A Cup Full of Midnight

by Jaden Terrell

  It took me a minute to realize that “Bastian” was Razor. “The other kids pick on him too?”

  He gave a little snort of laughter. “They knew better. One day, I saw him playing around near Mrs. DeVray’s desk. When she opened her drawer, she found a dozen black widow spiders in it.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She quit that same afternoon.”

  “And you thought it was Razor.”

  “Of course it was. While the other kids were screaming and climbing on top of their desks, Bastian looked over at me and winked. From that day on, we were friends, and the other kids left me alone.”

  Razor as protector. Razor as avenger. The image didn’t fit. Maybe he’d been different in grade school. Then again, Keating had been a sad, vulnerable little boy everybody picked on. He was exactly the kind of lost soul Razor would be drawn to. A shark to blood, as Keating had said.

  “He saved my life,” Keating said, as if he’d read my mind. “Melodramatic as that sounds. Only he couldn’t do it the usual way, couldn’t stand up on the playground and say, ‘Leave my friend alone.’ That would have been too noble. He could never bear to give in to his better instincts.”

  “He couldn’t admit he was protecting you.”

  “Exactly. He put spiders in the teacher’s desk. Any good it did me was just a side effect. He could tell himself our friendship was some Machiavellian thing built from ulterior motives.”

  “That didn’t piss you off?”

  He waved the idea away as if it were smoke. “He was a complex man, Mr. McKean, almost equal parts arrogance and self-loathing. Have you met his mother?”

  “Briefly. At the funeral.”

  “Completely narcissistic. Saw him as a showpiece, not a son. He was her confidant, her little hero. As if he was supposed to meet her needs, not the other way around. He slept with her until he went away to college. His father slept in the guest room until the day he died. He was practically a ghost.” He looked at me as if to gauge my reaction. Trying to shock me?

  I ignored the bait. “Distant father, suffocating mother. Possible incest. That’s got to be some kind of textbook dysfunctional family model.”

  Keating cocked his head to one side with a bemused smile on his face. It didn’t look completely at home there. “Why, Mr. McKean,” he said. “You’ve had a psychology course.”

  “One or two. But I don’t buy the idea that a crappy childhood justifies bad behavior.”

  He picked up a sleek mechanical pencil and rolled it between his fingers. “I don’t justify it, but I understand it. Bastian latched onto this vampire mythology because it gave him a sense of power and control. If it hadn’t been that, he would have found something else.”

  “Such as?”

  “Who knows? Neo-Nazism, some kind of cult. Okay, so he was a little twisted. Sometimes life is twisted.”

  It was a strange comment, coming from a psychologist.

  I said, “He has a brother.”

  “Heath. A senior at Vanderbilt. Philosophy and Religion. He was several years younger than Bastian and I.”

  “He twisted too?”

  “I expect so,” he said. “Though not in the same way. Bastian was Mama’s little prince and Daddy’s little bastard. Heath was just invisible. Was that all you needed? I have a client coming soon.”

  “Tell me about the woman at the funeral. The one who spit on your shoes.”

  “Marta Savales. What about her?”

  “People don’t usually spit on people they think highly of.”

  “They pay you to make that kind of deduction?”

  “No. They pay me to make other deductions. Want to tell me why this Marta Savales thinks so much of you?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the laptop and turned it on, pointed and clicked until he found what he was looking for, and scribbled something on the back of one of his business cards. “Here,” he said, holding out the card between two fingers. “Ask her yourself. I’m sure she’ll talk to you.”

  “Why would she?”

  “Her son is missing. She’d talk to the devil if she thought it would help find him.”

  “What happened to—”

  “I have work to do, Mr. McKean. I’m sure you understand that.” He tapped the edge of the card against the desk.

  I reached across and took the card. Marta Savales, it said, followed by a seven-digit number. I slipped it into my shirt pocket and said, “One more thing . . . Where were you the day Razor was killed?”

  “I was here.”

  “All day?”

  He licked his lips and glanced away, back toward the window. “I may have stepped out for lunch,” he said finally.

