A Cup Full of Midnight

by Jaden Terrell

  A brittle note came into her voice. “Now, what might a man like you want with Laurel O’Brien?”

  “A man like me?”

  “Take that any way you want, honey.” She chuckled softly, without humor. “You boys in blue spend your whole lives finding ways to make folks look guilty—”

  “We don’t make anybody look guilty. We just prove it when they are.”

  “That’s how you see it, I guess. My point is, what would make me think you got my client’s best interests at heart?”

  “She was with my nephew that morning,” I said. “They skipped school, must’ve met somewhere. You can imagine how that looked when she confessed to Razor’s murder.”

  “And this should ease my mind, why? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t toss Laurel to the hogs if you could pin this on her instead of your nephew.”

  “I don’t need to pin anything on her,” I said. “She pinned it on herself. But Josh wasn’t part of this, and if she was with him, she wasn’t part of it either. Anything I learn that could help Josh is going to help her too.”

  “If they were still together when the victim was killed.”

  “Look,” I said. “You and I both know that girl did not slash Razor’s throat, hang him up to bleed, and then pose him on that pentagram. But somebody did. I can find him for you.”

  “All by your lonesome.”

  “Just let me talk to the girl. You can be there if you want.”

  “Oh, I will. I surely will.” She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Tomorrow morning, then. Ten sharp. Don’t be late. And if I catch even a whiff of a double-cross, I’ll shut you down faster than a hound on a ham bone.”

  I assured her there would be no double-cross and hung up. A few minutes later, I eased the Silverado onto the highway and headed south between a battered Ford pickup and a fuchsia minivan that skidded across the yellow line at every curve.

  Perfect weather for a funeral.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I’d expected Razor’s funeral to be delayed because of the autopsy. Sometimes it took weeks to get the tests done and the body released, but the Parker case was high profile and the Parker family well off, and for once, the wheels of justice spun like they’d just been oiled. Maybe they had.

  The funeral home was a venerable brick building with a modern extension that stretched toward the surrounding memorial gardens like a prosthetic arm. A knot of kids in Goth garb crowded around the front door. A young woman in a scarlet evening gown and black hooded cloak stood nose-to-nose with an older woman, a slim brunette who was under-dressed for the cold in a tight black skirt and matching bolero jacket. Long legs, narrow hips, small waist. Behind her, a twenty-something guy in an expensive suit shuffled anxiously from foot to foot. The woman’s features were delicate, the young man’s coarse. They looked like they’d been sculpted by the same artist, but one of them had been left unfinished.

  I touched my fingertips to my chest, where the Glock in my shoulder holster made a barely perceptible bulge in my coat. I probably wouldn’t need it. But my father hadn’t thought he’d need his piece either when he went out to buy cigarettes and walked in on a convenience store robbery. Died a hero, the newspaper said, but maybe he wouldn’t have died at all if he’d had a Desert Eagle under his jacket.

  I swung out of the Silverado. Gasped as my left foot skidded on the gravel and a needle of pain lanced through my calf. Annoyed, I took a moment to let the pain ebb, then crunched across the parking lot toward the clot of disenchanted youth.

  The girl in the cloak and scarlet gown gestured angrily toward the building. I recognized her thin face and wild, mascara-rimmed eyes. She called herself Medea, after some nutcase from Greek mythology who murdered her children to spite her cheating husband.

  Sweet.

  Like Razor, she fancied herself dangerous. She reminded me of a rabid kitten. “We were his friends,” she said. “We have a right to be here.”

  “A right?” The dark-haired woman arched a perfectly shaped brow, a careless gesture belied by the frayed tissue clenched in her fist. She had the figure of a co-ed, but a spray of faint lines around her lips and at the corners of her eyes betrayed her age. The icy mist had ruined her makeup and flattened her hair. “You have no rights, as far as my son is concerned.”

  Her son. I searched her face for some clue that she’d known he was a monster. Saw only love and grief, and knew that, to her, it wouldn’t have mattered. She looked a lot like Razor, I realized. Lean build, fair skin, otter-dark hair. A hint of Eastern Europe in her face, which had good angles and fine, symmetrical features.

  A Goth-looking guy in tight leather pants and a red velvet pirate shirt leaned in and jabbed an accusing finger at Razor’s mother. “Razor hated you,” he said. Up close, he looked older. Maybe mid-twenties. I mentally ran down the descriptions in Razor’s file and pegged him as Barnabus Collins.

