Fresh Kills

by Carolyn Wheat

  The door was heavy. It slid open sideways, like the door of a warehouse. I gasped for breath as I pulled at the handle with both hands, straining my limited upper body strength. Maybe it was time I joined a gym, made friends with the Nautilus machines.

  Inside, it was dark, the kind of dark you expected in a tunnel. A rich, brown darkness that smelled of mulch and loam and fertilizer. As though I’d opened a door into a mole burrow.

  Long wooden tables stood in the center of the open space, with seedlings on trays, growing under dim light. I grabbed for breath and looked around, but I couldn’t see another person in the blue-tinged light from the overhead rods.

  This, I realized, had to be part of the Native Plant Center, which supplied ferns to local parks and gardens. Which meant there had to be someone in a Parks Department uniform somewhere close by.

  But where?

  And where was Kyle?

  I whirled around, half-expecting to see him in the doorway, blocking the only exit I knew. But there was no one in the crack of light I’d left when I pulled the door open.

  Turning had been a mistake; the bright sunlight brought purple and red spots in front of my eyes, which had to adjust to the dark all over again.

  I took a tentative step forward and called out, “Is anybody here?”

  No reply.

  I walked closer to the table upon which the seedlings stretched spindly green arms up to the stingy ceiling light. What grew here? Who grew it and why?

  More to the point, where the hell were they?

  “Just stay right there,” a voice commanded.

  I froze.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, my voice higher and more panicky than I would have liked it to be. “Kyle, is that—”

  “Kyle’s right here,” the voice, which was not Kyle’s, replied. “Just stay put, and everything will be all right.”

  It was the kind of voice you used when talking to a very crazy person. A very crazy person who might kill a newborn baby if you said the wrong thing.

  “No, it won’t,” I shot back. I had to get control of this somehow—which wasn’t easy, considering I couldn’t even see the person I was talking to.

  “I don’t want to have to call the police,” the man said, his voice tinged with exasperation.

  “Why not?” I countered. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Call the cops—please.”

  “You don’t want me to do that,” the reasonable male voice replied in a tone that promised infinite patience. “Just let Kyle have the baby and everything will be all right.”

  “You know Kyle?”

  “Sure do,” the voice said. “He and Donna come in here all the time, pick up seedlings.”

  Of course. That was the piece I’d been trying to remember ever since I realized that Kyle killed Amber. The Cheneys had a landscaping business; that meant they knew the workers in the Native Plant Center. The man whose face I couldn’t see had every reason to trust Kyle, and no reason at all to trust me.

  “Listen to me,” I begged. “I don’t know what Kyle told you, but—”

  The figure stepped closer. He wore the forest-green fatigues of the Parks Department, and his face already had the weathered brown of an outdoorsman in spite of the early spring weather. His forearms bulged, and his face wore a look of stubborn determination.

  “Kyle told me about you,” he said, his voice tinged with contempt. “He told me how you and that dead girl planned to sell the baby. I was there when they fished that girl out of the kill, and I—”

  “So was I,” I interrupted. “I was there, too, and I knew her when she was alive and I didn’t kill her and I don’t care what Kyle told you, I am not trying to sell this baby. I want to take him to the police. Kyle killed Amber, and—”

  “Kyle?” The man threw back his head and laughed. “You’re the lawyer they been talking about on TV. You tried to sell this here baby and you want me to believe Kyle killed that girl?” He shook his head and took another step closer.

  “Where’s Kyle?” I asked. It seemed vital that I know. Was he creeping around behind me? Had he gone for help? Would he appear in the doorway, ready to cut me off if I tried to make a run for it?

  The Parkie shook his head again. “You just stay there,” he ordered.

  I turned and bolted for the door. His footsteps followed; I reached out and grabbed a rake, tossing it behind me as I ran. It clattered in back of me, and I heard a curse that told me my pursuer had run into it.

  I reached the door and slid through, then gave a huge shove, trying to close the door enough so that he would find it harder to squeeze through. Then I dashed in the direction I hoped would take me to the road, where I could flag down a car and find a phone, call for help.

