o think. I asked him, was I going to go to jail? Was I going to have my baby in jail, and he kept telling me to shut up, that he was thinking, and then he had this idea. He got Mom out of the apartment the back way and into her car, and then he told me I was going to have to follow in his car, drive along after him. And I followed him up to this lake, and he put the car on the ice and it went through and I guess I already told you about that part.”
“And then what happened?”
“Dad came back to my place and cleaned up. There was blood all over the place. It was horrible. It took hours to clean it all up. It’s a good thing my roommate was away or she’d have seen everything that happened and that would have been bad. I couldn’t help my dad with cleaning up. My head had really kind of exploded by this point, and I was super tired. All that had happened, and then having to drive up to the lake. I stayed in my bed, under the covers. When he was finished, he told me everything was going to be okay. He said I wasn’t going to have to go to jail.” She smiled sadly. “He said he loved me very much and he wanted everything to be okay for me. He said I’d done a bad thing but sometimes people made mistakes and he didn’t want my whole life to be ruined, you know? He’s a really good dad. He said the police would just think Mom ran away, or maybe she got killed by that carjacker guy, but they’d never really know what happened because they’d never be able to find Mom or her car. And if the police didn’t know what happened, they couldn’t really charge anyone.”
She shook her head. “He’s going to be so mad at me. Because he did all this to protect me, and now . . . well, here I am. But I just . . . I can’t do it. I feel bad about what I did. I really loved my mom.”
Wedmore reached out and touched her hand. “Of course you did.”
“Is my dad going to be in a lot of trouble?”
“Well, I’d have to say yes. But with the right lawyer, and a sympathetic jury . . . A lot of them will understand the lengths a father might go to, to help his daughter. He might have to go to jail, but maybe not for a long term.”
“Not as long as me.”
Wedmore smiled. “You might be right about that.”
Melissa even managed a smile herself. “You’re very nice. I’m glad you were the one I got to tell all this to.”
“Me too,” the detective said.
“I just hope you’re right, that they don’t send Dad away to jail for a long time. That wouldn’t be fair. He’s not that old a guy. He’s got a lot of time left.”
Seventeen
Keisha was not calling the police.
It didn’t matter that what she’d done was in self-defense. This was no premeditated murder. Wendell Garfield had tried to kill her, and if she hadn’t put that knitting needle into his brain, he’d have succeeded.
She knew that if she did go to the police, she might even be able to make a pretty good case for herself. She’d start by telling them that Garfield had murdered his wife. He’d put her body in a car and left it on a frozen lake and waited for it to drop through the ice. Then he’d tried to kill Keisha when she’d figured out what he’d done.
Well, sort of figured it out. She’d be the first to admit she’d got a bit lucky with the vision thing, although lucky didn’t exactly seem like the right word in this instance.
And while she hadn’t yet looked in a mirror, she knew from touching her neck that there were some very serious marks where Garfield had tightened that sash. If her story didn’t entirely convince the police, surely those marks across her throat would.
So, maybe, if she went to the cops, they’d buy her story.