Garden of Evil (23 page)

That was it.

Keppie wanted to save the battery, and without the car's air-conditioning, the woods were stifling, swarming with stinging insects, gnats, no-see-ums, and mosquitoes.

Keppie changed into a shirt and jeans. I dressed Joey in little denim trousers and a long-sleeved pullover, touched by whoever had packed his small suitcase with such care. His mom? Or the dad now gone forever? I pulled on the jeans I was wearing when all this began. It seemed so long ago.

I sat on the open back of the SUV with my notebook as we resumed the interview. Joey played nearby, stirring up pine needles with a stick and making trucklike noises. Keppie stretched her legs and smoked, the gun in her waistband, watching us.

“Thank God you didn't shoot at those cops,” I said. “I was really afraid you would.”

“Has the sun fried your brain?” She snorted. “The hell of it is, you shoot at cops, they're goddamn sure to shoot back. Them sons-a-bitches'll try to kill you!” Her voice rose in indignation, at law enforcement's insensitivity and lack of fair play.

“Well, when I saw you reach for the gun, I assumed—”

“Hell, I wasn't gonna use it on
them.
” She leaned against the SUV in a smoker's stance, cigarette close to her lips, the other arm across her waist, its wrist supporting the elbow of the hand with the smoke. Her eyes glittered in a shaft of sunlight that back-lit her soft streaming hair.

I felt sick at what she had intended. She would hate jail, but she was no suicide, she was a survivor.

“There's no reason to use it,” I said calmly. “Nobody here wants to hurt you. All I want is to go back to Miami and write your story. Now.” I looked down at my notebook, the only security I had to hold on to. “What do you dream about, Keppie?”

Frowning, she took a deep drag on the cigarette, then smiled and licked her lips, exhaling smoke. “I dream about being lost in a wilderness,” she said slowly, “where there are a lot of guns and men and you can smell blood in the air.” She cocked her head, curious eyes meeting mine. “Wonder what that means?”

I shrugged, scribbling notes.

“Come on,” she offered. “Let's take a walk, wanna show you somethin'.”

“Come on, Joey,” I called, and he came running. Light slanted through the trees. Nearly five o'clock. What were they doing in Miami? Was McDonald searching for me?

Twice Keppie hesitated, to study her surroundings for a moment, then slightly changed direction. A tiny tree frog leaped onto her shoulder, and she casually shrugged him away. These woods all looked the same to me. How would we find the car again?

In a tight dark tunnel of pine trees, she pushed back some dead branches, tearing away a heavy curtain of spiderwebs. “Looky here,” she said.

I gasped. A human skull lay in the thicket, bones strewn around it.

“This here's Stanley,” she said with a grin. “The man was really hung, but he don't look so hot to trot now, does he?” I stepped in front of Joey. A scalp with strands of dark hair still clung to the skull. Spiders with silver streaks darted across faded scraps of fabric, all that remained of his clothes.

“Had a body by Budweiser,” Keppie was saying. “Shoulda heard him scream when he came—and bellow
once he got gut-shot. Hey, Stanley.” She addressed the scattered bones. “What the hell happened to your legs? I'll be damned if it don't look like some wild animal's done run off with 'em.”

“Daddy?” Joey said, from behind me.

“No, baby,” I said. “Let's go back.”

My eyes shifted skyward at the sound of a plane. Police, I prayed, focusing on a patch of blue between two trees. It was a sleek military jet, a lawn dart leaving a vapor trail behind.

“It's what men have been doing to us for years,” Keppie said flatly. “Killin' us and leavin' us in places like this. Bones in the wilderness.”

The body had been in this lonely place long before this recent murder spree. How many more were there? I wondered, with growing horror.

Next to her, Charles Manson had to be a ray of sunshine.

“'Bye, Stanley,” she called cheerfully, releasing the branches that snapped back in his direction. “Don't know what I'm gonna do with you,” she chided, manicured hands on her hips. “First, your balls are gone and your dick; then I come back and it's your arm; now it's your legs. Try to pull yourself together and stay put now till I come back, you hear?” She laughed like a giggly teenager.

Joey balked as we left and kept looking back over his shoulder. “I wanna see,” he said.

“There's nothing to see, sweetheart,” I said.