  “May have?”

  “Sometimes I go out, sometimes I work through lunch. There’s no pattern to it. Then when Heath called to tell me what had happened—” His shoulders sagged. “I could hardly think afterward.”

  “If you had gone out, how long would you have been gone?”

  “I don’t know. Forty-five minutes. Maybe more.”

  “You have clients all afternoon?”

  “Generally.”

  “And your receptionist would have noticed if you’d been gone longer than usual.”

  “Kirsten doesn’t work on Friday afternoons. Child care issues. And I don’t like where this conversation is going, Mr. McKean. Am I a suspect?”

  “Everybody’s a suspect,” I told him. “Everybody but me. One more question. This one’s definitely in your bailiwick.”

  “I suspect you don’t know anything about my bailiwick, but go ahead.”

  “The severed genitals . . .” He winced, but waited for me to go on. “What kind of person does a thing like that?”

  “Assuming it wasn’t a prescribed part of some ritual—”

  “We don’t think so, no.”

  “No. Well, then.” He tugged at his tie. Cleared his throat. “Look for someone who felt victimized by Bastian’s sexuality—Bastian or someone like him. Someone who wanted Bastian humiliated.”

  “So they cut off his balls.”

  “Exactly. Literal emasculation. It shows a lot of rage.”

  “Any idea who might have been that pissed at him?”

  “Mr. McKean, this was way beyond pissed.”

  “Rage, then. Any idea who might have felt that kind of rage?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice broke, and tears welled in his eyes. “He hurt so many people. I’d have no idea where to start.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I waved at Kirsten on the way out. Pretty girl, with eyes like malachite and skin the color of eggshells. Her hair was molten copper. Straight and shoulder-length, with the ends flipped up.

  I had a sudden thought, veered back and laid my palms on her desk. Flashed her a grin.

  She smiled up at me, a hint of mischief on her face. “Something else I can do for you?”

  “Any chance I could take a look at your appointment book?”

  “I don’t think so.” She pushed a few copper strands away from her forehead. “Confidentiality, you know.”

  “Sure, I get that. I just wanted to confirm some information Mr. Keating gave me. Confirm he was working a couple of Fridays ago. I guess I could wait in the parking lot on Friday and ask the patients about it as they go in.” Before she could protest, I gave her the date and added, “It should be pretty much the same folks week to week, shouldn’t it?”

  A thin, vertical line etched itself between her eyebrows. “That’s a little invasive, don’t you think? If all you need to know is if he was working, I can tell you he has clients pretty much all day every day, Tuesday through Saturday, five days a week.”

  “But people cancel sometimes, right?”

  “Sometimes. And, of course, sometimes an emergency comes up. A client in distress, a suicide attempt. Something like that.”

  “Tell you what, why don’t you look through it, tell me what’s there? No names, no problem, right?”

  She leane
d forward onto her elbows, lifting the hair off the back of her neck with a slender hand. “Dr. Keating is okay with this?”

  “Why not? He’s the one who gave me the information.”

  “Maybe I should call him to verify . . .”

  “Sure.” I smiled. Gave her the guileless look I’d used running undercover stings in Vice. Mouth dry, gut roiling, nothing but calm on the surface. “I’ll wait.”

  She gave a little sigh and let her hair fall back into place. “Well, I hate to interrupt him when he’s getting ready for a patient. I guess it will be okay.” She opened the appointment book and flipped through the pages until she found the right date. “It says here . . .” She ran her finger down the page. “Looks like a full day. He was booked from nine until four.”

  I was disappointed, but I nodded as if it was what I’d been expecting. “Thanks for the confirmation.”

  “Must have been a busy afternoon,” she said, still appraising the book.

  “Why do you say that?”

  She tapped at a name on the schedule. “One of us always initials the schedule after a session. Since I leave at noon on Fridays, he does it then, but it must have gotten crazy in the afternoon, because he forgot to initial anything after lunch.”

  I tried not to grin too broadly. “Thanks. You saved me a lot of work.”

