A Cup Full of Midnight

by Jaden Terrell

  “You think I killed the little shit?”

  “I think you care a lot about Judith. You wouldn’t let her rapist off scot-free.”

  His lips parted in a chilly smile. “Everything in its time, McKean.”

  “You were biding your time.”

  “Biding. Watching. Learning.”

  The thought of Josh sitting in Elgin’s front seat while Elgin watched and learned turned my stomach to lead. I told myself it meant something that he’d had Josh in his truck and hadn’t killed him. But maybe he’d thought Josh would save him the trouble.

  “So you waited,” I said.

  He nodded. “And then some other son of a bitch beat me to it.”

  “That must have cheesed you off. Here you are, all ready to avenge your buddy’s wife, and somebody else gets to your target first. Any idea who that might have been?”

  “No.” He pushed aside a sheaf of papers and slid his buttocks onto the edge of the desk. “Don’t care, either. As far as I’m concerned, whoever did it performed a public service.”

  “That why you warned me off the case?”

  “Did I do that?” He smiled. “Somehow I don’t think you have an iota of proof.”

  I shook my head and forced the corners of my mouth up. “Not even a scintilla.”

  “Then, if I had been the one to . . . re-educate you, it would be stupid of me to admit it.”

  I decided he probably did do his own writing. Smart guy. Dangerous. What Chuck Weaver might have described as a shark in a people suit.

  “I don’t back off,” I said.

  He nodded, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “I can see you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I do admire tenacity, but I won’t let you ruin a good man’s life over scum like Parker.”

  “Which good man would that be?”

  “Whoever killed Sebastian Parker.” He reached into the stack of papers, came up with a newspaper clipping with a grainy black and white photo of Razor and his coterie. They looked like ghouls. It was an old photo, and my heart froze as I recognized Josh’s sullen face in the mix. Elgin waved the photo in my direction. “They’re vipers, McKean. You got to burn out the whole stinking nest.”

  “They’re kids.”

  “Old enough to know better.”

  “Anything happens to the rest of Razor’s coterie, and you’ll be at the top of the suspect list.”

  “So?” He pointed to the pictures on the wall and gave me a wisp of a smile. “I’m a ghost, man. You can’t catch a ghost.”

  “I won’t let you hurt those kids,” I said. I won’t let you hurt Josh.

  He laughed and ran his thumb over the edge of an invisible knife. “You ever hear of the Son of Sam, McKean? You know what he said about his victims?”

  He didn’t have to tell me. I’d heard the quote before. I didn’t want to hurt them. I just wanted to kill them.

  “Come near Josh again,” I said, “and a ghost is all you’ll ever be.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I called Frank from the parking lot, and I must have sounded urgent, because Frank promised to put a tail on Elgin. Then I punched in Randall’s number.

  “I need you to take Wendy and the kids and go somewhere,” I said when he answered. “Pick up the kids, rent a cabin. Don’t come back until I call you and say it’s okay.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t tell him. Not all of it. Instead, I settled for a partial truth. That a former mercenary named Elgin Mayers had a beef with Razor’s whole coterie, of which he considered Josh a member. A lie of omission, maybe, but enough to scare him into keeping Josh close to him and far away from Elgin.

  “Take your .45,” I said. “And do it now.”

  He didn’t argue, and I wasn’t sure whether to be worried about that or relieved. I wanted to go with them, to be a part of keeping Josh safe, but he was still a suspect in Razor’s murder. He needed me here.

  It was Friday afternoon, and I’d promised to pick up Paul. I considered calling Maria and asking to switch weekends, but with Frank on Elgin’s tail, Paul would be safe at my place. I could work on the case from my laptop.

  My son was waiting for me on the front porch, his chubby arms around the neck of my thirteen-year-old Akita, Queenie. She endured the indignity with characteristic stoicism.

  “Daddy!” Paul loosed his hold on the dog and flung himself off the porch and into my arms. “We made reindeer at school.”

