Cold Blue Midnight Read online

  Ed Gorman

  Cold Blue Midnight

  ***

  In Indiana, the condemned die at midnight - men like Peter Tappley, a killer born to privilege and wealth, who lived in his mother's shadow and visited his hatred on trusting young women. Six years after his execution, his ex-wife Jill, a prominent Chicago photographer, is still trying to live down his crimes. But out there in the chilly autumn night, there is someone who still blames her for her husband's terrible deeds - someone determined to make her pay in blood. Enter Mitch Ayers, a homicide detective and former lover of Jill's, and Marcy Browne, a private eye. Both try to discover who is stalking Jill. What they find, though, may cost them their lives as well.

  ***

  From Booklist

  Jill Coffey's husband, Peter, was executed after a reign of terror as a deranged ax murderer. Six years later, Jill has a successful advertising career but remains concerned that Peter's mother, Evelyn, holds her responsible for Peter's madness. Then she notices a blue Volvo trailing her and soon finds herself charged with the brutal murder of her former partner. And, as one might expect, there's someone out there with an ax getting closer and closer to Jill. Gorman is one of our best and most underappreciated thriller writers, but here it seems he's settled for a standard psycho-killer slasher epic. It's very good psycho-killer fare-Gorman could rewrite a software manual and hold our interest-but it's mediocre Gorman. Buy sparingly for the devoted few.

  ***

  From Kirkus Reviews

  Six years after her son Peter Tappley was executed for stalking, raping, and killing three women, his imperious mother Evelyn is determined to punish the person she thinks responsible-Peter's wife, Chicago photographer Jill Coffey, whose dedication to her career 'made' Peter go berserk. She's hired a pair of hit men to frame Jill for the murder of her lecherous ex-partner, adman Eric Brooks. Now which of the four complications-(1) Marcy Browne, the p.i. Jill's got on the case; (2) a lovers' spat between the two hit men; (3) Cini Powell, Eric's latest conquest, who saw the killer at Eric's office; or (4) Peter's sister Doris, who's doped out Evelyn's nefarious plot-will save Jill from her fate? Prolific veteran Gorman (Hawk Moon, p. 563, etc.) has churned out a wonderfully pulpish, greased-lightning homage to Robert Bloch that you can start just before bedtime confident that you'll still finish in plenty of time for a good night's sleep.

  ***

  "A wonderfully pulpish, greased-lightning homage to Robert Bloch."

  -Kirkus Reviews

  ***

  "A darkly humorous Hitchcockian journey, flawlessly conceived and stylishly written."

  -The Mystery and Thriller Guild

  ***

  "In this pacy, polished novel nothing is as it seems… A riveting read written with insight and skill."

  -Manchester Evening News

  ***

  "All the cliches of reviewing come true. You will not be able to put his books down. You will keep turning the pages. You will jump at sudden noises. Gorman's going to be seriously big in a Dean Koontz, Thomas Harris manner. Ed Gorman's coming to get you!"

  -Crime Line

  ***

  PROLOGUE

  A sunny day in May, 1954. Nothing especially noteworthynot at the moment, anyway. But watch. Listen. Because what happens in the next hour or so will leave people talking for long years afterward…

  ***

  Evelyn Daye Tappley was just about the best mother of her generation. At least, that's the impression you got if you talked to any of her Junior League friends. If poor seven-month-old David had so much as a sniffle, Evelyn would cancel all her social engagements, even those including any senators or governors her well-connected husband might have invited to the mansion that night. And as for know-how about raising her one and only child… Evelyn could quote you chapter and verse from Dr Benjamin Spock's bestseller, Baby and Child Care.

  Wealthy as her background washer Ohio family made one of the early fortunes in steel, just about the time Mrs Woodrow Wilson was secretly taking over the White HouseEvelyn had seen both her younger brother and sister die from influenza in the terrible epidemic of 1931. She was not about to let a similar fate befall her own child.

