Ed Gorman: Cold Blue Midnight

She would find out who the man was and what he wanted, and then she would deal with him appropriately.

When everything was under way, and it was safe to make her call, she stepped outside the darkroom and lifted the receiver on the wall phone. The darkroom was in the rear of the first floor. At the front of the large ground floor was the studio itself. Lights, tripods, cables and props left over from yesterday's shoot littered the floor. She'd done stills for the Down's Syndrome Society, a freebie because she made a very good living and wanted to give something back. The lady from the Society had brought in six children suffering from the condition and each one of them had broken Jill's heart. She turned every photograph into a masterpiece of compassion. This was the kind of work she loved, but in order to do itat least for nowshe also had to shoot portraits of arrogant business leaders, pompous politicians and strutting jocks. Having an original Jill Coffey portrait of yourself was something devoutly to be desired in the Chicago area.

She thought of the old brick convent she wanted to shoot someday soon. It was kind of an old nuns' graveyard, all these ancient, wrinkled, honorable women pushed away even by their own church, and utterly forgotten. Jill wished to capture their sorrow and their isolation. She needed a three-day shoot to do it properly. She also needed a big-money project that would finance her three-day shoot.

'Kate?'

'Changed your mind about dinner tonight, eh? I knew you would.'

Jill hadn't had to identify herself. Best friends didn't need to trifle with such formalities.

'He was here again today,' Jill said.

'The guy in the blue Volvo?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Remember that football player I used to go out with?'

Jill laughed. 'The one who thought Burt Reynolds should try his hand at Shakespeare? What was that title you came up with? ''Smokey and King Lear Go To London"?'

'Well, cultured he wasn't but what he was, was one mean psycho after he'd had a couple of drinks. Maybe I should call him up and have him give you a hand. Two drinks would be all it'd take.'

'He's probably a reporter.'

'Whothe creep in the blue Volvo?'

'Sure, from one of those TV tabloids. Remember three years ago?'

Kate might have forgotten already, but Jill certainly hadn't. One day as she'd been leaving an office building in the Loop, she'd noticed a short blond man with a slight limp. Then she started noticing him again and again over the next few days. Everywhere that Jill went, so went the short blond man with the slight limp.

Only after four days of this, and three useless calls to the police, was Jill able to find out who the man was and what he was all about.

She'd been in Neiman-Marcus and suddenly couldn't deal with him trailing her any longer.

Right there in the middle of the store, with ever so many disapproving matrons looking on, Jill had confronted the man and asked him exactly what the hell he thought he was doing.

A TV tabloid reporter. That was who he was. That was what he was doing.

His syndicated show was doing a piece on My Husband the Serial Killer, about three wives who'd been married to multiple murderers and how they'd coped with the aftermath of their husbands' trials, and their own public shame.

Jill had refused to cooperate, of course. But that had not mattered.

One sunny April morning, as she was sipping her first cup of coffee in her tiny breakfast nook and listening to all the spring-sweet birds, she saw her own image on the 11-inch black-and-white TV set she kept on the kitchen counter.

'Did you know that prominent Chicago photographer Jill Coffey was actually the wife of notorious serial killer Peter Tappley? How do wives of serial killers cope with their lives after their husbands have been put to death?' (Here Jill's photo was joined with the images of two other women.) 'Find out tonight when Hard Facts presents My Husband the Serial Killer.'

They hadn't needed her cooperation.

They'd just gone to a few old friendsand a few old enemiesand gotten most of what they needed.

And what they couldn't get from those sources, they'd simply made up.

The weeks following the Hard Facts story had been miserable for Jill. While many within the Chicago advertising community had known about her former marriage to Evelyn Tappley's son, it was rarely mentioned. Her talent and her general good nature had made her a lot of friends and nobody wanted to see her suffer for something over which she had had no control.

Peter had killed those women, not Jill.

But for the three months following the Hard Facts story, Jill had experienced her first taste of notorietyand had hated it. The cynical and knowing gaze, the quick smirk, the whispersshe'd been treated to them all and had felt a curious shame, as if this was just the kind of treatment she deserved.

So this time she was going to stop it before it started.

This time she was going to find out which trashy TV show or newspaper the man in the blue Volvo worked for, and she was going to get an injunction.

Surely a judge would be sympathetic once she told him what had happened following the Hard Facts story.

Peter was now six years dead, and Jill wanted him to stay dead.

'You remember when you hired that private detective?' she said to Kate.

'Marcy?'

'That's right,' Jill said. 'Marcy. What's her last name?'

'Marcy Browne. With an "e" on the end. Why?'

'I'm going to have her check out this guy in the blue Volvo.'

'What about the police?'

'First of all, what am I going to tell them? That there's a man who sits in a blue Volvo on a very busy street and he irritates me? And second of all, I don't want anything official to happen. Official means the press will get involved because they'll hear about it somehow. I just want Marcy to find out who the guy works for and then I'll hire a lawyer and threaten some kind of legal action. If an injunction doesn't work, then I'll threaten a lawsuit. I don't want to go through it again, Kate. I really don't.'

'God, I don't blame you. I just hope Marcy can do something.'

'Well, she can find out who he is if nothing else.'

'You sure you don't want to have Chinese tonight?'

'Maybe tomorrow night. Anyway, what happened to The Hunk?'

Kate laughed. 'He's doing just fine, thank you.' Kate had been the most famous runway model to ever come from Chicago, glamorous, beautiful and a resolute heartbreaker. She changed men frequently.

Jill's phone signaled a call waiting. Convenient as it was, call waiting could also be a royal pain in the butt. Jill and Kate always joked that one day one of them would be shouting frantically, 'And the killer is' But then call waiting would interrupt them and the identity of the killer would remain forever unknown.

'I'll be right back,' Jill promised, and she depressed the phone button.

A male voice said, 'Jill? It's me, Eric.'

'Hi.'

'You sound as enthused as always.'

'Eric, we just don't have anything to say to each other anymore. I wish you could try to understand that.'

She hated the whiny note in her voice but she was getting exasperated with the man. When she'd come back to Chicago following the execution, she'd had little luck in establishing a freelance business. Eric Brooks had just left one of the big ad agencies to start his own, and he needed money. She gave him her modest inheritance and together they formed a partnership. Within a year, Brooks-Coffey was one of the hottest shops in the Midwest. Eric was creative, bold and relentless. He was also egocentric, dishonest and so driven to sexual conquest that Jill sometimes wondered if he weren't insecure about his masculinity. After three years, they'd parted company. She'd made enough money on the partnership to set up her own photography studio. But Eric still called every few months, always trying to sound as if they were old friends who just couldn't wait to be together again. That might be Eric's feeling on the matter but it certainly wasn't Jill's. He had never managed to sleep with her and so she became this overwhelming object of importance to him. Somehow, someday, he was going to slip her into his bed. He was obviously certain of that.