Never Saw It Coming

by Linwood Barclay

  Keisha stood there, her labored breathing the only sound in the room.

  She surveyed the wreckage. The overturned shelf, the scattered wheels, Kirk trapped beneath the wreckage. Justin unconscious.

  At least, she thought he was unconscious.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  She knelt down, put her hand on Justin’s chest. He was out cold, but alive. She could feel him breathing under her palm.

  Kirk was alive, too. He made a weak coughing sound.

  “Babe,” he said. “I can’t . . . I can’t move.”

  He made a gagging sound. Keisha moved toward him, put one leg over one of the shelving unit’s vertical posts, straddling it so she could get a look at Kirk. She could see one eye behind the wheel, saw how the rim was pressing against Kirk’s windpipe. The shelf had landed on top of the wheel, pinning it into position.

  Keisha would have to move the shelf before she could get the wheel off him.

  “Hey,” Kirk said. “Get this . . . get this off me.” He was trying to use his hands to move the rim, but one was caught behind his back, and he couldn’t get any leverage with the free one.

  Keisha thought.

  Surveyed the situation.

  Thought about Matthew.

  Maybe there was still a way out of this. A way for her to stay out of trouble, stay with her boy.

  “Hey!” Kirk said. “You . . . fucking deaf? I need . . . help here.” He coughed.

  There was a lot to figure out in a short time. She’d have to have it done before Justin woke up.

  But what she had here was an opportunity.

  “Hey,” Keisha said, looking down at Kirk through the openings between the mag wheel spokes.

  “Can’t . . . breathe,” he said.

  “Looks bad,” she said. “Must hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  “The fuck . . . you doing? Move . . . the shelf.” He was sounding wheezy.

  “I think I’ve got a way out, Kirk,” she said. “It might not work, but then again, it might. Got to take the chance.”

  “What . . . you . . .”

  “But it’s not going to work with you. Once Wedmore gets you in a room and starts putting questions to you, well, I don’t think you’re going to be able to outsmart her, you know what I’m saying?”

  “. . . bitch . . .”

  “You’re my weak link, Kirk. Sorry. You were an okay guy, you know? When we met? I really fell for you. You seemed so sweet.” There was that lump in her throat again. “But you conned me. You got inside me”—and she put her hand between her breasts—“before I realized what a useless piece of shit you are.”

  He didn’t say anything. He was watching her with that one eye.

  “But even a couple of hours ago, I might not have been capable of this. I might have helped you out here. But what you told Matthew? That I was going to send him away to military school?” She shook her head, and a teardrop fell from her cheek, slipped between the spokes and landed on Kirk’s forehead. “That was the last straw.”

  “Babe . . .”

  She put her weight on the shelf, which in turn forced the wheel down harder on Kirk’s neck. She managed to lift one foot from the floor, perch it on the edge of the middle shelf, then the other foot.

  Kirk made some very bad sounds. Sounds that Keisha would be hearing for the rest of her life.

  She sat there a couple of minutes until she was sure, glancing every few seconds at Justin to make sure he hadn’t regained consciousness.

  Once she was certain Kirk was dead, she went into action.

  She moved with deliberate speed, thinking through everything carefully.

  Rehearsed the story in her head.

  Got all the props in place.

  Then she found in her jacket pocket the card that Rona Wedmore had given her at the Garfield house. Went to the phone in the bedroom and entered the number.

  Wedmore picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Keisha Ceylon. I’ve got a confession to make.”

  Thirty-three

  Justin: Shit, it’s about time. I’ve been sitting in here for hours. This room—is this one of those interrogation rooms?—this room is freezing. They took my jacket, and they even took my shoes. Why the hell did they take my shoes?

  Wedmore: Sorry about that, Justin. Let me see if I can turn the heat up in here. I don’t even know if this thermostat is working. How are you feeling?

  Justin: My head feels like it’s going to blow up. Thanks for asking. That bitch hit me right in the head with a beer bottle. She’s crazy. Nearly as crazy as her boyfriend. Both of them are nutcases.

