A Circumstance of Blood

by Jeannette Batz Cooperman

  “I don’t think so.”

  In conversation, Jimmy always looked alert and amused, like a terrier waiting for the next tennis-ball throw. Now that expression hardened. “Sarah, you’ve been blind to that kid’s problems since you got here. How much more proof do you need? Are you so desperate you’ve fallen in love with a seventeen-year-old?”

  It took a hard bite to the inside of her cheek to keep her voice even. “No, not yet. But I think he was set up.” She waited a beat. “And so do the police.”

  He spun back to his laptop. “Well, they’ll figure it out soon I’m sure.”

  She stared at his profile. Hair sandy, sun-streaked even in winter. Shoulders narrow but straight. Blue oxford shirt pressed smooth.

  “Colin and Philip were close weren’t they?” she tried.

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy’s tone was wary.

  “I don’t know. It just seems like Philip must have slept with somebody here at the school. I mean, he’d worn a condom not long before he died.”

  “If Colin broke his vows, it wouldn’t be with Philip.”

  “With you, then?” It hurt just to say it.

  “That wouldn’t happen either.” A touch of bitterness in his voice. Old anger, she thought. Frustration gone rancid. If he’s wanted Colin all these years, he’s had to keep that desire pent up.

  “I tried to warn him about Philip last fall,” Jimmy said, facing her again. “He thought we should indulge him, give his creativity room to flower. But Philip made a god of himself. Concocted his own little rituals, forced his own confessions, sucked people’s secrets out of them. He said obeying vows was for children who couldn’t think for themselves. He called celibacy a coward’s out.

  “Colin didn’t like that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  O’Rourke tried Sarah again when he reached the antique dealer, but her phone went to voicemail. Fuck. He left her an urgent message, warning her to stay away from both Colin and Jimmy until he got there. He needed just one more piece of information, and he was about to get it.

  Dragan Petrović ran a dusty little antique shop on Gravois that specialised in German bric-a-brac, Russian Orthodox icons and antique Serbian folk costumes − but took whatever was on offer. O’Rourke walked in and switched gears, acting like he had all the time in the world. He ran his hand over an ornately carved Victorian mantelpiece. “Get that in the middle of the night, just before the demo crew showed up?”

  The young man shrugged, examining a tiny African elephant carved in wenge that was missing a tusk. “And if I did? You Americans don’t know how to save your treasures.”

  “Speaking of treasures, you got anything Asian?”

  “Porcelain? Lacquer?”

  “I’m looking for an antique map. Somebody said you might have it.”

  Dragan picked up the missing tusk, a delicate comma of ivory, and used a toothpick to apply tiny dabs of epoxy. Positioning the tusk with a tweezers, he held it in place and spoke without looking up. “Why a map?”

  “None of your business.” O’Rourke took a deep breath, fighting the urge to smash the dealer’s head into the counter and expedite this conversation. “If you’ve got it, I don’t care how. I just need to know who sold it to you.”

  Dragan released the tweezer’s tiny jaws and bent close, using a paintbrush with about three hairs to remove the excess glue. The tusk held. “A man brought me a very old map,” he said, his voice as husky as a man whispering of love. “The calligraphy’s amazing. The only reason I haven’t found a buyer yet is because I haven’t started looking.” He went to the back of the shop, where an espresso machine gurgled and two young women knelt on the floor slitting open cardboard boxes.

  He returned holding a brownish piece of paper in a transparent Mylar envelope. After making a show of wiping off the counter, he laid the map on top. O’Rourke took out his bifocals, but he was already sure.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said, shaking his head.

  Dragan feigned alarm. “It’s not hot, is it?”

  “Scorching. The cops are looking for it right now. But don’t you fret. I’m about to buy it from you and spare you all that grief. What’d you pay for it?”

  His eyes shifted left. “I gave him two thousand bucks,” he said, the American slang falling hard from his mouth.

  “No, you didn’t. But I’ll give you a thousand, and I won’t call the cops. Tell me what this guy looked like.”

  He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Nondescript Brit. The accent was Scottish.”

