Cold Blue Midnight Read online

  The gates swung open but the van remained still.

  Two armed guards in black rain ponchos appeared and began walking around the van, checking every inch of it. Finished with the exterior, one of the guards knocked on the side door and went inside. He reappeared five minutes later. Presumably, he had checked the inside as assiduously as he had checked the outside.

  More than one hundred reporters watched the guards do their job, though exactly what that job was, the reporters didn't understand.

  To whom did the van belong?

  What were the guards looking for?

  Would the van ultimately be allowed inside the high gray walls of the institution?

  The last question was answered soon. The guards, apparently satisfied that the van was not carrying any kind of contraband, waved it inward. The gates closed immediately. All this was overseen by two other poncho-clad guards toting shotguns.

  The reporters went back to their own vans and trucks and cars to wait out the rest of the long day.

  Only the protestors were dutiful. They had been marching with their picket signs since just after dawn.

  ONLY GOD SHOULD TAKE A LIFE

  - was typical of the placards they carried. For some reason, all the protestors, at least half of whom were clergy of one kind or another, were fat. And that gave them a certain pathetic, almost comic look as they strode up and down the parking lot adjacent to the institution in their dark, bulky rainclothes. They looked like a species of animal that had been neither clever enough nor strong enough to survive.

  The printing on their placards began to run with rainwater. One of them read:

  ONL G D CA JUDG A SOUL

  Many of the reporters had taken to betting. A thirty-two-year-old rich boy like Peter Emerson Tappley was probably going to get a reprieve. True, all the lower courts had ruled against Tappley. And true, the Supreme Court had decided just this morning not to grant a stay. But Governor Edmondseven given the tight race he was in against a very tough law-and-order candidateowed the Tappley family a lot. Some said he even owed them the Governor's mansion. So the bets were that he'd draw it out as long as possible and then say, at the very last moment, that he'd wrestled with his soul (the Governor actually said things like that) and concluded that there was enough evidence to grant a stay.

  Maybe Peter Emerson Tappley really hadn't raped and cut up those three women seven years ago.

  An hour after the van entered the prison grounds, a pool was started. People bet on various times that the Governor would order the stay.

  The ritual for execution was unvarying, even for a prominent inmate like Peter Tappley. He was given the breakfast of his choice (oatmeal and wheat toast with strawberry jam and a large glass of orange juice and two cups of coffee) served to him in the privacy of his death row cell.

  Then he was moved down the hall to a special visiting room where he began receiving a succession of guests, all emerging from the expensive van that belonged to his mother.

  First came his sister Doris, who spent half an hour with him; and then his beloved mother. White-haired, handsome and matriarchal as ever, Evelyn Daye Tappley spent three hours alone with her son. She even shared a few bites of the club steak he was brought for his lunch. It was quite good, actually.

  In the afternoon, Doris came back, joining her mother and brother. There was a great deal of tension, as one might expect, but there were more than a few smiles and laughs as they all remembered long-ago days when (or so it seemed) the sun had always beamed, the sky was a beautiful cornflower blue, and life was filled with puppy dogs and croquet games on the lawn and dips in the family pool. Tears merged with laughter, and Evelyn and Doris seemed to be constantly hugging Peter.

  All this stopped at 3:07 p.m., when Jill Coffey was let into the room by a guard.

  Jill, dark-haired, blue-eyed, pretty in a casual and freckled way, was Peter's wife. Or had been up until the divorce two years ago, just at the time Peter began exhausting the last rounds of his appeals.

  The Tappley family ceased talking.

  They all stared at Jill.

  'It wasn't necessary for you to be here,' Evelyn said.

  'I wanted to be,' Jill told her.

  She knew how much they despised her, and always had. For one thing, while her father had been a prominent banker in a small downstate Illinois town, Jill had hardly been the social equal of the Tappley family. For another, she had not hesitated to tell Peter how much she disapproved of his family.

