Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

She paid for her pad thai, giving the delivery guy a good tip. On her way back up the steps, her toe caught a frayed pocket of the runner and she stumbled, almost falling to her knees. The blood rushed into her face. I’ll trip and fall down the steps and I’ll paralyze myself and I’ll sue that fat prick for every fucking cent he’s got.

While eating her noodles in the small kitchen, Megan went through the two sets of crime-scene photographs. She laid them out on the tiled floor, Cynthia Blair on the left, Nicole Rossman on the right. The photographs covered nearly the entire floor. Forensics had determined that Cynthia Blair’s attack had taken place essentially where the body had been discovered, on the west side of the Obelisk, the side facing away from the park roadway. Apparently, Nikki’s attack had taken place elsewhere and she was transported to the site, presumably dead already. Tests were being run on the tire tracks that had been lifted from the wet ground. Megan had sent a team of investigators moving out in widening arcs from the Egyptian monument in search of more evidence of Nikki or her attacker, but by nightfall nothing of consequence had turned up. The teams were going to resume work tomorrow. However, the farther from the Obelisk the teams moved, the less certain Megan was that they would be turning up anything. Still, even notwithstanding the lack of the actual murder site and any evidence that might be gleaned from it, it was significant that whoever had carried out the attack on Nikki had moved the body so that it would be found exactly where Cynthia Blair had been found. Significant of what , Megan didn’t yet know.

The photographs told her nothing she didn’t already know. One a choking with the victim’s own scarf, the other a bashed skull and a knife to the throat. Megan sat with her elbows planted on the kitchen table, scissoring the pad thai with the red lacquered chopsticks she had given Helen for some occasion she could no longer recall. Her eyes trolled back and forth along the sets of photographs. As she seared the photographs into her brain, Megan found value in trying to imagine the killer in the moment before he quit the scene. The crime-scene photographer had taken shots from nearly every angle. At least one of these angles had to approximate the view of the killer as he looked down on his handiwork. Megan rose from her chair and stood over the photographs, casting her own shadow on them.

I’m the killer, she thought. I’m taking one last look at what I’ve done.

She stepped carefully around the photographs of the two slain women, sampling the different angles. Clutching the chopsticks in her right fist, she assumed a sense of being heavier than she was. Taller. With her free hand, she pushed her hair off her face and held it there, clutching it tightly, using the hair to pull her head back, exposing her neck. She looked at a close-up of Nikki’s left hand. Two of her sculpted nails were broken off. Megan placed her own short fingernails against her neck and pressed. She imagined a heavy guttural breathing, sharp grunts as the knife worked its way from one side to the other. She lowered herself to her knees and stared at the open eyes of Nikki Rossman. Then it came to her. The utter loathing for the person who had done this, the person whose actions she was aping in the privacy of her small kitchen. Megan caught her breath. She placed the tips of the chopsticks against her abdomen and pressed them there. Softly at first but then harder. The chopsticks were pressing into her skin. They were hurting. Hurt him , she thought. Let him feel what it’s like. And not a quick slashing cut, either, but something slower and deliberate. Something meaningful. Her hand was beginning to tremble with the effort, and Megan closed her eyes, trying to picture the killer. Faceless. A face in shadow.

Suddenly, as if a fork of lightning had ripped through her imagination, a face did appear. The Swede. Of course. The goddamn Swede. The broad brow. The large dull mouth. Him . She pressed the chopsticks even harder as she imagined Albert Stenborg and his large, oafish smile. She wanted to see blood seeping its way out of the Swede’s mouth. She wanted to see his heavy blue eyes freeze in sudden bewilderment, followed by the awareness. Hands-on this time. Not from a distance. Not with a handgun. So much more meaningful this way. Megan imagined she could move as close to his face as she wished. Close enough to feel his foul breath. Close enough this time to see her own reflection in his eyes, and to see in them the last thing on earth the murderous bastard was ever going to see.

Her.

The chopsticks snapped. The broken ends fell lightly to the floor, landing on the photograph showing a close-up of Nikki Rossman’s hand. The one nailed into her heart. Megan opened her eyes and looked down at her own belly. A tiny pink strip. A quarter-inch cut. In the scheme of things, nothing. On her hands and knees, she gathered up the photographs of the two murder victims, squared off the pile and placed it reverently on the kitchen table. There was enough pad thai in the container for two people. Or for a second meal. Megan finished it off. She took a shower, got into her faded robe and took the photographs into the front room, where she spread them out again on the floor, this time in front of the couch. She poured herself a small glass of bourbon and got onto the couch.

At twelve-thirty, Megan tried getting into bed. She made certain to drink several full glasses of water before she got under the sheets. There was a slight buzzing in her temples. She picked up the remote and turned on the television. Ever since Cynthia Blair’s murder, Megan had made it a habit to watch Midnight with Marshall Fox . She had never been a particularly huge fan of Fox, which she knew put her in the minority. She found his show oddly uneven. This one was a rerun. Megan realized that this was what she had tuned in tonight to find out. Was Marshall Fox going to stand up and make jokes in front of the entire country on the day when another young woman had been found murdered in nearly identical circumstances as his former producer? Megan was glad to see that the answer was no.

Megan watched the rerun for about twenty minutes, then turned it off. She shut off the light, wondering if this would finally be the night. Praying it might. Immediately, Nikki Rossman and Cynthia Blair climbed into bed with her. Next came Brian McKinney. He was followed by Marshall Fox. Megan flipped the light back on. Not tonight, then, dammit.

She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, where she stared at her reflection for over a minute. After this many months, Megan hoped she’d have started to get accustomed to those eyes. But they were every bit as foreign to her as they were the first time she’d seen them, right after she killed the Swede. But maybe that was actually a good thing, she thought, the fact that she wasn’t acclimating to them. She didn’t like looking at them, but she felt she had no choice. She had to face them. They were the only real truth she knew these days, even if it was not a particularly pleasant truth. Helen was dead. Truth. Cold, hard truth. So was the Swede. But the one wasn’t making up for the other. Not like it was supposed to. The math was off. She had dispatched the Swede, but the pain was still there. If anything, it was still growing, not shrinking away into the past like it was supposed to do. And some nights it hurt so horrifically that Megan didn’t know what to do with it. Stay home, she told herself. This was all she knew, her single piece of advice to herself. It was no solution for the pain, but she did know it was the right thing to do. Those several months of crawling into the darkness after taking her leave of absence from the department had not been the solution, not by a long shot. They had hurt. They’d been dangerously harmful. She might have curled up and remained there in the dark places if not for Josh. Thank God for Josh.