A Cup Full of Midnight (6 page)

Keating shifted forward so that one shoulder edged into the space between Byron and me. Protecting a troubled kid, or staking out his territory? He said, “And you are?”

“Jared McKean.” I extended my hand. His grip was firmer than I’d expected. “I’m investigating Razor’s murder.”

“You’re a homicide detective?” His speech sounded unnaturally formal, as if he’d learned English from a dictionary. No trace of an accent. I figured the formality was an affectation.

“Private investigator. I’m working with Laurel O’Brien’s attorney.”This was not entirely untrue. “Is Byron staying with you?”

There must have been a note of menace in my voice, because both Josh and Byron turned startled faces in my direction. Keating shrugged and forced a smile that was more grimace than grin. “Everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

“You know he’s a minor.”

“So for that, I should make him sleep on the streets?”

Behind us, the Bobcat rumbled to life. Even amidst the subdued chatter of the retreating mourners, it sounded obscene. Harsh and ugly as death itself. Fitting, maybe, for this death, which had been especially ugly, but in general I preferred the respectful sound of shovels crunching into earth. It seemed a small enough concession, for a man’s grave to be dug by human hands.

Though in Razor’s case, it might have been more appropriate to dump the body in a landfill and cover it with compost.

Keating looked over my shoulder toward the sound, and his expression changed. Wary, with a touch of pity.

I turned to follow his gaze. A woman in a gray wool coat had made her way down the icy embankment and was watching us in much the way an injured bird will watch a cat.

She looked to be in her early forties. A thatch of gray-streaked curls framed a square-jawed Mediterranean face. Her deep-set eyes were the color of moss.

Keating’s nod was almost imperceptible. “Mrs. Savales.”

Josh and I must have registered somewhere on the edges of her radar, because she flashed us a distracted, fleeting smile as she passed. Then she leaned forward, puckered her lips, and spat onto the toe of Keating’s expensive Italian shoe.

He tilted the toe up and waggled it from side to side. “I hope that made you feel better,” he said.

She wiped angrily at her eyes. “What would make me feel better . . . But you can’t give me that, can you?”

“No,” he said. “I wish I could.”

Her shoulders jerked as if he’d struck her. Then she turned and picked her way up the slope, purse clutched against her stomach, back straight. She walked stiffly, pausing between each step to pull the pointed heels of her pumps out of the ground.

“Who was that?” I said.

His smile was wry. “A fan.”

“I can see that.” A dozen questions tumbled into my mind, but Josh was shivering violently even beneath my coat. I took a note-pad and a ballpoint pen from my jacket pocket and handed them to Keating. “Mind giving me an address and a number where I can reach you?”

“Do I mind?” Ignoring my utilitarian Bic, he drew a gold Mont Blanc pen from his pocket and scribbled something on the back of a business card. I swallowed my annoyance and tucked my disposable pen back into my jacket, letting the lapel fall back slowly enough to give him a glimpse of the shoulder rig. His eyes flicked to the gun, then back to my face. “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think that’s really much of a consideration. Whether or not I mind.”

“I’ll find out what I want to know,” I said. “One way or the other.”

“I’m sure you will. But by all means, give me a call.” He held out the card between two fingers. “Byron, of course, will have to decide for himself.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
s Byron and Keating pulled away in Keating’s Buick Skylark, Josh turned to me and asked, “What was that? Some kind of pissing contest?”

“Something like that. How’d you get here, anyway?”

“Hitched. Don’t say it, I know it was stupid.”

It was. I opened my mouth to deliver a lecture. Closed it again. What could I say that he didn’t already know? “Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Could we just drive around for awhile?”

“Roads are getting pretty bad.”

“Just for a little while.”

We drove past a mall that had been dying since the seventies, cruised through the parking lot of a movie theater shaped like a jukebox, and crossed onto Bransford past a row of specialty shops draped in Christmas lights. While I drove, Josh closed his eyes and leaned his temple against the passenger-side window. I wondered what I should say, or if I should say anything at all.

We passed the darkened fairgrounds and came back out onto I-65 on the south side of town. The city came into view, the double antennae of the AT&T Batman building stretching up past the L&C tower and the rotating restaurant at the top of the old Hyatt Regency hotel. With the ice glistening in the lights, it may have been the most beautiful skyline in the world.

I glanced over at Josh and said, “Why’d you do it?”

He lifted his head. “I wanted to see the funeral.”

“No.” I nodded toward his wrists. “Why’d you do that?”

“You know you’re the first person who’s asked me that? I mean, besides my therapist. Everyone’s so freaked thinking if they ask, I’ll do it again. Like I’ll go right over the edge or something.”

“You came pretty close to it already.”

“I know. It’s complicated. Like . . .” He pressed his head hard against the window. “I can’t explain it.”

“Can’t?”

He shrugged. I wanted to ask why he hadn’t told me he was with Absinthe an hour before Razor’s murder, but something in his face told me this wasn’t the right time. Instead, I swung onto the 440 bypass loop, then onto the West End ramp. Past Centennial Park, where the full-sized replica of the Parthenon glowed in the mist, pale pillars lit with green and red. Not for nothing is Nashville called the Athens of the South. We drove to Music Row, circled the classical nude bronze Musica statue and headed back toward the Interstate. Passed a six-foot fiberglass catfish in a cowboy hat, and a few yards away, a man playing a guitar on the sidewalk. A Weimaraner dressed in an army uniform shivered at his feet.

Josh leaned over me for a better look. “Can we give them something, Uncle Jared? It’s freezing out there.”

I glanced into the rearview mirror, saw there was no one behind me, and slid to a stop. Rolled down my window and waved the musician over to the truck. He slung the guitar strap over his shoulder and picked his way across the slick street. He was about sixty, stiff with arthritis, or maybe just half frozen. The dog padded behind him, tail wagging. I stepped out of the truck, motioned Josh to stay inside, and shut the door behind me. Just in case.