  I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was going. All the trees and reeds looked alike. I ran down a large path that seemed well trodden, and I hoped it led to the road.

  It didn’t. I stumbled over a tree root and caught myself, grabbing for rough bark that scraped my palm. I shoved my foot back into the Italian loafers that had seemed like sensible shoes back in Brooklyn but hadn’t been made for slogging through swampland or hopping over roots. There was a walkway made of flat planks ahead, allowing the birdwatcher to cross the watery inlet without getting his or her feet wet. It probably led deeper into the swamp, where birds’ nests were hidden among the tall reeds. It was unlikely that it led to the road, to the mall, to civilization.

  If I went forward, I headed into swamp, away from help. But I also headed away from Kyle, away from the Parkie he’d recruited to his cause.

  Did Parkies carry guns? I hastily ran through my jumbled memory banks, searching for the New York statute defining the term peace officer, but to no avail. I took a quick glance backward. Was that reed swaying a sign that someone was hidden behind the green curtain? Was the sound I heard merely the breeze playing with the branches, rattling the tall grasses—or was someone moving through the swamp, hot on my trail?

  I had no idea. All I knew for certain was that if I stood still, someone would come crashing out of the foliage eventually. Movement seemed like a good idea. Movement made me feel as though I had a semblance of control over the situation, over my own fate and that of Baby Adam.

  When I reached the planked walkway, my shoes made hollow thudding sounds. I stopped dead, then moved forward more slowly, walking on the balls of my feet and trying to keep the heels from striking the wooden slats. It slowed my progress, but it felt worth it. Creeping along silently was better than advertising my presence with bouncy steps.

  Mercifully, Adam had stopped crying. I looked down at his fuzzy head, blue-purple veins like rivulets on the bald scalp. Then I glanced at the water flowing under the plank bridge, at the tall reeds overhead, picturing a baby in a basket floating along the swamp water, picturing Moses among the bulrushes. God had looked out for baby Moses; I hoped He’d do the same for little Adam.

  If I kept going in this direction, would I reach the other side of the wildlife preserve? Would I come out on Victory Boulevard? I could flag down a car there, maybe locate a telephone. Get help.

  That thought cheered me. I picked up speed once I stepped off the planking and put my feet back on hard-packed dirt. The path narrowed; I brushed past reeds and bushes, shielding Adam’s bobbing head with my left hand and using my right to push green stuff out of the way.

  I jumped lightly over a puddle, then came to a stop as I realized there was no more path. Reeds grew up all around me; there was no clear way through them. I pushed aside a bunch and peered through the green curtain, but the growth was equally dense in every direction except backward.

  There was no more path. Should I keep going, bushwhacking my way through the tall growth? Or should I turn back, hoping for another way out of the wildlife preserve?

  Adam gave a tiny little cry. I looked down at him. Huge, unfocused blue eyes tried to fix themselves on my face and failed. His head bobbed and he cried out again. It seemed a cry of pleasure rather th
an pain, but it was impossible to know for sure. An incredibly tiny hand reached out from the snuggly and grabbed at the air. He opened and closed his fingers and squealed again.

  “Shut up, kid,” I murmured. “Let’s not advertise, shall we?”

  “Too late,” a laconic voice said. I jumped a foot, then turned in dismay. Kyle Cheney stood five feet away from me, a silver gun glinting in his hand.

  “You don’t want to hurt the baby,” I said quickly. Hoping it was true.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.” But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he added, his tone regretful, “I don’t want to, but I will.”

  “You didn’t before,” I pointed out. I was shaking so hard I grabbed at a reed to lean on; a bad choice, since it bent over and nearly landed me in the swamp. A part of my mind was totally awed by the way I seemed able to carry on a normal conversation while trying very hard not to look at the gun pointed at my midsection; the other part of my mind knew I’d taken leave of my senses. That I was babbling in hopes that if I kept my mouth moving, I’d stay alive.

