Blearily, I stumbled down to breakfast barefoot and blue-jeaned, scratching my stomach and stifling yawns. Jay looked up as I plopped into my chair and reached for the steaming mug he’d placed beside my plate.
“You missed a button,” he said, gesturing toward my shirt. His smile was weak, embarrassed. “I guess you heard?”
I fumbled to realign my buttons. “A little.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
Jay set a plateful of muffins on the table between us and scooted onto his chair. A coffee cup full of immune-boosters, protease inhibitors, and Shaklee vitamin supplements sat beside his plate. He said, “Do you think I should call him?”
“Eric or Dylan?”
“Eric.”
“I don’t know. I guess that’s up to you.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“Jay, I’m sorry. I—”
“No, it’s all right. It isn’t fair of me to put you in the middle of it.” He picked up a muffin, made a neat incision in it, and tucked a pat of butter into the slit. Then he set it down carefully and slid it to the far side of his plate. “If I bring Dylan here . . . are you going to walk out too?”
“You know better,” I said.
I was relieved when he finally pushed his plate away and started to clear the table. I pushed away too. I had a couple of hours before I had to meet with Miss Aleta and her client. “I’ll be in the barn.”
He forced a smile. “Say hello to the boys for me.”
The barn smelled of hay, fresh earth, sawdust, and leather oil. The sweet-sweat-and-dry-dust scent of the horses. Dakota, the rescued Arabian, arched his neck across the stall opening. I fed him a handful of oats, brushed a few stray grains from his lips, and laid my palm flat against his nose so I could feel his breath. Rubbed the scar tissue around his blind eye. Four months ago, he would have flinched. Now he rubbed his head against my palm and whickered.
I brushed the caked mud from the horses’ winter coats and picked out their hooves, then returned them to their stalls, which were open to the pasture. Dakota and the Tennessee Walker, Crockett, trotted out into the pale winter sunlight. Tex, the Quarter Horse I’d run poles and barrels on when I was a kid, nuzzled my hand with his graying muzzle. I raked my fingers through his mane and plucked a burr from the pale, coarse hair. Thought of Androcles, though there was nothing lion-like about the palomino gelding. He gave my palm a long lick before plodding out to join the others. His limp, the residual effect of a damaged tendon, was barely noticeable. A lot like mine.
By the time I’d put out their hay and checked on the heating element in the watering trough, I was shivering. It would have been a good day to curl up in bed with a thick blanket and a warm woman. Instead, I shrugged on my dad’s leather jacket, locked my Glock and shoulder holster in the glove compartment, and drove downtown to the juvenile detention center where Absinthe was being held. The wheels of justice had already begun to grind, and in a day or so, a judge would decide whether or not the heinousness of Razor’s murder merited a transfer to adult court. If so, she’d be moved to the Metro jail a few blocks over, but for now she was still in the juvenile system.
Miss Aleta met me on the other side of the security checkpoint, her hand extended in greeting. I plucked my keys from the plastic container and stuffed them into my pocket, then clasped her proffered hand. The bones felt fragile, and I thought that if I squeezed too hard, the hand would crumble in my palm like a dry leaf.
“You remember what I told you,” she said. “I’ll be listening.”
“I remember.”
I followed her past the courtrooms and a bulletin board where rows of clipboards hung on nails announced the day’s court dockets. Just beyond the stairwell was the door to the detention facility, and beyond that was another checkpoint, where I left my keys with a pleasant-looking woman behind a glass partition. She gave me an appraising smile and gestured me through the electronic security gate. Miss Aleta went around the gate and opened one of the small lockers mounted on the wall. She rummaged through her purse for a pen and a memo tablet, then stuffed the purse into the locker. The woman behind the partition buzzed us through the heavy security door, and we stepped into the corridor that led to processing.
To our left was a visitation room that doubled as a training room for new hires. We passed through it to a smaller room, bare except for a table and four cushioned office chairs, two on each side. No partition, like there would have been in the Metro jailhouse, just a plate glass window between the two rooms so the guard posted outside it could see if anything went wrong.