  He squirmed out of my grasp, clumped to his overnight bag, and rummaged through it. Emerged with a reindeer made of three wooden clothespins, a tiny red pom-pom, and a pair of plastic wiggly eyes.

  “For you.” He held it out as if it were a Pulitzer Prize, and I took it with appropriate reverence. Then I tousled his hair and went inside for final instructions. Queenie hobbled after me.

  Maria was in the kitchen, perched on a high stool in the breakfast nook. I felt a pang when I saw her. Remembered sitting beside her at that table a few days after our wedding, a set of 164 Crayola crayons spread in front of us as she quizzed me.

  What color is this?

  Blue.

  Cobalt. And this?

  Um . . . Dark blue?

  Ultramarine. And this one?

  Cobalt?

  Cornflower.

  I had never known there were so many colors in the world.

  “Jared,” she said when she saw me, and started to get up. No easy feat, since, at eight months pregnant, she was at the stage she called Beached Whale.

  “No, no, stay where you are.” I bent to kiss her cheek. She flushed with pleasure or embarrassment.

  She reached up, straightened my collar, and smoothed the front of my shirt. Beneath her hand, my heart beat faster. She frowned and pressed her palm to my cheek. “What have you done to yourself now?”

  “Technically, I didn’t do it.” I laid my hand briefly on Maria’s bulging belly. “How’s your girl?”

  “Active.” She pressed my hand to her side, where I felt the pulse of a tiny kick. An intimate act, one we’d shared before Paul was born. My throat felt suddenly tight, the flesh of my palm hot.

  I drew my hand away. “That’s quite a kick.”

  “She’s more active than Paulie was. Do you think that’s a good sign?”

  I looked into Maria’s anxious face and said, “She’s going to be fine.”

  “I haven’t developed a photograph since I found out. Just in case the chemicals . . .” She gave me an anxious smile and stroked her stomach. “The ultrasound looked good. Perfect, the doctor said. But I wish she’d hurry up and get here. It will be such a relief to know.”

  “You and D. W. been going to Lamaze?”

  “Lamaze, Parenting classes, La Leche League. Birthing, Burping, and Breastfeeding, he calls it. To be perfectly honest, I think he’s scared out of his wits.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “Were you worried? When Paul was born?”

  “Petrified.”

  “And look how well you did.”

  She gave me the bottle with Queenie’s arthritis medicine in it, asked me when I’d be bringing Paul home, and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ll call you if the baby comes,” she said. “In the meantime, you guys have a good time.”

  In the morning, Paul helped me feed, water and turn out the horses. Then Jay and I bundled Dylan into his coat and the four of us headed out to the Dickens Christmas festival in Franklin’s historic district. It was a clear, mild day, and the temperature hovered in the low sixties. Tennessee weather. Snow and ice one day, outside without a jacket the next.

  Jay unloaded a wheelchair from the trunk, and I carefully lifted Dylan into it and tucked his blanket around him. His breath was warm against my cheek. It smelled like boiled corn.

  Paul gave Dylan a broad smile and clambered onto Dylan’s lap.

  “Paul,” I said.

  Dylan shook his head and edged over to give Paul more room. “He’s all right. Not hurting anything.”

&
nbsp; He was no threat to Paul. I’d read enough books and articles to know the odds of Paul contracting the disease from Dylan were so slim as to be nonexistent. I’d watched my son climb into Jay’s lap a thousand times and never blinked an eye. So why was I all of a sudden having visions of killer viruses swarming across the blanket and into my son’s body? I gave Paul a quick once-over. No open sores. No scrapes. No scratches.

  He was perfectly safe.

  I got up and scooped him into my arms. “Maybe another time. When you’re feeling stronger.”

  “Sure.” Dylan’s voice was bitter. “Whatever you say.”

  I couldn’t meet Jay’s gaze.

