Racing the Devil

by Jaden Terrell

  JAY TOLD ME ONCE that the most painful moment of his life—more painful than having his head shoved into a toilet, more painful than being told he had been given an incurable, terminal disease by a lover he’d thought had always been faithful, more painful than watching that lover walk out of his life without a backward glance—was the moment his father looked him in the eye and said, “You are not my son.”

  I didn’t know what I would do in Randall’s place. Paulie’s sexuality would present a different set of complications, but I somehow doubted this would be one of them.

  It never rains but it pours, Mom used to say. With my brother’s family crumbling and a prison sentence hanging over my head, now I had Maria’s pregnancy to think of too. What would it feel like to see her with D.W.’s child? To share my weekends with my son with D.W.’s flesh and blood? It wasn’t normal, and I didn’t know if we could make it work.

  But assuming I didn’t spend the rest of my life in a prison cell, I was willing to try. I would be as good a man as D.W.

  Jay was asleep by the time I finished with the horses. I wanted to talk to him about Josh, but it could wait.

  Besides, I felt like I’d been wrung out myself.

  There was another call from Lou Wilder on the answering machine, but it was late, and I didn’t feel like talking. I made a mental note to call him in the morning.

  I was too tired to dream.

  THE NEXT MORNING, after I’d doctored Tex and turned out Crockett, I played another round of phone tag with Lou, left a “when-can-I-see-you-again” message on Valerie’s machine, and drove downtown to trade the Taurus for a silver Chevy van. I’d learned enough of Hartwell’s damning secrets, and it was time to give the honorable Reverend Samuel Avery his share of attention.

  At ten o’clock, a woman in a flowered blouse and white Capri pants came out of Avery’s house carrying a basket. She was tall and bony, with a prominent nose. A wide-brimmed hat shielded her face from the sun and threw her homely features into shadow.

  Margaret, I supposed.

  She set the basket down beside a strip of earth that had been planted with marigolds and rose bushes, pulled on a pair of flowered gloves, and puttered in the garden until the heat drove her inside. There were no further signs of life until shortly after dusk, when Avery and his wife came out to sit on the front porch together, sipping what looked to be iced tea.

  At one point, Margaret reached out and laid a hand across her husband’s forearm. He said something that made her shrink back inside herself like a snail sprinkled with salt.

  Trouble in Paradise.

  I watched until they went back inside and the light of the television flickered against the blinds. Then I drove back home to get ready for another night of Heather-hunting.

  I WAS GETTING OUT of the shower when the phone rang. I threw a towel around my waist and rushed to answer it, just in case it happened to be Frank.

  “Jared McKean,” I said.

  “Jared. It’s Wendy. Can you come over here now?” At the tremble in my sister-in-law’s voice, a tendril of fear coiled in my stomach. I imagined a car wreck, an accident at the construction site.

  “What’s wrong? Is Randall all right?”

  She gave a shrill, nervous laugh. “Just like you to cut straight to the chase. Randall’s fine. It’s Josh.”

  My imagination shifted gears. Suicide. Drug overdose. “What’s wrong with Josh?”

  “He’s gone. He and Randall got into an awful fight last night. This morning when we woke up . . . can you please just come?”

  It took me five minutes to throw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Another ten, driving too fast, and I squealed into my brother’s driveway.

  The front door swung open before my boot touched the steps. Wendy, eyes swollen and bloodshot, stepped aside to let me in. If it were Maria, I’d take her into my arms and hold her while she cried. I’d known Wendy since I was nineteen, and I still felt like I’d be imposing on her privacy. Instead, she gave me a stiff hug and kissed the air beside my cheek.

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” she said.

  “Have you called the police?”

  “They say they’ll look for him, but you, of all people, know how it is. A teenage runaway is low on their list of priorities. I thought maybe you . . .” She looked down at her clenched hands.

  “Of course,” I said, suppressing a flash of anger at Josh. At fifteen, he couldn’t be expected to schedule his meltdown around my problems. “Is Randall here?”

