Never Saw It Coming: (An eSpecial from New American Library) (16 page)

Twenty-seven

Kirk figured it made more sense to take his pickup this time. Those two guys from the pizza place would recognize Keisha’s car, not that he was planning to drive right up to the Dumpster this time anyway.

He wasn’t an idiot.

He remembered there was another small strip of stores just past the one with the pizza place, to the north. He figured on parking there and then backtracking, grabbing the right bag, then getting the hell home.

It didn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to return. He wheeled the pickup into the next business lot, a place that made and sold metal fasteners, pulling in between a couple of other trucks. The lot was nearly full, which was good. Kirk didn’t believe anyone was going to notice if he left his pickup here for a few minutes.

He got out and walked down the alley—wide enough for a good-sized truck—between the two buildings. At the rear, the properties weren’t separated by a formal fence, but there was a thicket of bushes and rubbish that kept Kirk from strolling directly to the Dumpster behind the pizza place.

He’d considered waiting until it was dark to do this, but there was no one around, so he used his arms to part a way through the bushes toward the neighboring property. He was about forty feet from the Dumpster. The bag he’d left behind wasn’t on the pavement, so unless those two clowns had decided to take it inside and open it up, odds were they’d just tossed it into the bin after he’d sped off. What else where they going to do with it? Would they really be pissed off enough to go through the contents of the bag, looking for discarded bills or receipts, hoping to find an address? Did working at a pizza place pay enough to make you have to do that kind of shit?

Kirk doubted it.

But even if they’d tossed the bag into the Dumpster and forgotten about it, Kirk supposed he could see why Keisha had her panties in a knot about getting it out of there and dumping it someplace else. If there ever was a news story about someone trying to dispose of evidence in the Garfield killing, these guys might remember his visit, put it together, put in a call to the cops.

And if the trash hadn’t been collected by then . . .

So maybe, sometimes, Keisha was right. But not always. If it hadn’t been for him speaking up, she’d have turned down a chance to make an easy five grand. If that Beaudry woman wanted to throw money at Keisha, she should take it. Okay, he could see why the whole thing would make her a little squeamish, but for that kind of money she needed to suck it up. All she had to do was what she always did. Spin out enough bullshit to get the client engaged, make them think they were getting their money’s worth.

Piece of cake.

The way Kirk figured it, if there was anyone putting himself at risk in this operation, it was him. Out here in the freezing cold, huddling in the bushes, waiting for a chance to do a Dumpster dive.

Kirk emerged from the bushes and was almost to the car-sized rectangular bin when he saw the back door to the pizza place swing open. He hunched down and scurried in behind the Dumpster, out of sight.

He heard the door close, but didn’t know if that meant someone had stepped out, or gone back inside. He crept to the edge of the bin and dared to peek around.

It was the second man he’d encountered, the big white guy. He was standing there, a couple of feet beyond the door, the cold misting his breath. No, wait, he was on a smoke break.

The man hadn’t slipped on a jacket, so Kirk didn’t think he’d stand out there all that long. Frostbite trumped nicotine addiction, right? He’d get enough of a fix, then head back in.

But the guy kept standing there. Then he turned, looking in Kirk’s direction.

Shit.

Kirk, on his hands and knees, edged back from the corner of the Dumpster. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and the thin layer of nearly melted snow was cold on his bare palms and soaking through the knees of his jeans. He stayed crouched down like that, and tried to hold his frosty breath as long as he could.

He heard whistling. The pizza guy was having a smoke and a whistle. Kirk was trying to place the tune, but the man was a weak, off-key whistler, so it took a few seconds before Kirk realized he was attempting “The Long and Winding Road”.
Yeah
, Kirk thought.
That’s what I feel like I’m on. This is one motherfucking crazy day and it can’t come to an end soon enough
.

The whistling grew more faint. It sounded as though the man was strolling back toward the building. Then Kirk heard the door open, and, half a second later, slam shut.

He crawled to the edge of the Dumpster and peered around. There was no one there.

He wondered whether the big man’s buddy smoked too, and if he did, whether they took their smoke breaks in shifts. Which would mean the other guy might walk out that door any second.

Kirk had to move quickly.