  Wedmore: The doctor says you might have a mild concussion. But the good news is, your nose isn’t broken.

  Justin: Sure feels like it. I want to go home. Is my mom here?

  Wedmore: I’m not sure. Listen, they explain to you about the lawyer and everything?

  Justin: Oh yeah, but I’m cool. You’re gonna want to hear what I have to say about Keisha and that guy.

  Wedmore: That’s good, because I have a few questions for you before you go.

  Justin: Have you charged that asshole with trying to kill me?

  Wedmore: You talking about Kirk?

  Justin: Yeah.

  Wedmore: Kirk Nicholson’s dead, Justin.

  Justin: Dead?

  Wedmore: Yup.

  Justin: Well, shit. That must have happened when the shelf fell on him? And those wheels fell off? Is that what happened?

  Wedmore: Why did you go to Keisha Ceylon’s house?

  Justin: I, uh, I wanted to thank her again for finding me before I did anything to hurt myself. I got depressed a couple of weeks back, was in a pretty dark place, and my parents hired her to use her, you know, senses, to find me.

  Wedmore: I know that’s not true, Justin. Why did you really go there?

  Justin: Huh? No, that’s true.

  Wedmore: So you came by just to say thanks, and that led to a big fight? That ended up with one man dead?

  Justin: It’s all kind of a blur.

  Wedmore: You sure you didn’t come by to boast?

  Justin: Boast?

  Wedmore: That you’d beaten Keisha at her own game?

  Justin: I don’t—what?

  Wedmore: Keisha decided to come clean.

  Justin: Come clean? What? She confessed?

  Wedmore: She told us a few things.

  Justin: She told you she killed that Garfield guy?

  Wedmore: No, she didn’t confess to that, Justin.

  Justin: Well what the hell else would she confess to? She killed that guy.

  Wedmore: We can get back to that in a moment. No, what Keisha confessed to was the trick you played on your mother and stepfather.

  Justin: I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.

  Wedmore: Keisha says you approached her with an idea about how you could take them for five thousand dollars.

  Justin: She told you about that?

  Wedmore: Where’d you get the idea?

  Justin: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Like I said, I was depressed, I ran away from home for a while. My parents hired that woman to find me. She had this vision of me in an empty office my mom used to rent out to some plastic surgery place.

  Wedmore: Where’d you go to school, Justin?

  Justin: School?

  Wedmore: Did you ever have a teacher named Terry Archer?

  Justin: Mr. Archer? Yeah, I had an English teacher named Mr. Archer.

  Wedmore: I just got off the phone with him. He remembers you.

  Justin: He does?

  Wedmore: Yeah. He says he remembers a class where he got talking about that horrible thing that happened to him and his wife. He says you were in that class, that you had lots of questions.

  Justin: I remember something about that. His wife’s family disappeared or something.

  Wedmore: Very good. You remember. And I guess you remember the part where Mr. Archer to
ld his students about a psychic who said she’d tell them what happened to the family for a thousand dollars?

  Justin: I didn’t always pay attention in school.

  Wedmore: Mr. Archer says you actually asked him, after class, for the name of the psychic.

  Justin: I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t remember.

  Wedmore: Didn’t you tell your stepfather, Mr. Taggart, about her? I understand your father has an interest in that sort of thing.

  Justin: I don’t know where you’re going with this.

  Wedmore: When Keisha Ceylon led your parents to you, it wasn’t the first time you’d met her, was it?

  Justin: Uh . . .

  Wedmore: You knew what she did, the kind of scams she ran, and you came up with an idea to get five thousand dollars from your parents. After some persuading, Ms. Ceylon went along with it.

  Justin: Look, my mom, my stepdad, they’ve got tons of money, and anything I might have done where they’re concerned, that’s our business. It’s not like the public got ripped off or anything. Keisha—she really told you about all this?

  Wedmore: She said you’re an admirer of her work. A fan. That she inspired you. That after you ran this game on your parents, you wanted to do more work with her, but she said no. Does that sound about right?

