A Cup Full of Midnight

by Jaden Terrell

  “I love that desk,” I said. “It’s got character.”

  “So did Margaret Thatcher. But I wouldn’t want to share my office with her.”

  We pushed open the front door of Tootsie’s, and a gust of warm air rolled over us. It smelled of beer and grease and a hint of old cigarette smoke. The musicians at the front, a Dixie diva and a concrete cowboy, were singing a decent version of Garth Brooks’s “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” to a half-empty room. They nodded in acknowledgement as we stuffed a pair of fives into the tip jar and made our way to a table for four at the back. We shook the sleet out of our jackets and tossed them into the extra seats. Then we both moved our chairs so we could see the exit.

  I plucked a handful of napkins from the dispenser and dried my hands and face as well as I could, then waited until the waitress had taken our orders—a Bud and an order of fries for Frank, onion rings and AmberBock for me—before taking out the file and opening it on the table between us. A full-color photo of Razor’s butchered body lay on top of the stack, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe it was a good thing we’d come at a slow time.

  The photo showed a naked young man stretched across a pentagram drawn in blood. His own blood, according to the lab results. Drawn postmortem—though how you could sacrifice a guy who’d already bled out was beyond me.

  The next photo was a candid shot taken a few weeks before Razor’s death. He had high cheekbones and a straight, narrow nose and, except for a few faint lines at the corners of his eyes, he looked younger than his years. Thick hair dyed onyx juxtaposed with blue-white skin and a sullen, effeminate mouth that had probably seduced dozens of boys like Josh.

  I studied the picture, trying without success to muster some sympathy for the dead man, but all I could think was, Flirt with the devil, and don’t be surprised if he asks you to dance.

  Suddenly queasy, I shoved the photograph to the bottom of the pile. Sifted through the haphazard stack of papers. Crime scene photos, the medical examiner’s report, police reports, transcriptions of interviews, including Absinthe’s confession. Razor’s death, laid out in front of me like a hand of cards.

  “How about an overview?” I said.

  Frank took a swig of beer, took his time swallowing. “We found traces of blood in the tub,” he said, finally. “Looks like they carried your buddy Razor upstairs and hung him up to drain the body.”

  “Hung him up where?”

  “Chin-up bar in the upstairs hall. We found a little spatter on the wall there. We think they drained the blood into a bucket and rinsed it out in the bathtub when they were finished with it. They disinfected afterward, but you know how that is.”

  I knew. Chemiluminescent compounds could reveal traces of blood years after the fact. The newer ones worked just like Luminal, only better.

  Frank went on. “After they drained the blood, they went downstairs and drew the pentagram with it, splashed the rest around the room, posed the body, then used some kind of vacuum on the couch and carpet.”

  “They leave the bag?”

  “I wish. They did leave a couple of footprints—looks like somebody stepped in the blood and tracked it around some—but even if we could pull prints from the carpet, they’re too smeared to be of any use. Can’t even tell what size they were.”

  “You think they smeared the prints on purpose?”

  “We’re pretty sure they did.”

  I picked up the next photo, a close-up of Razor’s forearm, arcane symbols carved into it, dark slits between whitened edges of skin. “Ugly,” I said.

  “Aren’t they all?” He tapped one of the symbols with a forefinger. “Some of these are defensive cuts. The symbols were carved on top of them later. Like somebody didn’t want us to know he fought.”

  Somebody. Not Absinthe. Not Josh. Just somebody. The muscles in the back of my neck loosened a bit.

  I rummaged through the stack and plucked out the medical examiner’s report. Cause of death was a jagged throat wound. Its size and shape showed that the blade had gone in straight, then jerked sideways, slicing through the jugular; but there was no way to tell whether the killer had planned it that way, or whether Razor had widened the wound in an instinctive attempt to pull free of the blade. The forensic pathologist called it a compound wound. Like the defensive cuts, it indicated a struggle.

  The other wounds—the occult symbols, the long vertical slash that opened his gut like a dressed deer, and the one that had severed his genitals—had occurred postmortem.

