“Always passing judgment, always trying to psychoanalyze everybody. But he was no angel. Razor told me about some shit they pulled back in college.”
“They went to college together?” I didn’t know why that should have surprised me, but it did.
“Vandy.” He smirked, whether at me or at the villain on the screen, I couldn’t say. “They were both psych majors.”
“Razor get his degree?”
“B.S. Started on his Master’s. Then he and Alan got into some kind of trouble. Alan weaseled out of it and got to stay in school, and Razor got the ax.”
“Funny. He didn’t seem the kind to forgive and forget.”
“Guess Alan got a special dispensation.” He tapped a button on the game, and the screen went dark. He pushed it away from him. “What you said. About Absinthe and prison and everything.”
“What about it?”
He got up and picked up a Bugs Bunny figure from the shelf. Turned it over in his hand and set it back a few inches to the left of where it had been. “I know who wanted Razor dead,” he said.
“Seems like everybody wanted Razor dead.”
“No, I mean, for real. Those people who lived a couple doors down. Hewitt. He’s a nutcase. Him and his buddy, Igor.”
“Elgin.”
“Same difference. Big fucking bastard.” He scrubbed at the dingy carpet with the toe of his sneaker.
I said, “Look, if you know something—”
“I’m getting to it,” he snapped. “Anyway, she got herself into this. Why should I have to be the one to get her out?”
“Don’t be a jerk,” I said. “Absinthe’s your friend, and she needs you.”
I wasn’t sure it would work, appealing to his better nature, but finally, he ducked his head and mumbled, “Hewitt’s wife.”
A bad feeling nestled in the pit of my stomach. “What about her?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. Push her around some. Show her our knives. Maybe cop a feel.” He had the decency to look ashamed. “We were just supposed to scare her.”
“But it didn’t go down that way.”
“Barnabus was getting all stirred up. And Medea kept egging things on.” He scratched at a chip in the wooden shelf. “It just got out of hand.”
Heat crept up the back of my neck. “Razor raped her?”
“He watched. He was into it, that he could just say do it and we . . .” He looked away. With his index finger, he nudged Bugs Bunny a millimeter to the right.
“Go on,” I said in a brittle voice I hardly recognized.
“When we . . . when it was over, Razor told her he had an army of people who’d do whatever he told them to, and if she called the cops or told anybody, he’d send them to her house and they’d kill her and Hewitt.”
Anger took me two steps forward before I stopped myself. “And what did you do? Stand by and watch it happen? Take a turn? Hold her down?”
“You think I’m proud of what happened? You think I don’t think about it every single day?”A whine crept into his voice. “You don’t know what it was like, being around Razor.”
He picked up a Marvin the Martian figure and toyed with it. Our gazes met, and while I watched, the shame in his eyes turned to anger. I wasn’t surprised. Anger is easier.
I said, “Explain it to me.”
He placed Marvin the Martian carefully between Darth Vader and the Tasmanian Devil. “He made good things seem bad and bad things seem good,” he said. “It was like he turned the world inside out.”
“So the world was inside out when you helped Barnabus rape Judith Hewitt.”
“You’re so fucking curious,” he said, mouth stretched in a humorless grin. “Why don’t you ask your nephew? He was there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t believe him. Refused to believe him. To even entertain the thought was a betrayal.
Dennis Knight had forgotten the chip on his shoulder long enough to want to help Absinthe, but he’d also wanted to draw my attention away from his own part in Judith Hewitt’s rape. I had no reason to trust Dennis Knight.
I knew Josh. He was incapable of rape.
I barreled through the afternoon traffic, fighting the impulse to haul Josh out of class and ask him what he knew about the assault. A dull throbbing started in my temples. I loved Josh like a son, but if this was true, I would never see him with the same eyes. And if it wasn’t true, if I confronted him without just cause, he would never see me the same way either.
I forced myself to back off the tail of the car in front of me, cut off a guy in a red Subaru and swore under my breath when his horn blared. Skidded into the Hewitts’ driveway and pounded on the door. Cursed when no one answered, and scrawled a note for them to call me. I waited in the driveway for half an hour, then, too restless to sit still, drove over to Vanderbilt’s campus to talk to Razor’s little brother. Philosophy and Religion, Keating had said.
Vanderbilt University and Medical Center sat on three hundred and thirty-three acres in the heart of Nashville. Declared a national arboretum in the late nineties, it was home to at least one of every tree and shrub native to Tennessee. A beautiful place, even in the dead of winter, but I was in no mood to enjoy it. Instead, I found a parking spot three blocks from campus and bulled past medieval-style buildings with arched doorways and an oak tree that had been around since before the American Revolution.
I stopped at the library and got directions to the right department, then asked around until a campus police officer gave me directions to the classroom where I could find Heath. I planted myself outside the room until the door burst open and a stream of chattering students bubbled out.
Heath was at the tail end of the stream, standing to one side as if to avoid the rush. He spotted me and frowned. Then he sighed and came over.