  He gave the accusation some thought. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he said at last. “But Amber wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept saying all she had to do was go to court and she could take Erin away from us.”

  “So you gave her money,” I finished the thought. “You must love your daughter very much.”

  Kyle’s face wore a pinched look I suspected wasn’t just the result of his recent troubles. He looked like a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a man who took far too many things far too seriously.

  “I do,” he said. “And so does Donna.” He squinted into the bright overcast sun. “We lost so many babies,” he went on, speaking as much to himself as to me. “So many dead babies.”

  “Miscarriages?” I asked. “Is that why you adopted?” I had to keep him talking, had to keep him from coming any closer. He could still shoot at five feet away, but the more distance I kept between us, the better my chances of survival were. And maybe, just maybe, if he focused on his love for his own child, he’d see that he couldn’t insure her happiness by killing someone else’s baby.

  “Two stillborn, four miscarriages,” he recited. “And one baby that lived for six days. Six days, twelve hours, and forty-one minutes.” He swallowed; his oversized Adam’s apple bobbed like a piece of food caught in his throat. “That one was Kyle, Junior,” he added.

  His eyes swerved away. “I really think Donna would have killed herself if we’d lost another one,” he said. His voice was thin, strained, repressed, as if it had been years since he let his lungs fill to capacity. “She tried once, with pills. So when Betsy said Doc could get us a baby—” He broke off and swallowed again. “It was a miracle. She was a miracle.”

  I recalled the sun glinting off her copper hair, hair that was going to go brown and wind up the color of maple syrup, like her mother’s. “She’s a great kid,” I agreed. “I can see where Amber’s threat to take her away from you would make you crazy.”

  Poor choice of words.

  “I wasn’t crazy,” he snapped. He raised his gun arm just a little, pointed the weapon a little straighter. “I was doing what I had to do to protect my family.” He gave me a look that begged me to understand. “I gave her money,” he said, his voice a plea. “I gave her whatever she asked for. And then she came back and said there was a father who could screw up the adoption, that I had to pay him off, too.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that easy,” I objected. “She’d have had to admit she helped Doc fake Erin’s death. She’d have risked prosecution herself.”

  It seemed more than a little late to start giving Kyle Cheney legal advice.

  He shook his head. “Look at Baby Jessica,” he pointed out. “Those parents lost their daughter and there wasn’t anything about fraud. As soon as I saw that birth father, I knew it was all over.”

  He saw the father? When? When could Kyle have seen Jerry Califana?

  Then I remembered Sonia Rogoff’s account of the night she saw the Cheneys with Amber.

  “Oh, no,” I breathed. I closed my eyes; the picture Sonia had so vividly painted came back to me. “Amber pointed to a booth in the front and said the man sitting there was the father, right?”

  Sonia thought Amber meant the father of the baby who lay next to her in the car seat.

  But that wasn’t Amber’s meaning. She was pointing to a man she identified as the father of the child Kyle and Donna had raised for four years and eight months. Erin Cheney, born Laura Marie Califana.

  “She told you Scott was the father,” I whispered, “and that’s why you killed him.”

  “We couldn’t let him take our daughter,” Kyle replied. His Adam’s apple jumped; a vein throbbed in his forehead. His nervousness permeated his entire being; he looked like a man who hadn’t slept in weeks. Maybe years. I suspected Kyle had never been able to forget the gray-market nature of Erin’s adoption, had never entirely relaxed since the day the baby was placed in his wife’s hungry arms.

  “He didn’t care about her,” Kyle continued, his voice ragged. “He just wanted money, like Amber. But he could have screwed us, he could have walked into court and taken my child away, just like that Baby Jessica case.”

