Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  He staggered into her room. He dropped to the blood-soaked bed and picked up the phone. He would call the police, but first he'd call his friend Wagner and see what was going on.

  A gruff male voice said, "Sergeant Peterson. Homicide."

  "Homicide?" Brolan said. "What the hell's going on there?"

  The voice grew kinder. "Why don't I let you talk to Mr. Wagner?"

  Then Greg came on. Brolan could tell right away that the man was trying to keep from crying.

  "Are you all right?" Brolan said, terrified of the news he was about to receive.

  "I am," Wagner said. "But I'm afraid Denise isn't." Then it wasn't so easy for Wagner to hold his tears. Then it wasn't so easy at all.

  EPILOGUE

  SIX DAYS LATER the funeral was held on the downslope side of a small cemetery eighty miles outside St. Louis. The morning was sunny and brilliant because of the newly fallen snow. Two huge black stone archangels, both more than a hundred years old, sat on either side of the iron entrance gates observing the human drama below them.

  In movies and books graveside attendees always wear black. But not there. This was farming country, and not prosperous farming country at that. So, clothes ran all colours in the morning light, from the worn red of a once-elegant dress coat on the back of a frayed farm woman to the lime-green of a blast jacket on the shoulders of a teenager who looked not only cold but bored. Even the minister, a hawkish-looking bald man, wore a blue trench coat over his ministerial garb.

  Brolan stood next to Greg Wagner, who sat in his wheelchair, a blanket across his legs. The prayers had been said, and the minister was saying the last of his goodbyes. Off to the left two burly workers stood next to a tree, waiting to put the body into the wide, wintry hole they'd dug the day before. Their breath made silver plumes in the gold sunlight.

  Somewhere a woman sobbed.

  Brolan put his hand on Wagner's shoulder.

  "Let us remember her as she was before she left us," the minister admonished. Then he glanced up at the brown

  Oldsmobile that had brought her there. "Let us pray for her soul."

  The minister, followed by the twenty or so other mourners, left. Only Brolan and Wagner stayed behind.

  Wind came, scattering silver snow beads. Near the top of the hill a fawn stood watching the two men, graceful and supple against the white hills and the cloudless blue sky.

  Wagner stared into the empty hole of the grave. "I'm never going to be the same, Brolan."

  "I know."

  "She was some goddamned kid."

  "She sure was."

  Wagner started crying. "I don't have anybody," he said. "And I'm going to miss the hell out of her."

  Brolan put his hands on the wheelchair handles and started pushing Wagner through the snow to where Brolan's car sat on the winding gravel drive.

  At the car, after Brolan had helped him inside and folded up the chair and made him comfortable on the front seat, Wagner said, "Think you'll ever come over and see me, Brolan?"

  Brolan didn't answer. He closed Wagner's door and then went around the car and got in behind the wheel. The car had just had a tune-up. It started almost silently. He drove them out of the cemetery.

  "I don't think I probably will come to see you," Brolan said as they reached the two-lane highway and started driving past farms huddling against distant hills. "You've got rotten taste in movies."

  "What?" Wagner said, startled by Brolan's light tone.

  "You like the early Charlie Chans. I like the ones that were done at Monogram."

  "Monogram? You're crazy, Brolan. Did I ever tell you that?" And just for a moment Brolan didn't answer. Wagner saw why. Something had caught in Brolan's throat, and he had a hard time swallowing, and something silver appeared in the corners of his eyes. Wagner had been wondering if Brolan was ever going to show that he, too, mourned Denise. Now Wagner had his answer.

  "That's what I mean," Brolan said, clearing his throat at last. "Why the hell would I want to hang around with somebody who doesn't appreciate Monogram movies?"

  Something like a laugh rumbled through Wagner's chest as he looked out on the vast white mid-western landscape and saw a ghost image of a pretty little girl doomed to run away to the city and die.

  Brolan said no more then. They drove for many miles in silence, up and down the rolling white mid-western hills. Wagner thought of Denise. God, how he thought of Denise.