He got up on his feet and came around the front of the Dumpster. He worked the heel of his left hand under the lid and pushed up, then leaned his head over the edge. The first thing his eyes landed on was a garbage bag with a red drawstring tie. He reached in with his free hand, grabbed the top end of the bag, made a fist around it, and twisted it around his wrist.

He drew out the bag, let the lid down gently so it wouldn’t make a huge racket, slipped back through the bushes without catching the plastic bag on any of the sharp branches, and was back to his truck in under a minute.

The outside of the bag wasn’t as clean as it had been when he’d left Keisha’s house with it. Scraps of pizza, spilled pop, all kinds of sticky shit. He sure as hell wasn’t going to put it up front in the cab with him. He didn’t even like the idea of dropping it into the cargo bed, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

Kirk got in the truck, keyed the ignition, and happened to look down at the dashboard clock. It was nearly half past three.

Son of a bitch. The li’l fucker could be home in ten minutes, if he didn’t stop off at a friend’s house or get beat up on the way home. Kirk didn’t think he needed to be there for him, but he supposed Keisha was right. If he came home and the police were there, and his mom wasn’t, he’d probably go off on a crying jag. But chances were, the cops wouldn’t be there. If they came by and no one was home, they’d take off and come back later. Kirk decided to grab the kid, offer to take him to the food court at the Post Mall, and pitch the bag in one of the garbage bins there.

He backed out of the spot, threw the truck into drive, and nearly cut off a woman in a Lexus SUV as he swerved back onto the road with a screech.

About a half-mile later, he glanced into the rear-view mirror, checking not only for traffic, but the bag.

Didn’t see it.

“Jesus!” he shouted. “No way! No fucking way!”

He wheeled the car onto the shoulder and slammed the brakes. He jumped out the door and looked into the cargo bed, his heart pounding.

The bag was there. It had worked its way up to the front, right under the cab window.

Kirk closed his eyes for a second, breathed a sigh of relief, got back into the truck and continued on.

Twenty-eight

Gail Beaudry got out of her Jaguar as Keisha approached.

“What did you see? Do you know who did it? What happened?”

Keisha waved at her to get back in the car. She came around the passenger side and got in herself.

She was shaking.

“What?” Gail asked. “You look terrible. Did you see something? I mean in your head, did you see what actually happened?”

“Please, Gail, I need a second,” Keisha said, holding up her hand.

“Of course, of course, I totally understand. I know these things you see, it’s not like you can turn them on and off like they’re a DVD or—”

“Shut up!” Keisha exploded. “Just shut up for a minute.”

The way Gail recoiled, if the driver’s door hadn’t been there, she’d have fallen out of her seat. Her mouth was agape. She burst into tears.

“Gail,” Keisha said, suddenly feeling sorry.

Gail had one hand over her eyes and the other, palm out, toward Keisha. She sobbed for a good half-minute before Keisha said, “Really, I’m sorry. It was just . . . so horrible in there.”

Gail’s attitude did a one-eighty. “Oh, of course
. I’m
the one who should be sorry. I made you go in there. I shouldn’t have done it. It was too much to ask. I feel terrible.” She held Keisha’s arm.

“It’s okay,” Keisha said. She noticed Detective Wedmore walking down the Garfield driveway, pausing at the end, looking in their direction.

“I’ve probably traumatized you,” Gail said. “It was wrong of me.”

“It’s okay. I just . . . I guess I didn’t expect it to affect me the way it did.”

What Keisha hadn’t expected was how quickly Wedmore was putting it together. All because of that damn business card. But she had that covered, right?

“Did you . . . did you sense anything?”

Keisha looked down into her lap and shook her head a couple of times. “Not really.”

“Maybe it’ll come to you later?”

She looked at Gail, saw the wanting in her eyes, the
hope
.

“The police may be able to figure this one out before I can,” Keisha said.

“I don’t trust them,” Gail said. “I don’t trust the police at all.”

Keisha saw that Wedmore was walking toward them.

“There’s lots of people you shouldn’t trust,” Keisha said. “Not just the police.” She looked down at her purse, sitting on the floor between her feet. “I’ve been thinking, Gail, about this five thousand dollars you’ve given me. I don’t know that I deserve—”

“That detective’s coming this way,” Gail said. “What do you think she wants?”