  I looked directly into Kyle Cheney’s pale blue eyes, eyes the color of acid-washed denim. “Except for one little thing,” I said, trying for a gentle, believable tone of voice. “Scott wasn’t Erin’s father. Erin’s father is named Jerry Califana and he owns a pizza parlor in Tottenville. He’s still alive and he still wants his daughter back. You killed the wrong man.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Kyle shot back, so quickly I knew he understood the enormity of the accusation. “You’re just trying to mess me up. You’d say anything to keep me from shooting you right here and—”

  “Yes, I would,” I agreed. I rested my hand on top of Adam’s peach-fuzz head in a gesture that soothed me at least as much as it did him. He was a weight, a gentle, breathing weight on my chest; a real living creature connected to me in a way I’d never known before.

  I had to keep him alive.

  “I sat at a table in Jerry’s pizza parlor,” I went on, trying for a calm, conversational tone. “The first thing in his lockbox was a picture of his baby girl. He loved her as much as you love Erin. He’s not out for money. He’s a father, just like you.”

  “That’s bull—”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said firmly. He had a gun; the truth was my weapon, and I wasn’t going to let go of it. “Jerry was waiting for Amber at the Native Plant Center parking lot at the same time you picked her up at the mall in your sister’s car. You probably drove right past him on your way here.”

  Kyle drew himself up and visibly groped for control. “That doesn’t matter if the guy never finds out Erin is his child,” he said, trying to convince himself. “And he won’t find out if you aren’t there to tell him what you know.”

  “You aren’t going to shoot me,” I said with far more confidence than I felt.

  “Actually, I had wondered about that,” I went on, willing myself not to focus on the silver weapon. “I wondered why you didn’t shoot Amber instead of drowning her. Then I remembered where we are. Half the cops in the NYPD live on Staten Island. Hell, you shoot off a gun here, you’ll have twenty off-duty cops on your tail in a matter of minutes.”

  Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “I have a silencer,” he said softly.

  “I didn’t notice a—” I began.

  He stepped forward too quickly for me to react; I tried to maneuver my way out of his path, but it was too late. He closed the distance between us, grabbed my shoulder with one sinewy arm, and jammed the gun deep into my abdomen. “If I fire into your stomach, it should muffle the noise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Essentially, the advice my self-defense teacher gave regarding guns was to give the attacker whatever he wanted. Unless, of course, he wanted your life. Which was exactly what Kyle Cheney did want. He wanted me d
ead, and however reluctantly, he wanted Adam dead.

  My teacher’s advice in that situation was to take the advanced class.

  I hadn’t.

  If I tried to push the gun away, Kyle could pull the trigger and put a hole through me the size of a basketball. If I karate-chopped his throat or jammed the heel of my hand under his chin, the gun could go off by reflex, even if I managed to throw him off-balance. The same was true for the instep-stomp or the knee to the groin. All good defense techniques, but not against someone armed.

  But he hadn’t shot Amber. He could have, but he didn’t. Instead, he’d marched her to the heart of the swamp and pushed her down, then held her underwater till she drowned.

  “You’re not really a killer,” I repeated, hoping to hell the statement was still true. It seemed a remarkably naive thing to say to a man who’d killed twice and stood ready to dispatch two more innocent people.

  “I threw up in the bushes after Amber died,” he said, his voice so thin it sounded as though it hurt him to talk. “I—God, she took so long to die. It was so much harder than I thought it would be. I thought I hated her so much that I could hold her head underwater and be glad her life was ending. But I couldn’t. It was horrible. It took forever, and she gurgled and kicked and clawed at my face. It was horrible,” he added again.

  He shuddered. I looked at his face and saw that there were healing scratch marks along the acne scars. Why hadn’t someone noticed them before?

  Because he was a landscaper. Because his face was constantly scratched by tree branches, thorns, whatever.

  I swallowed. The gun was becoming a familiar presence now, its hardness bruising my sensitive stomach. “You must love Erin so much,” I said again. “How will you ever explain to her what you did?”

  He shook his head; his lank hair fell across his scarred forehead. “I never will; she’ll never know,” he said firmly.

  A kick and a push. Kick straight into his shin, then jab my elbow into his arm, shoving the gun away. Or was it dug too deeply into my flesh for that? Could I swing away from him, drop to the ground, swerve out of the way of the barrel?