  My better self was glad he hadn’t been tortured. The rest of me wished I’d killed the son of a bitch myself.

  I dropped the report on the table and picked up a photo of the blue ceramic bowl found beside Razor’s body. The inner curve of the bowl was streaked with black, and in the bottom of it, three charred lumps lay in a pool of something that looked like tar but wasn’t. A wisp of smoke curled from a stick of incense propped between the lumps—Razor’s shriveled genitalia and his blackened heart.

  Just looking at it made my nuts draw up.

  “Gotta hate someone a lot to do a thing like this,” I said. “Even as part of some ceremony.”

  “It wasn’t a ceremony. Before the girl confessed, we talked to an occult expert. This isn’t an authentic ritual. Just bits and pieces patched together from books and horror flicks. Look.” He handed me a picture of the pentagram. “It’s just a star inside a circle. Satanists draw the star upside down.”

  “Somebody trying to make it look like a satanic killing?”

  “Or trying to invent one. Kid was a role player. Vampires and all that crap. But then, you knew that.” He paused, then added, too casually, “Josh used to play with them, didn’t he?”

  I said, sharply, “Not for a long time.”

  “Don’t bark at me.” He held up his hands in mock surrender. “You know I have to ask.”

  “So now you’ve asked.”

  “Relax, Cowboy. Just dotting the i’s.”

  I nodded. Drew in a calming breath and opened the fists I hadn’t known I’d clenched. When I felt like I could speak, I tapped a finger on the medical report. “You think role players did this?”

  “Why not? You remember that bunch from Kentucky a few years back.”

  I remembered. Young family on their way home from a church retreat. Stopped at the wrong rest area and met up with a bunch of vampire wannabes high on PCP. It was the last mistake they’d ever make.

  “I thought vampires were passé,” I said.

  “Check out the internet lately? Ninety-five million hits, give or take. You got vampire chat rooms, vampire web sites, vamp support groups. Orientation meetings for teenagers who think they’re vampires.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Sanguinarius. The Sanguinarium. The Temple of the Vampire.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Nutcases ’R’ Us.”

  I scanned the M.E.’s report again. “Traces of drugs? Alcohol?”

  “Not enough to knock him out.” Frank tipped his chair back and ran his hands through his rumpled hair. “A little beer and pot from the night before. Lots of stuff stashed around, though. Uppers, downers, Ecstasy, Rohypnol.” My jaw tightened at the mention of the date rape drug, and he added, “Lotta kids take it just to get high. But from what I hear about our boy Razor, he coulda found a lot of uses for it.”

  “Any chance this was a drug-related killing?”

  “Naw. Too much imagination.”

  His cell phone rang, no fancy tones, just a plain old-fashioned rotary phone ring. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and grimaced at the caller ID.

  “Malone,” he growled, and tucked it back inside his jacket without answering.

  Our waitress came out of the back carrying a tray with our food and more beers. I slid the photos into the file and flipped it shut just as she reached our table.

  “Hiding your dirty pictures?” she asked, nodding toward the folder. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “Trust me,” Frank
said. “It’s nothing you want to see.”

  She hovered around for a minute or so, fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers, casting furtive glances toward the file. Frank and I opened our beers, took turns whacking ketchup onto our plates from an old-fashioned glass bottle. After awhile, she heaved a sigh and went back into the kitchen.

  When she’d gone, I said, “What about the O’Brien girl? What’ve you got on her?”

  “You mean besides the confession? We got her fingerprints on the knife. Right thumb and index finger. She definitely handled it.”

  “You’re sure it was the murder weapon?”

  “You know how knife wounds are. They get all stretched out of shape. But we think so.” He dropped the legs of his chair to the floor with a thud, shuffled through the sheaf of photographs, then shoved a picture of a small, curved dagger across the table toward me. “It’s called an athame.” He pronounced it a-THAW-may. “Some sort of ritual knife. It belonged to the victim, but we’re pretty sure the initial slashes and some of the symbols were carved with this.”

  “You gotta be kidding. Those ritual knives won’t even hold an edge. They’re just for show.”

