Garden of Evil

by Edna Buchanan

  “Jesus, Britt.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste at both of us, hands on her hips. “You look like the wrath of God. I don’t even wanna be seen with you. Take a goddamn shower and wash your hair. I’d be too embarrassed to send you back to Miami looking like that. Wash up the kid, too, and leave the door open.”

  Keppie tuned in the TV while we bathed. I looked deep into Joey’s bewildered brown eyes and held his hands as the water ran into the tub. “What’s your mama’s name?” I asked urgently.

  “Mommy,” he said.

  I checked the water temperature, helped him undress, bathed him, then wrapped him in a soft bath towel. “Be brave, sweetheart,” I whispered in his ear. “We’ll get out of this. You and me, together.” His little arms slid up around my neck in a tentative hug. I held him so close I felt our hearts beating.

  He sat on the closed toilet seat, his face serious, while I showered. It was good to be clean. My eyes were closed in the stream of warm water when Keppie screamed, a startled, high-pitched cry. I cut off the water, snatched a towel, and held it around me, heart pounding. Had the police arrived at last?

  “Britt, Britt! Come quick!” She burst, breathless, into the doorway. She had undressed. I wished she would keep some clothes on in front of Joey. “Come on! Come on! Get on out here!” she squealed. “You ready for this? We’re on America’s Most Wanted!”

  A bad composite of the Kiss-Me Killer, eyes, chin, and hairline all wrong, shared a split screen with my mug shot, filed at police headquarters for my current set of press credentials.

  “Montero is a Miami newspaper reporter who apparently set out in an attempt to interview the killer,” the voice was saying. “These unlikely companions are believed to be traveling together in a white late-model American-made sedan, possibly a Monte Carlo or Ford Galaxy. It is unknown whether Montero is being held hostage by the killer or is a willing participant in her flight to avoid justice. But police do want to question her in the case. In what is believed to be an authentic sighting, the two were spotted laughing and talking in a Denny’s restaurant in central Florida twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Hadda be them goddamn truckers!” Keppie muttered bitterly. “I knew it! Sonsa bitches. I shoulda shot their fat asses! They were askin’ for it.”

  “The public is warned to make no attempt to approach them, as the Kiss-Me Killer is believed to be armed, violent, and extremely dangerous.”

  “Violent!” she howled indignandy, hands on her naked hips. “They call me violent? This whole damn country is violent!” She paced the room angrily, hair and bare breasts bouncing. “The world is violent. Mother Nature is violent. And they call me violent!”

  “The reward for arrest and conviction in this case has reached the two-hundred-thousand-dollar mark.”

  Her right eye closed, left eyebrow raised, she punched the air like a cheerleader. “Awwww right!”

  “Anyone with information is asked to call local law enforcement or America’s Most Wanted. Help us take down this dangerous serial killer, believed responsible for at least seven brutal murders, before any more lives are lost.”

  Her growing notoriety seemed to thrill her, as though the exposure had elevated her to star status.

  “I didn’t look so good,” I said dismally. “They think I’m an accomplice, because we were talking and laughing.”

  “Ain’t that a hoot? You gonna have a lotta ’splainin’ to do, Britt. Can’t deny, you did help me git ridda that dead body.” She admired the blue stone in Jeff’s college ring, now adorning her right index finger.

  Patty Hearst went to prison, I thought, for crimes committed with her kidnappers.

  “We’re okay here,” Keppie was saying. “That woman never even looked at you when we checked in. She was busy making goo-goo eyes at little Joey here. That’s my good boy!” She scooped him up and twirled him around the room.

  He began to cry and she handed him to me. “What a piss-poor little crybaby,” she said in disgust.

  I rocked him until his sobs stopped. His soft curly hair was still damp from his bath and his skin felt warm. Too warm? Did he have a fever? What would I do if he did?

  Giddy at her new fame, Keppie celebrated with tequila, even used a glass. She wanted to sit out on the small screened-in porch wrapped around our tiny cabin and insisted on leaving Joey in the closet.

  “Just so we know where he’s at,” she said as though it were perfectly logical.

  I reluctantly bedded him down on the closet floor with a pillow, blanket, and his Beanie Baby. “What if he starts screaming?” I asked her.

