Linwood Barclay - Never Saw It Coming

“I–I don’t think so.”

Matthew frowned. “I was hoping maybe he was the stabber, that they’d take him away.”

“Oh, baby.”

“Is he always going to live with us?’

“Matthew, I don’t even know what’s going to happen an hour from now.”

“Do you love him?” Matthew asked.

“Love Kirk?”

He nodded.

“I thought I did, when I first met him, when he was different. But no, not any more. Why?”

“I was worried you loved him more than me.”

“What?” she said, wrapping her arms around the boy and squeezing. “How could you even ask such a thing?” She could feel him shrug, trapped in her embrace. “No, come on, I want an answer.” She released him, put a finger under his chin and propped his head up so he’d have to look her in the eye. “Why would you say that?”

“Something Kirk told me.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said I wasn’t supposed to know, so I couldn’t talk about it, especially to you.”

“Matt, listen to me. You can tell me anything. You know that.”

“It’s just, when you said I might be going to California, I thought maybe that’s where the military school is.” The boy looked like he was trying very hard to hold back tears.

“What military school? You’re ten years old, for God’s sake.”

“Kirk said they have one for kids like me, and if I didn’t stop, you know, messing up around here, and touching his wheels, and getting in the way, he said you were going to send me away to that school.”

“He said what?”

“He said if I settled down you’d probably forget about it, so that’s why I’ve been staying in my room a lot so I won’t be in the way because I really don’t want to go to that school and learn how to fight and kill people and stuff.”

“That son of a bitch,” she said under her breath, but still not caring if Matthew heard.

“So that’s not why you want me to go stay with your cousin?”

“Look at me. If I have to send you out there, it won’t be because you did anything wrong, or that you’re going to a military academy, and it won’t mean I don’t love you.”

“So there’s no military school?”

“There’s no military school.”

Matthew cracked a smile. “Are you crying, Mom?”

“Maybe a little.”

“I think I’m going to, too. But I’m happy.”

“Look, just give me a hug, and then get the hell out of here, okay?”

The boy and his mother threw their arms around one another again. Then he grabbed his coat and disappeared out the back door of the house, hopped the fence, and was gone.

A knock at the door again.

“I thought you’d left, Detective,” Keisha said. She noticed the unmarked car had moved ahead far enough to allow Kirk to leave in his truck. But the bag of pizza trash was still sitting on the driveway.

They’ll figure out what pizza place it’s all from. They’ll go there, search the Dumpster.

“I’d like to speak with your son,” Wedmore said.

“Matthew’s not here.”

Wedmore looked surprised. “I didn’t see him come out of the house.”

“He went out the back. He’s gone to see a friend.”

“Which friend?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“One of the friends he had over for his pizza party?”

Keisha nodded. “Possibly.”

“When was this party?” the detective asked.

“Just in the last few days. Yesterday? No, the day before I think it was. Did Kirk take off?”

“He did. Said he still had some errands to run, other than going to the dump. He must be quite the neat freak, wanting to make a trip to the dump to drop off a single bag of trash from a pizza party.”

Keisha said nothing while the detective studied her. Wedmore was thinking something, Keisha could tell. Plotting her next move.

Finally the detective said, “You have a nice day, Ms. Ceylon.” She let herself out, grabbed the bag of trash as she passed it, dropped it into the trunk of her unmarked car, and drove off.

Keisha closed the door and half stumbled back into her house. She went down the hall, into her son’s room, and collapsed on his bed. She pulled his pillow into her face and rolled her body into a ball, comforting herself with the scent of him.

Kirk, that son of a bitch, she thought. Telling her son she was going to send him away. She could only begin to imagine the thoughts that must have been going through Matthew’s head. What kind of man would put that fear into a child?

Of all the things he’d done, this was the worst.

She couldn’t allow the anger she felt for this man to overtake her. She needed to keep a clear head, to figure out what Wedmore might do next and what, if anything, she could do to protect herself.

Was it possible Rona Wedmore was going to return with a search warrant? Maybe bring along a team of CSI — type people, except they wouldn’t have fabulous hair and be dressed in the coolest clothes. They’d be in white suits that made them look like spacemen, and they’d very likely have some hi-tech gadget that would reveal blood that was invisible to the naked eye.

Keisha hoped she and Kirk had done a thorough enough job cleaning the house. If they’d got rid of all the blood, she should be in the clear on that No, there were other things to get rid of.

The money. She’d kept the cash Garfield had given her. Tucked it behind the toilet paper under the bathroom sink. Was there any blood on it? Wasn’t that something she’d meant to check later? Before Gail showed up, and she was dragged back into that house of horrors?

She swung her legs off the bed, started off in the direction of the bathroom.

The phone rang.

Keisha wanted to ignore it, but thought it might be Matthew. She ran for her bedroom and picked up the extension on an old phone that did not have call display.

“Hello?”

“Keisha, it’s Gail.”

“Oh. Yes, Gail?”

“That lady detective? She got me all confused.”

Keisha closed her eyes tiredly. “Yeah. About my card.”

“That’s right!”

“She was here a few minutes ago.”

“I told her you’d given me one of your cards, and that somewhere along the line I must have passed it on to Wendell, but then she started asking me when this all came up, and I told her you mentioned it to me this morning, and-”

“I know, I know.”

“And the other thing I called about,” Gail said hesitantly, “was if, since you got back home, was, you know, if…”

“If something comes to me,” Keisha said, “I’ll call you immediately.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Listen, I have to go. There’s family to call, I’m going to have to get in touch with the funeral home and-”

“Gail, I have to go.”

Keisha replaced the receiver in its cradle and was about to turn away when the phone rang again, so quickly it made her jump.

She snatched up the receiver before the first ring had finished and said, “Gail, please, I can’t talk-”

“Hey,” Kirk said. “It’s me.”

You told my son I was going to get rid of him.

They were the first words that came into her head, but what she said aloud was, “What?”

“I got good news.”

She found that hard to believe, but summoned the energy to ask what it was just the same.

“I went back.”

“Back where?”

“I got the bag. The right bag. I parked next door again, snuck over, opened the bin when there was no one around, and got it. I peeked inside, saw the clothes, made sure, right? I figured, that bitch cop, when she saw the pizza, she might start sniffing around at pizza places all over, you know, and-”

“Tell me you’re not bringing it home.”

“Jeez, Keesh, I’m not an idiot. I already got rid of it. In a Dumpster out back of a different plaza blocks away. And no one saw me this time. That’s good, right?”