I slid out of the Silverado and went around to meet him. “Mr. Weaver.” I extended a hand.
He shook it with enthusiasm. “It’s Chuck,” he said. “Mr. Weaver is my father.”
“Chuck, then. You got a few minutes?”
“Sure, why not?” He led me up the cinder-block steps, shifted the bag while he fiddled with the lock, and pushed open the door. With an embarrassed grin, he said, “It’s not exactly the Ritz.”
“Bet I’ve seen worse.”
He stepped aside and set down the bag, which was crammed to overflowing with books and papers. When I was clear of the door, he kicked it closed and said, “Can I get you a beer?”
He gestured for me to sit down, then went into the kitchen. I pushed aside a garish hand-knitted afghan and sank onto the sofa, an olive drab monstrosity frayed at the arms. I heard the refrigerator door open, followed by the clinking of glass and the hiss of air being released from the bottles. Chuck came back into the room, handed me a cold beer, and kept one for himself.
He settled into a black faux-leather rocking recliner pocked with claw marks. Bought secondhand, I guessed, since there was no other sign of a cat. Weaver saw me looking and rubbed at a torn nub with his index finger. “I know. The décor is lousy. But after alimony and child support, there’s not much left for niceties.” He took a swig of beer, made a face. “Oh well, at least it’s cold, right?”
“Razor ruined your marriage, didn’t he?” I rested one ankle on the other knee and took a sip of the beer. It tasted like cold piss.
“Guy ruined everything he ever touched,” Chuck said. “It was like a hobby with him.”
“I had that impression. How’d you know it was him?”
“You don’t think he could do a thing like that and not take credit for it, do you? Shoot, for him, half the fun was gloating afterwards.” He took a long swig from the bottle. “Maybe it was for the best, though, right? There were a bunch of pictures, but I wasn’t in any of them. If she couldn’t believe I was set up, we must’ve had a problem already.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but it still sounds like you had a pretty good reason to want the guy dead.”
He tilted the beer bottle and watched the liquid slosh from side to side. “I won’t say I didn’t think about it. One of my favorites is he gets hit by a bus and despite my most heroic efforts to save him, he dies in horrific agony. You’re thinking I might have killed him?”
“I don’t know yet. Did you?”
“No. I can’t prove it, though, I don’t think. When was he killed?”
I told him the date and time.
He thought about it. “So, where was I that afternoon? I believe I went out to the mall and bought some books. A couple of Terry Pratchetts. The new Stephen King.”
“Anybody with you?”
“No.” He ran his finger over the rim of the bottle. “I’m currently between significant others.”
“Got a receipt? For the books?”
“I doubt it. And even if I did, so what? I could have gotten a receipt from anybody. It’s not like they print your picture on it.”
“Good point. So, no alibi.”
“I guess not. Sorry.” He didn’t sound especially sorry. “You don’t really think I did it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m a wuss, if you want to know the truth. I don’t watch boxing on TV. I haven’t been in a fistfight since I was eight years old—and I lost that one. I hardly even watch the news anymore, because all that violence depresses me.”
“You spend your weekends pretending to be a vampire.”
“So what? I like horror flicks, too. Movie gore, that’s nothing. Just corn syrup and a little food coloring. The game . . . You saw it. Could it have been more bloodless?”
“I read the rules,” I said. “I seem to remember something along the lines of ‘embrace your dark side, because you can’t defeat evil by denying it, only by embracing it and working through it.’That’s not an exact quote.”
“No, I know the quote you’re talking about. But it doesn’t mean anything. The rule books are written from the viewpoints of various characters, so you have to take all that philosophical stuff with a grain of salt.”
“So it’s not a manifesto.”
“It’s a game.” He tucked his bottle between his thigh and the arm of the chair. “It’s about the humanity of the characters, people pretty much like us, but in constant conflict with their dark sides. They have these powers, but there’s a price. At its best, this is a game about redemption.”
Yes, I decided. He definitely had the smarts to stage the crime scene. Probably the physical strength as well. I wasn’t sure about the mind-set. A true psychopath could play the role of humanitarian as well as anyone. For awhile.
“What is it at its worst?” I said.
“At its worst, it’s banal. Juvenile hack-and-slash role-play.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Some people play their characters as inhuman monsters. Sharks in People Suits. There’s a place for that, I guess, but I don’t personally find it very rewarding.”
He tipped up his bottle, found it empty, and heaved himself out of his chair. “I’m dry. Can I get you another one?”
There were still two inches of liquid at the bottom of my bottle. “I’m good,” I said.
He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with another beer.
I said, “Some might say the game has a bad influence on people like Razor.”
He shrugged. “It’s just a game. If you’re a moral person, it’s not going to make you an immoral one. And if you’re an immoral person, it won’t make you a good one. Razor’s group . . . well, they came to the game for kicks, but they weren’t playing characters. They were living them.”
I thought of Alan’s fifth grade teacher, who had made them write over and over, Play is the devil’s workshop. I didn’t believe that, but maybe there was something to it. Not what you played, perhaps, but how you played it. “Medea says you threatened to kill Razor.”