  “Then we shove a sock in his mouth,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I left the door ajar, a chair pushed against it so he couldn’t crawl out without knocking it over.

  We were surrounded by woods and a dark sea of sky that glittered with far more stars than are visible over Miami’s city lights. A sliver of young moon hugged the horizon as Venus blazed to its right.

  Keppie reclined on a creaky wooden lounge chair, voice low and almost dreamy. “What do you think’s out there, Britt? Little green men? Aliens from outer space?”

  “The only aliens we worry about in Miami aren’t from outer space.”

  “Miami. You really like that place. I like to keep moving, see new things, new people.”

  The Milky Way arched toward the summer triangle. Tears sprang to my eyes. Was anybody in Miami looking at the sky and thinking of me?

  “You got the notebook?”

  I held it up.

  “Good,” she said. “Write this down. I seen a UFO once, big as life, amber lights just floatin’ above the treetops out behind my Grandma Bass’s place just this side-a Gulf Breeze.”

  “Probably a helicopter.”

  “Shit, no. I know a goddamn helicopter when I see one. This didn’t make a sound, just hung around the same spot for a good five minutes, then disappeared—pssst—just like that, into a cloudbank. I knew what it was. They got more sightin’s ’round Gulf Breeze than anyplace in the entire world. Never understood all these people complainin’ they was abducted by aliens. They want to take me in a flying saucer, I’d be first one aboard. Damn right.”

  “I wonder what they’d find if they probed your mind.”

  Keppie guffawed. “Who knows?” She reached over and cozily patted my knee. “Maybe where they come from, I’d fit right in.”

  Keppie wanted Joey restrained for the night, even though he could not reach the door lock. I didn’t want her to lock him in the closet, so we compromised. She handcuffed me to the bed leg, looped a rope around his neck, and knotted it to the cuffs. If we tried to untie it during the night, the cuffs would rattle enough to wake her.

  He slept beside me, fitful and feverish. Was he sick or reliving the trauma he’d endured?

  Exhaustion weakens your defense against relentless thoughts. I had to rest, but the world always seems worse at night. Distractions of the day fade, enabling dark thoughts to creep out of the corners of your mind and grow into monsters of your own making. The mind is caught in circular thought patterns, obsessing on fear or pain that builds in intensity along with your emotions. No surprise that more people die in the dark hours before dawn.

  The homeless I had interviewed on Miami’s streets said what kept them awake nights was not the heat, the rain, the rats, or the mosquitoes. It was fear: the uncertainty of how to stay alive without being raped, beaten, or murdered. I was one of them now.

  Nightmarish flashbacks of the woods and dread of what was to come kept me awake. I had always believed the human race to be resilient, brave, and basically good. How, I wondered, had Keppie become so different from the rest of us, for whom fantasies are enough? What made her act them out?

  I prayed that my fears and fatigue would disappear at dawn. I had to think clearly enough to keep myself and this innocent child alive.

  My face did not look as bad in the morning. The swelling had subsided, and Keppie insisted I try to cover the bruises with makeup. I wore f
resh underwear, a pair of the new shorts she had bought, and a bright yellow T-shirt that said FOLLOW ME TO FLORIDA, THE SUNSHINE STATE. We stopped at a general store, where Keppie purchased a dog leash and fashioned a harness for Joey. He submitted stoicly, standing stiffly as she buckled it around him. No one knew he was missing, I thought, with growing despair. He and his dad had been en route to Disney World. No one would miss them until they failed to return. It was up to me to save him.

  Keppie was in a talkative mood, chatting about her victims as we waited at the drive-through for Burger King breakfasts. I took notes.

  “Man of God, my lily-white ass,” she said, discussing the preacher. “Pious and pompous as all get out. Hah! Then he wants…well, you know.” She jerked her head toward the backseat as though suddenly sensitive to Joey’s presence. “I sure baptized him.” She smirked. “Shut his scripture-spouting mouth for damn sure.”

  “And the sheriff?”

  “I’d seen him around, always undressin’ you with his piggy eyes. Had a couple drinks in a cafe up there. Went out to the parkin’ lot to get somethin’ outa the backseat of a car I had borrowed from an acquaintance. I’m bendin’ over, in a short skirt. He cruises by, gets a eyeful, and pulls up.

