“Dad came back to my place and cleaned up. There was blood everywhere. It was horrible. It took hours to clean up the blood. I couldn’t do it. I stayed in my bed, under the covers. I couldn’t stop shivering. When he was finished, he told me everything was going to be okay. He said I wasn’t going to have to go to jail.” She smiled sadly. “He said he loved me very much and he wanted everything to be okay for me. He said I’d done a bad thing but sometimes people make mistakes and he didn’t want my whole life to be ruined, you know? He’s a really good dad. He said the police would just think Mom ran away, or maybe she got killed by that carjacker guy, but they’d never really know what happened because they’d never be able to find Mom’s car. And if the police didn’t know what happened, they couldn’t really charge anyone.”
She shook her head. “He’s going to be so mad at me. Because he did all this to protect me, and now… well, here I am. But I just… I can’t do it. I feel bad about what I did. I really loved my mom.”
Detective Marshall reached out and touched her hand. “I know.”
“Is my dad going to be in a lot of trouble?”
“Well, I’d have to say yes. But with the right lawyer, and a sympathetic jury… A lot of them will understand the lengths a father might go to, to help his daughter. He might have to go to jail, but maybe not for a long time.”
“Not as long as me.”
Detective Marshall nodded. “You might be right about that.”
For the first time since she’d been in this room, a shadow of a smile crossed Melissa’s lips. “That’d be okay. Just so he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life in jail. That wouldn’t be fair. He’s not that old a guy. He’s got a lot of time left.”
THIRTEEN
Keisha
She wasn’t calling the police.
She knew it was self-defense. She knew it wasn’t murder. But she didn’t have any confidence that the police would see it that way. Not once they started looking into her background. Saw her convictions for fraud back in 1999 and 2003 in Connecticut. Started figuring out what kind of scam she’d been hoping to run here with Wendell Garfield. Even if the guy did murder his wife, they’d find something to pin on her.
Keisha hadn’t told anyone she was coming here. She’d put her boyfriend on alert, said he might have to do the Nina shtick, but she never told him where she was going, who she was going to see. And the Garfield house, it was on a street where the houses were pretty spread out. She thought there was a good chance no one had seen her get out of her car and go into the house. If she could get out of here and back into her car unseen, she’d be all set.
Fingerprints.
She wondered what she’d touched. The robe, but it wouldn’t hold a fingerprint. Surely the cops couldn’t lift a print off the fabric of the chair.
Just to be sure, she wiped down the coffee table, any other surfaces she thought she might have touched. There was plenty of blood around, but none of it was hers, so she thought she’d be okay where DNA was concerned.
Once she got home, she’d get out of these blood-soaked clothes and burn them.
Keisha had a good feeling about this. She believed she could walk away from this and no one would ever know she was here.
Wendell Garfield, sprawled out across the floor, certainly wouldn’t be talking.
She’d have to wear a scarf at her neck for a few weeks. She’d caught a look at herself in the mirror. There was an ugly purple ring around her throat.
“No more of this,” she promised herself. “No more.”
This was a message, no doubt about it. Keisha had never been a particularly religious person, but this sure felt like it was a warning from the Man upstairs. “Knock it off,” He was telling her.
She was going to knock it off.
“Lord, just let me walk out of here and I’m yours,” she vowed.
She took one last look at the room, at Garfield’s dead body, just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She was good. She was as sure as she could be.
Keisha slipped out of the house, wiped down the door handle on her way. She was halfway across the yard when she happened to reach up and touch her ear.
There was nothing dangling from it.
She reached over and touched her other ear. The parrot earring was there. But the other one, it was gone.
It had been lost in the house.
“Oh God,” she said under her breath. She had to go back in.
She went back to the door, stood there a moment, steeling herself. She went inside, took in the scene all over again. She started by the chair where she had been sitting. Patted around it, stuck her fingers down into the cushion cracks.
No luck.
She looked at the coffee table, scanned the carpets. The earring was nowhere to be seen.
There was only one place left to look.
Keisha got down on her knees next to the body, slipped her hands under him, and rolled him over. The carpet was completely soaked with the blood that had poured out of Garfield’s eye.
She spotted a small bump in the pool of blood. She stuck her fingers into it and lifted up her earring. The parrot looked like a seagull caught in a red oil spill. She dropped the earring into her purse and went back out the front door.
Got in her car.
Got her keys out of her purse.
Keyed the ignition.
As she was driving away, looking ahead, she saw a police car turn the corner.
No no no no.
As it approached, Keisha wondered how visible the bloodstains splattered across the front of her dress were. Would the cop notice them as they passed each other? Why hadn’t she gotten these windows tinted?
The police car got closer. Two officers inside. A woman behind the wheel, a man riding shotgun.
Just look ahead, she told herself. Like you don’t care. Be cool.
The cars met.
As the police car slid past, Keisha was certain no one looked over. She kept her eyes front. Then, seconds later, she glanced in the rearview, expecting the patrol car’s brake lights to come on. The car to turn around. To come after her. Lights flashing.
Nothing happened. The police car drove on, pulling over to the shoulder out front of the Garfield house.
Keisha put on her blinker, turned left at the corner.
Home free.
Lesson learned.
FOURTEEN
Winona
She’d drifted off during a National Geographic special. Something about the rain forests. She’d never been all that interested in the rain forests.
But only a few minutes into sleep, Winona Simpson woke with a start.