  On that sunny day in 1954 Evelyn hired two extra workmen to help her seed and plant her half-acre garden on the eastern sweep of the grounds. She left David in the capable care of his nanny, a stout Irishwoman named Margaret Connally. Margaret had been David's nanny since he was brought home from the hospital. Of all the threats to young David, Margaret was perhaps most afraid of kidnappers. No wealthy person in the United States had ever forgotten the sad fate of the Lindbergh baby… But thus far in his life, the only thing young David had had to contend with was a predisposition to diaper rash, which often left him irritable late at night after he'd soaked himself while sleeping.

  The morning of 5 May went just fine…

  Early in the afternoon, Margaret Connally decided to bring The Little One, as she inevitably referred to him, outside to enjoy the sun. She herself would sit several feet away in a rocking chair enjoying lemonade and a few pages of the new Agatha Christie paperback she was reading. Evelyn approved of this. Margaret deserved a midday break, and this way she could relax while still keeping an eye on David in his playpen.

  Scamper the tabby kitten swatted at the netting of the playpen as David sat in his sailor suit, playing with a gray rubber mouse that squeaked when he pressed it between thumb and forefinger. Scamper always resented being kept outside the playpen.

  After her afternoon Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be (her Dublin mother having taught her to pray hard even when things were going well; that way God would be even more kindly when things suddenly went badly), Margaret then settled into The Body in the Library. She was pleased to find that this was set in a small English village, village mysteries being her favorite kind.

  At the same time Margaret began reading, another creature, unseen at this moment, entered the grounds. It had spent the morning in the rocky wooded slopes to the west of the estate. At dawn it had sated itself with a fieldmouse. It was not hungry now, it was merely exploring. The heavy rains of the past few weeks had caused many animals to seek lower lands.

  The afternoon wore on…

  Margaret was very much intrigued with her new Agatha Christie. It was perhaps the best Miss Marple story she'd ever read, especially the daring (for Christie) portrait of the immoral dance-hall girl, for whom Margaret felt great pity.

  Scamper hissed and cried as soon as he saw the timber rattler that had eased itself through the netting of the playpen on the far side.

  The snake, coiled directly in front of David now, was the color of urine, with dark blotches over its scaly, glistening skin.

  That was when, having belatedly recognized Scamper's cry Margaret looked up from her book and saw the serpent in the playpen just as it uncoiled and lashed out at The Little One, its fangs striking him in the chest.

  Margaret screamed

  Evelyn had just started working on her tomato plants when she heard the scream. She had no doubt what it signifiedthat something horrible had happened to David.

  Years later she would remember the expression on the face of the workman who swung around to look at her. The scream seemed to have chilled him deeply. He appeared to be paralyzed.

  Evelyn took off running.

  She saw all this in the next few moments: Margaret hurling her paperback at a huge slithering rattlesnake that was hurrying to escape the playpen

  David falling over on his face, sobbing

  Scamper jumping up perhaps half a foot in the air as the frantic timber rattler hurried past him

  Then Evelyn was reaching into the playpen and lifting her wailing infant into her arms.

  And then she
was running for the house as a gray-uniformed maid appeared in the back door.

  'Call an ambulance! Hurry! Hurry!' Evelyn shrieked.

  ***

  It was one of those ironies that only the darkest gods in the universe could take any pleasure in.

  The ambulance arrived within minutes. The passage to the closest hospital was untroubled. One of the doctors on hand knew, from his Army training at Fort Hood in Texas, exactly how to treat young David.

  The injection was given.

  The Little One, calmed now, seemed fine. He was put in a private room, assigned round-the-clock nurses.

  The doctor, pleased with himself and rightly so, smiled a great deal and invited Evelyn and her husband down to the cafeteria for some coffee. The importance of the Tappley family was not lost on him.

  They were three steps from the cafeteria when the doctor's name was called, in a rather frantic way, over the public-address system.

