Faye wasn’t so sure.
Kali continued with a series of announcements that she’d clearly been thinking about all day.
“I don’t want wanna talk to the detective. I wouldn’t mind talking to Laneer and Sylvia, but I ain’t got anything to say that won’t make them cry. That’s why I don’t talk these days. It hurts too much. Hurts me. Hurts them. Just hurts.”
Faye kept her eyes off Kali, and she kept her mouth shut. The girl needed to speak in her own time. To give her eyes a place to be and to keep her hands busy, she started building a mound of sweetgum balls. The trees over their heads had been shedding those round, pointy seed balls for a very long time, so Faye was in no danger of running out of them. She handled them with care, protecting her fingertips and remembering barefoot summers when hardly a day went by without sweetgum balls wounding the soles of her feet.
Kali leaned her head back against her tree. Faye thought she was finished with her revelations, but she was wrong.
“I heard him.”
“Kali. Who did you hear? What are you saying?”
“I didn’t know what I was hearing, but it was awful. Thumps. Bumps. Slaps, too, but I know what it sounds like when somebody gets slapped. It was the thumping I didn’t understand.”
Faye wished she didn’t know how Kali knew the sound of a slap.
“After a while, there was some screaming. That’s when I figured out that the thumping sound meant that somebody was getting beat bad. I told you about the meth heads. I thought maybe some of them were having a fight. Guess I was wrong.” Her eyes were still closed. “Maybe it was a meth head that did that to my mama. Naw. They woulda got caught by now. It’s hard to plan ahead when you’re messed up like that.”
Faye tried to think calm thoughts, without a lot of success. She needed Kali to keep talking, because she could be the witness that would put her mother’s killer away. But she also needed to handle this moment well. If she didn’t, Kali could draw into herself again, forever damaged by what she’d heard but not willing to reach out for help.
“Did you see the person hurting your mother?”
Kali shook her head. “No. Well, I crawled through the bushes and found a place where I could tell I was looking at a big man, but I never saw his face. Coulda been anybody, long as it was a man and he was big.”
“Did you hear him? Did you hear his voice?”
Calm down. Ask her one question at a time. Don’t scare her.
Kali gave another shake of the head.
“Did you know you were hearing—”
“My mama? No.” For the first time, Faye saw tears on the stubby eyelashes. “No, it didn’t—it didn’t sound like her a bit. When I got home and she wasn’t there, I thought maybe. Maybe it was. But I didn’t know for sure that she was dead until the minister told me so.”
Faye looked into Kali’s eyes and saw fear there and more. There was something else the girl wanted to say. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“What if he saw me? What if he knows where I’m staying? I think he’s gonna come get me.”
“Do you think he saw you? Did he look your way?”
“No. No, he didn’t. I just—Faye, what if he comes to get me?”
“I don’t think he will. He knows the police are after him, so why would he take any chances? And also, you have your Uncle Laneer to look after you.”
“He’s old.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t take care of you. And you’ve got Sylvia.”
Kali rolled her eyes. “She’s not very scary. I need somebody scary. You’re not scary, but you’re scarier than her.”
Maybe Faye shouldn’t have laughed, but she did.
“Uncle Laneer and Sylvia need me to take care of them.” Kali’s voice was insistent. “That’s why I don’t sleep any more. Somebody’s got to look out the window and see if he’s coming.”
Somebody needed to know that this child wasn’t sleeping.
“I’m scared about you, too.”
Faye was confused. “Why are you scared of me?”
“No. No, I’m not scared of you. I’m scared he wants to hurt you, too.”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Kali. Why would he want to hurt me?”
“I saw you. I saw you climb up out of the creek and start digging up my mama. If I saw you, maybe he did, too.”
Kali was shaking her head. “Been thinking all day today. He didn’t have to see you for you to be in trouble. Everybody knows it was you that found Mama. Sylvia made sure. Text, phone, people on the street. She told ’em all. She doesn’t know I was out there, so she hasn’t told ’em that, but she sure did tell ’em about you.”
“Why does that worry you?”
“Because it means it don’t matter if he saw you. He knows you were there. And he knows that maybe you saw him.”
Faye supposed she’d known this all along, but she hadn’t let herself think about it. Maybe she should listen to Joe and run for home, but Kali didn’t have that option.
Kali was stuck in this neighborhood, whether it harbored a killer who was looking for her or not. Or rather, she was stuck in this neighborhood if she was lucky. Any day now, a social worker could decide Laneer was too old or too poor to be a suitable guardian, swooping in to park her with a family of people who were strangers.
To be honest, this could happen anyway. At Laneer’s age, he was a heart attack away from dying or from being too sick to take care of a little girl. Next week, Kali could have a brand-new address, but that wouldn’t save her from a killer who probably knew her name.
Faye considered the evidence. Unless McDaniel was sitting on something explosive, there weren’t many clues that she knew about, but Faye