  Justin: I wouldn’t say that.

  Wedmore: What part do I have wrong? Straighten me out here.

  Justin: I don’t know. I just . . . none of that rings a bell.

  Wedmore: No? You saying you didn’t go to Mr. Garfield’s house and offer to provide the same kind of service Keisha did?

  Justin: Shit, no. Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s confessed to this other thing, with my mom and her husband and me, because she figures—because it’ll make her look almost honest. You know? She’s willing to admit all that, so you’ll believe her when she says she didn’t do the really big thing, killing that guy.

  Wedmore: You didn’t drop by her house and tell her you were the new fake psychic in town? That you got a thousand bucks out of Mr. Garfield before she did? And that made her boyfriend so angry, you cutting in on his girlfriend’s territory, that he attacked you? That there was a fight, and you knocked that bookshelf over on him?

  Justin: Okay, that’s totally not—there was a fight, yeah, but not the way you’re laying it out.

  Wedmore: You didn’t threaten her son if she gave you a hard time about it?

  Justin: Threaten her—what?

  Wedmore: Is that why there’s a picture of him on your phone? That you emailed to her. So she’d know you were watching him, and not turn you in?

  Justin: This is totally—the kid asked me to take his picture.

  Wedmore: I’ve got a couple of things in this box here I want to show you. Hang on . . . here we go. You ever seen this money before, Justin?

  Justin: Where’s that from?

  Wedmore: I’m asking, have you ever seen it.

  Justin: It’s money. Money’s money. It all looks the same.

  Wedmore: You notice the blood on the edge of some of the bills there?

  Justin: Uh, yeah, I can see that. So?

  Wedmore: We’ve saved out a couple of the bills and are having them tested, but we think that’s going to turn out to be Wendell Garfield’s blood.

  Justin: Oh.

  Wedmore: You know where we found this money, Justin?

  Justin: I don’t know. If it’s Garfield’s blood, I guess you found that money on Keisha.

  Wedmore: We found this money in your jacket, Justin.

  Justin: Huh?

  Wedmore: How do you think this money got into your jacket?

  Justin: Seriously? She put it there. She must have. When I was out cold.

  Wedmore: Yeah, I suppose that could have happened. I see your point. You were out for about ten minutes, the doctor said.

  Justin: Yeah, well. There you go.

  Wedmore: Do me a favor, Justin?

  Justin: What?

  Wedmore: Would you write your name on this piece of paper here?

  Justin: What for?

  Wedmore: Just humor me.

  Justin: You going to tape it onto the end of some fake confession?

  Wedmore: No, we’re not going to do that. Let me see if this pen has any ink . . . yeah, this one’ll do. Here you go.

  Justin: You just want me to write my name?

  Wedmore: First and last.

  Justin: I don’t get this.

  Wedmore: Justin . . .

  Justin: Fine, fuck it. There you go. Three times.

  Wedmore: Thank you. Is that the way you usually sign your name?

  Justin: Yeah.

  Wedmore: Hmm.

  Justin: What?

  Wedmore: Just asking. I have something else here I’d like to show you.

  Justin: What?

  Wedmore: I’ve got it in another evidence bag, although we found it tucked in with the cash. Okay, here it is. You recognize this, Justin?

  Justin: What the . . . it’s a check.

  Wedmore: That’s right. You see whose account this check is drawn on?

  Justin: Garfield. Wendell Garfield.

  Wedmore: For five hundred and eighty dollars.

  Justin: Yeah.

  Wedmore: And you see there’s also some blood on the edge of the check. We’ll have to do a test to see whose blood it is, but like with the money, we have a pretty good idea.

  Justin: Okay.

  Wedmore: And I guess you’ve noticed the other interesting thing. The most interesting thing of all.

  Justin: That doesn’t make any sense to me.

  Wedmore: You see who the check is made out to, don’t you, Justin?

  Justin: I don’t know. I can barely read it.