  He took off at a trot back the way he'd come.

  The Tappleys were only a few steps behind him.

  The doctor was joined by two others and they worked without pause for the next hour and a half.

  Uselessly.

  David had survived the snakebite itself just fine. But he was one of those rare humans to have a violentand in his case, fatalreaction to the vaccine…

  ***

  STATEMENT:

  OF PETER TAPPLEY

  By the Tuesday of that week I was in pretty bad shape. I didn't even go home. I just kept thinking about the previous Friday night, wondering what had happened exactly. If anything had.

  I looked through the ads and found a place in a tranquil old Chicago neighborhood called Edgebrook. It reminded me of how my mother always described her upbringing, where you had a backyard that met a wooded area filled with wildlife. But in Edgebrook you didn't need to be rich. I took a small apartment on a three-month lease, which the landlady was adamant about. 'I run a respectable apartment house,' she said. 'Not a motel.'

  I was still counting the hours it had been since I'd taken a drink. A hundred and four. The crying jags were pretty had by now, as were the shakes. But I wasn't hallucinating, which was a very good sign. No delirium tremens. I ran a low-grade fever and had severe headaches. I was having prostate pain, too, a lot of it sometimes, as if somebody were jabbing me with an ice-pick every few minutes. Sometimes emptying it helped. But I couldn't get an erection. That was a sure sign of the panic state I was in.

  Late in the afternoon, as I lay on my bed looking out the window, I saw a fawn come to the edge of the woods. She was so thin and frail and spindly of gait that I wanted to run out and pick her up the way you would an infant. And then disappear into the woods with her. She would teach me the ways of the shadowy forest, and there I would live for ever, not quite man, not quite beast, and then Friday night would not matter to me anymore.

  I stayed three days in the room without eating. Mostly I sweated and slept. On the second day I was able to masturbate but the prostate relief was only temporary. There wasn't even any pleasure in it. Sex was not something I cared to think about at the moment.

  I'm not sure when the idea came to me. But I knew right away that it was the only idea that could get me out of my predicament.

  In those days, 1979, back before the police were as strict about handguns as they would later become, finding a pawnshop willing to sell you a weapon on the spot was not very difficult. I went down to Maxwell Street, that little hymn to the Third World that the good citizens of Chicago never care to acknowledge, an open-air market of scabrous disease and harsh and myriad foreign languages, and the quick sad cunning of people who live out their lives utterly without joy. I found a gun inside of twenty minutesa.221 Remington Fireball, a weapon far more powerful than I needed.

  I went through the phone book looking for delivery services: there was one just a few miles away. I drove over, parked two blocks past the large cinderblock warehouse, then walked back. The place was laid out simply enougha small office up front, a huge receiving and dispatching facility in back, with perhaps half a dozen bays for truck repair. This was 8:30 in the morning. Some drivers were just getting started for the day. I walked to a far door and then hurried inside and over to a truck that had just been loaded. I stayed in the deep morning shadows, looking around to see if anybody in the big echoing warehouse had seen me. Apparently not. I snuck aboard the truck and hid in the back.

  Fifteen minutes later, the truck driver climbed in, heavy enough that the truck tilted to the right when he did.

  I let him get a couple of miles from the warehouse and stop at a light before I hit him. I got him with the butt of the Remington right on the crown of the head. He slumped over immediately. He hadn't seen me at all. I dragged him into the back of the truck and hit him again to make sure he stayed out. I took his place in the seat and drove to an alley four blocks away. I went in the back and bound, gagged and blindfolded him with stuff I'd brought along. He was still out. I took his uniform off and put it on. The sleeves were too long so I rolled them up. Same with the trouser legs. I then drove back to Maxwell Street where I bought a large steamer trunk with a sticker that said WORLD'S FAIR 1939. The interior of the trunk smelled like 1939, too.