  “The tag is stolen, he says. I say, Like hell. He says, Come with me. Like he’s arresting me. All the way up to the jail annex he’s talkin’ ’bout how good-looking, how sexy, I am. He grabs a feel and says we kin probably work this out. ’Magine how many times he done that over the years? Had his own kingdom up there. Well, hoo-ha, the king is dead! Shoulda kept a hand on his gun insteada his cock. Make sure you tell that one right.”

  We pulled off the road into the shade of some live oaks to eat our biscuits, cheese, and sausage, milk for Joey and coffee for us. Keppie kept the engine running, air conditioner blasting, as the temperature climbed faster than the sun in the sky. She poured the contents of five sugar packets into her coffee, took a small sip, then tore open number six. Maybe it was sugar that made her unpredictable and homicidal. I had reported a cotton-candy defense, an armed robber who pleaded insanity on grounds that eating five cones of cotton candy the night of the crime drove his blood sugar so high he wasn’t responsible for his actions.

  “You ever had your blood sugar tested?” I asked Keppie. “Any diabetes in your family?”

  “Britt, quit talking trash and pay attention. I’m strong and healthy as a bull, like my whole family.”

  Except they’re all dead, I thought.

  “Now where were we?” She patted her lips with a paper napkin. “Oh, yeah. The four-one-one on that fella at the rest stop in Alachua County. He was headed for a job interview, in advertisin’ or somethin’. Had a wife and babies at home, ’sposed to be looking for work. Seen his wife on TV later. Pretty little thing was cryin’, said the last thing he told her was that with any luck he would land the job. Well, he got lucky, all right.”

  She nibbled at her biscuit.

  “I tell you, Britt.” She sipped her coffee. “They was asking for it. Like that guy in South Beach with his big greasy paws. Here I am conversin’ with somebody, he elbows his way up, and the next thing you know,” she said indignantly, “his sweaty paw is gropin’ my thigh. And I say okay. He’s asking for it.”

  “What about the man you were talking to at the time? Why not him?”

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t a bad guy, hurtin’ over some woman, pourin’ out his heartaches. We was havin’ a nice conversation.”

  “What about?”

  She winked slyly. “Lotsa things. Then that purty boy. Never mentioned modelin’, lied through his teeth, said he was a writer and lived alone. I could see a woman lived there. What’d he think, I was stupid?…

  “They was all askin’ for it. They hate us.” She downed the last of her coffee and crumpled her empty food wrappers. “It’s war. You got to live by the golden rale: Do unto others before they do it to you.”

  She brushed crumbs off the seat.

  “Your turn.” She hit the signal and pulled out onto the roadway. She wanted to know what it was like growing up with a mother.

  “Well, the mother-daughter thing can be complicated, at least with us. She’s never liked my line of work. She thinks I’m like my father, accuses me of being a risk taker.”

  Keppie rolled her eyes. “Well, Britt, don’t you think that, just maybe, the woman’s on to something?”

  “She’s into high fashion; that’s what she does for a living, and she’s got this talent for laying guilt trips on me. I guess I embarrass her. She didn’t want me seeing my dad’s family when I was little and got all evasive when I tried to find out what really happened to my father—”

  “The bitch!” Keppie said indignantly. “When we get back to Miami, I can get rid of her for you.”

  “What?”

  “You want her gone, I can do it.”

  “Are you crazy?” I yelped. “Don’t even joke about that! I love my mother!”

  “Well, will you make up your damn mind?” she retorted angrily, and stomped the gas, brow furrowed.

  The radio news on the hour had no reports, either about us or about a missing child. Top story was death-row inmate Ira Jonas. Final appeal denied, he was about to die in Florida’s electric chair.

  “Son of a bitch,” Keppie muttered through clenched teeth. I thought at first she was cursing at traffic. “Those bastards,” she said. “Those bastards.”

  “What do you care about Ira Jonas? He killed an old couple in a robbery at their little store.”

  “Sittin’ in Old Sparky is no way to die,” she said.

  As if her way was better.

