Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

Today would have been Helen’s birthday. Tonight. Now. Josh had promised to come directly from the airport, even though Megan had insisted she’d be fine. But he’d called several hours ago from the tarmac in Memphis. His phone breaking up. Heavy rains. Delays. Not sure. Will call back .

The rain began during Megan’s second glass of wine. This time a full glass. The book on Cynthia Blair’s murder was on the coffee table. Woefully thin for a ten-day-old murder. Cynthia Blair had last been seen alive at approximately four-thirty on the afternoon of April 15 by the Korean woman where Cynthia took her laundry to be done. Cynthia had returned to her apartment with two bundles of folded laundry in a Crate & Barrel shopping bag; she’d opened one of the bundles, rifling through it while leaving the other untouched. Details. Megan had ordered a chemical check on the clothes that Cynthia Blair was wearing when she was murdered, to determine which piece of newly laundered clothing she had opted to don before heading out later in the evening. Was it the pants? The blouse? The underwear? Socks? Or-least likely-was it the scarf that had been used to tie off her windpipe for the several minutes required to guarantee her death? It had proved to be the blue-and-white-striped underwear. Conclusion to be drawn? Nothing. Zero. Or at least nothing that Megan could come up with. She felt dulled, as though her instincts were numb. Her mind felt clumsy, and she wished Joe Gallo had never assigned her this homicide. Cynthia Blair was now a week in her grave, and her murder book was still thin.

And Brian McKinney was an asshole.

“I hear your vic put on fresh panties before she died,” McKinney had needled that morning, pressing his hands on her desk as if keeping it from floating off. “Good work, Meg. Have you tracked down where she bought said panties? Might crack this whole case open in no time.”

They say that everybody has somebody who loves them, but to Megan this merely meant that in McKinney ’s case, somebody was loving an asshole. She knew at least some of the reasons he was such a jerk to her. But he was such a jerk, she figured there had to be even more reasons than just the obvious ones. This time he had gone too far. Megan had been tipped off. Tomorrow’s Post was going to have a scoop under Jimmy Puck’s byline. Unnamed sources confirm that Ms. Blair was in her third month of pregnancy at the time of her murder .

Great. Just fine. One more cat out of the bag. Rusty bucket. Leaky bag. Oh, what the hell. Megan finished her wine and poured another glass. She supposed she should be grateful for getting a full ten days into her investigation with the information of Cynthia Blair’s pregnancy remaining under wraps. Cynthia Blair wasn’t McKinney ’s case, he didn’t have anything to lose in handing a goodie like Cynthia’s hitherto unreported pregnancy over to Jimmy Stupid Name Fat Butt Puck. Megan knew that the smirk would be firmly in place on McKinney ’s face when she walked into the station the next morning. And she knew what Joe Gallo would tell her: Don’t take it personally .

But she wasn’t taking it personally. Not this time. It was Cynthia Blair’s parents Megan was thinking about. They’d be the ones taking it personally. Megan had been in Joe’s office when the Blairs had arrived directly from the airport, the two nearly drained of the ability to speak, imploring Joseph Gallo with tear-reddened eyes to end the bad dream right now and present their daughter to them, alive and vibrant. The Blairs took the news of their daughter’s pregnancy as if they had just been told she was composed entirely of green jelly beans. They couldn’t take it in, and they had made Gallo repeat the information three times. Four times, actually, though at that point Joe had turned the chore over to Megan. Maybe it would be better coming from a woman. Megan had felt her skin begin to crawl as she detected the Blairs latching on to her. She was only a year older than Cynthia, and at least to the naked eye, she was a competent, capable young woman in a high-stress environment in the overwhelming city of New York. Just like Cynthia. Only she was still alive. Megan thought that Mrs. Blair in particular was more than ready to go quietly unhinged, take Megan by the hand and tell her, “Pack your things, honey, we’re going home now.” Megan had led the questioning-pro forma, she knew it from the get-go-about Cynthia’s personal life, and did the Blairs have any indication from their daughter that she was seeing anyone in particular? Both Megan and Gallo knew that the questioning was a hollow exercise. People who knew Cynthia much better than the pale couple from Tucson and Cynthia’s close friends and recent work colleagues had all responded to similar questions and offered up nothing except that they’d all thought Cynthia Blair had been too ambitious to have a personal life. That was the general rap. Her life had been her career. Or vice versa. The Blairs offered nothing beyond their full-scale wonder, consternation, and inability to process how the both of them had entered into this surreal dream together and how in the world they would find a way out of it. Joe Gallo had promised them that the information about Cynthia’s pregnancy would remain private. “It’s part of the investigation. But beyond that, it’s nobody’s business but yours.”

The Blairs had shared a look. It was Cynthia’s mother who voiced the thought. “I don’t guess it’s any of our business, either. Cindy didn’t seem to think so.”

THE MEAT IN THE MARINADE remained on the kitchen counter. An intrepid cockroach, having traveled from its favored nesting area within the electrical outlet behind the refrigerator, up the side of the cabinet and across the large open plain of the countertop, lay on its back in the marinade, its infinitesimal feet kicking uselessly, the armor of its skin no protection against the saturating juices. It would be dead by midnight.

The rain was falling steadily, a dim roar, a soft, ceaseless shoosh . Droplets bounced off the sill of Megan’s open window, hitting the side of the toaster oven in a fanlike splatter. Crumbs moved erratically in the growing puddle. A rumble of thunder, and the lights in the apartment flickered, then went off altogether, then flickered back on under a minute later. The clocks in the apartment-the clock radio in the kitchen and the bedside clock radio-kicked to their default, blinking 12:00…12:00…12:00…

OUT AT THE HUDSON PIER, Megan was sitting on one of the stone benches, hugging her knees to her chest. Rain dripped off the brim of her NYPD baseball cap onto the backs of her small hands. She was drenched, wearing only a windbreaker and her thick gray sweats, her feet bone-cold in a pair of saturated Converse low-tops. Her head was bent forward, and she was singing softly into the dry space. She hated the song. Insipid, stupid, ridiculous song. Devoid of all meaning, infantile, banal. Vaguely insulting, even. But the tune had her. She was helpless. It sucked the words out of her as if it were a parasite.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you…

IT HAD BEEN one of those rumors that go around. In the age of instant communication, it spread like a galloping virus.

Marshall Fox trolls the Internet.

The buzz was that, like millions of his fellow citizens, Marshall Fox liked to cloak his identity and go out there and talk dirty. Very dirty. Entire sites had cropped up devoted to alleged “sightings,” lists of anonymous e-mail addresses that may or may not have been those of the popular late-night celebrity. Exchanges between the “willing” and the “alleged” were posted. Some of the postings had the ring of, if not truth, at least possibility. They sounded like Marshall Fox. They employed his jokes, his manner of speaking, key phrases that were associated with him. Of course, anyone with the ability to type and talent for mimicry could handle that. Most people knew well enough that it was largely considered a game. A celebrity impersonation. Cyberchat with a cyber wax figure. Cybersex with a personable fraud.