  “Not this one. Your boy Razor bought the real deal. Top grade. And he kept it sharp.”

  “Pretty pricey for a showpiece. How’d my boy Razor afford a thing like that?”

  Frank’s nose wrinkled. “Family money. And what can I say? Mama loved her little boy.”

  I picked up another photo, this one of Razor’s chest and belly opened from sternum to navel. I said, “You can’t crack a rib cage with a knife like that.”

  “No. M.E. thinks they did that with some kind of tactical or survival knife.” Frank held his hands about a foot apart. “Big hunting knife they use to dress deer.”

  I knew the kind of knife he meant. A heavy-duty blade. If you knew what you were doing, you could perform most of an autopsy with it. The only thing it wouldn’t do was cut through the skull. You needed a saw for that.

  I took a sip of AmberBock and said, “Tell me about the girl. What about her friends? People she hung out with? Anything there?”

  “She hung out with Razor and a little group of his vampire friends. The rest of them all alibi each other.” He picked up the report, tapped a line somewhere in the middle of it. “There are four of them. The O’Brien girl, Laurel. Medina Neel, twenty-one. Calls herself Medea.”

  “I’ve met her. Back in the fall, after we found out about . . . Razor and Josh. She seemed a little high-strung.”

  “If high-strung means as crazy as a Betsy bug, you got that right.” He swirled a French fry in a pool of ketchup, popped the whole thing into his mouth.

  “You said four. Who’s number three?”

  “Older guy, close to the victim’s age. Barnabus Collins. Just like the guy from Dark Shadows. Says so on his driver’s license.”

  “Five bucks says it didn’t say that on his birth certificate.”

  “Sucker bet. No thanks.” He looked back at the report. “The last one is a kid named Dennis Knight. Sixteen. Everybody calls him Dark Knight, even his mother, who confirms the group was hanging out at her place.”

  “She reliable?”

  “Didn’t strike me that way. House smelled like pot, and there was alcohol on her breath. Twitchy, too. Betcha fifty bucks she’s using, and that would be a sucker bet too.” He took a swig from his bottle and said, “Parker’s new boy toy found the body.”

  My jaw tightened. “How old?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Son of a bitch.” I didn’t mean the kid.

  “Kid’s name’s Byron Birch. Says he was at the gym. Logbook there backs him up.”

  “And the girl?”

  His phone shrilled again. He pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, rolled his eyes, and put it back in his pocket.

  “Malone again?”

  “Suspicious bitch.”

  “Should we get back? I don’t want to jam you up.”

  “Little late for that, don’t you think?” He cleared his throat and said, “The girl. Not talking. She definitely handled the knife. But whether she took a few whacks at him, or whether she just watched, I couldn’t say. She wouldn’t give us any details, just kept saying she did it alone. Which, as we know, is bullshit.”

  “Why confess and then not talk?” I picked up the arrest report and scanned it. “Says he was killed between twelve and two in the afternoon. Odd time for a blood sacrifice. Especially for a bunch of vampires. That all you have on the girl? The fingerprints and the confession?”

  The musicians started a new song, a bastardized Christmas carol. On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me . . . a fifty-inch HD TV. Frank took a swig of Bud and said, “It was enough to hold her. If she’s whacked enough to kill this guy, she’s whacked enough to keep killing.”

  “Remorse?”

  “Judge for yourself.” He rifled through the folder, found the transcript of the girl’s confession, and tossed it across the table.

  I skimmed the report. When I’d finished, I said, “As confessions go, it’s not much.”

  “I’ve seen flimsier.” He popped another fry, took his time chewing. Finally, he said, “You were a cop for a long time.”

  “Long time,” I agreed. Uniformed patrol officer to undercover vice officer to homicide detective to outsider. Nose to the window like a homeless, hungry kid.

  He said, “You’re gonna make the whole department look like a bunch of schmucks.”

  “That’s not my intention.”

  “But?”

  “But I will tear this department apart if that’s what it takes to get Josh out from under this thing.”

  He sighed. “I thought you might say that.”

