Garden of Evil (17 page)

“Let's just take a walk,” she muttered. My knees shook as she steered me away from the car, then stopped near a parked Monte Carlo, white with a blue vinyl top. Slightly taller than I am, she stood about five six, with a strong, tight-looking body that did not appear muscular but had no visible body fat.

“Okay,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “No tellin' how wired your car is for sound. We're changin' vee-hicles. We can do this easy, or do it hard. Behave, and you kin ride up front with me. Or you kin ride in the trunk. Your choice.”

I felt a rush of fear at being locked in the trunk. “I want to ride with you, up front.”

“Well, you just remember that, sweetie. Let's move.” She shoved me into the driver's side ahead of her.

“Get in, get in! Stop wastin' time. Move over!” she snapped. “No talkin' till I tell you to. I need a little peace and quiet.”

As she turned the key in the ignition, I thought I heard a chopper in the distance but couldn't be certain.

She pulled out of the parking lot onto a residential street. I noted the time on the dashboard clock. Unbelievable. Less than five minutes had elapsed since the bumper thumper in traffic.

I had been told not to get into a car with her, but nobody had mentioned what to do if I found myself in that position. I decided not to stay. When a traffic light bloomed red up ahead, I tensed, ready to jump out and
run when she stopped. Would she chase me? Shoot me in front of witnesses? Based on all I knew, all I had seen, yes. I decided to wait for the professionals.

They were on our tail. They would be here momentarily. We continued south, but at the Palmetto Expressway she entered a north-bound lane. She unpinned her ponytail and shook out her hair. Longer than I had realized, it was chestnut brown and lustrous. I watched for the chopper, squinted ahead for the roadblock, expecting sirens. Without my shades, the blazing afternoon sun made my eyes tear.

She picked up the Dolphin Expressway, proceeded east through heavy traffic, then north on Interstate 95. A Miami-Dade police cruiser passed us in the fast lane. A K-9 officer, with his four-footed partner in back, he never gave us a glance.

At the Golden Glades interchange she continued north on 95, into Broward County. She switched on the radio, a country-and-western station. I wanted to change it but thought better of it as she hummed along with the music.

What was McDonald thinking now? He was right. How could I be so stupid as to open the window and hand over my cell phone? Would a policewoman make the same mistake? Was it my fault the kid was dead? They had to stop us soon, or I would not make it back to the paper by seven. How would I write for the final? Mark Seybold was right. Plans do go wrong. Another man was dead, and here I sat like a jerk, waiting to be rescued.

Eyes tearing, I fingered the bruise on my cheekbone where my glasses had been knocked off.

“What's the matter, Britt? Nothin' to boo-hoo about, just a little bitch slap, that's all.”

“It's the glare,” I said. “I lost my sunglasses back there.”

“Well, honey”—she shook her head in exasperation—“whose fault is that now?”

I wanted a
SWAT
sniper to shoot her right where she
sat, then prayed that, if we were in their sights, they knew which one to aim at.

Not until we crossed into Palm Beach County, sixty miles out of Miami, still headed north, did I admit to myself that nobody was coming. No police chopper was tracking us.
SWAT
did not have us in their gunsights. They had no clue.

H
ER DEADLY AND UNPREDICTABLE VIOLENCE TERRIFIED
me, but she was eager to tell her story, I reasoned; that was why we were here. Dead reporters don't write. If she did harm me, what other journalist would listen to her? Seated beside me, humming along with a soulful country ballad on the radio, was the story of the year—perhaps of my life.

I felt a thrill of fear, along with something more powerful. She might have me, but I had her—all to myself. I had met murderers and interviewed killers, behind bars. They manipulate, color, and tamper with the truth for their own scheming self-serving reasons. There is a difference between observing a wild beast confined to a cage and one still roaming free in its natural habitat. This could be my access to the candid confession of an unrepentant serial killer willing to expose the dark side of her own sick soul—a journalist's dream.

Urban landscape gave way to rural Hobe Sound. At Palm City, south of Stuart, she took the Sunshine Turnpike, two high-speed lanes through farm and cattle land.

As the sun set, blood red over the Everglades, she reached beneath the seat and came up with a brown paper bag. She twisted off the top, took a swallow from the
bottle inside, and exhaled deeply, a satisfied sound. “Tequila,” she said, voice husky. “Needed that, for my nerves.” She offered the bottle.

“No, thanks,” I said.

She looked offended.

Show no fear, I told myself. Never behave like a victim. “One of us has to stay sober,” I said. “I'll be the designated driver.”

She laughed, a warm, infectious sound. She took another swig, air conditioner blasting, country music still playing, the spirited fiddles beginning to grate on my nerves. “Okay, wha'chu want to know?”

“Your name first. What do I call you?”

The bottle wedged between her thighs, she fumbled on the floorboard, retrieved my notebook, and tossed it to me with my pen. We were driving through citrus groves and farmlands in St. Lucie County.

“Keppie,” she said, and spelled it out.

Tex had nearly remembered it.

“What else?”

“Everything,” I said. “From the beginning, your earliest recollections. It all contributes to who you are today.”

