“What do you mean, pretty much?”
“Okay, so I drive behind this place and I’m getting ready to put the bag in the Dumpster, right? Then this asshole comes out the back door of this pizza place and starts giving me attitude about putting my trash in his bin, so-”
“Wait a minute? He saw you? And the car? He saw you putting the bag in there?”
“God, woman, let me finish,” Kirk said. Keisha was really starting to get on his nerves. “So anyway, the guy’s all in my face about it, and I’m thinking, what’s the big deal, one lousy bag of garbage, so what if I dump it in his bin, you know? So he’s acting like he wants to get into it, which is okay by me, but then some other guy the size of a refrigerator comes out to back him up and he’s swinging this fucking pipe like a baseball bat, so I had to get the hell out of there. I can take on one guy, no problem, but two, that’s a bit much.”
“Oh my God,” Keisha said. “Do you think they called the police?”
He shrugged. “Why would they do that? A fight over a bag of garbage? Who’s going to call the cops for that? It’s a couple of pizza guys. Don’t worry about it.”
Keisha was very worried. What if they made a note of the license number of her car?
She asked, “So where did you end up putting the bag?”
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Kirk said. “When that shithead started coming at me with the pipe, I had to take off, right then. So I left the bag there.”
“You left it there? Where they’d seen you?”
“That guy would have killed me with that pipe,” Kirk said.
Keisha was wishing he had. “Tell me you at least got the bag way in there before all this happened. I mean, nobody’s going to want to go into a Dumpster after a specific bag. Not after you’re gone.”
Kirk made a funny face and ran his hand over his chin. “Well, I’d agree with you on that if that was the way it happened. But I never actually got the bag into the Dumpster.”
“What?”
“I had to leave it on the ground. When that guy started coming after me. Asshole would have busted my head open.”
Was the floor tilting? Were they in the middle of an earthquake? Things seemed to be swaying to Keisha. “You’re telling me you left it there? Right there? In front of them? Shit, why didn’t you just empty the bag out so they could get a real good look? What the hell were you-”
I’ve had just about enough of this, he thought.
He exploded, throwing her up against the wall so hard it knocked the wind out of her. He wrapped his right hand around her throat, pinning her head to the wall, squeezing her right where the pink sash had bit into her skin.
“I am sick and tired of you criticizing me,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am trying to help you out here and getting no thanks in return and it’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“Let… go… Can’t…”
Keisha raised her leg, tried to knee Kirk in the groin. He jumped back, let go of her neck. Keisha doubled over, coughed several times.
“I’m not taking any more shit from you,” he told her, jabbing his finger in her direction. “I’ve been helping you out here, helping you raise that kid, looking out for you, and you don’t give me an ounce of respect.”
Even as she coughed, Keisha managed to laugh. “Yeah, you’re invaluable,” she said. “You’re just fucking indispensable.”
He pointed that menacing finger right at her face, only inches from the end of her nose. “That’s just what I’m talking about! Attitude! How’s that li’l fucker of yours going to show me any respect when his mother doesn’t?”
“You call him a name like that and you want respect?” she said, getting her wind back. “He sees you sitting around here all day, milking a hurt foot for all it’s worth. I haven’t seen you limp once today.”
“Not gonna be able to cover up your crime spree fast enough if I have to drag my leg everywhere I go,” he shot back. “Fact is, you’d be nothing without me. You’d have been screwed today, that’s for sure. You need a man around the house.”
“That’d be nice,” she said. “You know where I could find one?”
He lunged again, but before he could get his hands on her, she clawed his face. Raked her right hand down his left cheek, drawing blood.
“Motherfucker!” he said, jumping back. He put his hand to his cheek, looked at the blood on his palm. “Have you lost your mind?”
“You have to go back,” Keisha said.
“Huh?”
“You have to go back and get that bag.”
He shook his head. “No way.”
She kept her voice low, so he’d have to listen. “If they open that bag and see what’s inside, and remember my car, we’re toast. You get that?”
Kirk grinned stupidly. “Not me, baby. You’re the one whose ass is gonna fry.”
“You think so? Wasn’t me driving, wasn’t me trying to get rid of evidence.”
He looked at her, thinking it through, the grin fading. It took a few seconds. Like trying to explain the second law of thermonuclear dynamics to a pit bull, Keisha thought. “Shit,” he said finally.
“You gotta get that bag. You gotta find out if they threw it in the Dumpster. And if they did, you gotta get rid of it someplace else.”
“Oh, man,” he said, almost pitiably. “I can’t go back there.”
“You have to,” Keisha said. God, what a day and it was barely half over.
“Okay, okay,” he said, accepting, at last, what he was going to have to do.
Should she tell him about the other problem? He wasn’t going to like it, but he was in this with her, like it or not.
“There’s another thing,” Keisha said.
He gave her a look that said You’re kiddin’, right?
“Garfield had one of my cards on him when he died. Sooner or later, the cops are going to show up and-”
Someone started banging on the door.
Twenty-three
Rona Wedmore, sitting in the front seat of her unmarked car, put in a call to Joy from the forensics team.
“Hey,” Joy said.
“Got your text. What’s up?”
“We’ve only just removed the body, haven’t gotten that far with it, except to tell you that needle went about five inches into the deceased’s skull.”
“You guessing that’s what killed him?” Rona asked.
“You’re funny,” Joy said.
“I’m just asking, was there anything else done to him before that?”
“Don’t think so, but you’ll be the first to know what I find. Reason I called is, I got a look at the business card that was in his shirt. The name is… hang on, I wrote it down. Okay, ‘Keisha Ceylon, Psychic Finder of Lost Souls.’ Pretty classy.” She read off a phone number and a website address, which Rona scribbled into her notebook.
“That name rings a bell,” Rona said.
“Maybe you know her from another life,” Joy said.
“You remember that case, it’s got to be five or six years ago now, about the Milford woman whose family disappeared when she was fourteen? She went something like twenty-five years not knowing what happened to them.”