Keisha hated to think. “I don’t know. But, Gail, about this money, I—”

“I don’t like her,” Gail said. “I don’t like her one bit. And it’s not because she’s black. I have nothing against black people. But don’t you think it’s possible that, at some level, she likes sticking it to white people, whether they’re guilty or not? A kind of way to get even?”

“I don’t think so,” Keisha said. She opened her purse and was about to reach in for the envelope stuffed with cash, but stopped when she heard tapping at Gail’s window.

Gail powered it down.

“Yes, Detective?”

Wedmore said, “Mrs. Beaudry, I’d like to speak with you.”

“Is this going to take long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because I don’t want to keep Ms. Ceylon here. I’m driving her home.”

Wedmore thought about that briefly, and flagged over one of the uniforms. Then she put her head half into the open window and said, “Ms. Ceylon, that officer will give you a lift home. I don’t want to see you inconvenienced.”

“That’s okay,” Keisha said. “I don’t mind waiting for Gail.”

Wedmore said, firmly, “No, we’ll give you a ride. Mrs. Beaudry?”

Gail sighed, powered up the window and turned off the engine. “We’ll talk later, okay? Because maybe by then you’ll know something.”

No, I’m not going to know anything
, Keisha thought
. I want to forget all of this
. She just wanted to give the woman her money back and never see her again. She’d very nearly done it, too.

Gail got out of the car. A Milford police cruiser pulled up. Wedmore spoke to the driver, then looked at Keisha and waited. Reluctantly, Keisha moved from the Jag to the police car, Wedmore holding the door for her, saying, “I’ll drop by and see you a little later.”

Keisha felt the dread envelop her like a cold, wet sleeping bag.

* * *

Kirk’s truck wasn’t in the driveway when the police dropped Keisha at her house. She bristled. He’d promised he’d be here for when Matthew got home from school, which he would be in the next few minutes, unless the boy went to his friend Brendan’s house.

Only yesterday she’d been thinking she had to get that man out of her life. Now she’d bound herself to Kirk even more tightly by enlisting his help today. She’d lost all her leverage. How did you kick someone out when he knew you’d killed a man? Sure, they were in this together, up to a point. Kirk had helped her cover things up, destroyed evidence. But she was betting he could walk into the Milford police station and cut himself a deal if he was willing to roll on her.

So he was more than an accomplice. He was a potential liability. How would he hold up to an interrogation by Detective Wedmore? She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what had happened at the Garfield house. She was guessing, of course, but Keisha had been too, when she was relating her “vision” to Wendell Garfield, and look how close she’d gotten.

As worried as Keisha was about getting caught, about what would happen to her, there was a greater concern underlying all of this.

What would happen to Matthew?

If the police took her away, if they charged her with murder, if she failed to persuade a jury that she’d acted in self-defense, and was sent to prison, what would happen to her boy?

Here she was, cursing her mother on the one hand, and repeating the pattern she’d set on the other. Raising a child while living on the edges of the law, you had to know that one day it could all blow up in your face. But Keisha’d never considered her crimes as serious as those her mother committed. She didn’t hide bodies and steal Social Security checks. She wheedled money out of people, but it was always their choice, ultimately. The people she conned had to know, at some level, that they were being taken advantage of. They knew what was going on, and they didn’t mind.

Keisha never expected anyone to die.

What about Caroline? she wondered. Her cousin, in San Francisco? Would she take in Matthew, if it came to that?

Caroline, whose mother was Keisha’s mother’s sister, was a nice, decent woman. She had an honest job as a concierge at the Ritz-Carlton, and a husband named Earl who drove for FedEx. They had three children. Two girls, twelve and fifteen, and a son, seven. Good, hard-working people.

So decent, in fact, that they had little to do with Keisha. She was the family’s shame, the one who was raised by the family’s previous embarrassment, the one who made her living in a sketchy way, the one who got knocked up by a soldier who’d rather do another tour in Iraq than be a father.

