A Cup Full of Midnight (17 page)

“Police report said he was an artist.”

“Comic books and fantasy illustration. That’s what he always said, but he never actually sold anything.”

“You don’t seem exactly broken up with grief.”

He led me out a side door and headed across a wide patch of brittle grass. “My brother was a stone-cold bastard. He molested me when I was ten. Mother said it was normal. Boys will be boys.”

“What about your father?”

“He made a token attempt to help, but he was a broken man by then. Mother had already eaten him alive.”We came to a bench, and he tossed his notebook down on it and turned to face me. Some distance away, several young men tossed a Frisbee in the cold. “Does it surprise you that I’d tell you all this?”

“A little.”

“It’s part of my therapy. Coming to terms with Sebastian’s death and how guilty I feel because I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Can’t blame you, under the circumstances.”

We sat. The bench was hard, cold through the seat of my jeans.

“So if you’re looking to extort some sort of payment to keep his sordid history secret, you can forget it. I might be tempted, to protect Mother. But since she’ll never believe anything bad about Sebastian anyway, it would be rather a pointless gesture, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t come here to blackmail you.”

“Oh.” He looked mildly surprised. “What, then?”

I showed him my license and gave him the short version. Investigating Razor’s murder.

“I don’t give a damn who killed him,” he said. “You find whoever did it, introduce me. I’d like to shake his hand.”

“The kid who confessed didn’t do it. Anything you could tell me that might help her out . . .”

He shook his head. “Sorry. It took some longer than others, but sooner or later, just about everybody who ever knew him wanted him dead. He managed to screw everybody—usually in more ways than one.”

“I heard he went to school here,” I said.

“Got his Bachelor’s. Got bounced a couple of months before he would have gotten his Master’s.”

“Psychology?”

“That’s right. Headgames ‘R’ Us.”

“What happened?”

He fiddled with his notebook. “Some kind of research project. It was titled the Parker Principle, but he called it the Great Brain Fuck. He and Alan were working on it. Alan Keating.”

“I’ve met him.”

“He and Sebastian go way back. In fact,Alan practically lived at our house. Tells you something about his home life, doesn’t it? That our sad little family seemed preferable?”

“Did he . . . ?” I made an ambiguous gesture.

“Molest me? No. I think he and Sebastian may have had something going for a while, but I don’t think they’ve had that kind of relationship for a long time.”

“What can you tell me about this research project the two of them were working on?”

“Not much. It had something to do with behavioral psychology, and there was some question about ethics. I remember right after it happened, after he got expelled, Sebastian kept ranting about the narrow-minded morons running the department. Said he and Alan were working on the most daring project ever done at this school.”

“But he didn’t tell you what it was about?”

His gave me a chilly smile and said, “Sebastian liked his secrets.”

“So how come Razor got expelled and Alan got to stay?”

“I couldn’t say. Maybe somebody recognized that Alan was just a puppet. You wouldn’t believe how he used to do whatever Sebastian said.”

“Used to?”

“He got over it.” He stood up, picked up the notebook, tapped it against his thighs. “I think that’s why Sebastian kept him around. He wanted to see if he could get that old Alan back. Or maybe part of it was that Alan loved him. Not just some queer thing. I mean, really loved him. And Razor didn’t believe in love.”

“Medea said something along those lines.”

“Yeah, he used to say it all the time. Nobody really loves anybody. And I think he needed to prove to himself that he could kill that in Alan. Or that he couldn’t. You know, wanted to prove he was right and wanted to prove he was wrong at the same time.”

“It didn’t bother him that Alan got to stay in school?”

“It bothered him. But he got over it. He always did, with Alan.”

“You loved him too.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Who? Alan or Sebastian?”

“Both.”

“I hated my brother’s guts, and that’s the truth. I’d have killed him myself if it wasn’t for Mother.”

“Hate. Love. Sometimes it’s a fine line.”

He looked out into space. “Yeah, well. It’s nothing a few more years of therapy won’t take care of. Until then . . .” He raised an invisible glass. “To my brother, Sebastian. May he rot in Hell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
called Alan Keating from my cell phone. Kirsten put me right through.

“The Parker Principle,” I said when he answered. “The Great Brain Fuck.”

There was silence on the other end. Then, “Mr. McKean,” he said.

“This research project. What was it about?”

“It has nothing to do with Bastian’s death.”

“I’ll find out one way or another. It would be easier if you’d just tell me.”

“Did it ever occur to you I might not exactly be proud of it?”

Shades of Dennis Knight. “You know what they say, Keating. Honest confession’s good for the soul. So spit it out.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then he said, “You’ve heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment?”

“Psych experiment. Half the students are guards, and the other half are inmates. It didn’t go well.”

“They called it off. They had to. It got to be too much like a real prison. The guards started acting like tyrants, the prisoners didn’t seem to realize they could just go home.”

“I remember.”

“The guy who ran it wrote a book about how good people turn evil. Bastian was always fascinated by that kind of thing. Good and evil. He had a theory.”

“A theory.”

“Beneath the surface, everyone is evil. He thought if you knew enough, you could manipulate almost anyone into doing almost anything. People were marionettes, and all you had to do was find the right string to pull. To prove his theory, we . . . manipulated people. Bastian kept a journal with all the different tales he’d tell people and all the different things he could get them to do.”

My gut felt like it had been filled with shaved ice. “What kind of things?”

“Sexual favors, mostly. He was intrigued—and infuriated—by how many girls would cheat on their boyfriends. And how many straight men would perform homosexual acts, even when they were supposedly in exclusive relationships with women.”