  “Well,” Jay said. His tone was conspicuously bright. It made me feel even more like a shit. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  We spent the morning strolling past carolers in period costume and drinking hot wassail. I pointed out the characters from A Christmas Carol, and Paul, having wed himself to the version enacted by Muppets, staunchly insisted that Bob Cratchit was a frog. Dylan, slipping in and out of lucidity, seemed mostly to enjoy himself. A little before noon, he dozed off, snoring quietly, chin on his chest.

  As Paul ran ahead to buy a bag of roasted chestnuts, I looked at Jay and said, “About this morning. I’m sorry about—”

  “Don’t.” He looked away. “Can’t expect you to be enlightened twenty-four seven.”

  “I was an ass. It won’t happen again.”

  He forced a smile. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “I—”

  He held up a hand. “It’s all right, Jared. Really. You’re allowed to be human. Just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Just let’s not mention it again.”

  Thanks to the miracle of modern cell phones, I called Randall once and Frank twice, was reassured that Josh was safe and Elgin neutralized. I tried to push thoughts of Judith Hewitt, Elgin’s threats, and Razor’s gutted corpse from my mind and just enjoy my son.

  On the way to Pizza Hut for dinner, Paul snuggled in between Jay and me, while Dylan dozed in the backseat, cushioned by pillows, blankets, and the inflatable raft we’d used before.

  I glanced into the rearview mirror, and Dylan’s eyes snapped open.

  “Never seen a gay man sleep before?” he asked. His voice was weak.

  “Just thinking, if you’re tapped out, we can call it a day.”

  “No.” He cast a wistful glance in Paulie’s direction. “I don’t expect I have too many of these left.”

  “These . . .”

  “Days,” he said softly, and turned his face to the window.

  Later, while everyone else slept, I booted up my laptop and pulled up a background check program. Starting with Barnabus (birth name Robert Christopher Collins) and Medea (birth name Medina Rhiannon Neel), I worked my way through my list of suspects—criminal records, financial history, driving and employment histories, and more.

  Barnabus and Medea came from affluent homes, where youthful indiscretions could be smoothed over with a generous coating of green, but between them, they’d amassed twenty-three speeding tickets and several dozen unpaid credit cards. Barnabus had two arrests—but no convictions—for domestic abuse; Medea had been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for setting fire to a neighbor’s cat. No mention of whether the cat survived. I hoped it had.

  Dark Knight was too young, but his mother had a history. Three DUIs, two bankruptcies, and a conviction for passing bad checks. No jail time. No surprises there—it was penny-ante stuff—and there was nothing to make me think she had the brains or the self-control to stage a murder scene like Razor’s.

  Except for a couple of traffic violations, Hewitt and his wife were clean, but a deeper look into Elgin’s past turned up two five-year gaps in which he abruptly ceased to exist. His bio said he’d spent five years as a mercenary, so maybe he’d been out of the country. Or maybe some secret government agency—ours or someone else’s—had helped him disappear.

  I shut down the computer, my heartbeat loud in my ears.

  Elgin Mayers was beginning to scare the hell out of me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  By Monday, the swelling in my lip was gone, and the bruises on my face had taken on a range of hues from greenish yellow to deep plum. As I sat in my office in my ergonomically designed swivel chair with my feet propped on my Wyatt Earp desk, my cell phone rang. I checked the ID. Sherilyn, my friend from the juvenile division.

  “Hi, Handsome,” she said. “Got something for you.”

  “Byron Birch?”

  “I ought to make you take me someplace nice for this one,” she said. “I understand you’re working on that vampire killing.”

  “If this is good, you can name the place.”

  “It’s good,” she said. “But I’ll let you off the hook this time. Turns out Earl doesn’t like me going out with you hot heroic types. Let’s just say you owe me one.”

  “Deal,” I said. “What have you got?”

  “Mostly small potatoes. Possession of marijuana. Incorrigibility. Picked up a couple of times for solicitation. Ran away from home three times. His caseworker always suspected there was some kind of abuse in the home. One of the stepfathers, probably. There was a whole string of them.”

  It took me a minute to take control of my voice. “You ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  I said, “Kids like that, they’ve usually got a shell around them. He didn’t seem that hardened to me.”

