A Cup Full of Midnight (7 page)

I rounded the last curve, and the corridor opened on either side. The barn and pasture flashed by on my right. The horses looked up as I passed, then resumed munching on a round bale in the middle of the pasture.

Just ahead, my housemate, Jay Renfield, stood at the bottom of an extension ladder propped against the porch roof. Bundled up in a multicolored parka like some kind of pop art Eskimo, he was playing out a string of Christmas lights like a fishing line, while his lover, Eric the Viking, perched at the top of the ladder, hanging the other end of the lights along the eaves.

Jay and I had met in kindergarten, but lost touch after high school. He ran off with a bleached blond biker boy with a Marilyn Monroe tattoo, was disowned by his family, and went on to become a computer programmer, making a small but comfortable fortune designing games and graphics. I joined the force, got married, had a son. Our paths didn’t cross. Part of it was that we moved in different circles, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of it was a certain amount of discomfort with his homosexuality. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.

Years later, he called me up out of the blue and told me that the biker boy had left him with a broken heart, a dozen maxed-out credit cards, and a virus that would destroy his immune system.

Son of a bitch.

When I found myself divorced, unemployed, and rudderless, he offered me a place to stay. Cheap rent, swimming pool, and a place to board my horses. In return, I played chauffeur when he was too sick to drive, nursed him through night sweats and night terrors, and did odd jobs around the place. It was hard to tell which of us was getting the better end of the deal, so we just called it even.

Eric the Viking waved with his free hand as I approached the house. “Hey, Cowboy. Deck the halls and all that jazz.”

“We’ll be done here in a minute.” Jay’s breath coalesced in front of him like a disembodied spirit. “There’s hot chocolate in the kitchen.”

I gave him a two-fingered salute and went inside to pour myself a steaming cup of cocoa.

The kitchen smelled of sugar and warm milk. A pot of hot chocolate simmered on the stove. Draped across the back of my chair was my father’s leather bomber jacket, the one I’d been wearing when I found Josh. Unwilling to part with it, I’d stuffed it into the back of the closet when soaking and scrubbing failed to remove the stains.

I checked the cuffs for blood. They were clean.

I put it on and stepped back out onto the porch.

“Hey,” I said.

Jay looked up. Smiled. “You found it.”

“How’d you get rid of the blood?”

“Enzymes.”

I laid my hand over my heart and bowed my head in his direction. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one,” he said, grinning. “But anyway, you’re welcome.”

Upstairs, I lay on my bed and studied the Parker file. Started with the police report and worked through it page by page and photo by photo. I didn’t take notes. Not yet. Later, I’d attack the file with colored pens and highlighters, but for now, I just wanted to get a feel for the case.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the phone ringing, a gust of cold air, the front door smacking shut, footsteps, Jay’s voice. Casual, then concerned. It was the change in his tone that caught my attention. He sounded like he’d just been invited to his own execution.

I pushed aside the file I was reading and went to lean in the doorway of the kitchen, where he was setting the receiver back in its cradle.

“Trouble?” I asked.

He tucked one hand under the other armpit and stared at the wall in front of him. His face was still red with cold and his hair was rumpled. The knit cap he’d been wearing lay on the counter beside the phone, like a deflated caterpillar.

“That was Greg.” His voice sounded strained. “I don’t think you’ve ever met him. Dylan got him in the settlement.”

I nodded. There’s always a settlement. After every breakup, mutual friends choose one member of a couple over the other. It happened when Maria and I divorced, and it’s just as true of gay couples as it is of straight ones.

“What did he want?” I said.

He squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a small shake. Then, “Dylan’s dying,” he said.

Dylan. The biker boy with the bleached blond hair. The fucking bastard who’d given Jay AIDS.

“Good,” I said.

He looked at me sharply. “He’s got no place to go.”

“What about Greg?”

Jay picked up the caterpillar cap and twisted it in his hands. “Greg’s a fabulous person, but he doesn’t deal well with suffering.”

“And the punk he left you for?”

“Bailed when Dylan started to show symptoms. Poor Dyl. I don’t think anyone ever left him before in his life.”

“Poor baby.”

“You think I’m a sap.”

“He gave you AIDS.”

“He didn’t mean to.” He turned the cap inside out, rubbed the ribbing between his fingers. “I need to do this, Jared.”

“Do what?” I asked. Jay looked at me, and it suddenly came clear. “You mean, bring him here?”

“He’s all alone. There’s nobody to take care of him. Can you imagine what that must be like?”

“Let his family deal with him.”

“His parents are dead. Car wreck. They hadn’t spoken to him since he came out.” He looked away, but not before I saw the muscles in his jaw twitch. Jay’s parents had washed their hands of him when he’d told them he was gay. “He doesn’t have anybody else,” he said again.

I ran my tongue between my teeth and upper lip and tried to think of something clever to say. Instead, “It’s your house,” I said. “You can bring anybody into it you want.”

He said, “You’ll love him, you know. You think you’ll hate him. You’ll
want
to hate him. But you won’t.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

“It’s not all altruism.” He traced an invisible circle on the blue mosaic counter with his finger. “Maybe I’m just gratified that I’m the one he has to come back to.”

“I’m not the one you have to convince,” I said. “Don’t you think Eric might have a little problem with this?”

“I love Eric. He knows that. He’ll understand.”

I gave Jay’s shoulder a quick pat and sauntered upstairs, leaving him to break the news to his current lover that his former lover was coming home to die.

I wasn’t sure if I was being a coward or just minding my own business.

I found a pen in the drawer of my bedside table and flopped down on the bed with my copy of the Parker file. I went through it again, occasionally scrawling a note in a margin. People to interview, questions to ask.

Downstairs, voices rose and fell in tones of anger and betrayal. When the door slammed shortly after midnight and the house fell into an empty silence, I knew Jay had been wrong. Eric had not understood.