For the first time, his expression darkened. “Medea wouldn’t know the truth if it materialized in front of her carrying a neon sign.”
“So you never said you were going to kill him.”
“I may have. How often do we say, ‘I could have wrung his neck,’ ‘I was so mad I could have killed him.’ But how many of us do?”
“Not many,” I admitted. “But this time, someone did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
On the way home, I stopped by the dojang and sweated through an hour of kicks and punches that left me wrung out and high on endorphins. The calf felt fine, only a twinge or two to let me know it was there. Afterward, I jogged across the parking lot, damp hair freezing into clumps and the sweat on the back of my neck turning to ice. The Silverado glistened blue-black in the halogen light. A square of paper beneath the windshield wipers fluttered in the wind. I plucked it out and held it to the light.
The only good rattlesnake is a dead rattlesnake, it said. Parker was a rattlesnake. Let it go.
No signature.
I scanned the parking lot. Empty, except for the other students. I crumpled the note and stuffed it into my pocket. Unlocked the door and slid, shivering, into the driver’s seat, then punched the door locks and cranked up the heat. When the cab finally began to feel a little more Bahamas and a little less Siberia, I swung the truck out of the parking lot and headed south on Donelson Pike, picked up speed and veered on to the I-40 ramp. Barreling fast through the curve, the Silverado canted to the right, and something tumbled out from beneath the seat and bumped against my left leg.
I shuffled my foot backward to keep the pedals clear and looked down. Two inches from my boot, a thick loop of mottled silver-gray thrashed up, then down. A wedged head coiled back, followed by an unmistakable rattle.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
Then I said a word my mama hadn’t taught me and yanked both legs up and away from the pe
dals just as the snake shot through the place where my foot had been.
Holy Mary, Mother of God.
The engine hum dropped to a low drone, and the Silverado slowed, the headlights of the car behind me blooming in the rearview mirror. The snake coiled, mouth agape, for another strike.
No time to think.
Instinctively, I braced with my right foot. Snapped my left foot up and felt the snake’s nose thump against the sole of my boot.
Shit.
The tires juddered on the shoulder, then bounced onto the grass. The pickup fishtailed, and I wrenched the wheel to the left to avoid the ditch, still blocking the snake with my booted foot. The car behind me blared its horn and shot past, and the snake struck again, hit hard against the bottom of the boot, and hung there, fangs embedded in the sole.
Heart pounding, I drove the boot down hard on its head and ground it into the rubber mat as I guided the truck to a stop.
The snake writhed beneath my foot, but I held it there until my heartbeat slowed and my hands, damp with sweat and clamped to the steering wheel, stopped trembling. Then I put the truck in Park, pulled up on the door handle, and pushed the door open with my shoulder. I reached across and popped open the glove compartment, pulled out my Glock and slid off the safety with my thumb.
I passed the Glock to my left hand—my off hand—and pressed the barrel against the base of the snake’s skull. It strained upward against the pressure, body curling up and around my wrist. I squeezed the trigger once. The pistol bucked against my palm, and the shot boomed in the enclosed cab, loud enough to hurt my eardrums. A plug of flesh and blood sprayed from the snake’s neck, and with its head half severed, the snake went limp against the rubber floor mat. I held the gun to its mangled head until long after I was sure it was dead. Then, ears still ringing, I hooked the toe of my boot under the body and flipped it out of the truck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“A rattlesnake?”Jay snatched his cap and parka out of the hall closet and followed me out to the Silverado, which stood in the driveway with its driver’s side door open. “Who does a thing like that?”
I had a bucket of warm water in one hand and a soapy sponge in the other. While Jay shrugged into his parka, I set the bucket on the ground next to the pickup and dunked the sponge into it. “Could have been anybody. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the last couple days.”
“It’s insane. Where would he have gotten it, this time of year?”
“Good question. I have another one. How’d he get it in the truck?”
“You’re sure you locked it?”
“Hundred percent.” I swabbed the blood from the rubber mat and rinsed the sponge in the bucket. “Whoever this guy is, he’s good. No nicks or scratches around the locks. If he jimmied the door, he didn’t leave any traces.”
Jay tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth and said, “So what will you do?”
“Solve the case.”
“Just like that.”
“Why not? This doesn’t change anything.”
“Someone tried to kill you.”
“Someone tried to warn me off. I’m not sure killing me was the point.”
“Not killing you apparently wasn’t the point either,” he said. “You know, Josh would understand if you dropped the case. Let the police handle it.”
“The police will handle it all right.” I dabbed at a smear on the brake pedal. “Handle Josh right into a prison cell.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” he said, and went inside.
I hadn’t been able to reach Dennis Knight, so the next morning, on the off chance he was home, I drove over to the run-down duplex he shared with his mother. The other half of the building housed an Asian family whose five children played Mother-May-I as I picked my way through the dismembered Barbies and half-buried matchbox cars littering the lawn. On the stoop next door, an Asian woman sat watching the children.
“Dennis Knight live here?” I asked.
They looked up. The oldest child, a girl of about eight wearing pink stretch pants and a fuzzy blue parka, pointed a grubby finger toward the left side of the duplex.