  “You heard how they botched that last execution.” Her foot hit the gas, and the SUV leaped forward through traffic.

  “It may have been messy, but not botched. I mean, the guy is dead. The end result was achieved.”

  “Hang ’em, shoot ’em, inject ’em!” She swerved past a produce truck and tailgated a delivery van. “Anythin’ is better! That man didn’t git electrocuted, he burnt up!”

  The solemn legal process had erupted into an incandescent spectacle as foot-long blue and orange flames erupted from the condemned man’s head, startling both witnesses and executioner. It still seemed more humane than what happened to the man’s victim, an eighty-six-year-old widow, raped, stabbed twenty-six times, and left to bleed to death.

  Despite protesters seeking a change, the electric chair remains in use. With all its wires, meters, electrodes, sea sponges, and leather straps, it’s an archaic throwback, which is part of its unique and terrible beauty.

  “The problem,” I said, “is that it’s hard to test. You can’t ask volunteers to sit down and try it out.”

  Keppie never cracked a smile.

  “I think it’s fixed now,” I offered.

  Her only response was to kick the accelerator way up past the speed limit, the first time I had seen her do that.

  She’s scared, I thought, aware that a date with Old Sparky looms in her future, if she’s got one.

  Flying low on a curve, outdistancing everything else on the road, we hurtled up on an accident scene on the far side of the divided highway. An ambulance was departing. Three highway patrol cars with blue flashers were clustered to the side, where an accordioned silver-color car with a plastic luggage rack on top had apparently slammed into the rear of a semi-tractor truck. Luggage was strewn across the roadway and the grassy shoulder. The truck had begun to smolder and billow black smoke.

  Keppie took her foot off the accelerator, too late. Swerving to avoid other motorists slowing to gawk, she cut off a Toyota Corolla and shot across two lanes. Horns blared. Drivers hit their brakes. She had to be doing ninety. The eyes of a trooper at the accident scene followed us, his head turning. He shouted something to the others and ran for his car.

  I caught my breath.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Keppie said. “Shit!”

  “Maybe he’s not coming after us,” I said fearfully, praying he was.
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  The trooper rolled into a wide U-turn across the median into the northbound lane.

  “Goddammit!”

  She floored it again and leaned on the horn to blast an elderly driver out of our path.

  “Here we go!” she whooped, foot to the floor, eyes on the rearview.

  “Where? Where are we going?” Joey said.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Just hold on.” I checked to make sure he was secure in his car seat, then tightened my seat belt.

  The trooper’s siren wailed behind us.

  This is it, I thought. We will be rescued or die.

  “Listen,” I pleaded, scenery flashing by so fast it made me queasy, “all he wants is to write you a ticket. The car isn’t reported stolen.”

  “Shut up!” She weaved in and out of traffic. “You saw how he eyeballed us. Somebody musta spotted us and dropped a dime.” She glanced in the mirror. “We can lose this sucker. This baby can outrun them.”

  I closed my eyes as we cut off a driver who leaned on his horn, then opened them as another driver careened onto the shoulder to get out of our way. Joey’s eyes were wide, his mouth open, pudgy fingers grasping the sides of his car seat.

  The speedometer clocked us at 110.

  “Take it!” I screamed. “Just take the damn ticket! The registration’s in the glove compartment! Take the ticket! It’s not worth getting us killed!”

  “Ain’t it?” She never let up on the speed. We passed one exit, then another, like a jet on a runway about to lift off.

  We were pulling away from the trooper’s car, but he still followed, lights flashing, siren blaring.

  “Hoo-ha!” she cried, as his siren grew fainter and we continued to outdistance him. Suddenly the siren’s scream was upon us, startling us both. Her grin faded. Another trooper had appeared, not fifty feet away, racing along an access road parallel to the highway, nearly pacing us. More blue flashers ahead: a local sheriff’s department car, approaching in a southbound lane. He slowed down and bounced onto the median to cut us off.

  It was all over, time to stop and surrender. Anybody could see that. Despite my own fear and panic, I was struck by Keppie’s expression. No fear. Intense, centered, excited, but never afraid. She groped on the floor with her left hand, brought up the gun, and wedged it in the map holder on her door.