A Cup Full of Midnight (2 page)

At the foot of the stairs, I called my nephew’s name again. Listened for the frantic scrambling of two kids about to be caught screwing around. Heard nothing.

Up the stairs, quicker now, glancing into each room as I passed. Guest room, master bedroom, Caitlin’s, Rina’s. Rapped my knuckles on Josh’s door, got no answer. Pushed it open.

Empty.

The bathroom door at the end of the hall was closed. I knocked. No answer. Tried the knob. Locked.

I pressed my ear to the door. “Josh?”

Silence.

Wrong, this was all wrong.

I took a step back. Pivoted sideways, rocked my weight onto my right foot, and had a moment to wonder how I’d explain the broken door if Josh was inside wearing headphones and jerking off to some heavy metal Goth punk band. Then I drove the heel of my left boot into the particleboard just below the doorknob. A blade of pain shot through my calf, the ghost of a bullet wound that would probably have healed by now if I’d had the patience—or maybe the discipline—to stay off it. The wood trim around the lock splintered with a sharp crack, and the door swung inward.

The crack widened in slow motion, and the room swept into view. Polished ivory tiles, a white porcelain toilet with a thin brown crack along the base, a set of monogrammed towels folded neatly over a ceramic bar. An old-style, claw-footed tub filled to the rim with what looked like watered wine.

The air in the room seemed to thicken. For a heartbeat I stood paralyzed, unable even to breathe. Then I was moving, cell phone in hand, punching 911, my voice detached as if I were calling in a robbery to Dispatch. Not thinking, no time to think, but the details catalogued themselves into my brain all the same.

Josh slumped inside the tub, fully clothed except for his sneakers, which were neatly aligned on the bathmat, navy sweat socks tucked inside. Beside them lay a package of Schick double-edged razor blades, flap open. On the edge of the tub, a bloody half-handprint stood out like a flare against the white enamel.

No time.

I hauled Josh out of the still-warm water, cell phone trapped between my ear and shoulder, giving the operator my brother’s address with one part of my brain while another part gibbered like a madman. Praying, praying without words, because the only words my brain would form were in answer to the operator’s cool tones. Reddened water sloshed over the side of the tub, streamed from Josh’s hair and his shirt and his blood-darkened jeans, soaked my shirt through to the skin.

Too late
, the madman whispered. My stomach felt lined with lead. Too late.

But sometimes, in His infinite mercy, God allows us to save the things we love.

Blood still trickled from Josh’s wrists, a good sign, even though his skin was so white he looked bleached. Only the living bleed. His skin had a waxy sheen, but his chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly.

The phone, useless now, clattered to the floor. I snatched the towels off the bar, pulled Josh’s arms above his head, and pressed a towel to each wrist. I held them there until the paramedics pulled me away.

CHAPTER TWO

W
e gathered in the family waiting room of the ICU, a cracker box of a room with a soda machine and a pea-green vinyl couch and matching chairs. A round card table wobbled in the center of the room, and against the far wall, a flimsy wooden shelf overflowed with outdated magazines and jigsaw puzzles in split-cornered boxes. Someone had taped a line of paper candy canes along one wall, a pitiful attempt at holiday festivity.

Randall’s wife, Wendy, sat stiffly on the sofa, one arm around their foster daughter, Rina, and the other around Caitlin, who slumped in her seat with a spiral notebook in her lap. She was writing her name over and over, every spelling she could think of, in neat, loopy letters with hearts over the i’s. Caitlyn. Kaitlin. Kaitlyn. Caitlin. Maybe deciding who she’d be tomorrow. Maybe taking her mind off the fact that her brother had just tried to kill himself.

Across the room, my wife . . . my ex-wife . . . Maria and her new husband, D.W., clasped hands across the arms of their chairs. Her other hand rested on her swollen belly, beneath a
Baby on Board
sweatshirt. Cross-legged on the floor in front of them, my son, Paul, built something indefinable from Legos. He looked up at me and smiled, a slant-eyed Buddha in thick glasses and a Batman T-shirt. He could have been a Down syndrome poster child.