“You were at my brother’s funeral,” he said. He moved away from the other students, jerked his head for me to follow him.
“That’s right.”
“You were there with your nephew. Said he was one of Razor’s friends.”
I nodded, my throat gone tight at the mention of Josh.
“So, what are you doing here? Come to offer me your condolences? Or maybe it’s some sort of payoff you’re after.”
“Payoff?”
His laugh was bitter. “Mother may be naïve enough to think Razor was mentoring good-looking teenagers out of the goodness of his heart. I know better. Did you file charges?”
“Josh wouldn’t testify.”
“They never do. And—let me guess—no physical evidence, by the time you found out. Same old story. Legal shenanigans, a little bit of hand-waving, and the shyster lawyer Mother always hires has him out on the street again by evening.”
“Exactly how many times has this happened?”
“If you knew, it would make you sick. And to top it off, he never even paid a dime in legal fees. Never worked a day in his life, in fact. She poured money into him like it was water.”
“Police report said he was an artist.”
“Comic books and fantasy illustration. That’s what he always said, but he never actually sold anything.”
“You don’t seem exactly broken up with grief.”
He led me out a side door and headed across a wide patch of brittle grass. “My brother was a stone-cold bastard. He molested me when I was ten. Mother said it was normal. Boys will be boys.”
“What about your father?”
“He made a token attempt to help, but he was a broken man by then. Mother had already eaten him alive.”We came to a bench, and he tossed his notebook down on it and turned to face me. Some distance away, several young men tossed a Frisbee in the cold. “Does it surprise you that I’d tell you all this?”
“A little.”
“It’s part of my therapy. Coming to terms with Sebastian’s death and how guilty I feel because I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
“Can’t blame you, under the circumstances.”
&nbs
p; We sat. The bench was hard, cold through the seat of my jeans.
“So if you’re looking to extort some sort of payment to keep his sordid history secret, you can forget it. I might be tempted, to protect Mother. But since she’ll never believe anything bad about Sebastian anyway, it would be rather a pointless gesture, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t come here to blackmail you.”
“Oh.” He looked mildly surprised. “What, then?”
I showed him my license and gave him the short version. Investigating Razor’s murder.
“I don’t give a damn who killed him,” he said. “You find whoever did it, introduce me. I’d like to shake his hand.”
“The kid who confessed didn’t do it. Anything you could tell me that might help her out . . .”
He shook his head. “Sorry. It took some longer than others, but sooner or later, just about everybody who ever knew him wanted him dead. He managed to screw everybody—usually in more ways than one.”
“I heard he went to school here,” I said.
“Got his Bachelor’s. Got bounced a couple of months before he would have gotten his Master’s.”
“Psychology?”
“That’s right. Headgames ‘R’ Us.”
“What happened?”
He fiddled with his notebook. “Some kind of research project. It was titled the Parker Principle, but he called it the Great Brain Fuck. He and Alan were working on it. Alan Keating.”
“I’ve met him.”
“He and Sebastian go way back. In fact,Alan practically lived at our house. Tells you something about his home life, doesn’t it? That our sad little family seemed preferable?”
“Did he . . . ?” I made an ambiguous gesture.
“Molest me? No. I think he and Sebastian may have had something going for a while, but I don’t think they’ve had that kind of relationship for a long time.”
“What can you tell me about this research project the two of them were working on?”
“Not much. It had something to do with behavioral psychology, and there was some question about ethics. I remember right after it happened, after he got expelled, Sebastian kept ranting about the narrow-minded morons running the department. Said he and Alan were working on the most daring project ever done at this school.”
“But he didn’t tell you what it was about?”
His gave me a chilly smile and said, “Sebastian liked his secrets.”
“So how come Razor got expelled and Alan got to stay?”
“I couldn’t say. Maybe somebody recognized that Alan was just a puppet. You wouldn’t believe how he used to do whatever Sebastian said.”
“Used to?”
“He got over it.” He stood up, picked up the notebook, tapped it against his thighs. “I think that’s why Sebastian kept him around. He wanted to see if he could get that old Alan back. Or maybe part of it was that Alan loved him. Not just some queer thing. I mean, really loved him. And Razor didn’t believe in love.”
“Medea said something along those lines.”
“Yeah, he used to say it all the time. Nobody really loves anybody. And I think he needed to prove to himself that he could kill that in Alan. Or that he couldn’t. You know, wanted to prove he was right and wanted to prove he was wrong at the same time.”
“It didn’t bother him that Alan got to stay in school?”
“It bothered him. But he got over it. He always did, with Alan.”
“You loved him too.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Who? Alan or Sebastian?”
“Both.”
“I hated my brother’s guts, and that’s the truth. I’d have killed him myself if it wasn’t for Mother.”
“Hate. Love. Sometimes it’s a fine line.”
He looked out into space. “Yeah, well. It’s nothing a few more years of therapy won’t take care of. Until then . . .” He raised an invisible glass. “To my brother, Sebastian. May he rot in Hell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I called Alan Keating from my cell phone. Kirsten put me right through.
