A Cup Full of Midnight (10 page)

“What about you?” I asked. “What kind of arrangement do you have with Byron?”

He glared at me. “He’s fifteen, for God’s sake.”

“That didn’t stop Razor.”

“I’m not Razor.”

We stared each other down like a couple of alpha wolves. It was what Josh had called a pissing contest, and it wouldn’t get me any closer to what I needed. I held up my hands to signal a truce. “Okay. I was out of line.”

“Damn straight.” He stepped past me to a shiny black filing cabinet, yanked open a drawer marked Q–Z, and slid the folder he’d been studying deftly into place. Closed the drawer. Locked it. Then he blew out a long breath, came back around the desk, and slid into his chair. “What is it with you?”

“Something about your boyfriend,” I said.

“My boyfriend?”

“You’re not going to tell me you and Razor didn’t have a thing going?”

His gaze slid away, back toward the files. “That was a long time ago.”

“Then it won’t hurt to tell me about it.”

He pushed himself away from his desk and paced a path from desk to window and back again, then over to a rosewood bookcase filled with professional journals and hardbound books. Absently, he traced the titles with his index finger.
People of the Lie. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.

He saw where I was looking and said, “The psychology of evil.”

“A specialty of yours?”

“More like an interest.”

“Tell me about you and Razor.”

He came back and settled into his chair with a creak of leather. Swiveled his chair away and looked out the window. The view was unimpressive—a narrow, cluttered alley separated from a row of dingy red-brick buildings by a sagging chain-link fence. It didn’t mesh with the Italian suits and the gold tie loop.

“We met in grade school,” Keating said, eyes fixed on the glass. “Mrs. DeVray’s fifth grade class. We called her The Beast. She used to keep us inside at recess every day and make us write ‘play is the devil’s workshop’ over and over again.”

“Gunning for that teacher of the year award, was she?”

He spared me half a smile. “She hated children, I think. Children in general. But me especially. Maybe she thought I was weak. Or maybe she realized my parents wouldn’t intervene. You can guess how the other children reacted to that.”

“Open season,” I said.

“Exactly. They’d jump me on the playground, chase me home after school. They called me names, tripped me up, bloodied my nose. Once they made me eat excrement.” His jaw tightened. “Made me eat dog shit. They were like sharks smelling blood.”

“Kids can be cruel.”

“I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m telling you because it was something Bastian and I had in common—that Mrs. DeVray hated us both.”

It took me a minute to realize that “Bastian” was Razor. “The other kids pick on him too?”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “They knew better. One day, I saw him playing around near Mrs. DeVray’s desk. When she opened her drawer, she found a dozen black widow spiders in it.”

“Jesus.”

“She quit that same afternoon.”

“And you thought it was Razor.”

“Of course it was. While the other kids were screaming and climbing on top of their desks, Bastian looked over at me and winked. From that day on, we were friends, and the other kids left me alone.”

Razor as protector. Razor as avenger. The image didn’t fit. Maybe he’d been different in grade school. Then again, Keating had been a sad, vulnerable little boy everybody picked on. He was exactly the kind of lost soul Razor would be drawn to. A shark to blood, as Keating had said.

“He saved my life,” Keating said, as if he’d read my mind. “Melodramatic as that sounds. Only he couldn’t do it the usual way, couldn’t stand up on the playground and say, ‘Leave my friend alone.’ That would have been too noble. He could never bear to give in to his better instincts.”

“He couldn’t admit he was protecting you.”

“Exactly. He put spiders in the teacher’s desk. Any good it did me was just a side effect. He could tell himself our friendship was some Machiavellian thing built from ulterior motives.”

“That didn’t piss you off?”

He waved the idea away as if it were smoke. “He was a complex man, Mr. McKean, almost equal parts arrogance and self-loathing. Have you met his mother?”

“Briefly. At the funeral.”

“Completely narcissistic. Saw him as a showpiece, not a son. He was her confidant, her little hero. As if he was supposed to meet
her
needs, not the other way around. He slept with her until he went away to college. His father slept in the guest room until the day he died. He was practically a ghost.” He looked at me as if to gauge my reaction. Trying to shock me?