I wanted to punch something, seeing them like that, the three of them posed like a family photo. My family photo, with D.W. sitting in my place. He was a good guy. A safe guy. The kind who never came home with blood on his shirt and stitches in his head.

Maria had said of our marriage,
I couldn’t live that way, never knowing when they’d bring you home in a body bag.
And later, when I’d offered to change careers and sell insurance or repair motorcycles,
It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. You’re a hero waiting for something to die for.

I guessed she didn’t have to be afraid for D.W.

Randall stood in front of the Pepsi machine, one fist pounding lightly but steadily on the fiberglass front. I walked over to him, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “He’ll be all right.”

He gave the machine a final punch and swiveled to face me, eyes red, face drawn. It wasn’t quite like looking in a mirror, but it was close. At forty, he was four years older than I was and topped my six feet by two inches. His nose, broken during basic training, veered slightly off center just below the bridge. I had a small vertical scar across my lower lip and another above one eyebrow—reminders of bad men in bad places. But we had the same buckskin-colored hair, the same gray eyes, the same rangy build we’d gotten from our father.

I repeated, “He’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“We got to him in time.”

“You don’t
know
that.”

Caitlin looked up from her notebook. “Uncle Jared,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “You have blood on your shirt.”

I looked down at my chest, where the edges of my jacket framed a dark stain on my still-damp shirt. Pulled the zipper up to hide the stain and realized the cuffs of the jacket were splashed with rust. It was my father’s jacket. A leather bomber jacket he’d worn in the war. I felt bad that the blood on the cuffs bothered me, but it did.

“You should soak that,”Wendy said. “Use cold.”

Randall turned away from the Pepsi machine. “For Christ’s sake. What difference does it make?”

She started to speak, then bit her lip and looked down at her lap.

Caitlin sniffled, wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. I kissed her on the top of the head, then pulled one of the chairs over and slid into it. Paulie came over and crawled into my lap. His hair smelled like oranges. Like Maria’s. He squirmed against my chest, and I realized I was holding him too tightly. Reluctantly, I loosened my grip.

The clock on the wall ticked on, still no word about Josh.

My left calf throbbed, probably from kicking in the bathroom door. I shifted in the chair, careful not to unseat Paul. Stretched the leg out in front of me and flexed the muscle. Despite the dull pain, it felt strong. I flexed again and thought about close calls and bad choices.

Wondered what was taking so long.

Randall came over and sat on the arm of the couch beside Wendy. She shifted away from him, ever so slightly. I wondered what that meant. Maybe nothing. It bothered me all the same.

Time inched ahead. More waiting, more wondering, and finally, a doctor with a smudge of beard on his chin and a stethoscope around his neck pushed through the door. He looked barely old enough to drive, let alone to hold Josh’s life in his hands.

“How is he?” Randall said.

The doctor tipped his head toward Randall. “He’s out of immediate danger. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s stable for now.”

“For now?”

“All indications are, he’s going to be fine. Physically, at least. We have a psych consult lined up.”

“When?”

“Today, I hope. They have a heavy load this time of year.” He flashed a rueful smile. “Which one of you is Uncle Jared?”

I slid out from under my son and stood up. “I am.”

The doctor said, “He wants to talk to you.”

I looked at Randall, who read the question in my eyes.

“Go ahead,” he said roughly. “It’s what he wants.”

I glanced at Wendy. She turned her face away, jaw tight. I looked back at the doctor and said, “All right.”

He led me down the hall and through a set of swinging double doors. Our footsteps sounded loud on the polished tiles. A pretty blonde nurse in scrubs passed, pushing a cart piled with disposable pill cups and paper-wrapped syringes. She glanced up as we passed, gave me a sympathetic smile. I nodded back, feeling like an impostor. Stealing sympathy that should have been my brother’s.

“Here we are,” the doctor said. He glanced at his watch. “You have ten minutes.”

I took a deep breath, and the sharp smells of antiseptic and ammonia stung my nose and throat. I pushed open the door. Josh lay on his back, eyes closed, an IV dripping a clear liquid into his veins. Even against the white of the pillow, his face looked pale. The dark smudges beneath his eyes and the faded charcoal of his dyed hair seemed to float above the over-bleached blankets. He looked too young for sixteen. And too old.