  O’Rourke was out the door before he finished speaking.

  *

  As Jimmy talked about Philip, Sarah caught it − the thin, sharp smell of fear. Certainty came so fast it left her dizzy. The room didn’t so much spin as come in and out, like a broken zoom lens, and she had to stare down at the concrete floor until her head cleared. Classes are over, she thought. The boys are outside hurling logs, Connie’s two floors away, and Colin’s gone nighty-night. Not a bloody soul will hear me scream.

  Her voice came out in a light, curious tone that sounded like someone else’s. “If you hated Philip so much, why did you sleep with him?”

  Jimmy flinched. Her phone rang. They both froze. He grabbed her arm and wrenched it away from her pocket. The phone rang again. She writhed, trying to break his grip. “That’s Morganstern,” she gasped. “I told her where I was going.”

  “Why would she care who I slept with?” Reaching into Sarah’s pocket, Jimmy silenced her phone. “You are not going to tell Colin about this. Do you hear me?” He took her by the shoulders and shook her so hard pain shot down her arm.

  A wild, animal rage came over Sarah. She wanted to bite him until bright blood gushed, claw his eyes and feel their jelly beneath her nails. The instant he let go of her shoulders she struck out, aiming for his face. He shoved her away. Her head smashed against a music stand, and it toppled and fell on top of her. The ledge smashed into her nose and she tasted hot metal.

  Jimmy said something she couldn’t make out. Instead she heard the Tibetan bells behind him, clear and pure. I’m the gong, she thought, drunk with fear and pain. And then she slid into a black sea and felt nothing.

  *

  Morganstern closed the file folder and rubbed the back of her neck, hearing it crackle as she turned her head. Maybe tonight she and Daniel could watch a movie, and she could forget about this case for a few hours. As she picked up her car keys the phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Morganstern? Greyson Schucard. I’m a partner at Wittgens, Worthington & Schucard, and we represent the archdiocese. I was wondering if we could meet.”

  “Certainly,” she said. “Why don’t you come to the station?”

  “I’d be glad to, if that’s more convenient for you,” he lied. “But our firm is downtown, so I’d get caught in rush-hour traffic heading west and I’m afraid the delay would inconvenience you. Perhaps you could come down here − you should have no traffic at all − and we could have a private conversation in my office?”

  Morganstern agreed, hung up, and swore. Then she called her husband. “Hi, honey. I’m gonna be late tonight. Can you pick up Rachel and feed the dog? And pay Popcorn?”

  “Will he still be there?”

  “Probably. He’s taken to lingering in the hope of a dinner invitation.”

  “Leah, you have got to stop hiring homeless ex-cons.”

  “Don’t you like the paint job?”

  “It’s taken him six weeks.”

  “And this is why I love you, because you’re such a patient man. I’ll be home in time for a movie − you pick.”

  Schucard worked in the Metropolitan Square building. Smoky mirrored glass, nickel finishes, charcoal leather on the walls of the elevator. He came out to the lobby to meet her. “Can I get you some bottled water? I’m afraid the coffee’s undrinkable by now.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Following him to his office, she found h
erself staring through a wall of filtered glass at the curved leg of the Arch, its metal lit orange by the setting sun. “A lovely view. But why am I here?”

  He leaned forward. “I wanted to impress upon you the urgency of a resolution for the Matteo Academy case.”

  “Then we needn’t have met at all, Mr. Schucard. I regard every homicide as urgent.”

  “Of course. I was referring to the urgency of a delicate and discreet resolution.”

  She watched with fascination as he rubbed his finger along the base of his nose. The bone stopped well before the tip, leaving about an inch of rubbery cartilage to wobble back and forth.

  “Any further adverse publicity could destroy the school’s chances for establishing itself,” he was saying. “A great deal is at stake and the archdiocese wishes to ensure the best possible outcome.”

  A boy was dead. She thought the outcome seemed pretty compromised already. “Philip Grant’s death was a tragedy,” she said, spacing the words.