  'I don't want you here,' Evelyn said.

  'Mother,' Doris said, embarrassed. 'She has a right to be here if she wants to be.'

  Jill had always felt that Doris was her secret friend. Doris could never be demonstrative about this because her mother would get angry, but during the roughest spots in Jill's marriage, Doris had always been there to comfort her. Jill and Peter had lived in the family mansion ninety miles due west of Chicago. Doris was an inmate in the same prison. She still lived there, though her nervous little husband had moved out long ago.

  Evelyn was too angry to control herself. 'If she'd been a decent wife to my son, he wouldn't be here today. I blame that damned job of hers'

  Doris blushed, her angular but pretty face touched by tiny red spots on her cheeks. Even for Evelyn, this was an irrational outburst. Both Peter and Doris had fought Jill's determination to keep taking photography assignments in

  Chicago. To satisfy themEvelyn felt that a woman who worked was unseemly, overlooking the fact that she herself commanded an empire, and frequently put in twelve-hour days six days a weekJill had quit for nearly a year but she missed the work too much to stay away from it any longer. And as soon as she'd started taking assignments again, driving in from the mansion to Chicago a few days a week, her marriage had gone into a steep decline. Peter had been so threatened by her job that he became impotent.

  And apparently, about the same time, he also began stalking and murdering women.

  'I don't want you here,' Evelyn hissed. 'You wait out in the hall till Doris and I are finished.'

  Jill looked at Peter and Doris. As usual, they were clearly intimidated by their mother.

  Peter especially seemed resentful of Evelyn. But he nodded quietly, a somewhat frail man now, the old handsomeness gaunted out of him, in a prison uniform as gray and cold as the rainy sky outside.

  'I'll be back,' Jill said to Peter.

  She waited forty-five minutes in the hall. A guard brought her bitter black coffee. The assistant warden showed up once and asked her if she wouldn't be more comfortable in the lounge. She thanked him but said no.

  The prison was an echo chamber of hard harsh noises, gates slamming shut, prisoners shouting at each other, footsteps marching down vast hollow corridors. In some ways, the noises frightened Jill as much as the walls themselves, as much as the armed guards in the towers. In prison, there would be no true silence in which to think and be alone. Ever.

  ***

  Evelyn made a point of ignoring Jill as the assistant warden led the two women from the visiting room.

  A guard took Jill in, shutting the door behind her.

  Peter stood at a barred window, staring out.

  'It's a good day for it, anyway,' he said, turning back to her and smiling. 'I mean, I'd be really pissed off if the sun was shining and everybody was outdoors having a good time. If I have to suffer, they should suffer, too.'

  She said nothing. Just watched him.

  The room was small. Dusty. It contained an overstuffed couch and two overstuffed chairs. Two empty Diet Coca-Cola cans sat on the floor next to the couch. The floor had been waxed, but more than anything the room smelled of strong disinfectant. She was sure this would be the dominant smell of the prison.

  'Any particular reason you came to see me?' Peter enquired, his grin making him suddenly handsome again. She remembered what it had been like to be in love with him. He'd been a lot of fun, he really had. God, she'd loved him so deeply and truly it had been almost painful. And it
had certainly been scary. Neither before nor since, had she been able to give herself to a man with such abandon. 'You didn't bring me a cake with a file in it or anything, did you?' he went on.

  She smiled. 'Afraid not.'

  His grin faded. 'Evelyn still thinks there's going to be a reprieve.'

  He'd always called her Evelyn as a way of proving to himself that he had some distance on her.

  'But there isn't,' he said. 'The public likes the idea that a rich guy is going to get fried. They think it proves that this is a democratic country, after all.' The smile again, sad this time. 'What a way to prove it, huh?'

  He hadn't mentioned the women he'd killed. He never did. That was how she'd known, in the days following the police first coming to the mansion and questioning him, that he was a sociopath. He felt no guilt for what he'd done, merely a kind of ironic anger that he'd been caught. Ted Bundy had been very much like that.