  “In the study.”

  “Why don’t you write down a list of everyone you can think of who Josh might have confided in, and I’ll go talk to Randall?”

  I found my brother sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by stacks of old photo albums and loose photographs. Old family pictures. Disney World. Opryland. Picnics at the lake. Josh’s fourth birthday. Caitlin’s third.

  Josh laughed out at me from a hundred different angles. On his first birthday, slamming his whole fist into the cake. At two, dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween. At five, learning to ride a bike. At six, with missing teeth. At seven—roller skates. At ten, posing like Babe Ruth at home plate, smile a mile wide and lighting up his face.

  He’d always been the kind of kid his teachers called “a delight to have in class.” Now . . .

  “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?” Randall asked, not looking up.

  “Yes. He is.”

  With trembling fingers, he picked up Josh’s sixth grade school picture and studied it. “I named him after our father. Now . . . Jesus, Dad would have been so ashamed.”

  I hardly remembered our dad, except from photographs and the stories Mom told, but I knew enough. He was a good man. A hero.

  “I don’t think he’d be ashamed,” I said. “Josh is a good kid. He’s just . . . lost himself for awhile.”

  “He says he’s a faggot.”

  “Randall—”

  “I know, I know. You don’t like that word. Your queer friend doesn’t like that word. Did you ever stop to think that if you hadn’t kept bringing that little fairy around here, Josh might not have thought it was so cool to be gay?”

  I’d been expecting this—and dreading it. I said, “It isn’t about being cool or not cool. It’s just who you are. Or aren’t. Jay knew he was different from the time he was in grade school.”

  “Of course, Jay has to say that. What else could he say?” He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “What did we do wrong? Was I too strict? Not strict enough? I loved him so much. I loved him just so damn much.”

  “I know you did.” I pushed aside a stack of albums and sat down beside him, Indian-style. “I know you do. Have you found any of his writing? Journals? Poetry?”

  He gestured toward a dog-eared spiral notebook that looked like it had spent most of its life in the bottom of a teenager’s backpack.

  “There. It’s all death and anger and . . . He hates me, Jared, and it’s all there in that stinking book. I don’t want you to read it.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” I said, picking up the book. “Randall?” He shrugged, and I opened the notebook.

  At night, the old man

  Covered in brick dust

  Drinks his coffee black

  Too tired to speak to

  His invisible boy.

  The poetry was interspersed with beautifully rendered sketches and rambling journal entries. Reading the passages with Randall’s eyes, I could see why he read hate in every line. But with my own eyes, I read love there, and the pain and fear of a boy who knows he is not the son his father always wanted.

  “This isn’t a hate letter,” I told Randall, when I had finished it all. “It’s a love poem. Listen to this: ‘My dad is so perfect. He’s so strong. Why can’t he understand I can’t be him?’ He’s crazy about you, Randall. And he’s scared to death that when you know him, you won’t be crazy about him.”

  “My son is not a homosexual.”

  I splayed my fingers on
my thighs. “I don’t know if he is, or if he isn’t. Neither do you. But whatever he is . . .” Randall looked up to meet my gaze. “He is what he is. He didn’t choose it, and he can’t change it.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” Randall said. “You’ll never go through this with Paul.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “You don’t mean that, Randall. You know you don’t wish Josh was mentally retarded.”

  “I wish to God he was,” my brother said. “I’d rather he was. I’d rather he was dead.”

  From the doorway, Wendy drew in a sharp breath. Then she gave Randall a chilly stare and thrust a scrap of paper toward me. “I don’t know who his friends are,” she said, avoiding Randall’s gaze. “He doesn’t talk to us like that these days. But this is his English teacher, Elisha Casale. Josh seems to like her.” With another cool glance in Randall’s direction, she turned and left the room.

  Randall lowered his head. He looked broken. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “I’ll tell him you love him,” I said, placing Josh’s journal carefully atop a stack of photo albums. “And then I’ll bring him home.”

  I called Elisha Casale from my pickup and reached her on the first try. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, with a sultriness I didn’t usually associate with schoolteachers. In spite of my worry for Josh, I found myself wondering what she looked like.

  After I’d explained the situation and asked if she could offer any insights, she said carefully, “Josh is a talented young man.”

  “I saw some of his stuff today,” I said. “It was good.”

  She gave a throaty laugh. “That’s an understatement, Mr. McKean. The boy is a gifted artist. And, I might add, an excellent writer, though his subject matter was a little disturbing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He wrote a lot about death. And his father. I don’t know all the details, but I got the impression that things weren’t very good between Josh and his father. He used a pseudonym in his work, Joshua Nightbreed, as if he were disavowing his family name.”

  “There’s been some tension lately.”

  There was a pause. “I think—and I may be overstepping my bounds here—but I think Josh is . . . conflicted . . . about his sexuality.”

  “He didn’t seem too conflicted yesterday when he told his father he was gay.”

  “Ah.” Somehow she managed to infuse that single syllable with understanding, concern, and confirmation.

  “You knew?”

  “I suspected. He skirted the issue in his writing, but I thought it was fairly clear. He was angry and confused. And he was afraid of his father.”

  A wave of heat crept up my neck. “He was never afraid of Randall. If he said he was, he was lying.”

  “I didn’t mean physically afraid,” she said. “I meant, he was afraid of his father’s disapproval.”

  All right. That I could understand. “Mrs. Casale—”

  “Miss.”

  “Miss Casale.” Miss Casale. “Why didn’t you tell Josh’s parents he was this disturbed?”

  “Disturbed?” I imagined her frown, the little furrow between the eyebrows. Auburn hair, I thought. Blue eyes. “I wouldn’t say he was disturbed. In turmoil, perhaps.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Disturbed implies permanence. Turmoil ends. To answer your question, I didn’t contact his parents because he would have seen it as a betrayal. Whatever trust he had in me would be lost, and he would have lost one source of adult support and guidance. My students write what they write, Mr. McKean, because they know it’s safe to write it.”

  “Do you have any idea where Josh might have gone? Who he might be with?”

  “I know some of his friends. And I have some of his journals here at school. Why don’t you give me your number? I’ll look through them and give you a call as soon as I find anything.”

  I thanked her for her time and hung up, annoyed and disgusted with myself for being aroused. It was just a voice on the telephone, for Christ’s sake.

  I dropped the phone into the cupholder on my console and thought about everything I needed to do. Hunt for Heather. Research the men in Amy’s life—Hartwell, Carrington, and Avery. Run background checks on all of the above plus Valerie’s boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, if the afternoon I’d spent in her bed was any indication. I ran out of fingers before I ran out of things to do. If I was racing the devil, it looked like the devil was winning.

  Instead, I grabbed a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald’s and scoured the city. I stopped in the most popular bars looking for Heather, and I hit the coffee shops and cybercafés looking for Josh. It was like trying to find two specific needles in a stack of needles. They could be anywhere.

  Anywhere, apparently, except where I was.

  At one A.M., I drove down to Elliston Place, where groups of mostly young people stood in clumps or milled about, dressed in leather, lace, and pseudo-medieval finery.

  I showed Josh’s picture around and then, for the sake of thoroughness, described Heather as well. For my trouble, I got a series of blank looks, and a lecture on the Goth’s love of beauty and darkness. One young man with an engaging, impish grin laughed and said it was all a big joke, a chance to leave reality and visit in a comic book. Another, with a smoldering anger that seemed more incubus than imp, told me Josh was being taken care of by his “true family,” and that I should go back to the suburbs and mind my own business.

  About an hour before dawn, when the street was all but empty, I did.

  AT SIX A.M., I PULLED into the driveway of ValeSong Stables. Since the red Chevy was parked by the barn and there was a light on in the kitchen window, I dialed Valerie’s number and asked if I could come in.

  “Just in the neighborhood and thought you’d stop by?” Her voice was rich with sleep and a heat that made me glad I’d come.

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s kind of early.”

  “I’ll help you with the horses.”

  “Deal.”

  Breakfast was good.

  Dessert was better.

  Afterward, I kissed her again and rolled out of bed. Started for the master bathroom.

  “Use the one down the hall.” She gestured toward the open bedroom door. “I need to use this one.”

  I grinned. Lifted an eyebrow. “We could share.”

  “Not if we want to get anything done today.”

  The first door I tried was a spare bedroom. The second was locked, and the third was the charm. I washed up and went to muck stalls while Valerie fed her horses.

  When I turned Dakota out into his paddock, he nuzzled my hand before trotting out into the sunlight. I left him with a flake of hay and went to muck out his stall. He was something of a neat-nick, choosing one corner of the stall to relieve himself in. Some horses are like that. Others seem to think life is a challenge to see how much of their stalls they can cover with manure.

  I wasn’t really looking for a horse, but it was another point in his favor.

  When I’d scooped out the soiled bedding and added a layer of clean straw, I bent to even out the bedding beneath the feed bucket. Something small and dark caught my eye, and I reached in to retrieve it. It was wedged between two boards, but I pushed hard on one to widen the crack and it came free. I held it up to the light, a spiny seed pod with shriveled brown skin that still held a tinge of green.

  I carried it into the feed room, where Valerie was measuring out sweet feed and vitamins.

  “You got a problem,” I said, holding out the pod.

  She looked up. “What’s that?”

  “Milkweed. I found it in Dakota’s stall.”

  “Milkweed?” She frowned. “Let me see.”

  I handed it to her. “Looks like maybe you got a bad batch of hay. Could be what caused his colic. You have a problem with any of the other horses?”

  She shook her head, eyeing the pod as if it were some new and disgusting kind of insect. “A couple of
the mares were a little off their feed for a few days. Nothing like what Dakota went through.” She made a face. “I’ve never had a problem with toxic plants before.”

  “Happens sometimes. You want me to get rid of what you have and bring you a new load?”

  “I finished up those bales about a week ago.” She dropped the pod into the trashcan. “What I’m using now should be all right.”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  We spent most of the morning hauling away her old bales and replacing them with new ones from my own supplier. A spot check of the new bales showed no sign of the contamination.

  Then she thanked me in an inimitable way, and I drove home to take care of my own horses and catch a few hours of shut-eye before taking on the world again. I’d just peeled out of my jeans and T-shirt when my cell phone rang. I checked the number: Elisha Casale.

  “I think I might have found something,” she said. “Give me a little time to check it out, and I’ll touch base with you as soon as I know for sure.”

  “Why don’t you give me what you have, and I’ll check it out myself.”

  “You remember what I said about keeping their trust?” she said.

  “I remember.”

  “I’ll call you when I know something.”

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, I followed Samuel Avery to the Piggly Wiggly, the post office, and finally a florist’s shop, from which he emerged with a cauldron-sized basket of red and pink carnations. Next stop, St. Thomas Hospital. He went in with the basket and came out without it.

  How sweet.

  I tried, without success, to repress my cynicism.

  When he went straight home from the hospital, I called it a day. I didn’t like the reverend, but I had no concrete reason to consider him a suspect. Nothing but an unsubstantiated hunch and his uncanny resemblance to a dead man. I couldn’t spend all my time on him.

  I drove home wishing for a magic pill that would solve Amy Hartwell’s murder, bring Josh safely home, and maybe throw in a winning lottery ticket. Star light, star bright, and all that jazz.

  When I walked in, Jay said, “I have something for you on the insurance. Sorry it’s taken so long, but my guy at the company was in the hospital. Broke his leg parasailing in the Bahamas and just got back to work today.”