Absinthe, a chubby girl straining the seams of an orange jailhouse jumpsuit, was already seated at the table. Her head was pillowed on her arms like a child who’s been told to put her head on her desk. She looked up when we came in, face blotchy from crying.
“Is my mom coming?” she asked. Her voice was high-pitched, girlish. She didn’t sound like someone who would slash a young man’s throat and gut him with a hunting knife. She sounded like a little kid lost in the woods.
Miss Aleta sighed. “Not this time, child.”
For a moment, Absinthe’s face seemed about to crumple. Then she lifted her chin and jabbed a finger in my direction. The black polish was chipped, the nails gnawed down to the quick. “What’s he doing here?”
Miss Aleta said, “He wants to talk to you about Mr. Parker’s murder. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say.”
“I remember you,” Absinthe said to me. She tugged self-consciously at the waist of her jumpsuit, which was at least a size too small. “You’re Josh’s uncle.”
“That’s right. Jared McKean. They treating you okay?”
She glanced at her attorney, then back at me. Shrugged. “I guess.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . The other girls are kinda mean.”
Miss Aleta slitted her eyes and said, “Have any of them hurt you?”
Absinthe picked at a cuticle. “Sticks and stones.”
I said, “You were with Josh the day Razor died.”
Something flashed in her eyes, and she swung her head toward me. “I’m no snitch.”
“Look, he told me he ditched school. Witnesses saw him with you. How do you think it looked for him when you confessed to Razor’s murder? The cops know you didn’t do it alone.”
“I told them Josh didn’t have anything to do with it. I told them I was by myself.”
“You overpowered a grown man, cut his throat, lugged his body upstairs, and hung it up to drain the—”
“Stop!” She flung up her hands, as if to ward off an attack, then ducked her head and whispered, “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“No, I expect you don’t.”
In a brittle voice, Miss Aleta said, “And she doesn’t have to. Change your tactics, Mister, or the interview is over.”
I ignored her, directing my next question to Absinthe. “You really want to stay in here?”
Miss Aleta’s head swiveled toward me. I could tell she was angry by the way her hand tightened on her pen. “Mr. McKean. That’s enough.”
I held up a hand, palm outward. Trust me.
Absinthe leaned forward and sniffled. “No. No, I don’t want to stay in here. I hate it here. I didn’t think it would be this way.”
“How did you think it would be?”
“I don’t know.” She took a little hitching breath. “There’s no privacy here, you know? There’s like six of us in a room and the toilet is right in the same room. There’s just a little wall so nobody can see, but anybody can come around the corner and make fun of you any time they want. And the girls are always picking at you when nobody’s watching, but if you say one little thing back, you better believe they see that. And, like, there’s nobody to talk to; half the people in here can’t even read. And the beds—bunks, or whatever you call ’em—are hard and lumpy, and . . . small. You can hardly even roll over. It’s
like . . .” She gnawed at her lower lip, then mumbled, “Like prison.”
“It’s nothing like prison,” I said. “This is a cakewalk compared to prison.”
Miss Aleta gave her head a small shake. “Mr. McKean.”
Absinthe’s eyes welled. “That prosecutor,” she said. “Mr. Jessup. He said he wants to try me as an adult.”
“Not if I can help it,” Miss Aleta said.
I gave her a pointed look. “But can you help it?”
“I’m very good at what I do.”
I looked back at Absinthe. “She’s right. She’s very good at what she does. But you confessed, remember? And the prosecutor isn’t going to let the judge forget that. He’s going to pull out pictures of the crime scene and say that anybody who could do a thing like that should be locked up for the rest of her life, not just until her eighteenth birthday.”
Tears spilled down her face. “I don’t want to go to prison.”
“Then let me help you.”
“It isn’t what you think,” she mumbled. “I never meant for him to die.”
I didn’t ask how you could fillet a man by accident. Instead, I made my voice as neutral as possible and asked, “How did it happen?”