CHAPTER NINE

W
hen Maria and I divorced, I took the horses on twenty-mile trail rides, baled hay until my shoulders ached and sweat glued my shirt to my back, sparred at the dojang until my lungs burned. Jay had a different way of coping, and I awoke to the mingled scents of dark roast coffee and blueberry muffins. If he and Eric didn’t patch things up, we’d be eating cookies and cobbler until New Year’s.

Blearily, I stumbled down to breakfast barefoot and blue-jeaned, scratching my stomach and stifling yawns. Jay looked up as I plopped into my chair and reached for the steaming mug he’d placed beside my plate.

“You missed a button,” he said, gesturing toward my shirt. His smile was weak, embarrassed. “I guess you heard?”

I fumbled to realign my buttons. “A little.”

“It doesn’t change anything.”

Jay set a plateful of muffins on the table between us and scooted onto his chair. A coffee cup full of immune-boosters, protease inhibitors, and Shaklee vitamin supplements sat beside his plate. He said, “Do you think I should call him?”

“Eric or Dylan?”

“Eric.”

“I don’t know. I guess that’s up to you.”

“You aren’t helping.”

“Jay, I’m sorry. I—”

“No, it’s all right. It isn’t fair of me to put you in the middle of it.” He picked up a muffin, made a neat incision in it, and tucked a pat of butter into the slit. Then he set it down carefully and slid it to the far side of his plate. “If I bring Dylan here . . . are you going to walk out too?”

“You know better,” I said.

I was relieved when he finally pushed his plate away and started to clear the table. I pushed away too. I had a couple of hours before I had to meet with Miss Aleta and her client. “I’ll be in the barn.”

He forced a smile. “Say hello to the boys for me.”

The barn smelled of hay, fresh earth, sawdust, and leather oil. The sweet-sweat-and-dry-dust scent of the horses. Dakota, the rescued Arabian, arched his neck across the stall opening. I fed him a handful of oats, brushed a few stray grains from his lips, and laid my palm flat against his nose so I could feel his breath. Rubbed the scar tissue around his blind eye. Four months ago, he would have flinched. Now he rubbed his head against my palm and whickered.

I brushed the caked mud from the horses’ winter coats and picked out their hooves, then returned them to their stalls, which were open to the pasture. Dakota and the Tennessee Walker, Crockett, trotted out into the pale winter sunlight. Tex, the Quarter Horse I’d run poles and barrels on when I was a kid, nuzzled my hand with his graying muzzle. I raked my fingers through his mane and plucked a burr from the pale, coarse hair. Thought of Androcles, though there was nothing lion-like about the palomino gelding. He gave my palm a long lick before plodding out to join the others. His limp, the residual effect of a damaged tendon, was barely noticeable. A lot like mine.

By the time I’d put out their hay and checked on the heating element in the watering trough, I was shivering. It would have been a good day to curl up in bed with a thick blanket and a warm woman. Instead, I shrugged on my dad’s leather jacket, locked my Glock and shoulder holster in the glove compartment, and drove downtown to the juvenile detention center where Absinthe was being held. The wheels of justice had already begun to grind, and in a day or so, a judge would decide whether or not the heinousness of Razor’s murder merited a transfer to adult court. If so, she’d be moved to the Metro jail a few blocks over, but for now she was still in the juvenile system.

Miss Aleta met me on the other side of the security checkpoint, her hand extended in greeting. I plucked my keys from the plastic container and stuffed them into my pocket, then clasped her proffered hand. The bones felt fragile, and I thought that if I squeezed too hard, the hand would crumble in my palm like a dry leaf.

“You remember what I told you,” she said. “I’ll be listening.”

“I remember.”

I followed her past the courtrooms and a bulletin board where rows of clipboards hung on nails announced the day’s court dockets. Just beyond the stairwell was the door to the detention facility, and beyond that was another checkpoint, where I left my keys with a pleasant-looking woman behind a glass partition. She gave me an appraising smile and gestured me through the electronic security gate. Miss Aleta went around the gate and opened one of the small lockers mounted on the wall. She rummaged through her purse for a pen and a memo tablet, then stuffed the purse into the locker. The woman behind the partition buzzed us through the heavy security door, and we stepped into the corridor that led to processing.

To our left was a visitation room that doubled as a training room for new hires. We passed through it to a smaller room, bare except for a table and four cushioned office chairs, two on each side. No partition, like there would have been in the Metro jailhouse, just a plate glass window between the two rooms so the guard posted outside it could see if anything went wrong.

Absinthe, a chubby girl straining the seams of an orange jailhouse jumpsuit, was already seated at the table. Her head was pillowed on her arms like a child who’s been told to put her head on her desk. She looked up when we came in, face blotchy from crying.

“Is my mom coming?” she asked. Her voice was high-pitched, girlish. She didn’t sound like someone who would slash a young man’s throat and gut him with a hunting knife. She sounded like a little kid lost in the woods.

Miss Aleta sighed. “Not this time, child.”

For a moment, Absinthe’s face seemed about to crumple. Then she lifted her chin and jabbed a finger in my direction. The black polish was chipped, the nails gnawed down to the quick. “What’s he doing here?”

Miss Aleta said, “He wants to talk to you about Mr. Parker’s murder. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say.”

“I remember you,” Absinthe said to me. She tugged self-consciously at the waist of her jumpsuit, which was at least a size too small. “You’re Josh’s uncle.”

“That’s right. Jared McKean. They treating you okay?”

She glanced at her attorney, then back at me. Shrugged. “I guess.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . The other girls are kinda mean.”

Miss Aleta slitted her eyes and said, “Have any of them hurt you?”

Absinthe picked at a cuticle. “Sticks and stones.”