And Now She's Gone(39)
What is in that freakin’ bag?
Her curiosity was jonesing to solve this mystery. But then she heard the worst sound in the world. A sound that heralded the beginning of the end as soon as you needed to retrieve something from a trash bin that’s about to be emptied. That’s the sound she heard several blocks behind her—and a glimpse in the Camry’s mirrors confirmed: a blue and white trash truck on its way down the hill.
Kevin Tompkins smiled as the truck slowly made its way down Don Lorenzo Drive.
What the hell did he toss in the bin?
Whatever it was, he needed it gone. And he now stood in front of the entry gate, waiting for it to disappear.
Not yet. The truck had two more stops, and it growled as its metal claw snatched a bin from the curbside.
That Target bag can’t be good. Cuz why is he waiting for that truck?
A gun? A bloody knife? Arsenic? Counterfeit dollar bills?
The security gate opened. Mrs. Tompkins, wearing a pink and purple floral housecoat said, “Kevin, if you ain’t gonna do it—”
“Mom,” he snapped, turning away from the trash truck. “I told you—”
“And I told you,” she said, wagging her finger at him. “It’s broken and I’m missing my show cuz you don’t wanna stop what you doing.”
“Can I get five minutes? Just five minutes?” He glanced back to the truck.
The truck wasn’t moving. The trash guys were shooting the breeze with an old man wearing a one-piece jumpsuit.
“You’re being an asshole right now,” the old lady warned. “Actin’ just like your daddy.”
Kevin Tompkins didn’t move from his spot.
“Boy, don’t make me ask you again.”
“Mom.” He threw another glance in the truck’s direction—the truck was growling again. “Fine.” He stomped back through the gates.
Gray could see the soldier lingering in the walkway.
The truck was now at the end of the block.
Mrs. Tompkins’s front door slammed shut. Kevin had gone inside.
Gray opened the door and slipped out to the curb. She peeked over the trunk of her car.
Kevin and his mother were no longer outside, but it wouldn’t take long for the soldier to fix the television.
Crouching, Gray darted from the Saab to the 4Runner, the Volvo to the Fury. It was hot—ninety degrees already—but the anxious scooting from car to car was the culprit behind her sweaty armpits and the chilled trickles of perspiration down her backbone.
The trash truck was so close that she could smell the old meat, the spilled beer, the rotten diapers. She jammed to the middle bin just as the truck pulled to a stop in front of it.
“Lemme guess,” the trash guy said to her. “Accidentally threw something away?”
Gray flushed. “My daughter threw out a bag that…” She winced as she touched the middle bin’s handle and dug in deep to pluck out the Target bag.
Nauseous, she backed away as the truck’s metal claw grabbed the bin from the curb.
The contents in the Target bag shifted. Papers? Magazines? What could be inside? Whatever it was belonged to her now—that was the law. She didn’t head back to her car, didn’t want Kevin to see her with his trash. Instead, on feet she could no longer feel, she tromped up the block and rounded the corner.
She needed to wash her hands.
She needed to peek into the bag.
Dueling directives kept her mind racing as she happened upon a pocket park, one of those swatches of green frequented by seniors doing tai chi and new moms blowing bubbles at their gurgling babies. And those things were happening now, as Gray slid onto a bench. She took a deep breath and opened the bag.
On first glance, she saw nothing special. In context, Kevin had guarded this bag as though it had been the last black market kidney in a world filled with deathbed diabetics.
A closer look: two pairs of silk panties, a tube of lavender and eucalyptus lotion, a black hair scrunchie. There also were crumpled papers that had been torn from a spiral-bound notebook and filled with words written in blue ink.
You are beautiful and you have a beautiful spirit. I love you. That sounds creepy coming from someone you barely know but I can’t stop thinking
Thinking what? The author hadn’t finished the sentence or the sentiment.
The second note, this one in green ink, read:
Isabel why haven’t you responded to my letters?????
The third note, block print, black ink:
DEAR ISABELLE, TIME IS RUNNING OUT. YOUR SILENCE BRINGS ME SO MUCH PAIN. I WILL DIE FOR YOU. THESE ARE NOT IDLE WORDS. IF YOU KEEP IGNORING ME I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WILL DO TO YOU OR TO ME.
YOURS TRULY,
K.
Gray’s hands were shaking, and she’d stopped breathing. And now the sun was too bright, and now the new mothers were ghosts and the slow-moving seniors were wisps of moving air.
Was Kevin Tompkins stalking Isabel?
Were these silk panties hers?
More important than that, how had he left Isabel when he last saw her?
Germy and weak-kneed, she tromped back to Don Lorenzo Drive.
Kevin Tompkins’s Honda SUV was gone—he had probably left thinking that his cache of scary shit was now on its way to a landfill, gone forever.
He didn’t know, though.
A ghost had found his cache of scary shit and his problems were only beginning.