Linwood Barclay - Never Saw It Coming

“They don’t have pickup on this street?” Wedmore asked.

“Oh sure, but sometimes, you have a lot of stuff, you don’t want to wait for garbage day.”

“This is hardly a lot of stuff,” she said. “It’s just one bag.”

“Yeah, but we had some fish, and you know, that stuff sits around, it gets pretty ripe by pickup day.”

“In the summer, yeah, I could see that,” Wedmore said. “But you tuck that in a can, it’ll probably freeze these days.”

Kirk shrugged, hauled himself up into the driver’s seat. “You know, everybody does stuff different.”

“So you’re really going to make a trip to the dump for this one bag? Isn’t that kind of crazy?”

Another shrug. “I just do what the boss tells me.”

Keisha, watching this, knew it was all over. She wondered whether Kirk had been born this stupid, or if it was something he’d worked at over the years.

“Where is the dump, anyway?” Wedmore asked.

“Say again?” Kirk, evidently, had just suffered some partial hearing loss.

“I said, where is the dump? In case I ever have a lot of stuff I have to haul out of my place. Where is it?”

“The dump?” Kirk said. “You asking where it is?”

Keisha thought about lawyers. She didn’t know any offhand. She didn’t want to just pick one at random out of the Yellow Pages. A personal recommendation would be useful.

“That’s what I was asking,” Wedmore said.

“You just go out Route One, up aways,” he said.

“Open the bag,” the detective said.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. Open the bag.”

“It’s gonna stink to high heaven,” he said. “You sure you want me to do that?”

“Yes.”

Wedmore took a couple of steps back, giving Kirk room to slide out of the truck. He stood alongside the cargo bed, reached for the bag, lifted it out by the red ties, and set it on the driveway.

“Mom, can I have something to eat?”

Keisha whirled around, saw Matthew standing there. “Go to your room!” she shouted.

The boy, startled, bolted.

“Open it,” Wedmore said.

The red ties were knotted, so Kirk had to poke a finger into the green plastic of the bag and make a tear in it. He glanced back at Keisha, giving her an apologetic grimace before enlarging the opening. Once he’d created a hole about the size of a paper plate, Wedmore asked him to step away.

She leaned over the bag, peered inside, then looked at Kirk. “I don’t see any fish in here.”

“No?”

“No. I see a lot of pizza scraps, but no fish.”

Kirk blinked. “I guess I got mixed up,” he said.

The dumb son of a bitch had grabbed the wrong bag.

This had to be a first, Keisha thought. Kirk’s stupidity paying off. It would have been better if he’d come back without any bag at all, but if he had to bring one home, better that it be filled with discarded pizza.

Of course, it meant that bag of bloody clothes was still in the Dumpster behind that pizza place. Maybe, Keisha prayed to herself, it would end up getting picked up on trash day without ever being discovered.

The bag wasn’t her biggest problem at the moment, anyway. It was that damned card.

If the card was the only thing that could place her at the Garfield house, Keisha believed she could ride it out. Couldn’t any lawyer with half a brain come up with a dozen ways it could have ended up in the dead man’s shirt pocket?

She tried to stay composed as Wedmore, now wearing rubber gloves, sifted through the bag of garbage. There were pizza scraps, empty pop cans and water bottles, cardboard triangles for takeout slices, napkins.

She could hear Wedmore asking Kirk more questions.

“Where would you get all this?” she asked.

“We had pizza the other night,” he said.

“This isn’t garbage from one night’s pizza,” the detective said. “This is like trash from a restaurant.”

“No, it’s from here,” he insisted. “The li’l-the kid, he had a pizza party with some of his friends. They made a hell of a mess. I think they had some fish sticks, too, which is why I mentioned fish, why I wanted to get it out of the house.”

Keisha could just guess who Wedmore would want to talk to next: Matthew. She’d want to ask him when his pizza party had been. How many friends had he had over? What were their names?

Just when you thought things were turning a corner.

She went back into the house and rapped lightly on Matthew’s bedroom door before she opened it.

He was sitting on his bed, playing with a handheld video game, and made a point of not looking at his mother as she came into the room.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Keisha said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“I know that. It’s just, things have been a little tense around here today.”

“Why’s the police lady here?” It had finally occurred to him to ask.

“A man died,” Keisha said.

“What man?”

“No one we know, sweetheart. But he had one of my business cards in his pocket, somehow, so the lady was asking me if I knew him.”

“What happened to the man? Was he in an accident or was he shot or something?”

Keisha felt more tired now than she had felt all day. “He was… stabbed.”

“So she’s trying to find out who stabbed him?”

Keisha sat on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on her son’s knee. “Yes, that’s what she’s trying to do.”

“So there’s like a crazy person running around stabbing people?” he asked, but more excited than fearful.

“No, not a crazy person,” Keisha said. “It may even be that this man who died was the bad person, and that whoever stabbed him had a reason. Like, to protect herself.” She paused, and added, “Or himself.”

“Oh, yeah, like, self-defense.” Matthew watched his share of crime shows.

“Could be,” Keisha said. “Let me ask you something.”

Matthew put aside his video game. “What?”

“Winters here are pretty cold and miserable. How would you feel about maybe spending some time in California?”

“You mean, like, in San Francisco? With your cousin?”

“I haven’t asked her about it, but yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking.”

“When would we go?”

Keisha touched the side of his head gently. “I was thinking it would be a trip just for you. You being ten, and all, you’re getting to be a young man. It’d be a chance for you to fly all by yourself.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to go by myself. Except maybe for a weekend or something.”

Keisha thought, how about five to ten years?

“I’m not exactly Caroline’s favorite cousin in the world, but she loves you, and would be very happy to see you. She’d probably be even happier if I stayed here.”

“Why doesn’t she like you?” Matthew asked.

Keisha smiled sadly. “I think she likes me okay. She’s just disappointed in me. Sometimes I’m a little disappointed in me too.”

“I’m not disappointed in you,” Matthew said. “But I hate Kirk.”

Keisha nodded. “Yeah, I get that. Listen, we can talk about that later, but right now, I need you to scoot. Why don’t you go hang out with Brendan?”

“I guess. Why do I have to go?”

“I may have to talk to the police lady again, and I don’t think she likes to talk about police business in front of kids.”

“Oh.”

“And I want you to go out the back way.”

“Why?”

“She’s out front right now, talking to Kirk, and I don’t think she’d want you interrupting them.”

“Is Kirk in trouble?” the boy asked hopefully.