Taking another drink from the bottle, she inhaled deeply. “Unlike most people you meet here, I was bom in Florida. Upstate. Lived here all my life.”

“Me too,” I said.

“I think being deprived caused a crisis 'tween my physical and my mental self. That contributes to who I am today. Yeah.” She grinned wickedly and cut her eyes at me. “I'm deprived of somethin'. Maybe it's sex with my father. He didn't live long enough for that. I kin hardly remember him.”

“Me too,” I said again. Dr. Schlatter was right. “My father was killed when I was three.”

“Git outa here! Who killed him? Was he a son of a bitch?”

“No. But Fidel Castro thought so. He had him executed by a firing squad.”

“Man! See, I knew we had lots in common.” She punched the accelerator, looking pleased as she swung around a dawdling motorist. “Not that Feedel had anythin' to do with it in my case. Okay, now you answer me one.” Her voice dropped to a salacious whisper. “How was Lance Westfell in the sack? As good horizontal as he looks standing up?”

This interview would be too long if she got to ask a question every time I did.

“He's good,” I said.

She took her eyes off the road, expression expectant.

“Well,” I said slowly, “not as good as you might expect from seeing his movies, where he's thirty feet tall on the screen and everything is all—well, bigger. He's just a man,” I said. “A nice one. Now, how many men have you killed, and why?”

“Jesus Christ, lemme see.” Smiling to herself, she cocked her head and appeared to be thinking, like a prom queen asked to list her dance partners.

“You mean there are others, more than the seven—eight, counting today?” That possibility stunned me. Would I need another box of red pushpins? I wondered if anybody back at the office had plugged one in at the exit ramp off I-95 at SW Sixteenth Street.

“Oh, sure. I've never been real good at numbers,” she said casually. “We can git into that later.
Why
is somethin' else again.” She frowned, voice cold. “None of 'em were man enough to turn me on. Buncha pigs and cheaters, just scum. They deserved what they got.”

“But that kid today, you didn't even know—”

“Him? Well, he just got in the way. It was his turn, that's all. When it's your turn, God taps you on the shoulder.”

“God didn't tap him on the shoulder,” I said quietly. “You put a bullet in his head.”

“You here to argue with me, girl, or to write down what I tell you? I mean, you heard that music! I shot 'em in the brain—that thing they think with. Write that down!” Her glance was meaningful, eyebrow arched, lip curled. “And I ain't talkin' 'bout them head shots either. I been shootin' since I'm nine. Started out with a little bitty rifle my daddy bought me.”

“I thought you didn't remember your father.”

“The daddy that raised me,” she snapped impatiently. “There you go again. Damn!”

We passed a sign:
NEXT REST STOP, GAS, FOOD, 7 MILES.

“Can we stop?” I asked, unable to ignore nature any longer. “I need to use the rest room. Too much coffee.”

She pulled to the side, the car up close to the guard rail.

“Here? I meant the rest stop.”

“We don't need gas yet,” she said. Headlights pierced the soft twilight in both directions.

“But where—?”

“Come on.” She got out, trotted around to my side, and unlocked it with the key. “The car door will give you some privacy. Come on!” she urged impatiently. “Drop your jeans and do it. Nobody's watchin'.”

Nobody but her and a few dozen passing motorists.

She laughed and waved back when a high-riding trucker hit his air horn.

 

“I think it's somethin' I was bom with, or developed when I was real little,” she said, when we were back on the road. “I always had the feelin'.”

“What feeling?”

“Like, you know, when it's gonna happen.”

Her voice almost dreamy, she slowed down and dropped back behind a battered old landscaping truck.

“You wanna know what it's really like? Unless it was something that had to happen, like today, I kin always tell when it's coming on.” It was dark now, and I couldn't see her eyes in the dim light from the dash. “I can tell,
it's—it's like colors are brighter”—she shifted sensuously in her seat—“and my skin feels more sensitive. Things start happenin' in slow motion, like being underwater. It's a real high when I do it—but when I come down, I feel bad: you know, depressed.”

“Remorseful? Sorry that you did it?”

“Hell, no!” she said emphatically. Waves of light from somebody's high beams washed over her profile. “Just empty, sorry the high didn't last longer.”

She glanced at me.

“Ahhh, for Christ's sake,” she said, “what I do ain't all that bad. It ain't like there's a shortage of men or nothin'. I mean, shootin' people is just—it's kind of a thrill, I guess. I like bein' in control.” She sipped from the bottle again. “I guess maybe I was bom that way, just a little different.”

“They say the average brain contains a hundred billion cells with a quadrillion connections,” I said, wondering if she was already contemplating an insanity defense. “It's hard to say exactly where something goes wrong.”

“So it's probably something I was bom with.” She nodded, her tone sober.

“But they might be able to tell,” I said. “They do a lot now with MRIs—those imaging machines that scan the brain. Rosemary, our medical writer, did a story recently where doctors used it to actually see schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder—you know, the people who are always washing their hands.”

“I don't do that,” she said quickly.

“No, you have other quirks.”

