Linwood Barclay: Clouded Vision

“Okay, that’s okay, we have divers for that kind of thing.”

Melissa was surprised. “They can go in the water even when it’s super cold?”

“Oh yeah, they’ve got these special wetsuits that help keep them warm.”

“I couldn’t do that. Swim in freezing cold water. I can’t even go in a pool unless it’s like eighty-five or ninety.”

Marshall gave her a warm smile. “That’s my wife. It’s got to be like a sauna before she’ll get in. So, Melissa, your father, he put the car in the water?”

“Yep. He drove Mom’s car out onto the lake, where the ice was thin. And then he waited for the car to go through.” She started to tear up. “And then it did.”

“How do you know this, Melissa? Did your father tell you what he did?”

“I saw it. I saw the car go through the ice.”

“Where were you?”

“I was on the shore, watching.” A solitary tear ran down her cheek. She bit her lip, trying to hold it together. “I feel real bad, but I also feel a bit better, you know? Coming in here and telling you what happened.”

“Of course you do.”

“It’s not the kind of secret I could keep.”

“Melissa, you realize we’re going to have to go out and talk to your father, but I need to ask you, does he keep any guns in the house?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s never been interested in guns.”

“We just don’t want to have to hurt him, you know? When we go out there. We want to be able to bring him in peacefully. Do you think he’s dangerous?”

She was puzzled by the question, and shook her head. “Dad’s not dangerous. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever killed anybody or anything.”

“You mean, before your mother.”

“Oh, he didn’t kill my mother. Is that what you were thinking? I guess I should start at the beginning.”

Keisha

When Keisha Ceylon saw the pink sash drop past her eyes, she reached up instinctively to get her fingers between it and her neck. But she wasn’t quick enough. Wendell Garfield wrapped it tightly around her throat and began to twist.

“I swear, I don’t know how you know, but you’re not going to tell anyone,” he said.

Keisha clawed at the sash, her fingernails ripping into her own skin as she tried to loosen his hold on her. But the satiny ribbon was already cutting deep into her neck.

Garfield was leaning down over her, his mouth close to her right ear. His breath was hot against her cheek.

She tried to say something, to scream, but with her windpipe squeezed, nothing came out. Not a sound. She felt her eyes bulging. She kicked at the floor, dug into the carpet with her heels.

Keisha Ceylon knew that she was going to die. She didn’t need any vision for that glimpse into the future.

Any second now, she thought, it’s going to be over. Maybe I had it coming. Ripping people off, taking advantage of them when they were at their most vulnerable. I’m getting what I deserve.

Didn’t make her feel any better about it, though.

She gave up clawing at her throat and dropped her hands to her sides.

“You must have been there,” Garfield said through gritted teeth. “You had to be watching. That’s the only way I can figure it. You were up there, you saw me put the car on the ice, you saw it go under, and then you figured you could blackmail me. A thousand today, another thousand next week, and then the week after that, until I had nothing left.”

He had the ends of the sash twisted several times around his palms and kept pulling. Keisha could feel herself starting to lose consciousness. She wondered what he would do with her body. Hoped he wouldn’t put her in the lake along with Mrs. Garfield.

She didn’t like the water.

In the seconds just before she figured she was going to black out, her fingers dug into the seat of her chair.

Her right hand brushed up against something.

Something soft, almost furry.

Yarn.

And as her fingers fumbled across the yarn, they landed on something else. Something long, and narrow, and pointed. Like a stick, or a needle.

A knitting needle.

In the last second Keisha had before she blacked out, she grabbed hold of the knitting needle with her right hand and swung it up and over her shoulder. As hard as she could.

The scream was only an inch from her ear. And it was horrific.

As the grip on Keisha’s neck slackened, she tumbled forward out of the chair. She collapsed onto the floor, wheezing and gasping for breath. She was on her knees. Air rushed into her lungs so quickly it hurt. Her gasps would have been loud enough to hear from anywhere in the house, were it not for Wendell Garfield’s cries of agony.

Keisha, even as she struggled to get her breath back, had to turn and see what she had done.

The knitting needle was sticking straight out of Garfield’s right eye. Blood poured from the socket, spattering the right side of his face. Judging by how much of the needle remained exposed, Keisha figured that a good four to five inches of it was buried in his head.

But he could see her with his left eye, and, still screaming, he started coming around the chair after her.

Keisha struggled to her feet and tried moving for the door. But she hit her knee going around the corner of the coffee table and stumbled, allowing Garfield to get close enough to clamp his hand onto her arm.

“You bitch!” Garfield said, although there was so much blood in his throat it sounded as though he was gargling.

Garfield yanked so hard on her arm that Keisha went down to the floor again. She ended up sprawled on her back. Before she had a chance to roll away, he landed on top of her, straddling her.

He didn’t have the sash anymore. He was going to have to make do with his hands.

He leaned forward, the knitting needle still sticking out of his eye socket, blood dripping onto Keisha, and got his fingers and thumbs around her neck. She flailed about, but his hands had her neck pinned to the floor.

She started blacking out again. With her last ounce of strength, she shot the heel of her hand straight up against the end of the knitting needle.

She drove it into Garfield’s head another three inches.

There was another scream, and then, for a moment, he seemed to freeze above her. His grip on her neck relaxed, his arms went weak, and his body collapsed on top of her.

This time, Keisha didn’t even take time to get her breath back. She pushed frantically at his dead body until it was off of her, crawled a few feet away, and then, once she was able to breathe normally again, decided she was entitled to take a moment and become hysterical.

Melissa

“You’re sure you don’t want a lawyer?” Detective Marshall asked.

“I’m positive,” Melissa Garfield said. “I’m going to plead guilty to everything.”

“Then you have to sign here. And here.”

Melissa scribbled her signature.

“Okay. Now, why don’t you start from the beginning.”

“You see,” Melissa said, “instead of going shopping first, Mom decided to visit me. She’d do that once in a while, just drop by without calling or anything first. She’d say, ‘What, a mother can’t pop in and visit her daughter?’ She comes in and I’m in the kitchen, cutting up some celery and carrot sticks to put in a salad because I’m actually trying to eat the right things so the baby will be healthy, you know, even though I’d rather just be eating pizza and burgers, but I’m trying, okay? I’m really trying.”

“Sure,” the detective said.

“It’s like she was checking up on me all the time. She was always asking me these questions, like what’s happening with Lester and was he going to marry me and was he going to help take care of the baby and maybe I could move in with him and his mom and dad and she’d be able to help me look after the baby, like I was really going to do that, right? And then she wanted to know if I’d applied to the veterinarian school I was talking about because I happened to mention it, you know, and I said not yet, but I was thinking about it and she said what’s the holdup? Couldn’t I just go on the computer and press a couple of buttons and I’d be registered and if it was that easy I should just go and do it now and I said, Jesus, will be you just give me some room to breathe, you know? I got a baby coming in a few weeks and I got a lot on my mind and, okay, maybe I’m thinking about it, but do I have to do something about it right this very fucking second? And she said, it’ll take you like two minutes so why don’t you do it and I’ll cut up your celery and your carrots for you and she tries to take the knife from me and I don’t know what happened but I kind of snapped or something, you know?”