  The other boy, pimple-faced, in black jeans and a leather bomber jacket, nodded. “We were his real family.”

  The woman’s chin quivered. “You have three minutes to get off the premises before I call the police,” she said.

  “You don’t—” Medea began. I stepped between them, and her eyes widened. “I know you,” she said.

  “Time to go.” I nodded toward the parking lot.

  “Mind your own business, dickwad.” Medea thrust out her chin and clenched her fists against her sides. “You think Razor wanted some phony-ass Christian funeral?”

  “Razor is dead. This is for his family.”

  She crossed her arms against the cold, pressing her small breasts flat against her bony chest, then rubbed her forearms with her palms and glared at Razor’s mother. “She’s got no right to keep us out.”

  The young man in the suit, presumably Razor’s brother, stepped forward and said, “The police—”

  His mother cut him off with a gesture. “Stay out of this, Heath.”

  Heath flushed from collar to hairline, and the boy in the bomber jacket—Dennis Knight?—said with a smirk, “Police eat shit.”

  I nodded. Smiled. “And they’re noted for their loving kindness to smartass punks who give them a hard time.”

  For a long moment, we stared each other down. Then Medea made a sweeping gesture that ended with a sharp jab to the air in front of my face. “Remember this,”she said. “When your world falls all to hell.”

  I didn’t believe in magic spells or voodoo curses. I didn’t believe in vampires or witches or things that go bump in the night. The only monsters I had ever seen were human. All the same, just for a moment, the wildness in her face made my stomach clench.

  Then the moment passed. I looked her in the eye and laughed. “Bring it on.”

  “You’ll see,” she said. She spun around and scuttled down the path with a hunching, spider-like gait. The boys sauntered after her, scowling theatrically, thumbs hitched into their pants pockets.

  “Looks like I’ve been hexed,” I said.

  Razor’s mother forced a smile and dabbed a finger at the wet mascara smudges under her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Friends of your son’s?” I asked.

  She made a sour face. “That would be stating it generously. First they kill him, and now they want to dance at his funeral.”

  “Did they?” I said. “Kill him?”

  “One way or the other. I’m Elaina.”

  “Jared.” I held the door open, and she went in first. Heath followed sullenly.

  “You should see Sebastian,” she said, and guided me forward with her fingertips. “Heath, would you get Mummy a cup of coffee?”

  Heath bent from the waist in an exaggerated bow. “Of course. Anything for Mummy.”

  As we stood beside the chrome-edged casket at the front of the chapel, Elaina reached into the coffin and straightened Razor’s tie. “He looks beautiful, doesn’t he?”

  He’d been dressed in a traditional dark suit, probably the first he’d worn in years. The flesh-colored foundation and the hint of p
each blush applied to his face made him look oddly more alive than he had the last time I’d seen him.

  “He looks . . . peaceful,” I said.

  There was an awkward silence. Then Heath appeared with the coffee and handed a cup to his mother.

  “Thank you, dear,” Elaina said, wrapping her long tapered fingers around the cup and dismissing him with a nod. She gave me a vacant smile, scanned the room with glazed eyes. The altercation in the parking lot had probably taken everything she had. Her gaze slid to another mourner.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, and drifted away. The weight of her grief went with her, and I was relieved when she went.

  I turned from the coffin just in time to see Josh slip into the chapel. He looked my way and pulled up short, eyes widening.

  I watched him think it through. Had I seen him yet? Could he duck out of sight before I did? Then his shoulders slumped and he headed in my direction.

  He wore a black suit with a black shirt and a red silk tie that stood out against all that blackness like a wound. He’d grown taller in the last few months, and his limbs seemed at a loss as to what to do with themselves. His eyes were watery and rimmed with red, and I thought he looked exceptionally young and vulnerable, like a newborn giraffe.

  He glanced into the coffin and swallowed hard. Jammed his hands into his pockets. My gaze flicked to his wrists, where the bandages peeked out from his jacket sleeves.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” I gave his shoulder an awkward pat. “Does Randall know you’re here?”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “I haven’t decided. What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “You asked me to investigate.”

  “At his funeral?”

  “You’d be surprised what you can pick up at a funeral.”

  He pushed a shock of hair away from his forehead. “I don’t know. It seems . . . disrespectful.”

  “Do you want me to be respectful, or do you want me to find out who killed him?”

