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

by Linwood Barclay

  Kirk made a funny face and ran his hand over his chin. “Well, I’d agree with you on that if that was the way it happened. But I never actually got the bag into the Dumpster.”

  “What?”

  “I had to leave it on the ground. When that guy started coming after me. Asshole would have busted my head open.”

  Was the floor tilting? Were they in the middle of an earthquake? Things seemed to be swaying to Keisha. “You’re telling me you left it there? Right there? In front of them? Shit, why didn’t you just empty the bag out so they could get a real good look? What the hell were you—”

  I’ve had just about enough of this, he thought.

  He exploded, throwing her up against the wall so hard it knocked the wind out of her. He wrapped his right hand around her throat, pinning her head to the wall, squeezing her right where the pink sash had bit into her skin.

  “I am sick and tired of you criticizing me,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am trying to help you out here and getting no thanks in return and it’s starting to get on my nerves.”

  “Let … go … Can’t …”

  Keisha raised her leg, tried to knee Kirk in the groin. He jumped back, let go of her neck. Keisha doubled over, coughed several times.

  “I’m not taking any more shit from you,” he told her, jabbing his finger in her direction. “I’ve been helping you out here, helping you raise that kid, looking out for you, and you don’t give me an ounce of respect.”

  Even as she coughed, Keisha managed to laugh. “Yeah, you’re invaluable,” she said. “You’re just fucking indispensable.”

  He pointed that menacing finger right at her face, only inches from the end of her nose. “That’s just what I’m talking about! Attitude! How’s that li’l fucker of yours going to show me any respect when his mother doesn’t?”

  “You call him a name like that and you want respect?” she said, getting her wind back. “He sees you sitting around here all day, milking a hurt foot for all it’s worth. I haven’t seen you limp once today.”

  “Not gonna be able to cover up your crime spree fast enough if I have to drag my leg everywhere I go,” he shot back. “Fact is, you’d be nothing without me. You’d have been screwed today, that’s for sure. You need a man around the house.”

  “That’d be nice,” she said. “You know where I could find one?”

  He lunged again, but before he could get his hands on her, she clawed his face. Raked her right hand down his left cheek, drawing blood.

  “Motherfucker!” he said, jumping back. He put his hand to his cheek, looked at the blood on his palm. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “You have to go back,” Keisha said.

  “Huh?”

  “You have to go back and get that bag.”

  He shook his head. “No way.”

  She kept her voice low, so he’d have to listen. “If they open that bag and see what’s inside, and remember my car, we’re toast. You get that?”

  Kirk grinned stupidly. “Not me, baby. You’re the one whose ass is gonna fry.”

  “You think so? Wasn’t me driving, wasn’t me trying to get rid of evidence.”

  He looked at her, thinking it through, the grin fading. It took a few seconds. Like trying to explain the second law of thermonuclear dynamics to a pit bull, Keisha thought. “Shit,” he said finally.

  “You gotta get that bag. You gotta find out if they threw it in the Dumpster. And if they did, you gotta get rid of it someplace else.”

  “Oh, man,” he said, almost pitiably. “I can’t go back there.”

  “You have to,” Keisha said. God, what a day and it was barely half over.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, accepting, at last, what he was going to have to do.

  Should she tell him about the other problem? He wasn’t going to like it, but he was in this with her, like it or not.

  “There’s another thing,” Keisha said.

  He gave her a look that said You’re kiddin’, right?

  “Garfield had one of my cards on him when he died. Sooner or later, the cops are going to show up and—”

  Someone started banging on the door.

  Twenty-three

  Rona Wedmore, sitting in the front seat of her unmarked car, put in a call to Joy from the forensics team.

  “Hey,” Joy said.

  “Got your text. What’s up?”

  “We’ve only just removed the body, haven’t gotten that far with it, except to tell you that needle went about five inches into the deceased’s skull.”

  “You guessing that’s what killed him?” Rona asked.

