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 window.
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.
Not just by Keisha, but by her own son.
It seemed like a good time to get out of town. Start over. Turn her life around. Get a job. Maybe she could work at one of those makeup counters in a big department store. She’d be okay with secretarial work, too. Keisha was organized, she could run someone’s office, do correspondence, stuff like that.
And if it took a while to get a decent job, she could always, temporarily-not forever, that was for sure-read a few fortunes, she supposed. Check an astrological chart for someone.
If she got really pressed, help someone get in touch with a dead loved one.
Or even someone who was, you know, unaccounted for at the moment.
Tell people what they wanted to hear.
Give them hope.
Girl has to make a living.
