Linwood Barclay - Never Saw It Coming

“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.

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.”

“Archer,” Joy said. “Cynthia Archer. At the time, I kept thinking, why couldn’t that happen to my family?”

“This Keisha woman’s name came up back then.” Wedmore thought about it. “Claimed to have visions about people who vanish. I think she tried to shake down the Archers.”

“I’m going to hand over all matters related to visions to you,” Joy said. “There’s something else. Looks like footprints just outside the side living room window, in the flower beds. Ground wasn’t that frozen. And there may be some prints on the glass.”

Wedmore didn’t know what to make of that, but asked to be kept posted.

Once she was done talking to Joy, the detective made several other calls from her cell. When she’d gotten the answers to some questions that were on her mind, she keyed the ignition and drove to Old Fairfield High School.

She went straight to the office, identified herself to the secretaries at the counter, and said she needed to speak to a member of their staff. “Just ask him to come down here. Don’t mention who it is.”

One of the secretaries consulted a timetable on her computer screen. “But he’s teaching American Literature right now.” Wedmore gave her a look that seemed to ask whether the study of Ralph Waldo Emerson or Herman Melville trumped her request. The secretary picked up the phone, got the person she was looking for, and delivered the message. Wedmore commandeered a small empty room-the guidance counselor’s officer, as it turned out-and waited.

Three minutes later, Terry Archer walked in. When he saw who was waiting for him, his face fell.

“Oh my God,” he said. “What’s happened?”

Wedmore flashed him a reassuring smile. “Nothing, Mr. Archer, nothing.” She extended a hand and the teacher took it, but he looked far from comforted. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

“I’d like to say the same,” Archer said. “But seeing you, it’s given me something of a start. You’re sure everything’s okay? Is Grace okay? Is this about Cynthia?”

“So far as I know, your daughter and wife are perfectly fine. I’m not here about them. How are they, anyway?”

Archer offered up a pained smile. “Grace is good.”

“I remember she had a real thing for astronomy. Is she still into that?”

Archer nodded. “She wants to be an astronaut. Wants to get a little closer to the stars. She’s pretty upset they’ve mothballed the space shuttle.”

Wedmore grinned. “Well, I’m sure they’ll get around to going back to space at some point. And Mrs. Archer-Cynthia. How’s she doing?”

Archer hesitated. “She’s good. She’s okay.”

Wedmore knew there was something going on, so she said nothing, waited for Archer to volunteer more information.

“It’s been hard for her,” Archer said. “Getting the answers to what happened to her family, it didn’t… it’s not like it made everything perfect. Sometimes, getting your questions answered, it just raises new ones. Like, how do I move on, knowing what I know? Right now, Cyn’s kind of taking some time to herself.”

“You’re separated?”

He shook his head. “No, no, not that. Not exactly. But she needs a bit of space at the moment. Grace is with me.” He shrugged. “Things’ll work out. You know, one way or another. They have to.”

“I’m sorry,” Wedmore said. “How’s Grace been handling it?”

“Well, she’s getting into those teen years, you know? It’s hard to know what she’s thinking. She doesn’t like to let me in.” He shrugged. “But I guess every parent of a teenage girl goes through that, right?”

Wedmore waved her hand around the room. “When I started calling around, I didn’t think you were still teaching here.”

“I transferred back a couple of years ago,” Archer said. “But it was good, taking some time away from this place. Listen, I got a class of aspiring first offenders who’d rather steal shopping carts than hear about Hemingway, so if there’s something I can help you-”

“Keisha Ceylon,” Wedmore said.

“Jesus.”

“That got a reaction. What can you tell me about her?”

“After they did that TV show, about it being twenty-five years since Cynthia’s parents and her brother disappeared, that woman came out of the woodwork, claiming she knew things about the case. Not first-hand knowledge, but things she’d seen in a dream or a vision or something. Cynthia and I were asked to come down to the TV station for a follow-up, so this so-called psychic could tell us on camera what she knew, but when she found out the station wasn’t giving her a thousand bucks, she clammed up.”