  “His case worker thought he was a sweet kid. Charming. But there was something about him. A lot of hurt, way down deep. So I called in some favors, checked a few files. Turns out there was an incident.” There was satisfaction in her voice. “No charges were filed. The usual story. Married john, doesn’t want his wife to know where he spends his lunch hour.”

  “What kind of incident? Come on, Sher. You’re killing me.”

  “Oh, all right.” She took a deep breath, and I realized I was holding mine. “It happened last spring, and your boy Byron . . .” She paused for effect.

  “Go on. My boy Byron, what?”

  “He stabbed a guy. Almost hacked his penis off.”

  I squirmed reflexively. “You’re right. That is worth dinner.”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” she said. “Who knows if this thing with Earl will work out?”

  She gave me the name, address, and workplace of Byron’s alleged victim, blew me a kiss over the phone line, and hung up.

  I thought about Josh’s wry pronouncement at the funeral. Angel Face was hustling tricks way before he met Razor. A troubled kid with a history of drug use and sex offenses. Possible abuse, physical and sexual, in the home. The kind of background that was a breeding ground for sociopathy.

  I didn’t want it to be Byron, but it wasn’t the kind of information you could ignore.

  I called the number Sherilyn had given me, asked for Kevin Moreland. Married man. Sexual predator. Victimizer. Victim.

  The receptionist had a nasal quality to her voice that grated on my nerves. “Mr. Moreland is in a meeting. If you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll let him know you called.”

  “Jared McKean. Tell him I’m a private investigator looking for information on an acquaintance of his. Byron Birch.”

  I left her my number. It took exactly three minutes for the phone to ring.

  “My God.” His voice was an agitated whisper. “What do you mean, calling me here? Is this some kind of shakedown?”The terminology sounded out of character, as if he’d pulled it from some gangster movie.

  “No sir. As I told your receptionist, I’m a—”

  “I know what you told her,” he said. “A private detective. How did you get this number?”

  “That’s what detectives do. There’s no reason this has to interfere with the rest of your life. I’m curious, though. Why didn’t you press charges?”

  “I have a wife. Kids.” His voice dropped back into the whisper.
“My God, I have a career. If this got out . . .” His voice cracked, and I imagined the sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Just tell me what you want.”

  “Just to talk, Mr. Moreland. I’m digging into the kid’s history, and here’s this . . . incident. Surely you can see why it might be important.”

  “What? Like some kind of background check? The kid’s a psychopath. Simple enough?”

  “Like I said, I’d really like to go over the details with you. I’d be happy to come by your house to discuss it.” I started to read off the address.

  “No!” He cut me off. “Look, I’m in meetings all morning. You know Santa Fe Steakhouse on Music Valley Drive? Twelve-fifteen. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Twelve-fifteen.” I wrote it in my appointment book. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Moreland resembled a weasel with thick, wire-rimmed glasses and a scraggly mustache. He tugged at his tie, smoothed the top of his thinning hair as if to reassure himself that it was still there, and shot a quick, furtive glance around the room. I knew who he was the minute he walked in.

  When I waved him over to the table, he ducked his head as if to avoid being recognized and shuffled over. Slid in across from me and smoothed his hair again. I was sure he’d picked this restaurant because, in spite of the lunch crowd, the high-backed booths gave the illusion of privacy.

  “Mr. . . . McKean, is it?” he said. “I’m here. Say what you have to say.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to order first?”

  “I just want to get this over with.”

  “Worried about the family finding out, huh?” I shook my napkin out and draped it across my lap. “What I’m wondering is how you managed to keep it from your wife in the first place. A wound like that, I’d think it would be kind of hard to explain.”

  He averted his gaze. “I told her it was a random mugging, that they never caught the guy.”

  “A random mugger who just happened to take a whack at your johnson.”

  “There’s an artery in the groin. I told her he was probably going for that.”

  “Uh-huh. Bet she was real sympathetic too, seeing’s how he must’ve been trying to kill you.”