Kirk winced. “In the fucking eye?”
“That made him let go of me,” Keisha said, reaching into the shower to turn on the hot and cold taps.
“Wait, what are you saying?” Kirk asked. “You left the guy with this needle sticking out of his head? Did he go to the hospital?”
“He’s dead, Kirk.”
His head snapped back. “What?”
“He’s dead. This is what you have to do. You have to get rid of my clothes. At first
I was thinking, burn them out back, but the cops, I’ve seen those shows, they can find blood on burned-up clothes, I’m sure of it. So you got to take that bag and drive somewhere far away, like go to Darien or Stamford or somewhere and throw that bag into a Dumpster with a thousand other bags, just someplace where no one is ever going to find it, you got that?”
“You killed this guy?”
“Are you listening?”
She stuck her hand in the water to test the temperature. She turned up the hot tap. She was going to burn this blood off her.
“Yeah, okay, I’m listening.”
“Once you get rid of the bag, you’re going to have to wipe down the car. Like the door handles, the seat. They’re vinyl, so anything on them you should be able to get off.”
Kirk was stupefied, shaking his head, still clutching the bag in his hand.
“Kirk, are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”
“You understand what you have to do?”
“Get rid of your clothes, wash the car.”
“Not just wash it. You’ve got to go all over it. Like you were getting ready to sell it. Like you were cleaning your truck.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Shit, and my purse, too. Go get my purse.”
Keisha could hear his footsteps on the newsprint. She called out to him: “If you walk on the paper, you’re going to get blood on your shoes!”
“Oh, yeah.” A pause. “They look okay!”
He returned with her purse, smeared with Wendell Garfield’s blood. She took it from him and said, “Put all the newspapers into the bag.” He gave her a look that suggested he was tired of taking orders, but went.
She dumped the contents of the purse onto the floor. It had been on the floor by the chair she’d been sitting in at the Garfield house. When she’d thrust that needle over her shoulder and caught Wendell Garfield’s eye, blood had sprayed everywhere, some of it landing in the open purse. Tissues, her wallet, lipstick, chewing gum, a small container of Tylenol—almost everything had some small trace of it.
And there was that bloody parrot earring.
She grabbed her wallet, which contained her driver’s license, cards for everything from Social Security to Visa—even a Subway sandwich card—and set it on the counter by the sink. She saw Garfield’s cash tucked into the small pouch, ran her bloody hand under the tap and fished it out. A few droplets of blood. She’d go through the bills later, see if any of them could be saved. She’d have to throw out the check, of course, with Garfield’s name and signature on it, but not now. She couldn’t trust that Kirk, if he got his hands on it, wouldn’t be dumb enough to try and cash it.
Quickly, before he returned, she tucked the money in the cabinet under the sink, behind some extra rolls of toilet paper.
Kirk returned.
“All this stuff,” she said, pointing to the items on the floor, including the tissues, lipstick and gum, “has to be thrown out.”
Kirk scooped the items off the tile floor, shoved them into the bag. “I think that’s everything.”
“I dropped my keys by the door. You’re going to have to rinse those off.”
“Yeah.” His eyes held hers. “So, just what kind of shit you getting me into here, babe? Am I, like, covering up a murder?”
“He was going to kill me if I didn’t kill him.”
“Well, I guess then, it’s cool.” He certainly wasn’t inclined to call the police. If they came and arrested Keisha, what would happen to him? Would he have to look after her kid? Would he have to go live someplace if she lost her house? If she got taken away and wasn’t making any money, how was he going to live? How would he pay for improvements to his truck?
No, turning her in was not an option.
“Kirk, you can do this, right?” she asked. “You can get rid of that bag?”
He gave her a smile, but his eyes looked dull. “Hey, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, right?”
Keisha didn’t like the sound of that, but right now, Kirk was all she had. She needed him to do these things for her, and she needed him to do them right now.
He left the bathroom. She listened until she heard him pull the front door closed. As she was about to step under the spray, it hit her, everything that had happened in the last hour, and she took two hurried steps to the toilet, lifted the lid frantically, dropped to her knees and threw up. Three good heaves.
She unrolled a couple of feet of toilet paper, dabbed her face, flushed the toilet, and allowed her body to collapse against the cold tiled wall.
I nearly died.