I ignored the bait. “Distant father, suffocating mother. Possible incest. That’s got to be some kind of textbook dysfunctional family model.”

Keating cocked his head to one side with a bemused smile on his face. It didn’t look completely at home there. “Why, Mr. McKean,” he said. “You’ve had a psychology course.”

“One or two. But I don’t buy the idea that a crappy childhood justifies bad behavior.”

He picked up a sleek mechanical pencil and rolled it between his fingers. “I don’t justify it, but I understand it. Bastian latched onto this vampire mythology because it gave him a sense of power and control. If it hadn’t been that, he would have found something else.”

“Such as?”

“Who knows? Neo-Nazism, some kind of cult. Okay, so he was a little twisted. Sometimes life is twisted.”

It was a strange comment, coming from a psychologist.

I said, “He has a brother.”

“Heath. A senior at Vanderbilt. Philosophy and Religion. He was several years younger than Bastian and I.”

“He twisted too?”

“I expect so,” he said. “Though not in the same way. Bastian was Mama’s little prince and Daddy’s little bastard. Heath was just invisible. Was that all you needed? I have a client coming soon.”

“Tell me about the woman at the funeral. The one who spit on your shoes.”

“Marta Savales. What about her?”

“People don’t usually spit on people they think highly of.”

“They pay you to make that kind of deduction?”

“No. They pay me to make other deductions. Want to tell me why this Marta Savales thinks so much of you?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the laptop and turned it on, pointed and clicked until he found what he was looking for, and scribbled something on the back of one of his business cards. “Here,” he said, holding out the card between two fingers. “Ask her yourself. I’m sure she’ll talk to you.”

“Why would she?”

“Her son is missing. She’d talk to the devil if she thought it would help find him.”

“What happened to—”

“I have work to do, Mr. McKean. I’m sure you understand that.” He tapped the edge of the card against the desk.

I reached across and took the card.
Marta Savales
, it said, followed by a seven-digit number. I slipped it into my shirt pocket and said, “One more thing . . . Where were you the day Razor was killed?”

“I was here.”

“All day?”

He licked his lips and glanced away, back toward the window. “I may have stepped out for lunch,” he said finally.

“
May
have?”

“Sometimes I go out, sometimes I work through lunch. There’s no pattern to it. Then when Heath called to tell me what had happened—” His shoulders sagged. “I could hardly think afterward.”

“If you had gone out, how long would you have been gone?”

“I don’t know. Forty-five minutes. Maybe more.”

“You have clients all afternoon?”

“Generally.”

“And your receptionist would have noticed if you’d been gone longer than usual.”

“Kirsten doesn’t work on Friday afternoons. Child care issues. And I don’t like where this conversation is going, Mr. McKean. Am I a suspect?”

“Everybody’s a suspect,” I told him. “Everybody but me. One more question. This one’s definitely in your bailiwick.”

“I suspect you don’t know anything about my bailiwick, but go ahead.”

“The severed genitals . . .” He winced, but waited for me to go on. “What kind of person does a thing like that?”

“Assuming it wasn’t a prescribed part of some ritual—”

“We don’t think so, no.”

“No. Well, then.” He tugged at his tie. Cleared his throat. “Look for someone who felt victimized by Bastian’s sexuality—Bastian or someone like him. Someone who wanted Bastian humiliated.”

“So they cut off his balls.”

“Exactly. Literal emasculation. It shows a lot of rage.”

“Any idea who might have been that pissed at him?”

“Mr. McKean, this was way beyond pissed.”

“Rage, then. Any idea who might have felt that kind of rage?”

“I don’t know.” His voice broke, and tears welled in his eyes. “He hurt so many people. I’d have no idea where to start.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
waved at Kirsten on the way out. Pretty girl, with eyes like malachite and skin the color of eggshells. Her hair was molten copper. Straight and shoulder-length, with the ends flipped up.

I had a sudden thought, veered back and laid my palms on her desk. Flashed her a grin.

She smiled up at me, a hint of mischief on her face. “Something else I can do for you?”

“Any chance I could take a look at your appointment book?”

“I don’t think so.” She pushed a few copper strands away from her forehead. “Confidentiality, you know.”