“Thanks.” I started toward the door. Then, on impulse, I went over to the woman on the stoop. She scooted away a few inches and frowned up at me.
“You looking for good time, you go see her.” She nodded toward the Knights’ door.
“I’m not looking for a good time. I just wondered if her son and his friends ever play a game here on Fridays.”
She sniffed. “Play game, make noise. Drink beer. Very noisy. Keep little ones awake.” She put the tips of her fingers against her lips and made a spitting sound. “Ptu, ptu.”
I looked back over my shoulder toward the house. “You see her here about three Fridays ago?”
“No, no.”The woman shook her head fiercely. “Not home Friday. Two year, I live here. Never home Friday.”
I thanked her and went next door. Took the porch steps two at a time and knocked at a warped wooden door with peeling paint.
A thin woman answered. Her hair was pulled back and piled high on her head, a few loose tendrils spilling out around her face. In the background, some raucous game show blared.
“Ms. Knight?” I asked. Then I remembered the police report and said, “Tara Knight?”
“Who wants to know?” She stepped out onto the porch, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from her fingers. The nails were long, fake, and very red, with sharp outlines where they’d been glued on.
I handed her my license and watched while she studied it.
She was thirty-three, according to the police report, a single mother who had given birth at the age of seventeen. I imagined she’d been attractive once, but now she just looked exhausted.
She handed my license back. “Private detective?”
“I’m working with Absinthe’s attorney.”
“Oh.” She gave me a long, appraising look and stepped aside to let me in. “She’s an okay kid. Hope you don’t mind if I smoke.”
“It’s your house.”
“So it is.” She gave me an amused smile, took a long drag from the cigarette, and led me to the living room. There was a sour smell in the air—kitty litter, fried fish, and stale smoke. On the TV, a blonde woman in a sequined dress gestured to the stereo system today’s lucky contestant might win.
Tara flopped into a tan recliner across from the TV and turned down the volume with the remote. “I guess you came to talk to Dark Knight.”The nickname sounded odd, coming from his mother. “He can’t help you. He was here the day Razor was killed.”
“You knew Razor?”
“I know all my son’s friends.” She pushed herself out of the chair, stepped into the kitchen and returned with a glass of ice, which she filled to the brim with bourbon. “I just can’t understand why anyone would want to kill Razor. He was a beautiful man, just beautiful. Eyes like an angel.”
“If you say so.”
She sucked in a lungful of smoke, held it in for a moment, then blew out a bilious cloud. “Razor was a very complicated man. He always said it was his destiny to be misunderstood.”
I said, “I read the police report. You said Dennis . . . Dark Knight . . . and his friends were role-playing here the day Razor was killed. You were here the whole time?”
“Every minute.”
I looked her in the eye, and she slid her gaze away. The lie didn’t surprise me. Frank had thought she was a doper, and dopers always lie.
“Can I see Dark Knight anyway?” I said.
“Suit yourself.” She waved me toward the back of the house and turned the volume back up on the TV.
Dark Knight’s room was easy to find. It had a big-eyed girl from some Japanese cartoon plastered on the door. I tapped on it once, then pushed the door open. The room was cramped, the walls covered with comic book posters and movie memorabilia. Nosferatu, Night of the Living Dead, Spiderman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A couple of posters from bands I’d never heard of.
A tattered Batman kite pinned to the inside of the door by a crooked thumbtack.
Dennis Knight sat cross-legged on his bed playing an electronic martial arts game, fingers flying at the controls as his video persona leaped and whirled. He played with his whole upper body, bobbing and twisting in concert with his avatar. His hair was a mass of dark, greasy curls. His pale skin was stippled with pink pimples across the forehead and in the crevices around his bulbous nose. The thick lenses of his heavy, black-framed glasses made his eyes look oversized and startled. The kind of kid who gets picked on in gym class, but Absinthe had blushed when she talked about him.
I showed him my license. “I’m working on Absinthe’s case.”
“That crazy bitch.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Are you kidding? Saying she killed Razor?”
“You don’t think she did it?”
“You seen her room? Stuffed animals. Teddy bears.” He gave his head a disgusted shake, but a smile crept across his lips. “She hasn’t got the guts.”
“I thought she was a friend of yours.”
He shrugged. Turned his attention back to his game. “She’s okay, I guess. For a poser.”
“A poser?”
“A wannabe. She pretends she’s part of the scene, but it’s like Razor said. She doesn’t have the stuff.”
I walked past a bookshelf filled with plastic Warner Brother cartoon figures and sat down at a desk cluttered with half-finished drawings and scraps of overwrought fiction.
“Hey,” he said. “Who gave you an invitation?”
I said, “I’d think you’d want to help get Absinthe out of this mess. Keep her from going to prison for the next forty years. Seeing as how you’re friends and all.”
“It’s her mess.” He shook his hair out of his eyes and turned back to the screen. “But go ahead and talk.”
“The ritual of Transformation,” I said. “Who was there? You and Barnabus. Medea. Absinthe. Any others? Alan Keating?”
“That asshole. He wouldn’t even’ve been allowed to come around if he and Razor hadn’t known each other from way back.”
“What’s your beef with Keating?”
A Cup Full of Midnight Page 12