“I want my daddy. He got shot, got shot in the head,” he piped up. “In the woods. I saw it.”

“Ain't no big thing, son,” Keppie told him, reaching out to tousle his hair. He pulled away fearfully. “Ya gotta get used to it, boy. People die all the time.”

Joey asked for juice again on the way back to the car. He had missed lunch; now it was time for his supper. “I wish we could've stopped for supplies,” I told Keppie.
“At least we could have gotten him some food, water, and insect repellent.”

“Sorry 'bout that,” she said.

“Let's go,” I urged. “I'm worried about the mosquitoes. You saw the warnings in the paper about the encephalitis outbreak up here. There's a medical alert in twenty-seven counties between here and Miami. Mosquitoes spread it. They've even canceled night baseball games.”

“How quick does encephalitis kill you?”

“I don't know, but it's pretty fast. You get a headache, pain, then seizures. Your brain swells—”

“Bullets kill you faster,” she said.

“But you're just as dead,” I said. “The mosquitoes carrying it are like vampires, creatures of the night, the hungriest and most active between dusk and dawn. We still have a few hours of light. We can dump the car someplace close to a town, walk to a motel, or take a bus.”

“I'll take my chances with the skeeters,” she said. “They ain't killed me yet.”

I wanted out of these steamy insect-infested woods. No place in Florida is more than sixty miles away from salt water, yet there was no hint, no breeze, no fresh smell of air from the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico. The heat dulled me into a near stupor as sweat streamed from every pore.

We plodded to the little stream. Keppie brought a paper cup and drank but I refused to drink or allow Joey to. To get sick would be a disaster. I couldn't picture Keppie nursing us back to health.

“If you ain't the goddamnedest worrier!” she said. “You just know too much for your own good.”

“There are phosphate plants and paper mills in this part of the state,” I said, “along with sewage treatment plants and garbage dumps. We don't know what's upstream.”

She stood ankle-deep in water, paper cup in her hand, one hip slung over to the side, hair streaming down her
back. “The water's the least of your worries. You graspin' the big picture here, Britt? Think I'd drink it if it wasn't safe?”

“You do a lot of things other people wouldn't do.”

She grinned, raised her cup in a mock toast, then drank.

“She's drinking it,” Joey protested. “I want some too.”

“No, honey, this water might be dirty,” I said. “Here, sit down.” I helped him take his shoes, socks, and pants off so he could wet his feet, then soaked a T-shirt and dabbed his face and throat to cool him off.

 

“You see, my folks who raised me did the best they could,” Keppie said, as we resumed our interview back at the SUV, “but they just couldn't stand havin' me around. Their kids were scared to death of me. I was outa control.”

“In what way?” I asked. We sat under the open hatch, facing the forest.

“Well, I started smokin' and drinkin' at 'bout ten or eleven years old.” She swallowed from the bottle, leaned back, and swung her feet up onto the floorboard. “I'd been shopliftin' since I was nine. Had tons of stuff under my bed. Boxes and bags full. All kindsa stuff I didn't even need or want, just took it for the thrill of it. And I'd carry a big ol' nail around in my pocket. Whenever I seen a nice car, I'd run the nail right down the side. Sometimes I'd write some other kid's name in the paint with it. Hah!” She gave a little half laugh. “Used to follow the mailman around and steal people's mail, throw it away, just for the hell of it. All kinds of stuff like that. What really got to 'em was the fires. I liked settin' fires when I was a kid.”

“You mean playing with matches or cigarette lighters, that sort of thing?”

“Nah,
fires.
I'd pile a buncha papers or clothes outside their door when they was sleepin', pour on lighter fluid, and strike a match to it. Shoulda heard 'em scream. It was comical.”

“My God, you could have burned the whole house down,” I said, scratching the mosquito bites on my ankle.

“Oh, I did that once. Red Cross hadda put us up at a motel.”

“What did your folks do?”

“Had me in and outa therapy, hospitals, juvenile court. I told ya, I drove 'em nuts.”

She caught me eyeing her cigarette and smiled.

“Nothin' to worry 'bout now,” she said. “Grew out of it. Just a stage, I guess. Thought about it when you ragged on me for smokin' in bed.”

“So your childhood was troubled,” I said, nodding.