  'Why have you come, Jill?'

  She'd known he would ask this. She wished she had an answer. 'Oh, I suppose because we were in love once, and had such high fine dreams together for our future, and because you'll always be a part of meeven after everything that happened.'

  'The women, you mean?'

  She nodded. Could he just once say how sorry he was for what he'd done?

  He said, 'You know, I never would've killed them if you hadn't gone back to work.'

  She waited for the grin. He had always been good at mocking his mother. Wasn't he mocking her now, her absurd notion of somehow blaming Jill for the murders?

  'You went bitch on me, Jill. Just like a woman.'

  They were standing barely inches apart. He took his finger and jabbed it angrily at her breastbone. 'You had to have a job. Had to get back into the Chicago thing. How many of those guys were you screwing on the side, anyway?'

  She didn't know what to say. But that was all right, because he wasn't done.

  His face was a mask of rage, of dark frantic eyes that bulged, of lips frothy with spittle, of cheeks flushed with crimson.

  'When I was cutting those women up, I was thinking of you, Jill. I really was.'

  The grin again, but this time she saw the insanity in it.

  She started backing toward the door.

  Preparing herself to call out for the guard in case he wasn't looking through the observation window.

  'I could've saved myself a lot of hassle, couldn't I? I should've just killed you. You were the one I wanted: you and all the guys in Chicago you used to shack up with.'

  She'd always known he was jealous. But not like this.

  He sprang.

  She was shocked by both his speed and strength as his hands took her throat and he slammed her back into the wall.

  She had time for a single, muffled scream.

  He went to serious work on her. She could feel the anger increasing in his iron hands and fingers.

  And then the door was bursting open.

  And two guards were grabbing him.

  And tearing him away from her.

  And one guard was bringing his wooden baton down hard across the back of Peter's skull.

  And another guard was leading her, dazed and shocked and terrified, from the room to the assistant warden's office around the corner.

  ***

  She didn't see Evelyn or Doris again that day.

  After a long, rambling and apologetic speech from the assistant warden, she was taken out the back way, put into the rear of a panel truck so the press couldn't see her, and driven back to her motel.

  There was a bar adjacent to the motel. Though she was not especially fond of alcohol, she had two very stiff drinks of whisky and then went back to her room, taking a turkey sandwich and a small bag of potato chips with her.

  Without quite knowing why, she spent several minutes checking the locks on the doors and windows.

  She had this image of Peter. She'd never known how much he hated her, how much he'd wanted to kill her.

  But checking the locks…

  Did she think he was going to somehow escape prison tonight and come kill her?

  She took a long, hot, relaxing shower.

  When she was toweled dry and ensconced in her favorite pink cotton pajamasshe had never forgotten her sweet mother's advice that dark-haired girls always looked good in pinkshe slid between the covers, clicking on the TV remote as she did so.

  She hoped there was some kind of mindless comedy on tonight. She needed that kind of escape.

  She wished she'd never come up here now.

  She wished she'd never seen Peter as she'd seen him just a few hours ago.

  This was how she'd remember him. For ever.

  The motel didn't have cable, just the three networkswhich meant that she didn't have much choice as to programing.

  She ate her sandwich and half the chips, and occupied herself with a rerun of a wooden romantic comedy.

  But at least no women were being ripped apart in it.

  At least no sociopath's face was filling the screen as he screamed the word 'bitch' over and over again.

  She drifted in and out of sleep several times.

  Thunder woke her.

  Thunder had always scared her. As a child, she'd seen a Disney movie in which a little girl was lost in a vast and terrifying forest. Thunder and lightning had stalked the girl like the wrath of a dark and disapproving god.

  A moment of disorientation: a motel room that still managed to look like 1958 right down to the pressed-wood blond furnishings.

  Where was she?

  Who was she?

  Peter's face. Shrieking at her.