“Nobody loves anybody,” I said.

“Then you know. He had a thing about that. It was like he needed to prove love was a lie.”

“He was bisexual.”

He laughed without humor. “He was a sexual omnivore. But his machinations weren’t limited to sex. Someone would be upset about some perceived slight and he’d suggest some retaliation for it. Just pranks, mostly, but some of them were pretty cruel.”

“What was your part in it?”

“I lent an air of credibility, I suppose. I went out with a few of these women, but I wasn’t very good at it. Not as charming or believable as Bastian.”

“What happened?”

“One of the girls attempted suicide. It came out, what we were doing.”

“And Razor got expelled.”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t. How’d you manage that?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if you can understand how I felt. It was like some evil spell had been broken and I could see what a terrible thing we’d done. I pleaded for another chance. Broke down and cried like a baby, which also doesn’t make me proud. I guess my advisor believed I was sincere.”

“Were you?”

“I’ve never meant anything more.”

“That doesn’t exactly answer the question.”

“I was sincere, all right? What do you want from me?”

“The truth.”

“It happened years ago. It has nothing to do with what happened to Bastian.”

“So you say. But you lied about the day he was killed, so why should I believe you now?”

He was silent for a beat. Then he said, “What?”

I wasn’t certain—all I had were the missing initials on his calendar—but I played the card anyway. “You canceled your appointments for that afternoon. You had plenty of time to get to Razor’s and kill him before Byron got home.”

When he finally answered, his voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear him. “And why would I do that?”

“You tell me.”

“Goodbye, Mr. McKean,” he said. And the line went dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

W
hen I got home, the horses were standing by the pasture gate. Their breath billowed out into the chilly evening air, and the snow around the gate was pocked with hoof prints. Churned-up patches of dark earth showed through. Tex whickered softly and pawed at the ground as I approached.

“Hey, fella.” I scratched the flat place between his eyes, and he heaved a sigh that warmed my face and drained the tension out of me. By the time I’d brushed the three of them and dropped a flake of hay into each of their stalls, I felt almost human.

Inside, the drone of voices and a flickering light came from Dylan’s room, followed by a spate of canned laughter. I peered in and saw Jay slumped in the recliner, eyes closed, head lolling onto his shoulder. Dylan lay back against a stack of pillows, the comforter pulled up to his chest. Beside him, Luca the papillon pup gnawed at a dried ostrich tendon as long as he was tall.

The pup looked up. The tendon dropped from his mouth and he bounced across the bed, wagging from the shoulders down. I scooped him up a heartbeat before he tumbled off the edge, and he licked my chin and squirmed against my shoulder like a fur ball filled with Jell-O.

Dylan opened his eyes and said, “Long day.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Plenty of time for that, right?” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a wheeze. “Nothin’ but sleep for a long, long time.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“Twenty more years. Barring that, I could use a glass of OJ.”

“Juice I can manage.”

He forced a smile and closed his eyes. “So, are you the husband in this cozy little arrangement? Because I know Jay’s got to be the wife.”

I felt the muscles of my face tighten. “I’m a friend.”

“Oh, yes. The straight friend. He’s made such a point of it, I wonder can it possibly be true? Personally, methinks he doth protest too much.”

“He said I was going to like you in spite of myself.”

“And you don’t?” He gave a dry chuckle that ended in a long, rattling cough. I glanced at Jay, whose eyelids fluttered open, then dropped closed again. Too tired to wake himself up. “I must be losing my touch.”

“I’ll get you that juice,” I said, passing the puppy back to him. It gave a little whine, then sighed and settled down. In the kitchen, I took a few deep breaths, poured a glass of orange juice, and took it back down the hall.

I placed the glass in Dylan’s outstretched hand, which dipped dangerously at the sudden weight. He strained to lift his head from the pillow and brought the glass to his lips. Juice spilled around the corners of his mouth and trickled down the sides of his chin.

“Shit,” Dylan said. “You know what, Straight? Dying sucks.”

I slid one hand under his shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position. Then I took the glass from his hand and held it to his lips. He sipped, swallowed, sipped again.

When he’d finished, he turned his face away and coughed. “Needs vodka,” he said. “I don’t guess you’d . . .”

I eased him back onto the pillow. “Let me guess. You’re not supposed to mix alcohol with your meds.”

“What’s it going to do, kill me?”

He had a point. I took the OJ into the kitchen and laced it with two ounces of vodka. Then I went back into his room and helped him take a few more sips.

“Don’t you die on me now,” I said. “Not with this stuff in your system.”

“Why worry?” he said. “The most they could charge you with is mercy killing.”

“Illegal,” I reminded him.

“How about if I promise not to die until the alcohol’s out of my bloodstream?”

I agreed that would probably be a good idea.

I was pretty safe, though, because a few swallows of the drink were all he could manage. When he’d finished, he sank back into his pillow and closed his eyes.

“You’re a good man, Straight,” he sighed. The rattle in his voice suggested some congestion in his lungs. “Jay’s a lucky guy.”

On the way upstairs, I glanced at the hall table, where the first one home drops the mail. Nothing. It was possible the box had been empty, but this time of year, it was unlikely. Jay must have gotten busy, forgotten to pick it up. I trudged back down to the end of the driveway to check the mailbox. Cable bill, electric bill, three Christmas cards addressed to Jay and one to me. And a plain white envelope, no stamp, no address, just my name printed in heavy block letters across the front. I worked open a corner, then slipped my thumb under the flap. Inside was a piece of white typing paper with the same kind of unidentifiable block lettering I’d found under my windshield wiper.