Lady Midnight (17 page)
Authors: Timothy C. Phillips
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Not really. Just wondering. She was just on my mind. Well, okay, thanks, Les.”
“See you tonight.”
“See you.”
I hung up the phone. I sat at my desk for a while and thought about the last few weeks. It seemed like a hundred years since Baucom had met me at Sally’s Diner. I remembered laughing, smiling faces, and cringing, crying faces. And I remembered the looks on the faces of people who were lying to me, people who were grateful to me, and people who had tried to kill me. Most of all, I remembered the faces of the dead, and even if they belonged to those of my enemies, I couldn’t find any malice in my heart at that moment, even for them.
I thought again of the girl in the river and wondered who she had been, how she had gone wrong, and why she had come to such a sorry end. I realized I was obsessing over her identity, and wondered if I should pitch in somehow to find out who she had been in life. Her death was really no more of a conundrum than Connie Patrick’s had been. It was just that I had all of the pieces of Connie’s puzzle in my possession. It all made sense now, however dark and hopeless the final picture of her life might be. The story of the girl in the river was a complete mystery.
I went to the window and looked out over the lights of Birmingham. Outside, the long hot summer was coming, the heavy night was falling, and there was a mob war brewing that would soon engulf the streets. Tomorrow would be a new day, full of new complications, and those who were still in the game would have to get up and grapple with those complications, ready or not. Out on the highway, a river of white lights surged and a river of red lights receded. The wind whispered against the pane. I stood and stared out at the black night.
– THE END –
The following works of music and literature are referenced in this novel, for which I am indebted to their respective authors and composers. I encourage you to enjoy them in their original forms:
Ars longa, vita brevis.
MUSIC:
“Lady Midnight” Copyright 1969 by Leonard Cohen. Lyrics are reprinted here with the kind permission of Mr. Cohen’s management.
“American Trilogy,” Copyright 1970 by Mickey Newbury. (Here, as performed by Elvis Presley).
LITERATURE:
Lost Horizon
, Copyright 1933 by James Hilton.
“Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream”: A Fragment. Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798, 1816.
Timothy C. Phillips was born in a small town at the foot of the Appalachians. Youngest of seven children, he attended colleges in Alabama and Louisiana, and holds degrees in English, Forensics and Political Science. He lives in Alabama, where he writes and dabbles in music.
To date there are seven titles in the
Roland Longville Mystery Series: