A Circumstance of Blood

by Jeannette Batz Cooperman

  And here she was playing Oprah again, making excuses for Graham. Taken in by their battle of wits, his dark vulnerability, the flashes of charm − romance novel crap.

  Her phone rang. Casper. Letting it go to voicemail, she opened her laptop and searched for articles on teenage violence and sociopaths. For the better part of an hour she read. At four, she called Bryan Dennison’s office number, apologised for intruding and explained, in case Laurel hadn’t, her ‘project’. “I hope I’m not interrupting something important.”

  “No, no, just working on a little warm-up-the-crowd speech for a fundraising auction.”

  “You manage to do an awful lot,” she said, her voice warm and encouraging. Watching her mother train poodles had been instructive – ‘Good boy’ and ‘What a clever pup!’ converted pretty easily. “Your trial work alone must take eighty hours a week.”

  “It used to, when I was a public defender. That’s one reason I switched gears.”

  “Just one of many?”

  “I guess I got a little cynical too. Thought I ought to learn a little more about how power functions, instead of always being on the wrong end of it.” He chuckled, appreciating his own strategy. “That’s not why you called though. What can I do for you?”

  She’d been doodling spirals, winding them down the page and making big starburst explosions at the bottom. “I guess I’m still just wondering the unknowable. Your son’s obviously intelligent, but he’s hard to read.”

  “I presume you’re asking whether he tried to harm my wife.”

  The pen slid from her fingers. She hadn’t expected him to be that direct.

  “Look, my wife may be a therapist,” he went on, “but in terms of her own emotions, she’s very vulnerable.” There was a cultivated pity in his voice, and the faintest hint of scorn. “When her lungs collapsed, she became physically vulnerable, too. And Graham has no patience with vulnerability. I don’t think my son’s a monster, but could he have had an impulse to end her pain? Yes. I’m afraid he could.”

  *

  Mrs. Dalton had tried to lift everybody’s spirits, filling an old silver pitcher with glossy holly branches and lighting fresh candles, but the dinner conversation was strained and desultory. Offered seconds of the entree, a hearty beef stew topped with puff pastry, Sarah shook her head − a lump of it still sat, stuck, beneath her sternum. She turned to Jimmy hoping for comic relief, but even he slipped into a rant, something middle aged and grumpy about kids not trying hard enough.

  She missed his usual lightness. Was the murder getting to him, or was it his grandfather’s approaching death? This wouldn’t be a clean, pure grief. Back in college, the old man had constantly compared sweet Jimmy to his smart, athletic, super-achieving older brothers. Not even a deathbed could erase those scars.

  “Any sign of the map yet?” Jimmy asked Colin.

  “It’s not like it’s going to turn up in the laundry.”

  “How much you want to bet Graham Dennison stole it to sell?”

  Colin just shrugged. Switching the subject, Jimmy sounded a little more like himself as he regaled them with freshman reviews of a symphony concert. “‘At first they were really off key,’ one kid had written, ‘but they got better when the conductor came out.’”

  Charron summoned a dry chuckle but no smile to go with it. Sarah’s laugh came out thin and polite − a society laugh, not her usual uninhibited burble − and she felt a silent scream rise in her throat, frantic as a bird banging around in the rafters. Was this what people meant by a panic attack?

  She stood. “Even I can’t manage dessert tonight,” she said, faking a smile. Her head felt like it was pumped full of air and floating several inches above her body. It took an act of will to turn and neatly push in her chair, and she went through the door into the hall so fast she almost bumped into Steven.

  He was standing stock still just outside the dining room, cradling his left wrist in his right hand as though it would fall off if he let go. Sarah stopped. She could breathe again, now that she was away from the table. She tried a little small talk, but his eyes stayed fixed on the dining room door. The sleeves of his flannel shirt, a murky orange and electric blue plaid, hung too long, and a feeling of tenderness came over her. What a weird, exquisite brain he had. Able to recognise a Limoges pattern from the eighteenth century, but helpless at picking out a shirt.

  The minute Colin emerged, Steven stepped forward. “Father, could I talk to you?”

  “Not tonight, Steven,” Colin said gently. “I’ve got some planning to do. Come and find me tomorrow, okay?”

  The boy’s body tensed. “It’s important,” he said, half yelling the word.

  “Tomorrow, Steven.”

  “It’s something you need to know,” he muttered as he walked away.

  Sarah kept her eyes on his receding back. It wasn’t like Colin to be so cruel.

  As soon as the boy was out of earshot, Colin said quickly, “He probably wants to explain more about computers. He went on for forty-five minutes yesterday. But I can’t let that temper get out of hand. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll hold a couple of hours open and just let him talk.”

  Nodding wordlessly, she moved toward the door, but Colin put a hand on her arm. “Can you come up to my study for a minute? There’s something I want to ask you.”

  *

  Once more, Colin left the door to his room ajar.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sarah snapped, walking over and closing it. “I’d rather have privacy than propriety.”

  The minute the door clicked shut, the air in the room lightened. It felt like they were in college again, talking late into the night in her dorm room, the mood warm and fizzy, neither of them sure what might happen next.

  Except now they both knew − nothing. Colin needed her the way most men need women − as a presence, a pacifier. But his role in the world was all sewn up, no room for anything but his work and his God.

  “Do you think it’s normal,” she asked carefully, “that Steven got so upset after finding the body?”

  “Gentle God, Sarah, he’s fifteen years old, and he found his friend dead!”

  “I’m just asking. I don’t know these kids. I don’t know kids, period.”

  He let it go, but she could tell she’d angered him. When they settled by the fire, she said, “You’ve got a soft spot for that boy, haven’t you?”

  Keeping his eyes down, Colin scraped at a bit of balled wool on his chair’s armrest. “I was that boy. Awkward, scared of everything, hypersensitive. Hated change. Got told I was a prodigy. Got frustrated way too fast.”

  “A touch of Asperger’s?”

  Her tone was teasing, but he answered gravely, “I think so. I learned to imitate my friends, and I pretty much faked my way into understanding all the social games and unwritten rules. These days, people make a little more sense to me.” Abruptly, with none of the logic that usually stitched his sentences together, he asked, “Was the divorce painful?”

  She gave him a what-do-you-think? look.

  “Right. I mean, I just wondered if you had second thoughts afterward. It had to be a tough decision.”

  “Yeah, well, I was kind of hoping you’d help me sort through it all. And instead you went off to Scotland and barely communicated with me.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, looked so pained she added, “I know. You were going through your own hell. Yes, the divorce was painful. No, I had no second thoughts. Just a little guilt and shame that I couldn’t pull off a good marriage.” Face hot, she blamed the fire and went over to sit on the bottom step of the spiral staircase. “You sure it was just computers Steven wanted to talk about? What if he thought of something, remembered something?”

  “That, he would have blurted out,” Colin said, twisting so he could face her without dislodging the dog, who was using his loafer as a pillow. “He already told me he set up a digital recorder in Philip’s room because Philip wanted to tape a sexual
encounter.”

  “Morganstern must have found the recorder. I wonder who he slept with.” Tall piles of books flanked the staircase, and Sarah hunched forward to read their titles. “You don’t suppose,” she asked idly, not looking up, “that there’s any chance Steven killed him?”

  Colin snorted. “Don’t be daft. Steven’s too thin skinned to get through high school, let alone kill somebody. Haven’t you noticed how he avoids any extreme emotion, any new experience?”

  “I can’t see him killing,” she agreed. “But could he have taken the map?” She answered herself. “Yes, he could. He loves objects. They’re his world. They make sense to him in a way people don’t. And it’s so old − he’d love it for that reason alone.”

  Her bottom already numb from the cold iron, she came back to sit by the fire, but she was still antsy, unable to settle either her body or her mind. She kept picking up and discarding ideas like she was losing at gin rummy.

  “I’ll grant you that’s a possibility,” Colin said slowly. “But I think he’s got more integrity. Also, it would mean there were two separate crimes, unrelated. That’s beyond farfetched.”

  “True. And so is Philip’s father killing him. But I still think we need to find out when Northrup Grant went home Friday night. He lives in one of those gated communities − maybe there’s surveillance. O’Rourke said he’d check.”

  “The guy who knows the drug dealers?” Colin’s tone was pointed.

  “He’s a little rough around the edges, but you can trust him.”

  The room was too small for Colin to pace it properly, but he gave it his best shot, crossing to his desk in a few long strides, to the stairs, back to the fire. His pillow gone, Simon moved over to curl against Sarah.

  “I’m just not comfortable with somebody like that being so involved with the school’s problems,” Colin said.

  “And you’re comfortable not knowing who killed your student?”

  “Ach, that’s not fair.” He paced some more. “Okay, see what he can suss out, but for God’s sake, tell him to be discreet. That’s all I need, word leaking out that I’m having the parent of a dead child investigated.”

  “He’ll be careful. I checked out Skycraft, by the way. Get this. They rent drones to civilians. Crop dusting, search and rescue, private security . . . Maybe he got tangled up in something illegal and somebody killed his son in retribution. Or as a warning.”

  He sat on the floor next to her, leaned against his chair, and closed his eyes. When he spoke, all the energy had drained from his voice. “Sarah, why do people kill?”

  Without asking, she located Aunt Alice’s scotch and poured them each a splash. “You’re the one who went to seminary. Evil? The absence of love? Existential despair?”

  “No, I mean why do people kill?” This time he said it with such grim resolve that the dog’s head came up. “There’s pure sadism, there’s revenge. What else?”

  “Fear of the other person. Fear of getting found out.” She took a long swallow, and the whisky traced a column down her throat, spreading its glow across her chest. Desperately she wanted to relax, forget death and danger for at least one evening. She stretched out full length, head on her arm, and wondered if Colin ever thought of that night. Spring of senior year. They’d split a bottle of Chianti at a pizzeria and gotten drenched in a rainstorm on the way back . . .

  “Lust, wrath, envy,” he was saying. “We can work off the seven deadly sins.”

  “Except sloth,” Sarah sighed, sitting up again. “If you were that lazy, you wouldn’t have the energy to kill.”

  “Right. So let’s go through the rest of them. Who was jealous of Philip?”

  “Graham might have been. Philip was well-loved, for all his weirdness, and he was wary of Graham, protective of the other kids. That might have stung.”

  Colin nodded. “What about pride for Northrup Grant? A son that wild and flamboyant, government security looking over his shoulder − maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “And for anger there’s Father Charron,” she said slowly. “Although I can’t imagine him shooting heroin into a kid’s vein.”

  Colin startled her by disagreeing. “The man’s brilliant. He’d figure it out. Maybe he decided that Philip was the window through which the demon reached Graham, or some such nonsense. There always has to be an opening, you know. A chink in the godly armour; a Ouija board or séance that wakes the dark side.”

  “Colin, are you drunk?”

  “Not in the least. That is the official theological version.”

  “It meshes well with paranoia. Okay, Father Charron’s a remote possibility. What about Adriana for lust? Could she have wanted Philip dead, so he wasn’t − I don’t know − a source of disappointment for the man she loved? Or a rival?”

  “Possible. And greed would be the map. Anybody could guess it was worth money, and that includes every student here. I have no doubt Steven could manage negotiations with Sotheby’s.”

  “So could Graham.”

  Colin gave her a sharp look, but said nothing.

  “All right, I fucked up,” she burst. “I completely misread the situation the first time.” She tossed back too big a swig of scotch and felt the sting in her nose, the hard burn in the back of her throat. “Whoa,” she said, coughing.

  Colin was studying his hands as though they’d just been given to him. “I never said you fucked up.”

  “No, but you’ve been thinking it. And you’re right − Graham’s the likeliest suspect.” She hesitated. “If he did do this, and it’s because there’s some flaw in the biology of his brain, what would the Church say?”

  He thought for a minute. “I don’t actually know. But I know what I would say − that it’s the most extreme brokenness on earth. It’s what we’ve called evil all these centuries. We can’t condone it. But if it’s bred in the bone, we can’t condemn him for it, either.”

  They fell silent and, for a minute, the only sound was Simon snoring, his head on Sarah’s thigh. “It’s almost a Zen koan,” she murmured, stroking his soft curls. “Can you empathise with someone who has no empathy?” When she looked up her eyes were dark. “In Haiti so many people died every day that they had to be buried in mass graves. Why is one boy’s death bothering me more? Because he was a child of privilege, and therefore not expected to die?”

  Colin shook his head. “Because somebody intended it,” he said quietly. “Somebody knowable, not a malevolent God or a crazy vodou practitioner. Somebody like us.”

  *

  On her way back to the milkhouse, Sarah remembered the stricken look on Steven’s face. Would he be asleep already? She made a quick turn into the dorm, rules be damned, and climbed the stairs to his room. At her light knock, he opened his door right away, but when he saw her his face fell.

  “Hi, Steven,” she said. “Father Mac said to tell you he’s saving a couple hours tomorrow afternoon so you two can spend some time just talking.” He nodded, a force field of silence around him. “Well, sleep tight,” she said, feeling inane.

  “I have to tell you something,” he blurted. “The map’s not real.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He’d already turned and gone back into his room, so she followed. And when she tried standing just inside the door, Steven came back and closed it. Can’t get much more inappropriate than this, she thought. Colin’s going to kill me.

  “I was scared to tell Father Mac at first,” he said, “because I know he thinks it’s really special. But then I overheard Father Cadigan saying Graham probably stole the map for money. And he wouldn’t have, because I already told him it wasn’t worth anything.”

  His words spun in her head, then settled into place. “You mean the Matteo Ricci map isn’t an antique?”

  He shook his head. “At least, not as old as they think it is. It’s painted on pith, not on xuan. You can tell the difference if you know what to look for − xuan is softer, and it star
ts out pure white. Pith starts out a bright ivory, and the paints have more sheen on its surface. So the oldest that map could be is, like, 1820.”

  “And you told Graham this?”

  He nodded. “He was trying to teach me how to defend myself and have more confidence. I wanted to show him I knew things.”

  “I bet he was impressed.”

  Steven nodded faster. “He thought it was cool that I could tell. He laughed really hard.”

  “Did you tell anybody else? What about Philip?”

  “He was the only other one. I told him back in November, after Father McAvoy brought the map over for our world history class. Father Mac wanted us to see how clever Matteo Ricci was when he put China at the centre of the map to honour the Chinese. He brought in one of those maps that shows New York really big and the rest of the country really small. He said the New York map was about arrogance, and Matteo Ricci’s map was about respect.”

  “So that’s why Philip wanted to use it in the mashup?”

  “It was cool − he was going to build the school in 3-D lines on top of the map, like it was the foundation? And then have it dissolve into sand. He wanted to show lies.”

  “Ah. I see. That helps.” When she reached over to squeeze Steven’s shoulder, his gaze darted toward her hand and he jerked back, pure reflex. Even the lightest touch must feel like an onslaught to him. Leaving her hand in midair, awkwardly far from her body, she said, “Thank you, Steven. You’re really, really smart. And there’s not a thing Graham Dennison needs to teach you.”

  *

  A mumble of male voices came from Colin’s study. Sarah knocked anyway − he had to hear this. “Come in,” he called. He was talking to Jimmy about the memorial Mass, prayer books and hymnals spread out in front of them.

  “We should invite Philip’s friends from his first high school too, don’t you think Sarah?” Jimmy asked.

  It took her a second to shift gears. “Yeah, I do. This wasn’t his entire world.”

  Colin sighed. “Right. Unfortunately, it’s mine.” No doubt he was envisioning his school filled with raging junkies and cross-dressers, all demanding to know what had happened to their friend.