But no matter how much Caroline might look down her nose at her cousin, she never took it out on Matthew. Even though she didn’t see her second cousin often, she never forgot to phone him on his birthday, or send him a small present at Christmas. This past year, she even mailed him some chocolate eggs at Easter.

Matthew’d be better off with Caroline and Earl, Keisha thought, even if I don’t get arrested.

No, no, that wasn’t true. For all her faults, Keisha believed she was a good mother. She loved her son more than anything in the world, and he loved her. As long as it was possible for them to be together, they would be.

Should she call her cousin? Keisha contemplated phoning Caroline, telling her something had come up, she might have to send Matthew out there for a few days. Once he was there, if the police did pick her up, Caroline would hold onto him. She’d do the right thing. She was that kind of person.

These thoughts ran through Keisha’s mind as she unlocked the front door of her rented house and walked into the living room. Saw Kirk’s unfinished beer and half-eaten Twinkie on the coffee table.

She looked at the clock. Any moment now, Matthew would be home.

Outside, she heard a car door slam. Seconds later, the front door opened and Kirk’s eyes landed on her.

“Shit, I raced back here for the kid, but you’re already here. You couldn’t have called me?”

“I just got dropped off a second ago,” Keisha said. “Did you do it? Did you get the bag?”

He smiled triumphantly. “I got the bag.”

If there were half a dozen weights on her shoulders, she felt one of them float away. “Oh thank God. It was still there? It hadn’t been opened?”

“Still there, not opened,” he said. “You think I don’t know how to get things done?”

“Okay, that’s good. Thank you.”

“You get the five grand?”

She nodded tiredly. “I got it.”

He slapped his hands together. “Did she get cash, like I told her?”

“She got cash.”

“Let’s have a look.”

She pointed to her purse, which she’d dropped onto the couch. He dug into it, found the envelope, and peered inside. He riffled his finger across the tops of the bills.

“Sweet,” he said. “Have you counted it?”

“Gail wouldn’t cheat me.”

“We should go out for dinner tonight and celebrate,” Kirk said.

“I don’t feel like celebrating.”

“Come on. Live a little.”

Keisha glared at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Huh?”

“All the stuff that’s gone down today—I nearly died! A man is
dead
. This police woman, Wedmore, is sniffing around me, and I think she knows what happened. And you want to go out and celebrate?”

He had the money out of the envelope and had turned the bills into a thick fan. “You have to live in the moment, babe. And at this moment, we’re loaded.”

“I almost gave it back,” she said quietly.

“You what?”

“I almost gave it back. I’m not taking advantage of people like this any more. You don’t think today was some kind of message? Huh? You don’t think maybe somebody’s trying to tell me something?”

He sneered. “Oh, that’s bullshit. Sometimes shit just happens. Then, the next day, different shit happens.”

She shook her head and walked into the kitchen. He followed her in, saying, “Where you wanna go? Come on. The li’l fucker likes Chinese. We’ll go someplace he likes.”

“His name is Matthew.”

“Come on, you know I’m just goofin’ around.”

She leaned against the counter and sighed. “What did you end up doing with it?” she asked.

“With what?”

“The bag. Where’d you finally dump it?”

“Oh, it’s still in the truck,” he said offhandedly. “I was planning to get rid of it soon as the kid showed up. Go to the mall, get a snack, drop it off back of the place.”

Keisha wondered if she should just turn herself in. It’d be faster. “You’re not serious.”

“Yeah, I raced back ’cause you wanted someone to be here for the kid. Figured you wouldn’t be home in time. I’ll get rid of it, don’t worry.”

“So that bag, it’s here, sitting in the driveway?”

“Don’t worry. It’s all under control. Where is the kid, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Keisha said. She left the kitchen and went to the front door to watch for Matthew, saw Kirk’s truck parked by her car.

She couldn’t see the bag in the back of it.

“Kirk!” she shouted. “I don’t see any bag!”

“It’s there,” he said wearily. “It’s just tucked up under the rear window, is all.”

She was going to go out and see for herself, but stopped when a dark vehicle stopped at the end the driveway. An unmarked police car. Rona Wedmore got out, looked at the house, saw Keisha standing in the doorway, and smiled.

“Perfect,” Keisha said.