“The Parker Principle,” I said when he answered. “The Great Brain Fuck.”
There was silence on the other end. Then, “Mr. McKean,” he said.
“This research project. What was it about?”
“It has nothing to do with Bastian’s death.”
“I’ll find out one way or another. It would be easier if you’d just tell me.”
“Did it ever occur to you I might not exactly be proud of it?”
Shades of Dennis Knight. “You know what they say, Keating. Honest confession’s good for the soul. So spit it out.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Then he said, “You’ve heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment?”
“Psych experiment. Half the students are guards, and the other half are inmates. It didn’t go well.”
“They called it off. They had to. It got to be too much like a real prison. The guards started acting like tyrants, the prisoners didn’t seem to realize they could just go home.”
“I remember.”
“The guy who ran it wrote a book about how good people turn evil. Bastian was always fascinated by that kind of thing. Good and evil. He had a theory.”
“A theory.”
“Beneath the surface, everyone is evil. He thought if you knew enough, you could manipulate almost anyone into doing almost anything. People were marionettes, and all you had to do was find the right string to pull. To prove his theory, we . . . manipulated people. Bastian kept a journal with all the different tales he’d tell people and all the different things he could get them to do.”
My gut felt like it had been filled with shaved ice. “What kind of things?”
“Sexual favors, mostly. He was intrigued—and infuriated—by how many girls would cheat on their boyfriends. And how many straight men would perform homosexual acts, even when they were supposedly in exclusive relationships with women.”
“Nobody loves anybody,” I said.
“Then you know. He had a thing about that. It was like he needed to prove love was a lie.”
“He was bisexual.”
He laughed without humor. “He was a sexual omnivore. But his machinations weren’t limited to sex. Someone would be upset about some perceived slight and he’d suggest some retaliation for it. Just pranks, mostly, but some of them were pretty cruel.”
“What was your part in it?”
“I lent an air of credibility, I suppose. I went out with a few of these women, but I wasn’t very good at it. Not as charming or believable as Bastian.”
“What happened?”
“One of the girls attempted suicide. It came out, what we were doing.”
“And Razor got expelled.”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t. How’d you manage that?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if you can understand how I felt. It was like some evil spell had been broken and I could see what a terrible thing we’d done. I pleaded for another chance. Broke down and cried like a baby, which also doesn’t make me proud. I guess my advisor believed I was sincere.”
“Were you?”
“I’ve never meant anything more.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer the question.”
“I was sincere, all right? What do you want from me?”
“The truth.”
“It happened years ago. It has nothing to do with what happened to Bastian.”
“So you say. But you lied about the day he was killed, so why should I believe you now?”
He was silent for a beat. Then he said, “What?”
I wasn’t certain—all I had were the missing initials on his calendar—but I played the card anyway. “You canceled your appointments for that afternoon. You had plenty of time to get to Razor’s and kill him before Byron got home.”
When he finally answered, his voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear him. “And why
would I do that?”
“You tell me.”
“Goodbye, Mr. McKean,” he said. And the line went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When I got home, the horses were standing by the pasture gate. Their breath billowed out into the chilly evening air, and the snow around the gate was pocked with hoof prints. Churned-up patches of dark earth showed through. Tex whickered softly and pawed at the ground as I approached.
“Hey, fella.” I scratched the flat place between his eyes, and he heaved a sigh that warmed my face and drained the tension out of me. By the time I’d brushed the three of them and dropped a flake of hay into each of their stalls, I felt almost human.
Inside, the drone of voices and a flickering light came from Dylan’s room, followed by a spate of canned laughter. I peered in and saw Jay slumped in the recliner, eyes closed, head lolling onto his shoulder. Dylan lay back against a stack of pillows, the comforter pulled up to his chest. Beside him, Luca the papillon pup gnawed at a dried ostrich tendon as long as he was tall.
The pup looked up. The tendon dropped from his mouth and he bounced across the bed, wagging from the shoulders down. I scooped him up a heartbeat before he tumbled off the edge, and he licked my chin and squirmed against my shoulder like a fur ball filled with Jell-O.
Dylan opened his eyes and said, “Long day.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Plenty of time for that, right?” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a wheeze. “Nothin’ but sleep for a long, long time.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“Twenty more years. Barring that, I could use a glass of OJ.”
“Juice I can manage.”
He forced a smile and closed his eyes. “So, are you the husband in this cozy little arrangement? Because I know Jay’s got to be the wife.”
I felt the muscles of my face tighten. “I’m a friend.”
“Oh, yes. The straight friend. He’s made such a point of it, I wonder can it possibly be true? Personally, methinks he doth protest too much.”
“He said I was going to like you in spite of myself.”
“And you don’t?” He gave a dry chuckle that ended in a long, rattling cough. I glanced at Jay, whose eyelids fluttered open, then dropped closed again. Too tired to wake himself up. “I must be losing my touch.”
A Cup Full of Midnight Page 13
