A Cup Full of Midnight (25 page)

“Laurel’s work,” Darlene said, nodding toward the dog’s paws. “She has a well-honed sense of the dramatic.” She gave a shrill, nervous laugh, and pressed her hand to her mouth as if to stuff the laughter back in. “I’m sorry. I’m rattling on. I don’t know what to say. What to do. What do you need me to do?”

“I need to see her room.”

“Of course. This way.” She set the dog down and started up the stairs. The dog trotted behind her, wagging its stump of a tail.

I followed the dog.

Absinthe’s room was, much like Absinthe herself, a study in opposites. White satin coverlet with a pattern of pink embroidered roses. Matching canopy arched across the bed. Three teddy bears, a mouse puppet, and a stuffed dragon arranged neatly on the pillows. Black walls, decorated with glow-in-the-dark, stick-on stars and posters of bands I’d never heard of. Arkham Asylum, Butterfly Messiah, Cult of the Psychic Fetus.

A tangle of necklaces dangled from the mirror of her antique white French Provincial dresser, some carved with runes, others made from different colors of crystal. I remembered a few from the books she’d recommended. Rose quartz for love. Amethyst for wisdom.

On her nightstand were an incense holder with a smoldering cone of sandalwood, a crystal ball, and copies of
I,Dracula, The Witches of Eastwick
, and something by Frederick Nietzsche.

Under her mother’s worried gaze, I searched the drawers and closets, her desk, under the bed, and between the mattresses. Then I carefully took each drawer out of its slot, emptied it systematically, and searched for false bottoms and hidden compartments. In the bottom of her underwear drawer, I found a stack of granny panties, a couple of plus-sized satin thongs, and a plastic sandwich bag filled with something that looked a lot like oregano. Beside it was a pack of rolling papers and a book of matches.

Darlene looked away, embarrassed. I handed her the bag. She carried it down the hall between two fingers and a thumb and flushed the contents down the toilet.

I finished my search of the room, but turned up nothing that might tell me where Absinthe might have gone.

“Did the police check the doors and windows for signs of forced entry?” I asked.

“They didn’t find anything,” she said. “They seemed pretty sure she was a runaway. But where would she go? She doesn’t have any money, and I took away her credit cards when all this happened.”

The police had made a reasonable assumption, but I looked again anyway. Faint scratch marks marred the paint around the front door. Easy to miss, especially if you were already convinced there was nothing there.

Elgin Mayers? Leaving the marks on the door seemed clumsy for him. He hadn’t left any trace when he’d broken into my office, which would have been more of a challenge.

“I’ll keep looking,” I said. “I’m sure the police will too. You should try and get some sleep. And stay here until we find her. Just in case she calls.”

Darlene forced a smile. “I can take some time off from work, if I have to. Just . . . please find her.”

I got a description of Absinthe’s car—a red Corvette—and her license plate number. Then I climbed into the Silverado and pulled out of the driveway, not sure where to start. Where did a teenaged girl with no credit cards and no money to speak of go after midnight?

As I merged onto I-65 North, my cell phone buzzed. I groped across the seat for it and was greeted by a breathless, teary voice.

“Mr. McKean?”

“Absinthe.”

Something rattled in the background, followed by a heavy thump. “I’m at Dark Knight’s,” she whispered. “You have to get here right away. It’s—”There was another bump, and she gave a muffled little shriek. “I have to go. They’re here!”

There was a clatter, followed by the sound of running footsteps and a sharp cry cut off abruptly.

I dropped the phone onto the seat and punched the gas. Dodged a gray Cadillac and a tomato red Mitsubishi, then pushed the Silverado up to one-twenty and hurtled down the Interstate. I drove with one hand, punched 911 on my cell phone with the other.

I couldn’t offer much information. Just an address and that a girl was in trouble. But I knew all the right codes, and the dispatcher, probably thinking I was an off-duty officer, assured me she would send the nearest patrol car ASAP.

I hoped they’d beat me there.

As I swung onto I-40, a patrol car cut in after me, blue lights flashing. I pretended he was answering my 911 call and kept my foot on the accelerator.