  Wedmore: Oh, come on now. What’s it say?

  Justin: It sort of looks like my name.

  Wedmore: That’s right. You notice that the handwriting doesn’t match? How Mr. Garfield’s handwriting is totally different from your name there?

  Justin: I see that.

  Wedmore: What I figure is, Mr. Garfield wrote the check, but left blank who it was to be made out to. Some people, they’ll just make it to Cash, or fill in their name themselves. Is that what you did?

  Justin: I didn’t write my name there.

  Wedmore: You didn’t?

  Justin: No way.

  Wedmore: But, hang on . . . the handwriting on the check looks just about identical to these signatures you just did for me.

  Justin: I didn’t write my name there. Keisha must have done it.

  Wedmore: What, you think she put a pen in your hand and wrote your name in while you were unconscious?

  Justin: She must have copied it.

  Wedmore: From what?

  Justin: I don’t know. My driver’s license? It’s probably on that.

  Wedmore: That part of your license—we looked—is so worn off you can barely even see it. You know what this looks like, don’t you, Justin?

  Justin: This is bullshit.

  Wedmore: You went to see Mr. Garfield. You gave him Keisha Ceylon’s card as a reference, said you were an associate of hers, that you had a vision about his wife. Garfield must have panicked, thought maybe you actually knew he was involved in her death. Something went wrong. He attacked you, and you stabbed him in the eye with the knitting needle. We can put you at the scene, Justin. The footprints outside the window. Your prints on the window frame. Did you look inside before, to check if he was there, or after, to see the mess you’d left behind? We found money with what’s likely to be Garfield’s blood on it, in your pocket. And finally, Garfield’s bloody check, made out to yourself, in your own hand, in that same pocket. That looks kind of bad, don’t you think, Justin?

  Justin: She did it. I’m telling you. She went there, she tried to get money out of Garfield. She stabbed him in the eye and killed him.

  Wedmore: And you know this how?

  Justin: Like I said, I followed her there. I was watching through the win
dow.

  Wedmore: So you admit you were at the scene.

  Justin: Outside! Not inside.

  Wedmore: Then how did you get this check? Signed by Mr. Garfield. Made out to you, in your own handwriting?

  Justin: I . . . I . . .

  Wedmore: If you’ve got something physical, something that puts Keisha there instead of you, let me have it.

  Justin: She was all bloody! Search her house for her clothes.

  Wedmore: We did that, Justin. Didn’t find anything. Her house, her car looked clean.

  Justin: Then she cleaned up! People do that after they kill someone! They clean up!

  Wedmore: Is that what you did, Justin? Got all cleaned up after you killed Mr. Garfield?

  Justin: I want that lawyer.

  Thirty-four

  “So you’re going to come to San Francisco with me?” Matthew asked his mother.

  “Yeah, but we’re not going to stay with my cousin,” Keisha said. “What I’m thinking is, we find a place to stay, maybe not right in the city, ’cause it’s expensive there, but just outside. See what it’s like, maybe even move there.”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said.

  “I think we need a fresh start,” she said. “I can’t even go back into that house after what happened there. We’re never spending another night in that place.”

  “Will someone get all my stuff?”

  “I’m going in just long enough to pack,” Keisha said. She still had Gail’s five thousand dollars. She was entitled to that money. It wasn’t evidence she had to get rid of. Not like that fragment of an endorsed check Justin’s parents had given her, with his signature on the back. She’d flushed that down the toilet before the police arrived, after she’d copied his signature onto the blank check Garfield had written her that morning. All those fake signatures she’d put on Social Security checks for her mom had paid off.

  She’d cut it fine. Justin started waking up seconds after she’d planted the money and the check in the pockets of his jacket. So far, the story was hanging together. They had more on him than they did on her. And Justin’s parents hadn’t pushed yet to have her charged with scamming them. Maybe they had enough on their plate right now, getting a lawyer to defend him on two counts of murder. Or maybe Marcia Taggart didn’t want it made public how she and her husband had been duped.