“Sure, I get that. I just wanted to confirm some information Mr. Keating gave me. Confirm he was working a couple of Fridays ago. I guess I could wait in the parking lot on Friday and ask the patients about it as they go in.” Before she could protest, I gave her the date and added, “It should be pretty much the same folks week to week, shouldn’t it?”

A thin, vertical line etched itself between her eyebrows. “That’s a little invasive, don’t you think? If all you need to know is if he was working, I can tell you he has clients pretty much all day every day, Tuesday through Saturday, five days a week.”

“But people cancel sometimes, right?”

“Sometimes. And, of course, sometimes an emergency comes up. A client in distress, a suicide attempt. Something like that.”

“Tell you what, why don’t you look through it, tell me what’s there? No names, no problem, right?”

She leaned forward onto her elbows, lifting the hair off the back of her neck with a slender hand. “Dr. Keating is okay with this?”

“Why not? He’s the one who gave me the information.”

“Maybe I should call him to verify . . .”

“Sure.” I smiled. Gave her the guileless look I’d used running undercover stings in Vice. Mouth dry, gut roiling, nothing but calm on the surface. “I’ll wait.”

She gave a little sigh and let her hair fall back into place. “Well, I hate to interrupt him when he’s getting ready for a patient. I guess it will be okay.” She opened the appointment book and flipped through the pages until she found the right date. “It says here . . .” She ran her finger down the page. “Looks like a full day. He was booked from nine until four.”

I was disappointed, but I nodded as if it was what I’d been expecting. “Thanks for the confirmation.”

“Must have been a busy afternoon,” she said, still appraising the book.

“Why do you say that?”

She tapped at a name on the schedule. “One of us always initials the schedule after a session. Since I leave at noon on Fridays, he does it then, but it must have gotten crazy in the afternoon, because he forgot to initial anything after lunch.”

I tried not to grin too broadly. “Thanks. You saved me a lot of work.”

She handed me another of Keating’s business cards and looked at me like a cat might eye a bowl of milk. “In case you need to get in touch with me about anything. Use it sometime.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
had no intention of calling Keating’s receptionist, but I owed her a debt of gratitude. A few missing initials didn’t mean Keating was guilty of anything more than being overworked, but it seemed a little too convenient that the one day he’d forgotten to sign off on his appointments was the day his good friend Razor had been butchered. I hadn’t drawn first blood yet, but it was a start.

I dialed my ex-wife’s number from Keating’s parking lot. When she answered, I felt a familiar rush of pleasure and pain.

“Hiya,Angel,” I said.

Maria gave a pleased little laugh. “Hiya, Cowboy.”There was an awkward moment. Then she said, “You want to talk to Paulie?”

“Yeah. Put him on.”

A few seconds later, Paul’s gravelly voice came on the line. “Mama baby comin’. Gonna take care of her, my pretty baby.”

“I know you will, Sport.”

He was eight years old, but fate, or God, or genetics had given him the mind of a three-year-old. Just after he was born, when Maria’s doctor told us he had Down syndrome, we’d thought of all the things he’d never do and wondered how we’d cope. Would he ever ride a bike? (He does.) Could I teach him to play baseball? (Yes, but not well.) Would he be happy? Could we?

We’d thought if our marriage could survive a disabled child, it could survive anything.

We were wrong. When it ended, it had nothing to do with Paul.

As I listened to my son chatter, some of the tension in my neck and shoulders seeped away. Thirty minutes after I flipped the phone closed and pulled onto the Interstate, I walked into our living room to find Jay draping silver strands on an artificial tree so tall the angel on top brushed the ceiling. His back was to me, and the droop of his shoulders said he was giving the tree such careful attention to take his mind off his problems.

I waved one arm in an arc that swept from the tree in one corner to the sterile hospital bed in the center of the room. One leather armchair had been pulled against the wall; the other squatted beside the bed. “Did you do all this yourself?”

He turned, a strand of icicle dangling from his fingers. “I put up the tree. The guys who delivered the bed helped with the rest.”

I didn’t ask about Eric, and Jay didn’t mention him. Instead, we made small talk over dinner, then bundled up and drove across town to bring home the scum-sucking bastard who had given Jay AIDS.