  “Indeed,” Schucard said hastily. “The archdiocese simply doesn’t want to compound that tragedy with any misinformation or unwarranted allegations. One of the boys was interviewed on television, and he gave the impression that Matteo’s priests were being grilled as suspects.”

  “Everyone is a suspect, Mr. Schucard, until we solve the case.”

  He folded his hands and arranged his features in an earnest expression. “Lieutenant, I have the utmost respect for your dedication and professionalism. I simply need your assurance that you will respect the delicacy of this situation. St. Louis is deeply Catholic. Our schools’ influence is woven into the very fabric of the city.”

  At that she lost patience. “I’ve lived in this city for a long time, sir, and I’m well aware of the Church’s influence.” She stressed ‘influence’, giving it a different implication. “But crime is crime, and guilt is guilt. My job is to investigate this murder, not do damage control for the archdiocese. I intend to solve this case as quickly as justice allows, and if the process gets a little messy, it seems to me that’s your concern and not mine.”

  Her phone rang. “Just got a call from Bridget Malone over in narcotics,” her sergeant said.

  She pressed the phone closer to her ear and turned sideways, the cushy leather chair exhaling beneath her. “And?”

  “They busted some kid for dealing, an amateur, and he gave up a bunch of customers to keep his scared little ass out of jail. Said his daddy would kick him out if he got charged.”

  “And?”

  “One of the people he fingered is a priest at the dead kid’s school.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  *

  “How did you know?” Jimmy asked, kicking one of the chairs away.

  Sarah blinked awake and opened her mouth to answer. Blood from her nose poured down her throat and she gagged, turning her head to the side with a violent jerk. Pain ripped through her head and neck. She coughed the blood out, wheezing for air as she choked and spat. “Why did you do it?”

  He bent so close she could feel heat coming off his skin. But instead of rage, his voice calmed into precision. “The little bastard made me break my vows, and then he threatened to tell the world. He said, ‘Nobody will be surprised. They all expect paedophilia.’ We would have lost the school, and Colin never would have spoken to me again.”

  The world went quiet, like an audio feed had been cut. The only sound left was the pounding of Sarah’s heart.

  “So you killed him,” she said.

  Jimmy sat back on his heels, giving her room to sit up. “No. God, no. I fucked him and left.”

  *

  Connie sat twisting her hands. She shook them apart and tried pacing like Colin, but that only made her more nervous. So she sat down and wrote him a note, then set a timer on the computer for ten minutes so she wouldn’t overreact.

  When the timer went off and he hadn’t returned, she locked the office and ran up two flights of stairs. Outside his door, breathing hard, she knocked: loud, soft-soft LOUD.

  No answer. She pushed the door open and heard him snoring. “Colin?” A louder snore. She’d have to go into his bedroom. She knocked on the doorjamb, then went over and shook his shoulder, but he just mumbled and rolled away from her. He was exhausted, poor lamb.

  She picked up the pitcher of water by his bed and dumped it over his head.

  Colin sat up spluttering. Connie fetched him a towel and handed him her note, tapping hard on the message with her index finger.

  He fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand and read: ‘Please get up. Sarah went to see Jimmy. She seemed scared.’ Connie pointed at his chest, then slashed her finger toward the door.

  “Right. On my way.” He scrubbed his face again with the towel, put his shoes and jacket on, and followed her downstairs.

  *

  They were sitting on the floor, Jimmy gently dabbing at the blood on Sarah’s face with an old-fashioned linen handkerchief. “I’m fine,” she said, waving his hand away. “Explain what happened.”

  “He seduced me. I know that sounds crazy − I was supposed to be the grown up. But man, he was good. He made it seem . . . inevitable. And from that night on he tormented me with it. Kept taunting me, said I should tell Colin I was gay, said he’d tell Colin and everybody else. Finally he promised to keep his mouth shut if I showed him the flashblood ritual. He was fascinated by it − I knew he would be. He wanted me to get high with him and ‘stop pretending to be good’.” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck. “I never should have done it. Any of it. But I couldn’t think of any other way to get him to shut up.”