  She handed me another of Keating’s business cards and looked at me like a cat might eye a bowl of milk. “In case you need to get in touch with me about anything. Use it sometime.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I had no intention of calling Keating’s receptionist, but I owed her a debt of gratitude. A few missing initials didn’t mean Keating was guilty of anything more than being overworked, but it seemed a little too convenient that the one day he’d forgotten to sign off on his appointments was the day his good friend Razor had been butchered. I hadn’t drawn first blood yet, but it was a start.

  I dialed my ex-wife’s number from Keating’s parking lot. When she answered, I felt a familiar rush of pleasure and pain.

  “Hiya,Angel,” I said.

  Maria gave a pleased little laugh. “Hiya, Cowboy.”There was an awkward moment. Then she said, “You want to talk to Paulie?”

  “Yeah. Put him on.”

  A few seconds later, Paul’s gravelly voice came on the line. “Mama baby comin’. Gonna take care of her, my pretty baby.”

  “I know you will, Sport.”

  He was eight years old, but fate, or God, or genetics had given him the mind of a three-year-old. Just after he was born, when Maria’s doctor told us he had Down syndrome, we’d thought of all the things he’d never do and wondered how we’d cope. Would he ever ride a bike? (He does.) Could I teach him to play baseball? (Yes, but not well.) Would he be happy? Could we?

  We’d thought if our marriage could survive a disabled child, it could survive anything.

  We were wrong. When it ended, it had nothing to do with Paul.

  As I listened to my son chatter, some of the tension in my neck and shoulders seeped away. Thirty minutes after I flipped the phone closed and pulled onto the Interstate, I walked into our living room to find Jay draping silver strands on an artificial tree so tall the angel on top brushed the ceiling. His back was to me, and the droop of his shoulders said he was giving the tree such careful attention to take his mind off his problems.

  I waved one arm in an arc that swept from the tree in one corner to the sterile hospital bed in the center of the room. One leather armchair had been pulled against the wall; the other squatted beside the bed. “Did you do all this yourself?”

  He turned, a strand of icicle dangling from his fingers. “I put up the tree. The guys who delivered the bed helped with the rest.”

  I didn’t ask about Eric, and Jay didn’t mention him. Instead, we made small talk over dinner, then bundled up and drove across town to bring home the scum-sucking bastard who had given Jay AIDS.

  Fabulous Greg, who’d taken Dylan in for the short term but didn’t deal well with suffering, was tall and lean, with rugged, Marlboro Man features and narrow, bloodshot eyes. He met us halfway down the front sidewalk, a cigarette tucked between his fingers, Greta Garbo-style.

  “Thank God you’re here,” he said. He ground the cigarette out on the heel of his shoe and curled the butt into his palm. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to help him—”

  “It’s okay,” Jay said. “We’ve got it.”

  Greg gestured toward a pair of oversized suitcases. “His meds are in the front zipper pocket, along with an instruction sheet. You know, how many of what and when.”

  I carried the suitcases out to the car and stowed them in the trunk. Then Greg led us down a Georgia O’Keeffe hallway and into a bedroom with starched white sheets and ivory walls accented by Andrew Wyeth prints in wooden frames.

  I’d seen pictures of Dylan. Tanned. Bleached blond. Manufactured James Dean expression. The hollow-cheeked man who lifted his head from the pillow when we walked in bore little resemblance to those photographs.

  Jay’s expression was neutral, but his eyes gave him away. I didn’t need words to know that he was seeing his own future in Dylan’s ravaged face.

  “So, you’re Jay’s latest,” Dylan rasped. His voice was weak, but he still managed to make it sound smug. His thinning hair had reclaimed its natural shade of brown, and his smooth-shaven face was mottled with purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions. One ear was crusted with scabs.

  “He’s not my latest,” Jay said, before I could answer. “He’s just a friend. A straight friend, at that. So be nice.”

  Dylan’s laugh dissolved into a long, racking cough that made his eyes water. When he’d recovered, he asked, “When have I not been nice?”