  His hands. On her throat.

  Guards racing in

  Homely, familiar images now: the potato-chip sack on the night-table next to her; her rain-speckled tan suede car coat hung to dry over the back of the desk chair; a bit of brown paper bag sticking up from the small waste-can to the left of the front door.

  Her eyes moved to the dark TV. She needed some human contact, even if it was secondhand.

  She found the remote and thumbed it to ON.

  A newsman standing in front of the prison. Night. Rain. The reporter huddled beneath his umbrella, speaking into the microphone in his right hand. He wore a trench coat and looked suitably grim, especially under the stark TV lights.

  'Unless there's a last-minute reprieve, Bev, the execution is scheduled to take place just about one hour from now. At midnight.'

  An off-camera voice: 'Michael, why don't you tell our viewers how a prisoner is prepared for execution?'

  The reporter nodded. 'Well, there really isn't anything remarkable about it, Bev. Most of the day, the prisoner spends with his loved ones. Then, after they're escorted out, the chaplain comes in and remains for some time with the prisoner. And then the prisoner is showered and shaved for the execution.'

  'I'm not sure what ''shaved" means in this context, Michael.'

  'Well, execution by electrocution means that electricity is conveyed into the body at specific points. They shave an area on the prisoner's left knee, so the electrode will fit nice and tight, and then they shave a five-inch circle on the crown of his head so the metal cap will fit. By the way, he's given special trousers with the left seam cut from cuff to knee so they can place the electrode with no problem.'

  'Then he's ready to be executed?'

  'Just about. They take him to the execution chamber and sit him in the chair and get him ready and then the assistant warden comes in and reads the prisoner the death warrant. And then the assistant warden makes a final call to the Attorney General to see if there's been a last-minute reprieve of any kind. And if not… Well, if not, Bev, the prisoner receives approximately two thousand seven hundred volts AC and five amperes of electrical currentand he usually dies within a few minutes.'

  'Usually but not always?'

  'Well, there was a case last year in New York where the electrodes weren't fitted snugly and it took the prisoner more than twelve minutes to dieand he was cry
ing out for help all the time. I'm told it was a pretty grisly'

  'Hold on, Michael. They're telling me something in my ear.'

  The camera held on the trench-coated reporter. You could hear the protestors chanting off-camera.

  Then: 'Michael, we've just been informed that the Governor's officeand this is official as of 11:07 p.m.will not (repeat: will not) issue a stay of execution. So Peter Emerson Tappley will be put to death in the electric chair tonight in, according to the studio clock, just fifty-three minutes.'

  Jill thumbed off the TV.

  Sat there unmoving in her frivolous pink pajamas in this ancient, worn motel room that smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew, and whispered of loneliness and adultery.

  Soon now, it would be over, the life of the man she'd once loved so much but hadn't really known at all.

  Not a word of remorse for what he'd done: that's what bothered her most.

  Not a single word of remorse.

  She went to the bathroom.

  When she came back, she found a Honeymooners rerun and made a singular effort not to look at her little portable alarm clock.

  She didn't want to know.

  She didn't want to mark his passing.

  Ralph Kramden said, 'Honey, you're the greatest!' just as she heard somebody on the rainy drive outside let out a cowboy yelp. 'Yahoo! Fry, sucker, fry!' She hadn't wanted to stay in this rundown place but it was the only accommodation she could find. All the decent motels had been commandeered by the press.

  'Yahoo!' somebody else shouted.

  They were celebrating.

  They sounded drunk, and absolutely delighted.

  The Boogeyman was dead.

  ***

  She did not sleep well, waking several times to the eerie shifting shadows, and the eerie shifting silence, of this battered old room.

  She rose early, packed and checked out.

  Just as she turned away from the registration desk, the desk clerk said, 'Oh, I forgot. Somebody dropped this off for you.'

  A fancy buff-blue envelope. She recognized the author at once. Evelyn Tappley.