the closet door and shone the light on Evelyn's head, which he had set on the shelf above the hangers.

The rest of her body, blood-soaked, was propped up against the base of the wall.

Jill tried very hard not to scream. Very hard.

Mitch decided to tell Jill in person about the girl named Cini. He wanted to be able to hold her, comfort her, after she'd heard such bad news.

Traffic was a bitch, many of the people over-cautious on the snow and ice, many others completely reckless.

In the course of his forty-five-minute drive, two drivers honked at him, one gave him the finger and one made a face at him. These kind of road conditions brought out the worst in people; they got uptight and took their uptightness out on everybody else.

He passed through a dour working-class neighborhood before seeing the relative glitz of Jill's neighborhood, everything refurbished and shiny clean and upwardly mobile.

He had to park a block away.

He smiled at the Christmas music coming from a CD store. Not Thanksgiving yet and already merchants were trying to put people in a buying mood. Mitch was glad that people honored Christ's birthday so irreverently. If Christ were alive today, that's just what He'd be doing, hawking CDs.

He knocked first and then, getting no response, rang Jill's bell.

He kept looking at the passersby. He liked people in their winter clothes. It made them more vulnerable, more human. In summer you saw all the hard human angles and the sweat, and picked up on all the smells. It was nice, every once in a while, to see people who resembled big dumb friendly bears.