  The address I wanted was over in Montclare. By now it was raining, which would be helpful. A guy in a service uniform was anonymous enough; a guy in a service uniform in the rain was virtually invisible. Nobody would pay any attention.

  I was still hoping that nothing had happened, that it was all just panic and fantasy.

  By the time I pulled up behind the two-story white apartment building, the truck driver had come awake and started muttering beneath his tape. I went back and hit him once more and once more he was blessedly silent.

  I opened the rear doors of the truck and took down a dolly. Then I reached up and pulled down the steamer trunk, using the dolly to transport it inside the building and up the dusty carpeted stairs to apartment 6B. The hall smelled of cigarette smoke and long-dead sunlighta scent that had traveled millions and millions of miles.

  I knocked and there was no answer but then I hadn't really been expecting any.

  I snugged my leather gloves even tighter and then went to work with two of the picks a felonious friend of mine had once given me to hold as collateral on a two-hundred-dollar loan. The picks never failed me, but the friend had: I never saw him again. Within thirty seconds I was opening the door and pushing dolly and trunk inside.

  There is something almost sexually intimate about being in somebody's residence when you're not supposed to. You are walking around in the echoes of their secrets, the thingsbeliefs, desires, longingsthey whisper only to themselves, that nobody else will ever know.

  For a long and almost giddy time, I sensed that the apartment was empty and that I had therefore been worried about nothing.

  No, I hadn't actually come back from a tavern with a woman and then, just as we were making love, cut her throat. No, it had all been a terrible nightmare. Yes, I'd been here but I'd gone home and nothing bad had happened. She hadn't answered her phone in the following days simply because she'd been called out of town. Simple explanation. Sane and Simple. Unlike the shadowy fantasies of my imagination.

  I followed the smell to the bedroom, the odor redolent of the sickly-sweet smell of pigpens on the hot summer days when we used to visit my uncle's farm.

  She was sprawled naked across the bed. There was red from her blood and yellow from her urine and brown from her feces on the otherwise white chenille spread. Her skin was the blue of deep and abiding bruises, and a curious buff-blue film covered the whites of her brown eyes. Her legs were spread and her sex looked lonely and vulnerable, exposed that way. Blood had sprayed across the white wall behind her.

  Getting her in the trunk took twenty-five minutes and in order to do it, to fit her inside properly, I had to break both of her arms and one of her legs. Thunder rumbled across the gray mid-morning sky as I worked, and rain slid down the dusty wi
ndows, sealing me into a melancholy I didn't need.

  When I was all finished, when I'd made certain that every inch of the trunk's exterior was clean of her fluids, I hefted it onto the dolly and exited the apartment, locking the door behind me. Then I took the trunk down to the truck. I had to give our friend the driver another slam across the back of the head. He was going to have one terrible headache later on.

  There was a point on the river, twenty miles to the east, where a stand of second-growth trees gave a man some protection from curious eyes.

  I got her to the river's edge, the chill filthy water lapping as far up as my knees, and then I took hold of the trunk-handle and dragged her as far out as I could, careful not to step off into some unseen hole on the murky bottom and drown.

  The current was fast. The water was murky all the way down. In moments, the trunk sank without trace. Perfect.

  I drove the truck back to the city, dressed the driver in his clothes once more then left him in the blind and empty alley. Probably wouldn't be found for awhile.

  Back in my room, I slept for the next two days. I awoke feeling pretty good. I took a long and steamy shower, put on fresh clothes, packed up all my stuff into the leather briefcase I carried, and left the key behind on the dresser along with a note that said: I've decided to patch things up with my wife. I've enjoyed my stay here. Thank you.

  Everybody likes a happy ending, even crabby landladies.

  ***

  There was going to be an execution and it was going to be a good one. The prisoner was rich, handsome and only thirty-two years old. You couldn't ask for more excitement than that.

  The morning of the execution, a long, expensive mobile van pulled up to the prison gates. It was a gray and rainy day.