I squealed onto the Donelson Pike ramp, shot past a row of restaurants, a pawn shop, and a funeral home, the patrol car on my tail. With a prayer to the patron saint of reckless drivers, I screeched onto Dark Knight’s street. The Silverado fishtailed, then recovered. I didn’t need to look for the Knights’ duplex. The blue flashing lights led me there.

There were two patrol cars parked outside. A red Corvette with Absinthe’s license tags was parked between them. The Asian family huddled on their porch, watching the proceedings with wide eyes. A pair of uniformed officers stood to either side of the Knights’ front door.

How long since Absinthe had screamed?

Not long.

Too long.

I parked the Silverado and got out with my hands up.

The patrol officer who’d been following me scrambled out of his car, gun out.

“What’s your hurry, Mister?” he asked.

Slowly, I turned to face him. “There’s a kid in there who may be in trouble.”

“And you’d know this, how?”

I told him.

When I’d finished, he said, “Nice story. We’ll see if it checks out.” He moved closer and I checked out his nametag. T. Brandt. “In the meantime, how about showing me some ID? Slow and easy now.”

I nodded and reached for my wallet, careful not to expose the shoulder rig. I eased the leather case open so he could see my identification and held it out.

He spared it a glance. “You think that license means you can blow off the speed limits?”

“No, sir.” I glanced up the steps, where one of the two policemen was pushing open the door to the Knights’ apartment. It was unlocked. Not a good sign. “I just wasn’t sure how close you guys were. Can I put my hands down?”

“You armed?”

“I have a Glock forty caliber in a shoulder holster. I have a license to carry it.”

“Why don’t you just slowly put it on the hood of the truck and back away from it?”

I did as he asked.

“Now,” he said, “put your palms on the side of the truck and spread your legs.”

I let him pat me down.

“Okay.” He stepped away and lowered his gun. “You can put ’em down.”

There was a tense silence. Then one of the uniforms came outside and nodded to Brandt. “Got a couple of D. O.A.s in there,” he said.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. “The girl?”

He gave me a blank stare. “Female, mid-thirties. Teenage male.”

“Shit.” I pounded the side of the Silverado. “What happened?”

Brandt stepped closer. “Better call this in,” he said to the uniformed officer. To me, he said, “Maybe you should tell me everything you know about what happened here.”

I filled him in. Twenty minutes later, Harry Kominsky arrived with the M.E. and a host of forensic detectives and I went through it again.

I was glad it was Harry. The guys on the Job called him Lurch, because he was the tallest man in the department and had a stiff, uneasy way of moving, as if his joints had been welded together; but he’d been on the Job for forty years, and Frank and I had worked with him enough to know he knew his stuff.

He listened to my story without interrupting, then rubbed his gaunt face with his hands and said, “Sit tight.”

He disappeared inside, leaving me in T. Brandt’s capable hands.

A few minutes later, he opened the door and waved to Brandt. “Give him his piece back and let him come up.”When I joined him on the front steps, he said, “Don’t touch anything. I guess I don’t need to tell you that.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

He hunched his big shoulders and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Not as bad as it could be,” he said. “But bad enough.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I
opened the door and stopped short, hit by a blast of frigid air laced with the pungent scents of stale urine, excrement and rotting meat.

The kid and his mother had been dead awhile. Probably killed not long after I’d last talked to Dennis. I breathed through my mouth and told myself it wasn’t my fault.

I moved further into the apartment, sidestepping a woman taking photographs of the scene and a man dusting for fingerprints. Tara Knight’s bloated body was sprawled in the recliner, an afghan draped across her lap, sightless eyes riveted on the television. The bruises that circled her neck were punctuated by darker marks where her killer’s fingers had dug into the skin.

See enough dead bodies, and they start to look unreal, more like movie props than people. I waited for that familiar detachment to set in, but knowing the victim made it harder. Tara Knight had lived a hard life, and a sad one. I’d have wished her a gentler death.

I followed Harry down the hall, where Dennis Knight lay sprawled on his back, his bare legs stretched beyond the threshold of his bedroom, his head resting near the open bathroom door. He wore a pair of soiled navy blue cotton briefs and a Marilyn Manson T-shirt with a dark, rust-colored stain that started at the collar, spread across the shoulders and chest, and darkened the carpet around his upper body. The left side of his face was pressed against the carpet, throat gaped open, one long gash from ear to ear. The edges of the wound were beginning to turn black.