  “You’re funny,” Joy said.

  “I’m just asking, was there anything else done to him before that?”

  “Don’t think so, but you’ll be the first to know what I find. Reason I called is, I got a look at the business card that was in his shirt. The name is … hang on, I wrote it down. Okay, ‘Keisha Ceylon, Psychic Finder of Lost Souls.’ Pretty classy.” She read off a phone number and a website address, which Rona scribbled into her notebook.

  “That name rings a bell,” Rona said.

  “Maybe you know her from another life,” Joy said.

  “You remember that case, it’s got to be five or six years ago now, about the Milford woman whose family disappeared when she was fourteen? She went something like twenty-five years not knowing what happened to them.”

  “Archer,” Joy said. “Cynthia Archer. At the time, I kept thinking, why couldn’t that happen to my family?”

  “This Keisha woman’s name came up back then.” Wedmore thought about it. “Claimed to have visions about people who vanish. I think she tried to shake down the Archers.”

  “I’m going to hand over all matters related to visions to you,” Joy said. “There’s something else. Looks like footprints just outside the side living room window, in the flower beds. Ground wasn’t that frozen. And there may be some prints on the glass.”

  Wedmore didn’t know what to make of that, but asked to be kept posted.

  Once she was done talking to Joy, the detective made several other calls from her cell. When she’d gotten the answers to some questions that were on her mind, she keyed the ignition and drove to Old Fairfield High School.

  She went straight to the office, identified herself to the secretaries at the counter, and said she needed to speak to a member of their staff. “Just ask him to come down here. Don’t mention who it is.”

  One of the secretaries consulted a timetable on her computer screen. “But he’s teaching American Literature right now.” Wedmore gave her a look that seemed to ask whether the study of Ralph Waldo Emerson or Herman Melville trumped her request. The secretary picked up the phone, got the person she was looking for, and delivered the message. Wedmore commandeered a small empty room—the guidance counselor’s officer, as it turned out—and waited.

  Three minutes later, Terry Archer walked in. When he saw who was waiting for him, his face fell.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  Wedmore flashed him a reassuring smile. “Nothing, Mr. Archer, nothing.” She extended a hand and the teacher took it, but he looked far from comforted. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  “I’d like to say the same,” Archer said. “But seeing you, it’s given me something of a start. You’re sure everything’s okay? Is Grace okay? Is this about Cynthia?”

  “So far as I know, your daughter and wife are perfectly fine. I’m not here about them. How are they, anyway?”

  Archer offered up a pained smile. “Grace is good.”

  “I remember she had a real thing for astronomy. Is she still into that?”

  Archer nodded. “She wants to be an astronaut. Wants to get a little closer to the stars. She’s pretty upset they’ve mothballed the space shuttle.”

  Wedmore grinned. “Well, I’m sure they’ll get around to going back to space at some point. And Mrs. Archer—Cynthia. How’s she doing?”

&nbs
p; Archer hesitated. “She’s good. She’s okay.”

  Wedmore knew there was something going on, so she said nothing, waited for Archer to volunteer more information.

  “It’s been hard for her,” Archer said. “Getting the answers to what happened to her family, it didn’t … it’s not like it made everything perfect. Sometimes, getting your questions answered, it just raises new ones. Like, how do I move on, knowing what I know? Right now, Cyn’s kind of taking some time to herself.”

  “You’re separated?”

  He shook his head. “No, no, not that. Not exactly. But she needs a bit of space at the moment. Grace is with me.” He shrugged. “Things’ll work out. You know, one way or another. They have to.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wedmore said. “How’s Grace been handling it?”

  “Well, she’s getting into those teen years, you know? It’s hard to know what she’s thinking. She doesn’t like to let me in.” He shrugged. “But I guess every parent of a teenage girl goes through that, right?”

  Wedmore waved her hand around the room. “When I started calling around, I didn’t think you were still teaching here.”