  It was plausible. He could, of course, be lying. Either way, she had to pretend to believe him until she was safely out of the room. She tried for a conversational tone, that would have been easier if she weren’t spitting blood. “What happened then?”

  “I couldn’t manage to withdraw much of his blood, and it spattered all over the sheets. He was already high. He said . . .” Jimmy’s voice softened to a bleary drawl − “‘Oh, don’t bother, just fuck me. I won’t tell your lover.’” His eyes clouded. “I’ve been worried sick, wondering if there was any way he’d already overdosed. But he was fine, just sleepy. Didn’t much care what I did to him.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “Neither of us enjoyed it.”

  “Did you take the syringe with you?”

  “No. It never would have occurred to me. I figured he’d clean it all up the next morning. That’s how I knew somebody else must have come after me. The syringe was still there, and so was rest of the heroin. I just took . . .” − his voice dropped, and Sarah could barely make out the words − “the condom.”

  “So somebody else came after you and found it all there waiting for them.”

  He nodded, sick fear on his face. They were both thinking the same thing.

  *

  Morganstern reached for the plastic bag that kept sliding off the pile on her desk. This case defied the obsessive neatness Daniel teased her about. She needed at least the illusion of order to get through the muddle of an investigation, but in this case nothing would stay put.

  She took out the recorder and played it until she reached one phrase. Rewound, hit ‘Play’ again. Heard Philip’s voice, alive for a second, mocking.

  “Your precious school.”

  *

  They’d be in the music room. Colin started down the stairs. At least Connie’s old confidence was coming back, he thought wryly, ruffling water from his still-wet hair. And, she was right. Given his last conversation with Sarah, if she was set on accusing Jimmy, he probably ought to be there.

  When he reached the basement, he heard voices. Yes, that murmur was Sarah. And there was Jimmy, his voice loud then muffled, the words impossible to distinguish. Colin opened the door. “Hey, you two.”

  They were sitting on the floor, blood all over Sarah’s face, and they both looked startled, even frightened. He crossed to Sarah an
d held out a hand to pull her to her feet. “What in hell is going on?”

  Jimmy’s eyes were over bright, the blue electric. “I tried to avoid this,” he said.

  Colin’s lips went ice cold, and he could barely form the words. “You killed Philip?”

  “Let him explain,” Sarah said, her voice surprisingly calm.

  “I didn’t kill him. I slept with him. And I showed him the flashblood ritual to shut him up.” Jimmy’s voice was flat. Grabbing the edge of a chair seat, he pulled himself to his feet and looked straight at Colin.

  “I loved you,” Jimmy said, making it an accusation. “I always have. And you let me, because it was convenient. ‘Charm them, Jimmy. Be who I can’t.’” Words rushed out of him. “Everything I did was for your dream, your school. All I wanted was for us to be together, to be a team. You said you couldn’t do it without me.” His voice hardened. “And you were right. I did everything you couldn’t do. I made it all go smoothly. And you still didn’t love me back.”

  “For God’s sake, Jimmy, I’m not gay!”

  Sarah cut in. “The point is, when Jimmy left, the syringe and another vial of heroin were sitting right by Philip’s bed. So if he’s telling the truth, somebody else came in and took advantage of that. Somebody else he was sleeping with maybe.”

  “Then it could’ve been anybody,” Jimmy muttered.

  “How do you know he didn’t overdose with the first shot?” Colin asked.

  “He was fine for . . . a long time after that. Believe me, I worried about it. He’d bought stronger stuff. Said he wanted to make sure I got a taste of it. But he . . .”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened,” Sarah interrupted. “I think somebody else went to his room, probably to confront him. He was unconscious, and they seized their chance.”

  “Yeah but who?” Jimmy asked.

  She sighed. “I think I know.”

  *

  Jimmy’s eyes flicked to Colin.

  She shook her head. “Think wider. You weren’t the only one Philip seduced.” Licking her finger to wet her face, she scrubbed off the dried blood with Jimmy’s handkerchief. “Come on. We’ve got to go see Connie.”