Through the open bedroom door, I could see that one of the shelves was off-kilter, cartoon characters scattered on the floor below. Elmer Fudd and Wile E. Coyote tangled with Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian.

I resisted the impulse to pick them up and put them where they belonged.

“Must’ve gotten up to investigate a noise,” Harry said. “Or take a leak. Probably never knew what hit him. Killer nailed him as he came out the bedroom door.”

He’d been dead long enough for rigor mortis to fade and the blood to settle and turn the backs of his arms and legs a livid purple. The part of his body facing upward was pale in comparison, but the flesh of his head and neck had already turned a greenish red. The body had begun to bloat, escaping gases forming blisters the size of silver dollars on the young man’s skin.

Someone, probably the killer, had turned the air conditioner on full blast, presumably to slow decomposition.

“What do you figure?” I asked. I fought the urge to go outside and take a gulp of fresh air. Do that, and your olfactory senses have to adjust to the stench all over again. Better to tough it out, if you can stand it. “Couple of days?”

Harry nodded. “Probably. Though cold as it is in here, it’ll be hard to pin down an exact time.” He waved a hand in front of his nose. “Another day or so and the neighbors would have been complaining.”

“Efficient kill,” I said. “Quick. Quiet.”

“Must’ve been. He strangles the mother, then waits for the kid to come out of his room.”

“Signs of forced entry?”

“Bathroom window’s open, but we’re thinking that’s where the girl went out.” I peeked in. It would have been a tight squeeze, but with a boost from adrenalin, she could have managed it. He said, “We’re dusting for prints now.”

“Any other sign of the girl?”

“Nada. We’ll probably get a match on her prints, though.”

I glanced around. “Anything missing?”

“Who could tell? Mom was a pack rat, kid had a lot of junk. Comics and shit. All those little toys. But I’m not seeing this as a robbery.”

“No. More like an execution.”

“Yeah, but for what?”

I filled him in on Judith’s rape and Elgin’s vanishing act. Again, I left Josh out of it. “I’m not sure if Hewitt’s involved or not, but this looks like Mayers to me.”

He rubbed at a spot on the side of his jaw. “Hewitt. We talked to him after the Parker killing. He and the brother-in-law alibied each other.”

“Brother-in-law?”

“Mayers is Judith Hewitt’s half brother. You didn’t know?”

“No.” I felt annoyed that I hadn’t considered the possibility. Careless. “Different last names.”

“He’s quite a bit older. Already grown up and out of the house by the time Daddy and his new wife had the girl.”

“They’re close, though.”

“Seems like it. You say Parker and his buddies raped her?”

“Yeah.” I looked again at Dark Knight’s body. Stupid, senseless way to die. “Better send someone to warn Barnabus. And Medea, too. He’s targeted the whole group.” I gave him the address.

“I’ll see to it.” He didn’t seem offended that I’d offered the suggestion. “As for you, why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? And drive slow, McKean. I don’t think Officer Brandt is likely to let you off with two warnings in one night.”

My gaze slid back to Dark Knight’s body. I resisted the sudden urge to cover him with a blanket.

In the bathroom, another detective was coating the windowsill with black fingerprint dust. A mobile phone with lots of chrome, probably Absinthe’s, lay on the floor beneath the window. It looked like a crushed beetle. I watched the technician for a few moments, then went back into the living room. The scene was abuzz with detectives and forensic technicians turning the duplex into an efficient and official crime scene.

Harry was kneeling beside Dennis Knight’s body, talking quietly to the medical examiner. I gave him a quick nod on the way out. He nodded back.

I stepped out onto the porch and came nose to eyebrows with Kelly Malone. Her hair was tousled, her face bare. I guessed she’d gotten the call at home, no time for makeup.

She crossed her arms and said, “What are you doing at my crime scene?”

“Nice to see you too, Detective.”

“Answer the question. I said—”

“I know what you said. The girl called me. Absinthe—Laurel—O’Brien.”

“So?”

“She’s in trouble. Her mom hired me to find her.”

“Then unless she’s hiding in the closet, this is not your business. I suggest you get out of here before I have you arrested.”