Her shoulders lifted, dropped. One hand reached up, found a strand of hair, and twisted it around her finger. The other hand was clamped tightly to her opposite hip, as if to hold herself together. I’d seen a man gut-shot once, and he’d held himself like that.
“Was it a sacrifice?” I asked.
She shrugged again.
Miss Aleta said, “Laurel—”
“I hate that name,” Absinthe said. “Why won’t you call me by my real name?”
“Absinthe?” Miss Aleta spread her fingers in a frustrated gesture. “Why would you want to be named after a poison?”
“It isn’t a poison. It’s a liqueur.”
I said, “Then why not just call yourself Bailey’s Irish Cream and be done with it? It’s easier to spell.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m trying to,” I said. “Look, I’ll call you whatever you want, but your attorney’s right. You need to distance yourself from this stuff.”
“This stuff is who I am,” she said.
“Laurel,Absinthe. Whoever you want to be. About this sacrifice—”
“It wasn’t a sacrifice.”
“Then why the pentagram? Why the symbols drawn in blood? Was this a satanic thing?”
“It’s not satanic. It’s just magick. It doesn’t have anything to do with Satan.”
“Okay.” I plucked a tissue from my pocket and handed it to her. She used it to wipe her nose, then folded it over and dabbed at her eyes. “Explain it to me.”
She sucked on a strand of hair, pulled it through her teeth, and carefully arranged it into a long wet curl along her cheek. “First off, the pentagram isn’t satanic. Satan is a Judeo-Christian invention, and people were using pentagrams way before both those religions.”
“Razor was cut open across a pentagram. It had to mean something.”
She looked away, chewing at her lower lip.
I said, “Talk, don’t talk. It’s all the same to me. But no jury will fall for this ‘I didn’t mean it’ crap. You can’t carve a man up like a Halloween pumpkin and not mean it.”
Her lips trembled, and more tears spilled down her face.
I said, “The judge won’t care if you cry.”
A line of snot trickled to her upper lip, and she swiped a sleeve across it, then looked at the tissue in her hand and gave a little laugh. “God, I’m a basket case. I can’t stay here.”
“Then talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.”
“Somebody threaten you?”
“No.”
“I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
She tugged at her hair again. Nibbled at a nail. I kept my mouth shut and gave her time to think it through.
“You going to get me out of here?” she said at last.
“I’m going to try.”
“I can’t tell you who was there.”
“Absinthe, these people are not your friends. You don’t owe them anything.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “Because I don’t know.”
I frowned. Licked at the small, thin scar on my lower lip. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You said—”
“I said I killed him.” She rubbed at a fingernail. Flicked away a chip of black polish. “I never said I was there.”
CHAPTER TEN
Miss Aleta leaned forward with a little gasp. “What are you saying, child?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. How did you kill him, if you weren’t there?”
Absinthe raked one ragged thumbnail across the other, scraping a thin white strip into the dark polish. Then, “Craft,” she said at last. “I killed him with craft.”
“Witchcraft?”
She gave a miserable nod.
“How the hell do you kill someone with witchcraft?”
“I have spell books. Real ones. They tell you how to bring harm to your enemies, even death. It’s Black Magick. I never thought it would really work.”
“Then what was the point?”
She looked down at her lap. “It made me feel better, that’s all. But then it really worked, and when you use bad magick against someone, it comes back to you, only three times worse. It’s called the Rule of Three. Whatever you wish on someone else comes back on you, threefold.”
“Sounds risky.”
She waved a hand, indicating her surroundings. “Ya think?”
“So why do it?”
“I was pissed at him.”
“Obviously. About what?”
“It doesn’t matter. It was stupid. Just some stuff about our coterie.”
“Coterie. That’s like a coven?”
“Duh. No. It’s just a group of people who hang together. Some of us are vampires. Like Razor and Barnabus. And some of us are human servants. Only, being a witch, I was special.”