“Hell, no. Aside from losin' my mama, I was happy as peach pie. It was my mama's sister, my Aunt Mary Alice and her husband, my Uncle Harland, my new parents, that was troubled. I was fine, but she was cryin' all the time and he was always bent outa shape. Used to stay up nights talkin' 'bout what to do with me. Didn't think I heard 'em, but I did. Thinkin' back, I guess they were too scared to go to sleep.” She chuckled.

“What finally happened? When did you leave home?”

“Last time I ran away I was 'bout sixteen, just never went back. They were probably hopin' I wouldn't, though I know they'da took me in if I showed up. You see, they promised my mama they'd look out for me. And you gotta give 'em that, they always kept their word. They're good Christians. Sometimes I call 'em or drop a line, just to let 'em know I'm alive. Probably scares the shit outa them, thinkin' I might show up some day.”

“How do you see your future? What do you think is ahead?”

“For me?” She shrugged. “Well, I don't plan much. Plans never tend to work out. I'm not one-a those people who knows exactly where she's 'sposed to be and what she's 'sposed to be doing five-ten years from now. Might say I live for today but I have hope for tomorrow. You know what hope is?” She brightened.

“Tell me your definition.”

“Hope,” she said, swallowing another hit from the bottle, “is a memory of the future. Write that down.” She wiped her lips on her sleeve and gazed skyward. “Every day I wake up with strong feelings of hope. As long as I do, I know there's a future.”

“I wanna hamburger,” Joey said, interrupting. “Please.”

I gave him an animal cracker. “Mine,” he said, and reached for the box with both hands. He whimpered as I pulled it away.

“We're playing a game,” I said. “We're going to see how long these crackers can last. You eat the tiger and we'll save the elephant for later.”

Dry tiger crumbs caught in his throat and he coughed. “Milk!” he gasped, between spasms that reddened his face.

“We don't have any right now.” I patted his back.

“Let's go get some.” His little voice was raspy.

“We can't right now.” I cuddled him and wished for rain.

It elated Keppie to hear on the radio news at six that the search for the Kiss-Me Killer had focused on Atlanta, after a reported sighting there. Georgia police were on alert.

I coaxed Joey, who was hungry and cranky, to settle down in the back of the SUV, while Keppie sat up on the hood reading a tabloid. Though I was as wrung out as a wet dishrag, hair hanging damp and stringy, the heat merely coated her skin with a glossy sheen, curling tiny tendrils of hair around her forehead and neck, adding to her luminous look. Who would believe somebody who looked like her could spread so much misery to so many?

She caught me watching and met my eyes with a heavy-lidded seductive gaze that made me acutely aware of every curve beneath my wet clinging clothes.

Trees obscured the setting sun, and night fell like a
rock. No lights, no highway sounds in the distance, only night birds, insects, and small scary creatures rustling in the brush. We left the car windows open so we could breathe, but the mosquitoes were a nightmare. When I draped clothes and a blanket over the windows, the heat was suffocating. We desperately needed air, but when I took the clothes down, the mosquitoes swarmed. Their high-pitched whines filled the car.

“Blow some cigarette smoke back here,” I begged Keppie, who was in the front. “It'll help keep the mosquitoes off.” I fanned Joey with one of her tabloids.

While he slept fitfully, I entertained visitors. I felt their eyes in the dark. I am young to have so many ghosts. They usually appear in public places and familiar neighborhoods. Sometimes I see the homely profile, familiar bulk, and shambling walk of Dan Flood, the veteran cop with a long memory and a passion for old cases. About to call out his name, I remember he's gone. As I pass a video arcade or a pickup basketball game on some inner-city court, I glimpse Howie's awkward and stick-thin shadow. I stopped my car once, happy to see the spunky abandoned teenager again, then painfully remembered that he, too, was gone—his potential and brave heart stilled forever by misguided police bullets. My friend Francie appears at the wheel of a speeding patrol car or in a flash of blue uniform around a comer, though I know a sniper's bullet found her through the smoke and chaos of the riot. Her dog, Bitsy, is my only inheritance, except perhaps for the one my mother accuses me of, my father's attraction to lost causes. His presence has always been with me, strong and comforting in times of danger. But not now. Others came and went throughout this endless night, but not him. Had he forgotten me? Had the final resolution to the mystery of his death freed him from earthly bonds? Had he left my life forever?