“Yeah, okay, I’m listening.”
“Once you get rid of the bag, you’re going to have to wipe down the car. Like the door handles, the seat. They’re vinyl, so anything on them you should be able to get off.”
Kirk was stupefied, shaking his head, still clutching the bag in his hand.
“Kirk, are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”
“You understand what you have to do?”
“Get rid of your clothes, wash the car.”
“Not just wash it. You’ve got to go all over it. Like you were getting ready to sell it. Like you were cleaning your truck.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Shit, and my purse, too. Go get my purse.”
Keisha could hear his footsteps on the newsprint. She called out to him: “If you walk on the paper, you’re going to get blood on your shoes!”
“Oh, yeah.” A pause. “They look okay!”
He returned with her purse, smeared with Wendell Garfield’s blood. She took it from him and said, “Put all the newspapers into the bag.” He gave her a look that suggested he was tired of taking orders, but went.
She dumped the contents of the purse onto the floor. It had been on the floor by the chair she’d been sitting in at the Garfield house. When she’d thrust that needle over her shoulder and caught Wendell Garfield’s eye, blood had sprayed everywhere, some of it landing in the open purse. Tissues, her wallet, lipstick, chewing gum, a small container of Tylenol-almost everything had some small trace of it.
And there was that bloody parrot earring.
She grabbed her wallet, which contained her driver’s license, cards for everything from Social Security to Visa-even a Subway sandwich card-and set it on the counter by the sink. She saw Garfield’s cash tucked into the small pouch, ran her bloody hand under the tap and fished it out. A few droplets of blood. She’d go through the bills later, see if any of them could be saved. She’d have to throw out the check, of course, with Garfield’s name and signature on it, but not now. She couldn’t trust that Kirk, if he got his hands on it, wouldn’t be dumb enough to try and cash it.
Quickly, before he returned, she tucked the money in the cabinet under the sink, behind some extra rolls of toilet paper.
Kirk returned.
“All this stuff,” she said, pointing to the items on the floor, including the tissues, lipstick and gum, “has to be thrown out.”
Kirk scooped the items off the tile floor, shoved them into the bag. “I think that’s everything.”
“I dropped my keys by the door. You’re going to have to rinse those off.”
“Yeah.” His eyes held hers. “So, just what kind of shit you getting me into here, babe? Am I, like, covering up a murder?”
“He was going to kill me if I didn’t kill him.”
“Well, I guess then, it’s cool.” He certainly wasn’t inclined to call the police. If they came and arrested Keisha, what would happen to him? Would he have to look after her kid? Would he have to go live someplace if she lost her house? If she got taken away and wasn’t making any money, how was he going to live? How would he pay for improvements to his truck?
No, turning her in was not an option.
“Kirk, you can do this, right?” she asked. “You can get rid of that bag?”
He gave her a smile, but his eyes looked dull. “Hey, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, right?”
Keisha didn’t like the sound of that, but right now, Kirk was all she had. She needed him to do these things for her, and she needed him to do them right now.
He left the bathroom. She listened until she heard him pull the front door closed. As she was about to step under the spray, it hit her, everything that had happened in the last hour, and she took two hurried steps to the toilet, lifted the lid frantically, dropped to her knees and threw up. Three good heaves.
She unrolled a couple of feet of toilet paper, dabbed her face, flushed the toilet, and allowed her body to collapse against the cold tiled wall.
I nearly died.
I killed a man.
Her breathing was quick and shallow, and she wondered whether she might pass out. Hold it together, she thought. Suck it up. Kirk would get rid of the evidence, clean the car.
She hoped to God he didn’t fuck it up. It wasn’t like she’d sent him to the store with a list of ingredients to make rocket fuel. He ought to be able to wash a car and get rid of a bag.
Slowly she pulled herself to her feet and got into the shower. The hot water felt good hitting her skin. She poured some shampoo into her hand, washed her hair, rinsed, shampooed it again. Then a third time. By the time she picked up the soap to start on her body, the blood was washed away, but that didn’t stop her from nearly scrubbing herself raw.
She stood under the water until it started to go cold. When there was no hot left, she turned off the taps, reached beyond the curtain for the towel, and dried herself off.
Out of the shower, she studied her naked body in the mirror. She thought there was a tiny spot of blood on her right shoulder, rubbed it with the towel, realized it was a mole.
She was confident she’d gotten every trace of Wendell Garfield off her.
Still naked, she gathered up the towel and bathmat and walked it down to the basement, shoved everything into the washing machine, poured in some soap, and hit the start button.
Back upstairs, she went into her room and dressed herself in fresh clothes. She found a blouse with a high collar, which she buttoned to the top to hide the bruises on her neck. Then she slowly walked the route between the front door and the bathroom, looking for any traces of blood. The newspaper seemed to have done the trick. She got some paper towel and Windex from underneath the kitchen sink and squirted the tiles inside the front door. She cleaned them three times, just to be sure, then flushed the paper towels, one at a time so as not to cause a clog, down the toilet.
Then she thought, what about when she ran from the car to the house? It was such a short distance, she was confident no one had seen her. If anyone had, they’d surely have called the police. But there might be blood out there.
She opened the door. The light snow that had fallen overnight had melted on the driveway and the path from it to the house, but everything was so wet, she didn’t think, even if some blood had somehow dripped from her clothes, that anyone would be able to find a trace of it out here.
She went back inside, picked up her wallet by the sink, and rubbed it all over with several dampened tissues. Took out her driver’s license, Social Security card. Made sure everything was clean.
Then she leaned against the bathroom counter, put her face in her hands, felt some relief slowly washing over her. She was done. So long as Kirk did as he was told, she was good.
Time for a drink.
As she entered the kitchen, the phone rang. It wasn’t a sound that normally made Keisha jump, but she nearly hit the ceiling on that first ring. She looked at the caller ID, but it came up as unknown.
No one knows. No one knows anything about what happened. Certainly not yet.
Keisha picked up. “Hello?”
“Oh, hey, Keisha? It’s Chad and-”
The health store owner in Bridgeport who needed her advice every time he met a new man. “Chad, I don’t have time today.”
“But I met this guy, he came into the store, and I think we kind of clicked, and I found out his birth date and I’m not sure we’re compatible because I’m a Virgo and-”
“Not today,” Keisha said and hung up.
She opened the fridge. She needed something strong to drink but there was nothing in there but Kirk’s bottles of Bud. That would have to do. She plunked herself down in a chair, cracked open a bottle, and took a long swig.