  “Both.” He reached into the casket and laid a hand on Razor’s cheek. I wanted to slap it away. Knew it would be a mistake. “He would have hated this. He would have wanted to be buried in something extravagant and elegant.”

  The last time I’d seen Razor, he’d been wearing black trousers with laces up both sides, a white silk shirt with a ruffled front, and a crushed velvet jacket with antique brass buttons. Black lips. White foundation. He’d looked like an undead highwayman. Elaborate, sure. Memorable, even. But elegant? That was debatable.

  After the service, a traditional ceremony with hymns and a sermon, we followed the shivering procession across the parking lot to the cemetery for the graveside service. The grave was a frozen gash at the top of a short slope, where the family sat in folding chairs beneath a canopy. The rest of us stood at the bottom of the slope, shuffling our feet for warmth and wiping sleet from our eyes.

  “Do they always go on and on like this?” Josh whispered. When I put a hand on his shoulder, I could feel him trembling. Maybe from cold. Maybe from grief. Maybe a bit of both. It pissed me off that Razor still had a hold on him. “How can they stand it?”

  I shrugged off my coat and slipped it around his shoulders. “Delaying the inevitable,” I whispered back. “They don’t want to put him in the ground.”

  I flipped up my collar and tucked my hands under my armpits to keep warm. While the preacher droned on, I scanned the crowd. Nobody looked out of place. Nobody stood up and confessed to Razor’s murder. Then Josh nudged me with his elbow and nodded toward a blond boy at the back of the crowd. “That’s Byron. Byron Birch. He and Razor were . . .” He rubbed his hands together and blew on them to warm them with his breath. “You know. After Razor and I broke up.”

  I remembered Byron’s name from the police report. He’d worked out at the gym, gone to a movie, picked up a sack full of Krystal burgers, and come home to find a bloodbath in his living room.

  The kid was about Josh’s age, blond as an Aryan wet dream and with the kind of looks that draw predators out of the woodwork. His navy blue suit was too short in the sleeves and too tight across the chest, and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen.

  “He’s not Goth,” I said.

  “He’s a jock,” Josh said, as if that explained something. Maybe it did.

  A man in a long wool coat, open to reveal a tailored black suit, stood beside Byron, a proprietary hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Josh.

  “Alan Keating. A friend of Razor’s. From before.”

  “Before?”

  Josh looked uncomfortable, and I knew what he meant. The only thing that really mattered. Before me. “Back in the old days,” he said. “I think they went to school together or something.”

  Even with his suit damp and his dark hair stiff with sleet, Keating looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine. Sun-bed tan, conservatively styled hair, gold tips attached to his starched white collar. His tie was lavender, the tie tack embellished with a loop of gold chain. He looked to be in his late twenties, which should have made him too old for Razor’s taste. Certainly, he was too old for Byron.

  My fists clenched at my sides.

  Josh said, “It’s not like Byron was some little virgin or anything, anyway. Angel Face was hustling tricks way before he took up with Razor.”

  The minister finished his speech and the mourners fluttered into bunches like a flock of half-frozen but well-dressed ravens.

  I made my way toward Byron, catching snippets of conversation as I passed. Josh trailed along behind me.

  “. . . his poor mother . . .”

  “Maybe now she’ll give Heath the time of day . . .”

  “. . . Sebastian . . . freakish, last time I saw him . . .”

  “. . . so very sorry for your loss . . .”

  “. . . so sorry for your loss . . .”

  “. . . so sorry.”

  I caught up to Byron and touched his sleeve just as he and Keating turned away. Byron looked blankly at my extended hand for a moment before clasping it in his own, and his smile flashed half a beat too late. His eyes were glazed. I thought of the pharmaceuticals found in Razor’s house and wondered if Byron had been medicated. If Keating had medicated him.

  “Byron Birch?” I said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “This may not be the best time, but—”

  “I still can’t believe it.” His hands were trembling, and he jammed them into his pockets when he realized I had noticed. “He’s the most . . . alive . . . person I ever met. How can he just be gone?”

  He still spoke in the present tense, as if he hadn’t fully processed the fact that Razor was dead.

  A mechanical whirr interrupted the conversation as the coffin began its descent into the grave. The crowd began to disperse, and Elaina gave us a narrow look before Heath guided her away.

  “She hates me,” Byron said. “I don’t know why. I didn’t kill him.”

  “No,” I agreed, though I had no idea if this was true. “But you probably know the people who did.”

  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.”<
br />
  “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?”