  “I transferred back a couple of years ago,” Archer said. “But it was good, taking some time away from this place. Listen, I got a class of aspiring first offenders who’d rather steal shopping carts than hear about Hemingway, so if there’s something I can help you—”

  “Keisha Ceylon,” Wedmore said.

  “Jesus.”

  “That got a reaction. What can you tell me about her?”

  “After they did that TV show, about it being twenty-five years since Cynthia’s parents and her brother disappeared, that woman came out of the woodwork, claiming she knew things about the case. Not first-hand knowledge, but things she’d seen in a dream or a vision or something. Cynthia and I were asked to come down to the TV station for a follow-up, so this so-called psychic could tell us on camera what she knew, but when she found out the station wasn’t giving her a thousand bucks, she clammed up.”

  “Hmm,” said Wedmore.

  “She came by the house one other time, trying to shake us down personally. Cynthia threw her out on her ass.”

  “Has she ever been in touch since?”

  Archer shook his head. “Never heard from her again.”

  “What was your sense of her?” Wedmore asked.

  A small shrug. “Two short meetings, that was it. But she was an opportunist. She liked to take advantage of people when they were at their most vulnerable. That puts her pretty high on my list of lowlifes.”

  Wedmore smiled. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Is she still out there, doing her thing?”

  “Maybe.”

  Something flashed in Archer’s eyes and his brow furrowed. “That thing on the news. The man and his daughter. Asking for information about his wife.”

  Wedmore nodded and extended her hand again. “Thank you for your help. I should let you get back to your students.”

  Archer tried to smile one last time, but Wedmore could sense the effort. The man wore his sadness like a jacket. “Actually, it is nice to see you again. You were a great help to us at a very dark time.”

  He slipped out of the guidance counselor’s office. Wedmore had a strange feeling, as she watched him leave, that she would see him again before long.

  Twenty-four

  “Shit,” Keisha said as the banging on the door continued.

  “What are you gonna do?” Kirk said, dabbing blood from his cheek with a tissue.

  Keisha stood there, frozen, not sure whether to answer it, or escape out the back door and jump the neighbour’s fence. The latter seemed like a pretty stupid idea. If this was the cops wanting to talk to her, they probably already had someone covering the back door.

  “I’ve got no choice,” she said, took a breath, and opened the door.

  “Oh, thank God you’re home!” said Gail Beaudry, who had her hand raised, ready to knock again. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot from crying.

  “Gail?” Keisha said.

  “I have to talk to you!” the woman said, forcing her way into Keisha’s house. She glanced at Kirk, who was standing there, dumbfounded. “I have to talk to you alone.”

  “This isn’t a good time,” Keisha said. “Maybe later this week, but right now—”

  “He’s dead!” Gail blurted. “My brother’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Someone killed my brother!”

  “Gail, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “This morning,” she said. “And they’re saying all these horrible things about Melissa. Ridiculous things! That she killed her mother. It’s all crazy. The police have everything all wrong! You have to help me! You have to make them see the truth!”

  Keisha was getting a very bad feeling. She grabbed Gail by the shoulders, steadied her and looked into her eyes. “Gail, stop, just stop for a second. Who’s your brother?”

  “Wendell,” she said. “Wendell Garfield.”

  Keisha exchanged a look with Kirk, who was standing to Gail’s side. He mouthed, “What the fuck?”

  “Okay, Gail, come sit down and tell me all about this. Do you want something to drink? Kirk, get her something to drink.”

  “Do you have anything diet?” Gail asked, allowing Keisha to lead her to the couch.

  “Just get something,” Keisha said, sitting down next to Gail, knees touching. She was massaging the woman’s shoulder comfortingly. “It’s going to be okay. You just need to tell me what’s happened, but slowly, from the start.”

  Kirk handed Gail a can of Diet Pepsi that he’d already cracked open. Gail looked at him and said, “What happened to your face?”