  The phone in his jacket shrilled. This time he reached in and turned it off without looking. An angry flush spread upward from beneath his collar.

  “You gotta get back,” I said.

  “Guess so.” He stared glumly at his nearly empty bottle.

  “I might need to ask you for a few favors. Run a tag, match a fingerprint.”

  “We’ll see. I’m not saying no. I’m just saying, don’t count your chickens. See where it leads.”

  “Let’s start with this, then. You don’t think it was a ritual killing, do you? Not even a made-up one.”

  “I don’t know, Cowboy.” He downed the last of his beer and thunked the bottle down on the table. Gave me a dour grin. “Take away the trappings, and there was a lot of random stabbing. This one feels personal.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We stopped at Kinko’s and made a copy of the file. I put it in my glove compartment, then zipped the original under my coat and headed back to Frank’s office. Malone met us in the lobby, lips pressed together, arms folded across the chest of her tailored black pantsuit. Even angry, she looked damn good. She shot me a scowl and said, “I heard you were trouble.”

  I forced a grin. Mr. Innocent. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

  She rolled her eyes, then turned a chilly gaze toward Frank. “You. Campanella. In my office. Now.”

  He reddened, gave me a cursory nod, and stalked, stiff-backed, toward her office. When he’d gone, she leveled her gaze at me and said, “You’re not doing him any favors.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “He’s a pigheaded dinosaur. It’s not my job to do him favors.”

  “What is your job?” I asked.

  She flashed me a middle finger and strode back toward her office.

  I waited until she turned the corner, then went back to Frank’s cubicle and tucked the Parker file under the Peeping Tom folder. On the way out, I waved at the skinny kid behind the glass, but he didn’t wave back. Immersed in his book.

  With ice crusting the streets and the traffic in a snarl, I decided to shower and shave at my office, one of six suites in a renovated building that had begun life as a boarding house a few blocks from Vanderbilt Hospital and University. One of my co-renters
had wound the porch columns with strands of plastic lights shaped like jalapeño peppers. The place looked like the bastard child of a Victorian dollhouse and a cheap Mexican restaurant.

  We were a mismatched lot, but the rent was reasonable. 1-A was a counselor to battered women. Her clients passed me in the hall from time to time, some timid, some defensive, most stepping wide to avoid me as if I were a water moccasin. Across from her, a group of aging hippies called themselves the Society for the Legalization of Psychotropic Substances and occasionally slipped pro-LSD flyers through my mail slot. On the second floor, a nondescript man who shuffled nondescript packages to and from Bangkok and Shanghai worked across the hall from an elderly woman who ran a quaint little business called “Strip-o-Grams.” I saw her ladies on the stairs sometimes too, sequined and feathered as they headed out to work, or scrubbed fresh in jeans and oversized sweatshirts after. Sometimes they were the same women I saw in 1-A.

  My office, Maverick Investigations, was on the third floor across the hall from an empty suite. Two doors led from the outer office, where my desk sat, to the rest of the apartment—shower, kitchenette, and a former bedroom that now housed surveillance equipment, a hodgepodge of indispensible gadgetry, and a walk-in closet for extra clothes and my theatrical kit.

  After exchanging my damp jeans and chambray shirt for a gray suit and a blue silk tie, I looked through Razor’s case file for the name of Absinthe’s attorney. Aleta Thomas.

  I stared at the name. Five feet nothing on her tiptoes, with wrists the size of wishbones, Miss Aleta was nothing but bone and gristle beneath a seventy-five-year-old veneer of southern grace. Many a hapless prosecutor had cause to regret mistaking her wry charm for weakness.

  I found her name in my Rolodex and punched in the number. After the usual half-dozen transfers, someone finally took pity and put me through. A moment later, she drawled, “Laws, child, I didn’t expect to hear from you again.”

  “I know, Miss Aleta. Life’s funny that way.”

  “Life’s funny a lot of ways. But you didn’t call me to talk philosophy.”

  “No ma’am. I called you to ask if I could talk to one of your clients,Absi—” I stopped myself. “Laurel O’Brien. The Parker case.”