I handed the musician a twenty, and he pocketed it with a grateful smile.

“Bless you, sir. God bless you.”

I said, “You know Kaizen? Shelter over near the bus station?”

“I heard of it. Why?”

“Guy who runs it is a friend of mine.”

He nodded toward the dog. “Can’t keep Charley in no shelter.”

“Ask for Billy Mean,” I said. “Tell him Jared sent you. He’ll let you keep your dog.”

“Billy Mean,” he said. “I heard of him. Some kind of badass in Vietnam.”

“Long time ago,” I said.

“Not to me.”

It was a long walk, so I loaded them into the back of the truck, drove to Billy’s, and dropped them off. Randall would kill me if he knew I was picking up strangers with Josh in the truck, but I was pretty sure Josh wouldn’t tell him.

The musician turned back at the door. “Bless you, sir,” he said again. “Bless you both.”

From the passenger seat, Josh waved goodbye, looking happier than he had in months. It had probably been awhile since he’d felt like he’d done something good, or at least caused something good to happen. He needed more of that. As we pulled away, I looked at him and said, “Can you get me into one of those vampire games? The kind Razor and his buddies played?”

“Razor didn’t play. Razor just
was
.”

“All right. Whatever. But the others. They told the police they were playing the day—” I stopped.

“The day Razor died. I know. But Mom and Dad don’t let me play anymore. Maybe if you told them I was helping you out with an investigation—”

“Never mind. It was a bad idea.”

“But if you saw what it was really like. I mean, if you told them it was no big deal—”

“Josh . . .”

He gave me a big-eyed, pleading look. When he was five, I’d bought him a big-kid bike because of it. “Please?” he said. “If you’d just check it out, I know you’d see it isn’t like you think it is. It’s not all weird and gruesome.”

“You guys drink blood. How much more weird and gruesome could you be?”

His fist clenched against the side of his thigh. “That’s not part of the game. Most of the people who play don’t even do that. Razor was just a little . . .” He stopped.

“Extreme? Perverse? Sociopathic?”

“Eccentric.”

I snorted, and he turned his face away, back toward the window.

“Anyway,” he said, “why are you doing this if you hated him so much? Whoever killed him did the world a favor, right?”

“I’m doing this because you asked me to.”

“But you think he deserved it?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

In the long, uncomfortable silence that followed, we swung onto Briley Parkway and cruised past the gold glass International Plaza building. It glistened like a Christmas ornament in the icy mist. Then Josh said, “Please, Uncle Jared? I’ve done everything they’ve asked me to. Ever since you brought me home last summer. I make curfew every night. I’m seeing a counselor. She’s lame, and she doesn’t understand about the game, but even she says Mom and Dad should check it out. They won’t, I know that. But they’d believe you if you told them it was okay.”

“And if I don’t think it’s okay?”

“You will. But I wouldn’t ask you to lie. I know you wouldn’t, anyway.”

I thought about it. What could it hurt? Josh could be my passport to the vampire culture, and if there seemed to be anything harmful about it, I could make sure he never went back.

Never being a relative term. Once he turned eighteen, all bets were off, all influence null and void.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

He turned back toward the window, but not in time to hide his smile.

I hadn’t even stopped the truck before Randall opened his front door and stepped out onto the porch. He watched us through squinted eyes, pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket, and tapped one out into his palm. I hated that he was smoking again, but ragging him about it would only make him defensive.

“Shit,” muttered Josh, then cut his gaze toward me. “Sorry.”

“I’ve heard the word before.”

“He’s gonna kill me.” He slid out of the passenger seat and slunk toward the house, head low. I turned off the ignition and followed.

When we were almost to the porch, Randall jerked his head toward the house. “Your mom was worried,” he said to Josh.

Josh bobbed his head even lower. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell it to your mother.”

As Josh ducked around his father and into the house, Randall turned to me and said, “You took him to the funeral.”

“No. I brought him back from it.”

“I didn’t want him to go.”

“I know.”

He looked off into the distance, hunched a shoulder. “It’s good you were there, I guess. He’d rather have you there than me, anyway.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Right.”

“If I was his dad, he’d be coming to you.” I wasn’t sure this was true. I thought I was a pretty cool dad. Way cooler than Randall, but it didn’t seem like a good time to say so.

“Hell.” He rolled the cigarette between his fingers, stuck it between his lips, took it out again and pointed it at me. “This isn’t coming out right.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

He barked a short, embarrassed laugh and I laughed with him, glad of the moment. We hadn’t laughed at all since I’d found Josh fading out of consciousness in that tub of bloody water. It was about time.

“You want to come in for a beer?” he asked.

“Next time.”

He took a long drag from his cigarette. Then he said, “I hope you spit on the son of a bitch for me.”

“Where he is, he’d probably appreciate it.”

I watched him in the rearview mirror as I pulled away. He was a big man, but he looked small standing there, smoke curling from his cigarette and up into the mottled winter sky. I considered turning the truck around, taking him up on that beer.

But it was getting late, and the icy mix was still coming down, and I wanted to get home before the roads got any more treacherous. There were a thousand good reasons not to go inside and have a drink with my brother.

None of them should have been good enough.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he house I lived in, a two-story Victorian-style farmhouse with a wraparound porch, was a fifteen-minute drive from my brother’s. The rutted gravel driveway wound for almost a quarter mile through a corridor of trees—white oak, red cedar, slippery elm,Virginia pine. From spring to fall, the house was invisible from the road, but now, with the hardwoods barren and only the evergreens in full foliage, you could catch glimpses of the house and barn through the tangle of branches.