  “Shaving,” he said.

  She nodded, then answered Keisha’s question. “A few days ago, Ellie, that’s Wendell’s wife, she disappeared.”

  “I saw something on the news about that,” Keisha said.

  Gail nodded. “They held a press conference and everything yesterday. Wendell and Melissa. Oh, God.” She set the can of Pepsi on the table and put her hands over her eyes. “It’s all so unbelievable! Why would they hold the press conference if Melissa had something to do with it?”

  “Gail, so what are you saying? It was the daughter?” As soon as she said it, Keisha realized how it might sound; that she was surprised that Wendell wasn’t the one responsible. She had to recalibrate her thinking, to act surprised by everything she was about to hear, to listen and react without preconceptions.

  In fact, she wouldn’t have to try all that hard.

  “That’s what they’re saying,” Gail said, shaking her head. “That Melissa killed her mother.”

  Keisha tried to get her head around that. If Melissa had killed Ellie Garfield, why had the husband tried to strangle her? He must have been in on it, or at the very least, been helping his daughter cover up after the fact.

  “And what exactly happened to Wendell?” Keisha asked. “Where did they find him?”

  “At home,” Gail said. “I don’t really know all the details. But none of this makes any sense. That Melissa would kill her mother, that someone would kill Wendell. It’s insane.”

  Keisha put her arms around Gail. “You poor thing. This is so horrible for you.”

  As she held the woman, Keisha’s mind raced. Once Kirk finally disposed of the bloody clothes, the only thing that connected her to Garfield was the business card she was sure the police would find. She’d convinced herself she could explain that away by saying there were a hundred places Garfield could have picked one up.

  But now there was a definite link between Keisha and the dead man.

  The dead man’s sister. Who just happened to be one of Keisha’s clients.

  Not good, not good at—

  But wait a second.

  Maybe there was an opportunity here.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Keisha said. “Was he older, younger?”

  “He was my baby brot
her,” she said, and began to weep again.

  “I think—haven’t you mentioned him in some of our sessions?”

  She nodded, grabbed a couple of tissues from the box on the table, which was right next to the unfinished Twinkie and beer, and blew her nose. Then she had a sip of her soda, and said, “That’s right. I mentioned a few times to him that I came to see you, that you helped me to connect with my past lives.”

  “What did he think of that?”

  “Oh, he was very dismissive, but no more than my husband. Jerry thinks I’m a total crackpot.” She managed a short laugh. “Maybe I am.”

  “No, not at all,” Keisha said. “Everyone has different things they believe in. They’re coping strategies. They help us deal with the world out there. Was Wendell dealing with a lot of things? Difficult things?”

  “Oh, my, yes. Melissa’s been a constant source of stress for him and Ellie. She—oh, I can’t believe Ellie’s actually dead too. Melissa left home at sixteen, lived on her own, then met this man who got her pregnant. Ellie and Wendell were worried sick about her.”

  “Did you try to offer advice to them? Give them any suggestions? I mean, you’re Melissa’s aunt. I could imagine you wanted to help them where you could.”

  “Of course, of course, I tried.”

  “Is that why you took my card?” Keisha said. This was either going to work or it wasn’t. “To give it to your brother and his wife? In case they ever wanted to consult with me? Because, given what you’ve said about him, it seems unlikely he’d have been in touch.”

  Gail pulled away from Keisha’s embrace. “Did I do that?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Gail blinked a couple of times. “I don’t … I’m not sure.”

  “It was some time ago. You know that period where you believed you were channeling Amelia Earhart?”

  Gail nodded. “That was a couple of years ago.”

  “I think it was while you were talking as Amelia that you asked me for a card. You said you had someone you thought I could help.”

  Gail was still trying to recall. “That’s possible. I think I remember. Maybe I was thinking of giving it to Ellie. She probably wouldn’t have believed in what you do any more than Wendell, but at least she wasn’t totally closed-minded.”