“How about some garlic cheese grits?” Mia called. “That’ll put some meat back on your bones.”
“I’ll give the oatmeal a shot, if you put brown sugar in it.”
With a groan I rolled out of bed, stretched, then went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the shower.
Keisha Harvin had fallen in love with Caitlin Masters’s house the first night she stayed in it, and in the months since, she’d only grown to love it more. A three-story Victorian on Washington Street, directly across from the mayor’s house, it was the kind of place Keisha might never be able to afford on her own. Every morning she awakened in the cavernous house, she smiled, then rose and padded like a princess across the hardwood floor and down the stairs to the gleaming kitchen, feeling all the while as though she were acting in a movie.
Sabrina, she thought sometimes. I’m the black Audrey Hepburn.
And yet . . . Keisha never could get quite comfortable in the house. Wherever she walked, she felt Caitlin’s unquiet ghost hovering nearby. Keisha had no sense of any malevolent spirit, only one that hated to let go of the world of light and life. Keisha told herself that since she devoted almost every waking hour to completing Caitlin’s work on the Double Eagle cases, Caitlin’s ghost would forgive a sister for trespassing in her home.
This morning Keisha had meant to get to work early. She’d set an early alarm, but for some reason she slept through it. Whenever that happened, she always felt as though some cosmic force were trying to sabotage her plans. She’d skipped her shower to make up time, and now she stood hunched at the back door, fumbling with her keys, trying to cram the flat metal into the lock while her backpack and purse dragged her right shoulder earthward and threatened to upend the jellied toast balanced in her left hand. Stuffing the toast into her mouth, she finally slid the key into the lock, turned it, then yanked it out and trotted awkwardly toward her Prius, which was parked in the narrow driveway beside the house.
Keisha thanked God for her keyless remote, which she clicked with an immense sense of relief. As she tossed her purse across the driver’s seat, someone called to her from her front yard. Keisha forced a smile as she turned, expecting her elderly neighbor—who was always watering his flowers—or even maybe Penn’s daughter, Annie. What she saw instead was an old white woman wearing a leather jacket and holding a McDonald’s cup in her hand.
“Can I help you?” Keisha asked.
“I hope so,” said the woman, who had stringy gray hair and a harsh edge to her voice. “Here’s a present for you, pretty girl!”
Then she threw the contents of her cup in Keisha’s face.
The shock of the liquid hitting her skin and eyes made Keisha gasp and drop her backpack. She shook her head like a dog trying to dry itself, then held up her hands in case the woman meant to physically attack her.
No attack came.
Keisha didn’t realize her eyes were closed until she heard laughter, and some part of her brain registered that the laughter was receding.
The woman was retreating, thank Jesus.
“Goddamn,” Keisha sputtered, pulling the tail of her blouse from her jeans and using it to wipe her face and eyelids. “Crazy bitch.”
As she wiped, her eyes began to burn.
She blinked several times, then tilted her head back, but this did nothing to relieve the burning, which seemed to be worsening.
Shit, she thought as the pain rapidly grew intolerable.
Keisha gasped, then cried out and wiped harder. The pain kept ratcheting up the scale. Then she realized her face was burning as well.
Panic detonated in her chest, robbing her of breath and judgment. By the time she thought of her garden hose, she could barely see. Stumbling across the St. Augustine grass, Keisha began to scream.
“What’s that?” Annie asked sharply.
I stopped with a spoonful of oatmeal nearly to my open mouth. “What?”
Mia froze halfway to her feet. “Somebody screamed.”
When the second scream came, Mia bolted from the kitchen, Annie on her heels.
“Wait!” I yelled. “Damn it! Tim’s not out there! He’s in the bathroom! Wait!”
By the time I got outside with my pistol, I saw Annie and Mia racing across the street toward Caitlin’s house. In the front yard, Keisha Harvin was stumbling around like Patty Duke playing Helen Keller. At first I thought it was some kind of prank, so clumsy and strange did Keisha look, but with the next scream I recognized genuine pain and horror.
Scanning the street for threats, I leaped down the steps and sprinted across the pavement, praying Tim wasn’t far behind. Mia was trying to question Keisha, but the reporter only sobbed and babbled unintelligibly. I knew only one thing: Keisha was in terrible pain, and her face and eyes seemed to be the source of it.
“This is Penn, Keisha! What happened?”
She screeched for a couple of seconds, then said, “She threw Coke in my face!”
“Who threw a Coke in your face?”
“White lady!”
Looking closer, I saw that Keisha’s blouse was wet, as was the skin of her upper chest. As I noted this, my gaze locked onto the skin itself, which did not look right at all. Something corrosive had gotten at it—
“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Mia! Did you touch her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Go rinse your hands with the hose.”
“Make it stop!” Keisha screams. “It’s burning!”
“Annie, did you touch her?”
“No! Daddy, what’s the matter with her?”
“Run home and call 911! Then get me the rubber gloves out of the washroom.”
Annie stared transfixed at Keisha’s pouring eyes.
“Annie, right now! We need an ambulance and police!”
“I’m going!” she cried, sprinting back toward the house.
“I can’t see!” Keisha wailed. “All I can see is light. What did she do to me?”
“Breathe, Keisha,” I said in a level voice, fighting the urge to take hold of her and comfort her. “Stop talking, just breathe. I want you to sit down where you are. I’m going to get the garden hose. Do you hear me?”
Her fingers found her reddening cheeks. “Oh no—my face . . .”
“Sit down, right here. Or better yet, lie on your back.”
“On the ground?”
“Yes. Mia, bring the hose!”
A sprinter in high school, Mia covered the distance to me in three seconds and clapped the hose into my hand. Keisha was still sobbing, but I figured the tears were good for her eyes.
“Keisha, I’m going to rinse your face, your eyes, everything. I need you to help me by staying calm. There’s going to be water in your face—a lot of it—but just keep breathing through your mouth. We’re going to rinse your skin until the ambulance gets here. Even under your eyelids.”
“Hurry, hurry—”
I turned the thick, clear stream of water on her face and brought the hose to within three inches of her skin. In the sluicing torrent I could see the beginnings of some sort of deep burn, but with her dark skin it was hard to tell how bad it was.