Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

“The problem is gay professors and gay students. That sort of relationship, I promise you, is still frowned on.”

“Eric,” I said, “give me a break. This is Boston academia we’re talking about here. The most strongly fortified bastion of liberalism in America.”

He laughed softly. “You think so, don’t you?” He shook his head again, a strange smile playing on thin lips. “If you had a daughter, Patrick, and let’s say she’s twenty, she’s smart, she’s at Harvard or Bryce or B.U., and you found out she was fucking a professor, how would you feel?”

I met his hollow gaze. “I’m not saying I’d like it, Eric, but I wouldn’t be surprised. And I’d figure she’s an adult, it’s her choice.”

He nodded. “Same scenario, but it’s your son and he’s fucking his male professor?”

That stopped me. It stirred some deeply repressed part of myself that was more Puritan than Catholic, and the image I had in my head—of a young man in a tiny cramped bed with Eric—revolted me for just a moment before I got control of it, started to distance myself from the image, grasp on to the intellectual handholds of my own social liberalism.

“I’d—”

“See?” He was smiling brightly, but his eyes were still hollow and unhinged. “The thought repulsed you, didn’t it?”

“Eric, I—”

“Didn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. And wondered what that made me.

He held up a hand. “It’s okay, Patrick. I’ve known you for ten years, and you’re one of the least homophobic straight men I know. But you’re still homophobic.”

“Not when it comes to—”

“You and your gay friends,” he said, “you’re fine. I grant you that. But when it comes to the possibility of your son and his gay friends…”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Jason and I had an affair,” he said and poured his coffee into the sink.

“When?” I said.

“Last year. It ended. It only lasted a month in the first place. I was a family friend, and I felt like I was betraying Diandra. Jason, for his part, I think wanted to be with someone closer to his own age, and he still had a pretty powerful attraction to women as well. But the breakup was very amicable.”

“Did you tell the FBI this?”

“No.”

“Eric, for Christ’s sake, why not?”

“It’ll destroy my career,” he said. “Remember your reaction to my hypothetical. No matter how liberal you think academia is, the trustees of most colleges are straight white males. Or their country-club wives. And as soon as they think a fag professor is turning their children or their friends’ children into fag students, they’ll ruin him. Bank on it.”

“Eric, it’s going to come out. The FBI, Eric. The FBI. They’re going through your life right now with magnifying glasses. They’ll turn over the right rock sooner or later.”

“I can’t admit this, Patrick. I can’t.”

“What about Evandro Arujo? Did you know him?”

He shook his head. “No. Jason was scared, Diandra was scared, so I called you in.”

I believed him. “Eric, please consider talking to the Feds.”

“Will you be telling them what I told you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t work that way. I’ll tell them, for what it’s worth, that I don’t think you’re a suspect, but I don’t think it’ll change their minds without proof.”

He nodded and walked out of the kitchen to the door. “Thanks for coming by, Patrick.”

I paused in the doorway. “Tell them, Eric.”

He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me, trying to look brave. “The night Jason was killed, I was with a student. A lover. The student’s father is a high-powered attorney from North Carolina and a ranking member of the Christian Coalition. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out?” I looked down at his dusty carpet.

“Teaching’s all I know, Patrick. It is me. Without it, I disappear.” I looked at him and he seemed to be disappearing as he said it, floating away to mist right in front of me.

“I stopped at The Black Emerald on my way over to the hospital, but it was closed. I looked up at Gerry’s apartment above it. The shades were drawn. I looked for Gerry’s Grand Torino, usually parked out in front of the bar. It wasn’t here.

If the killer had met me face to face since all this began, as Dolquist theorized, then it narrowed the field of suspects. Eric and Gerry were both considered suspects by the FBI. And Gerry was definitely physically strong.

But what possible motive could he have?

I’d known Gerry my entire life. Could he kill?

We’re all capable of murder, the voice in my head whispered. Every one of us.

“Mr. Kenzie.”

I turned, saw Agent Fields standing by the trunk of a dark Plymouth. He tossed recording equipment into the trunk. “Mr. Glynn’s in the clear.”

“How?”

“We had this place staked out last night. Glynn went up to his apartment at one, watched TV until three, and went to bed. We sat here all night, and he never left. He’s not our man, Mr. Kenzie. Sorry.”

I nodded, part of me relieved, part of me feeling guilty for suspecting Gerry in the first place.

Of course there was another part of me that was disappointed. Maybe I’d wanted it to be Glynn.

Just so it would finally be over.

“The bullet did a lot of damage,” Dr. Barnett told me. “It tore up her liver, knicked both kidneys, settled in her lower intestines. We almost lost her twice, Mr. Kenzie.”

“How is she now?”

“She’s not out of the woods,” he said. “Is she a strong person? Got a big heart?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then she’s got a better chance than some. That’s really all I can tell you right now.”

They brought her into ICU at eight-thirty after ninety minutes in post-op.

She looked like she’d lost fifty pounds and her body seemed adrift in the bed.

Phil and I stood over her as a nurse hooked up her IVs and switched on a life-support monitor.

“What’s that for?” Phil said. “She’s okay now. Right?”

“She hemorrhaged twice, Mr. Dimassi. We’re monitoring to make sure she doesn’t do it again.”