Edward Gorman
Murder Straight Up
To my parents
for their patience,
wisdom, and love
A special acknowledgment
to Dow Mossman, who
did not know he was helping.
Mention should be made of
some very good newspeople: Dave
Shay, the Dean of Iowa newscasters;
John Campbell, Iowas best sportswriter;
and Christine Craft, journalist.
1
The flashlight went dead with no warning. No fading to dim yellow. No sputtering. Just dead.
At the moment, I was somewhere on the second floor of KRLD-TV, Channel 3, standing inside an overly starched gray uniform that bore the insignia FEDERATED SECURITY on the right bicep, and the male equivalent of “sensible” shoes, big ugly brown mothers with thick squeaky rubber soles. I’m on my feet a lot.
My first reaction to any piece of gear that won’t work is to subject it to threats and ridicule. You know the routine. Shake/kick/stomp it, all the while swearing at it, until it gets so embarrassed that it starts working again. I once had a Muntz TV that this number worked very well with. Other than that, my method has been singularly lacking in success.
It was dark as hell up here, and while it wasn’t horror-movie spooky by any means, it was uncomfortable even for a thirty-eight-year-old ex-cop and now security man like myself.
For one thing, the flashlight had elected to cop out in the middle of a group of cubicles that were a long way from any windows. The second floor is the executive level, which means it had closed down for the day three hours ago.
Which meant it was only slightly darker in here than in Richard Nixon’s mind.
In addition to being a security man, I am also an actor. True fact. To prove it, I can show you cards from both AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and SAG (Screen Actors Guild). I’ve been in more than two dozen commercials (three of which have been on network) and innumerable dinner-theater productions, and can be glimpsed in a Paul Newman movie playing a priest. Yes.
I mention this here because one of the dinner-theater productions I’d done was Wait Until Dark, the play about the blind woman stalked by killers. One thing I hadn’t liked about the actress was that she overdid the blind bit — you know, banging into furniture as if she were playing bumper cars with it.
But tonight was making me change my mind. She hadn’t exaggerated, at least not by much.
If you’d been an observer standing to the side and watching me try to grope my way to light, you would have heard a succession of minor crashes and a steady litany of obscenities, the American male’s preferred way of dealing with virtually any crisis.
Finally, my knees sore from hitting desks, my hands twitching like the antennae on a berserk ant, I stumbled out into the hallway and over to a window that was haloed with foggy golden streetlight from below.
The fog made the light eerie enough to make me feel lost on a different plane of existence. Real “Twilight Zone.” Only the persistent squeak of my shoes kept reminding me of who and what I was.
The rest was easy. I just followed the path of windows leading to the wide staircase that swept downstairs to the lobby and the brightly lit, bustling news department of Channel 3.
Or at least that was my intention.
When I got halfway to the stairs, my eyes at last adjusting to the shadow shapes that moved in the foggy light, I heard something that froze me.
In police school you are warned over and over about dark places — about going into them unprepared. Your weapon and your flashlight, you are told, are the most important things you possess at this moment. Well, we already know about my flashlight. So, for reassurance, my hand touched the formidable handle of my Smith & Wesson. The only thing moving was the sweat draining from my forehead down my face and from my armpits down my side.
Somebody, no doubt about it, had scraped something against an uncarpeted section of flooring somewhere to my right.
My mind registered all sorts of unnecessary information: the smells of floor wax, cleaning solvent, dust; the sounds of electricity thrumming in the walls, of tires whishing over rainy pavement on the street below; the play of shadows deep in the staircase.
After thumbing free the catch on my holster, I drew my weapon in a single easy gesture and turned back to the origin of the sound.
Suddenly I became aware of the desperate noise my heart was making, trapped in the cage of my chest. Goddamn, only a year off the force and I was as nervous as a rookie covering his first prowler squawk.
I was taking some deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, when the intruder made his move. He was a brief silhouette against the golden fog of window. Then he was into the shadows, running.
“Stop!” I yelled.
My command didn’t have any effect. He kept running, shoes slapping the hallway, deeper and deeper into the darkness at the rear of the building.
Now my fear was gone. I was too busy to worry about being afraid.
“Stop!” I shouted again.
The slap-slap of his shoes. He led me down a corridor, around a corner, down another corridor, around yet another corner.
Finally I had to slump against the wall, catch my breath. For long moments I could hear only my breathing. Big wet gasps of it in my ears.
And then I heard his breathing, too.
Somewhere ahead in the gloom.
But he wasn’t just panting, as I was. There were sobs intermixed.
“Goddammit,” he said. “Goddammit.”
It was the first time I realized I was dealing with a relatively young man. Maybe even a teenager. I pushed off the wall, following my weapon, starting for the shadows where the kid was hiding behind a door.
“I’ve got a weapon drawn,” I said. My voice sounded huge in the darkness there. “I want you to drop any weapon you’ve got and step over there into the light.”
A window spilled more foggy light on the floor.
The breathing again. The sobbing. The kid was crying.
“Come on now,” I said.
“Fuck yourself.”
I might have felt sorry for him, the tears and all, if I hadn’t known from experience that he was in a very dangerous state at the moment. I’d once cornered a seventeen-year-old who’d been dealing hash. He’d slammed himself up against a wall and stood there convulsed with tears. All I could think of, being a parent myself, were the strange, sad paths taken by young people sometimes. You just hope it won’t happen to your own. My pity damn near got me killed. When I got up near him, shot out a hand to put reassuringly on his shoulder, he came up with a razor blade that cost me eight stitches in my forearm.
“Come on now, into the light,” I repeated to this kid on this night.
He went over into the light, but only briefly. Then he did what I was trying to prevent him from doing. Reaching the door with the electric red exit sign above it. The door opened onto an exterior fire escape.
He lunged for it, got it opened and dove through.
In that instant I had to make a decision: to fire or not.
“You sonofabitch,” I said, not sure if I was cursing him for running or me for not firing.
I jammed my weapon back into my holster and went after him. I reached the door just as it was closing. When I slammed it open, I stepped into hell. Damp, foggy, rainy light enveloped me, thick tumbling wraiths of it. I put a hand on a wet piece of iron fire escape. Below me I heard his footsteps banging on metal rungs of ladder, down, down.