He needed a haircut. He needed . . . I wasn’t sure what.

I moved to the bedside, watched him breathe. The bands around my lungs loosened, and I let out a quivering breath. He opened his eyes and said, “Hey.”

“Hey.” I closed my fists over the metal handrail to keep my hands from trembling. There were a thousand things I wanted to say to him—
What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call someone? Why didn’t you call me?
And the million dollar question,
Why?
None of them seemed right.

None of them seemed like enough.

I settled for, “You had us worried there for awhile.”

His lips strained upward in a smile that stretched the skin across his bones. “I had me worried too.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Your family is outside.”

“You’re my family too,” he said.

“Josh—”

He lifted a hand to silence me. Winced as the IV needle pinched the skin. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Why?”

To hurt my brother and his wife? He’d already done that. I glanced at the IV line, followed it down to the bruised flesh at the bend of his arm and then to the bandages taped tightly around each wrist. Tried not to think about what was beneath the bandages.

He saw where I was looking and turned his palms toward the mattress.

“I need a favor,” he said. “Not an Uncle Jared favor, a P.I. favor.”

I frowned. What did a sixteen-year-old kid need with a private detective? “What kind of favor?”

“I have $160 at home. I know it’s not enough, but . . . I want to hire you.”

“You don’t need to hire me. If you need something, all you have to do is ask.”

“I know. But this is, like . . .” He made a helpless gesture with his hands and winced again. “Huge.”

“Try me.”

“I want you to find out who killed Razor.”

My mouth suddenly tasted sour. Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “That son of a bitch.”

“It’s okay.” He gave me a weak, sardonic smile. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Razor’s mother had named him Sebastian Edward Parker. Razor was the name he gave himself. Sharp. Bright. Dangerous. It was an affectation. He was a predator, but like a hyena, he preyed only on the weak. His sexual preferences ran to teenaged boys. Fifteen, sixteen. Give or take. Vulnerable. Alienated. Horny young guys drowning in confusion and testosterone.

Boys like Josh.

“He molested you,” I said.

He looked away. Plucked at a frayed edge of the blanket. “I knew what I was doing.”

“You were fifteen.”

“Old enough.”

“And he was pushing thirty.”

“He wasn’t pushing thirty. He was only, like, twenty-five.”

“He told you that, he lied. He was on the downhill side of twenty-nine. Too old to be—”

“Stop,” he said. He wiped the back of his free hand across his eyes. “Just . . . It doesn’t matter now.”

I let go of the bed rail and stalked to the window. Looked out through the shatterproof glass into not much of anything. A parking lot frosted by halogen lights, a black-silhouetted tree line, and beyond that, the lights of the apartment complex behind the hospital. They looked like scattered stars.

“Please, Uncle Jared,” Josh said. “I need to know what happened to him. Why it happened.”

It happened because he was a shit
, I thought.
Because sometimes bad things happen to bad people.

It happened, maybe, because in spite of legal loopholes and sleazy lawyers, there was sometimes justice in the world.

I turned back to the bed and said, “The police already have a suspect. Some girl he knew. Laurel O’Brien. She confessed.”

A snort escaped him, something between a laugh and a sob. “Gimme a break. You met her. You really think she could—” He stopped. Closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Do you think she could do what they said?”

“When did I meet her?”

“That time I ran away and you went looking for me. You know. She told you her name was Absinthe.”

“Ah.” I remembered her then. An overweight girl in Goth makeup and a black satin gown too tight across the chest. Beneath her obnoxious façade, there was something about her I’d liked. “Why would she say she did it if she didn’t?”

“I don’t know. But I need to know. What if it was—” His voice broke, and tears shone in his eyes. “I just need to know. Please, Uncle Jared?”

Maybe I should have needed to know too, but the truth was I didn’t care who’d killed Razor. I just wished it had happened six months earlier, before he’d gotten to Josh.

I said, “Those cops who came to your school—”

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad. Please.”

“What did they say to you?”

“They think . . .” His mouth trembled.

“They think what?”

“The day he . . . Razor . . . died, I ditched school.”