She laughed easily, shrugging her hair back over her shoulder. “I ain't crazy, that's for damn sure. I may have some problems, maybe from drinkin', been doing that since I'm eleven. But I ain't crazy.” She brought the bottle to her lips again, then replaced the cap, licking her lips. “You know who was crazy? That goddamn cop today, runnin' down the ramp wavin' that shotgun. That's a good
way to get that shotgun crammed up his butt and the handle kicked off. I coulda taken him out just like that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “Even with his bulletproof vest. I'm s'prised they didn't give you one.”

I shrugged. Thank God, I thought, that no cop was shot. “So you weren't scared to see them?”

“Cops? I tol' you before, they can't shoot worth a damn. I don't worry about a police bullet with my name on it, it's the one outa nowhere, the one that says
To whom it may concern,
that's the one that worries me….

“Hungry?” She squinted in the rearview. “I'm thinkin' to stop, git us some chicken from the colonel, and find us a place to stay the night.”

“I thought you were going to drop me off somewhere,” I said, edgy. The drive back to Miami would take hours. It was already late. Maybe the cops or the paper could arrange a flight. “I've got to get back.”

She did a double take. “Thought you wanted the story. We ain't hardly begun. 'Sides, it ain't bad havin' company on the road. Believe it not, it gits lonely out here sometimes. You kin go home tomorrow.”

My heart sank.

She left the turnpike at Yeehaw Junction. I remembered one of the FBI tips compiled for executives who travel in countries where ransom is a main source of revenue. If offered a choice of menus, ask your abductors for fried chicken and French fries. Your greasy fingerprints may help investigators build a case later.

“Don't you try pullin' anythin' or givin' anybody any high signs,” she warned at the drive-through. “I am damn irritable when I'm hungry. Hate like hell to shoot people before I eat. But I'll do it, no bout adoubt it.” She grinned.

Her voice dripped honey as she ordered a barrel of extra crispy, cole slaw, fries with extra catsup, and Cokes to go, paying cash from what appeared to be my wallet. “Now,” she said, as we rolled out onto the main drag. “I recollect
a darlin' little place right up here somewheres. Nothin' fancy. Just a place to sleep.”

 

The Sunshine Motel, a semicircle of tiny green-painted cottages, was surrounded by orange groves. The sign boasted
COLOR TV IN EVERY ROOM.

I had wanted a vacation from the word factory, but this was not what I had in mind.

“Now be a good ol' girl.” She stopped in front of the office. “We're gonna register. 'Member, I got the gun and ain't too shy to use it. Don't do nothin' stupid.”

The sweltering night was alive with sounds, frogs and crickets. She had to sleep sometime, I thought. Nothing stopped me from walking out after she drank enough tequila. No point endangering anybody now.

“We're plumb tuckered out,” she told the elderly night manager, adding that we were vacationers from Naples. “Need to git us some shut-eye. Ya got somethin' away from the others? We don't wanna git a lotta noise.”

He barely glanced at us, took the money, and handed her a key. Our cabin smelled musty. But the chicken smelled good. I hadn't realized I was hungry.

The small room had twin beds, a nightstand, a dresser, two chairs, a small closet, and a tiny bath. Keppie tinkered with the aging room air conditioner, coaxing it to full blast, while I unpacked the food on the dresser top, laid out the napkins, and opened the Cokes.

“Now Britt, I hate to have to do this to you…”

Her words struck fear into my heart.

“…but till I can trust you”—she took a set of handcuffs out of the duffel bag she had brought in from the trunk of the car—“you're gonna have to wear these.”

“You can trust me,” I protested. Where was the gun? I wondered. I wasn't sure. She stood between me and the locked door. “You don't—”

“I'm sure I can,” she said sweetly, the metal bracelets
clinking as she approached, “but it's just the way things are till you prove yourself.”

“How will I eat?”

“You'll manage,” she said comfortingly.

“Where'd you get these?” I asked, as she snapped one around my left wrist. They looked like police issue.

She brightened. “A date I had didn't need 'em anymore.” Chortling, she clicked the other side around the armrest of a bulky vinyl chair. “Now sit down and eat,” she said, as though I were a child. “It's almost time for the news.”

“The sheriff,” I said, stomach tightening. “Buddy Brascom. Were these his?”

“Maybe so.” She turned on the TV and perched on the edge of the only other chair, which she had dragged up close to the screen.

The local news seemed a thousand light-years from Miami, but they keyed to the story—The Kiss-Me Killer Strikes Again in Miami—at the top of the hour and reported it a few minutes into the newscast.

The dead driver was twenty-two, a reformed gang-banger who had become the much-loved counselor of a summer program for underprivileged kids. Why is that always the case, I wondered? Somebody finally gets their act together, then
bam!

“See that, see that? They always do that!” Keppie protested, waving a chicken wing at the screen. “They make 'em out to be heroes! He was an asshole!” she informed the TV news reader.

Footage from a sister affiliate in Miami included aerials of a door-to-door police search in the neighborhood surrounding Shenandoah Junior High. “I knew it, I knew it!” She kicked her bare feet furiously in delight and hammered her fists jubilantly at the air.