Miss Aleta leaned forward again. “You said, ‘human servant.’ You’re saying Mr. Parker wasn’t human?”
I could see her angling, the way defense attorneys do. If she couldn’t get Absinthe off, maybe she could make a case for an insanity plea.
Absinthe tugged at the thumbnail with her teeth and winced as a bead of blood welled up beneath it. Absently, she licked it with the tip of her tongue, then closed her lips around it and sucked at the wound. I repeated Miss Aleta’s question. Reluctantly, Absinthe removed the thumb from her mouth.
“He was a vampire,” she said slowly. “I don’t mean he was immortal or anything. All that stuff about vampires being immortal and not being able to go out in daylight . . . that’s just so much crap. A vampire is a person who can feed off of the life force of another person.”
“Life force. That’s blood?”
“It’s essence. Life energy. Some vampires have to drink blood to get it, but for a really powerful vampire, like Razor, the blood is just a high. He could tap into the life force without that. You’ve heard that old saying that someone just sucks you dry? Someone who sort of saps your strength? Well, that’s a vampire.”
I could think of a few people who fit the description. “So all this power Razor supposedly had. What did he do with it?”
She blinked. Frowned. “Do?”
“Yeah. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t give to charity. So what, exactly, did he do?”
She scowled, scratching at the table with her index finger. “He understood people. Made them want to do things for him. Give him things. He could, like, see into people’s heads.”
“You’re saying he was some kind of mind reader?”
“I don’t know. Some vampires are.”
“You aren’t a vampire?”
“No.” She looked at me as if I weren’t completely bright. “I’m a witch.”
I opened my mouth to ask another questio
n, and she raised a hand to stop me. “You want to know how it works, I’ll tell you some books to read. Write these down.”
Miss Aleta pulled out her pad and dutifully scrawled the titles. Charms, witchcraft, vampires, and the player’s handbook for the vampire game. She tore out a sheet of paper and made another copy of the list, which she slid over to me.
“I didn’t plan on taking a course,” I said to Absinthe, tucking the list into my pocket.
“Too bad.” She gave me a watery smile. “You need one.”
A few follow-up questions, and then I walked Miss Aleta to her car. There was a hint of a smile on her lips, and I could see her working out a new defense strategy. Police still had Absinthe’s fingerprints on the knife and the eyewitness who placed her near the crime scene, but without her confession, the case was weak. There might be enough doubt to keep her out of the adult system. Maybe even get a sympathetic judge to award bail.
“I’ll call Josh,” I said. “See if I can find out where he and Absinthe went when they left Razor’s. Maybe there was another witness.”
“You do that,” Miss Aleta said. “I’ll make a date with the prosecutor.”
The phone conversation with Josh was unenlightening.
Where did you and Absinthe go when you left Razor’s?
We weren’t at Razor’s.
A witness put you there.
Just in the neighborhood. We didn’t go to the house.
Then what—?
Just watching.
Watching what?
Nothing. Everything. Just watching.
They’d watched the neighborhood for a couple of hours. Then Absinthe drove Josh home and—presumably—went back to her place. No, they hadn’t seen anything. No, no one had gone into the house. Around mid-morning, Byron had come out carrying a black workout bag and pulled away in Razor’s Camaro. He was too young to have a license, but I guess that didn’t mean much to either of them. Josh and Absinthe had left at eleven—more than an hour before the murder, if the medical examiner’s estimated time of death was accurate. Filling in the blanks, I thought Josh had probably gone there to see Razor. Changed his mind and left when he saw Byron.
Razor had lived a few blocks off West End in a refurbished multi-level house with gabled dormers and two pinnacled towers. Half House of Usher, half Addams Family. In balmier weather, I could have walked there from my office. The neighborhood had seen better days, like an aging heiress whose milky complexion had been replaced by wrinkles and age spots. Houses that had once hosted coming out parties and champagne brunches were now considered starter homes and fixer-uppers.
A Cup Full of Midnight Page 6