  Jay shook his head, a pained expression on his face, as if the question had rendered him speechless. I could have said enough for both of us, but it wasn’t my question to answer.

  Dylan met my gaze, and his smile faded. “No, really, Jay. Thanks for coming.”

  Jay leaned down and placed a dry kiss on Dylan’s lips. He smoothed an invisible wrinkle from the Appalachian quilt pulled up to Dylan’s neck, then paused and picked up a painted plastic model of Bela Lugosi as Dracula from the table beside Dylan’s bed.

  “You still have this,” he said. He turned to me and said, “I made this for him. Before we split up.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Dylan said. “I happen to like Dracula.”

  Jay looked down at his shoes.

  “Don’t be a dick,” I said to Dylan, and he stretched his mouth into something that resembled a grin.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” he said. “Jay knows why I kept it.”

  Jay and Fabulous Greg bundled Dylan into flannel pajamas and a down parka. Jay slid one arm around Dylan’s shoulders and another under his legs. Dylan was drawn and shrunken, but the strain of lifting him showed on Jay’s face.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  I carried Dylan out to the car and laid him gently across the backseat. Jay and Greg arranged pillows and an inflatable raft around him. As they jostled him, he pressed his lips together and clenched his fists.

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said. His breath steamed out of his mouth and hovered between them like a ghost. “We’ll be home soon. Then you can rest.”

  “Home?” gasped Dylan, between clenched teeth. “I don’t think so, Jay-o.”

  Jay paused and laid a hand on Dylan’s cheek. “It’s my home, honey. That’s going to have to do.”

  Greg shifted from one foot to the other. “There’s one more thing. Wait here.” He jogged into the house and returned a few moments later, a small bundle of white and sable fur tucked into the crook of his arm.

  “Good God,” Jay said. “What is that?”

  It was bigger than a squirrel and smaller than a rabbit, with a foxy face and a pair of oversized fringed ears that stood out from its head like wings. Greg held it out, and it licked his fingers and wagged a plumed tail.
/>   “This is Luca,” Greg said, pressing the puppy into Jay’s arms. It nestled against Jay’s chest and licked his chin. “A very dear friend thought he’d be good company for Dylan. God knows what she was thinking. I’ve been keeping him in the laundry room; it’s tiled.”

  Jay looked at me. I shrugged. There was hardly enough of the little guy to qualify as a dog, but he deserved better than a cramped life in a grudging owner’s laundry room.

  Greg said, “He’s a papillon. You’ll love him. I thought he’d be a yappy thing, but I’ve never even heard him bark.”

  “Well . . .” Jay said.

  “Wonderful!” Greg gave Dylan a quick, careful hug and scurried back into the house, rubbing his arms against the cold.

  Dylan held out his arms, and Jay tucked the puppy in beside him.

  “You’re too good to me,” Dylan said dryly, and even though I knew he was being sarcastic, I silently agreed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When I left the house on Friday afternoon, Jay was sitting at the dining room table reading the comics and eating strawberry Pop-Tarts. Beside his plate were a half-empty glass of soy milk and a fistful of vitamins and prescription drugs. The sound of Dylan’s rattling breath came from a baby monitor on the edge of the counter.

  “Sleeping,” Jay whispered, gesturing toward the living room.

  “Probably good for him. You going to be all right?”

  “You’re the one who’s out chasing murderers.” He turned the page to the horoscopes. Pointed to mine. “The stars say it’s a bad time to take risks.”

  “It always is.”

  The forecast called for snow, and already the freezing wind cut through my fleece-lined jacket as if it were cotton. I pulled on a pair of gloves and a knit cap and drove to Josh’s high school. Found a parking spot near the front, where a wave of exuberant teens poured through the double doors and spewed out into the parking lot.

  In the front hall, I found Josh chatting with his English teacher, Elisha Casale. An attractive woman. Caramel skin. Hair the color of molasses in sunlight. We’d met the summer before, and I wondered if maybe the chance of seeing her was what had made me come inside instead of waiting for Josh in the truck.