If I Live

  I can’t believe this. When in history have the wheels of justice moved this fast? I get in my car and try to figure out what Keegan will do. Will he head back toward Shreveport in the rental car? Go back to the airport and put her in his plane? Then I realize that he won’t do either because he doesn’t intend to transport her to Shreveport.

  She’ll miraculously “vanish,” and he will skate.

  I’m a failure, but I try anyway, pulling out of the parking lot and heading right and trying to catch up to any car that looks like his rental. But this is useless. I have failed Casey and it might cost her her life.

  When I don’t find Keegan’s Tahoe, I decide on another course. I pull over and Google “Billy Barbero Memphis Attorney.” An address and phone number come up, and I click on the number to place the call, hoping he’ll answer even though it’s night.

  “Yello.”

  I’m surprised to hear that greeting. “Is this Mr. Barbero?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Dylan Roberts.” I know I’m speaking too fast, so I try to slow down. “I understand you’re the attorney for Casey Cox.”

  There’s a long pause. “For who?”

  “Casey Cox. She’s been all over the news. You’re Billy Barbero the attorney, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “And I know who she is, but I never met the woman. You say she named me as her lawyer?”

  “That’s right.” I’m confused. How would Casey have known him? Maybe he has a billboard or commercial. Or maybe he was the first listing in the phone book. “Mr. Barbero, what kind of law do you practice?”

  “Mainly I represent disabled people, but I consider myself a full-service attorney. If she named me, I’ll be glad to defend her.”

  “Full service?” I ask. “So you aren’t a criminal attorney?”

  “Does she need a lawyer or not? Just tell me where she is.”

  I feel like an idiot for even talking to this man. But he’s the only option I have. “I need you to listen carefully. Casey Cox has been placed in the custody of a Detective Gordon Keegan of the Shreveport PD. She claims he is the real killer of Brent Pace, among others. I need for you to call Chief Gates of the Shreveport PD and throw around as much weight as you can to stop her transport. I have evidence that Keegan is guilty and plans to kill her.”

  “I’m listening,” he says.

  “She doesn’t have much time. Don’t tell him you’re not a criminal attorney.”

  “I’ll call right now.”

  “Threaten to call a press conference. Threaten to smear the entire police force.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m pretty good at intimidation.” He chuckles. “Casey Cox, huh?”

  I roll my eyes. “Move heaven and earth, and call me back at this number.”

  When I hang up, I pull over and beg God to intervene for Casey. But I wonder if my faith is too flimsy these days to move the mountain of Gordon Keegan.

  29

  CASEY

  The very presence of Gordon Keegan makes me feel a swirl of nausea, and I can’t seem to control the images of my father and Brent that keep strobing through my mind, as if my brain is cycling in and out of a dream.

  But it’s not a dream. I’m awake, and I can smell Keegan— the sweat scent mixed with too much aftershave—and I can hear him humming some song I don’t know under his breath.

  I lean my head back on the tan leather of his back seat, my hands bound with a plastic tie on my lap. I work them as I sit there, trying to wiggle my hands out, but he’s pulled it too tight. He isn’t driving toward the interstate; he has no intention of taking me to Shreveport. And he doesn’t care about tainting the case that will go before the court. He doesn’t intend for me to get that far.

  He stops humming and looks at me in his rearview mirror. “You know, darlin’, I don’t like it when people file false reports about me. Did you think you were gonna turn the entire Memphis PD against me? Think again, sweetheart.”

  “I told the truth,” I say. “That you’re a bloodthirsty murderer.”

  He laughs with giddy delight. “And nobody’ll believe a word you say.”

  Blood on my living room wall . . . my screams ripping from my chest . . . my cries for Daddy . . .

  I close my eyes and will them to see what’s in front of me now. Keegan’s face is lit up under oncoming headlights. “You really are a psychopath, aren’t you?” I ask. “What happened to you? Were you abused or tortured or abandoned?”

  He laughs again, with his bone-chilling cackle. “If that’s the story you want to tell yourself.”

  “Why did you kill Rollins?” I ask. “Was he balking at all the murders you’d asked him to commit? Was he threatening to go to the police? Drinking too much?” Of course he’s not going to admit to anything, but I have to say it anyway.

  Dad’s body swaying, his head oddly twisted in the makeshift noose, the fan creaking as though it will pull from the ceiling . . . the smell of death and terror . . . blood on the walls . . . on his hands . . . signs of a struggle . . .

  Sweat drips into my eyes now. My hair is wet and my heart is slamming. I know I’m losing it.

  I speak again to hear my own voice. “When you killed my dad, was that quick? Or did you torture him? I know he fought back. I saw the blood. A person who hangs himself wouldn’t have blood like he’d been in a fight for his life. You killed him because he was going to expose you.”

  His smile fades and his teeth glisten against the headlights coming toward us. “I watched him strangle to death.” He looks at me in the mirror again, gauging my reaction. “Does that make you feel better?”

  I think of lunging forward and looping my hands over his head, cutting my plastic tie into his throat by sheer strength, my teeth sinking into his jugular. I could kill him in cold blood now, watch his life bleed away. If I have to live the rest of my life knowing I really am a killer, I’d be okay with that. I could rest knowing that he is off this earth.

  But then I second-guess my strength, the tightness of my wrist tie, my ability to sink a deep enough bite before he fights back.

  “What about Brent?” I ask. “Did you stay until he was dead?”

  He seems delighted that he has the chance to boast about his brilliance. “I knew he called you,” he says. “I knew you were coming on your lunch hour.”

  My brain takes me back to that moment when I turned the knob and pushed inside to call out Brent’s name, and found him on the floor . . . My brain flashes back and forth, from Brent’s death scene to me here in Keegan’s car . . . then back again. I try to stay here, present.

  “You didn’t know he sent me a thumb drive, did you, before he even called me, just in case something happened to him. I actually got it. I’m not the only one who’s seen it.”

  I see the grin fade from his eyes now, so I keep going. “It was probably out in the mailbox when you murdered him, and you didn’t even know it. The mailman picked it up and sent it. You dropped the ball on that one.”

  Now I see a flicker of worry in his eyes, and he looks back at me over the seat. “Nice try, but there’s no way you would’ve gotten any of your mail.”

  I smile now, because I did get it, but I can’t tell him that my landlord gave it to my sister and my sister got it to me. I just go quiet, letting him wonder. Finally, when I speak again, I say, “The press is going to really enjoy getting all that the moment anything happens to me. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  He thinks that through for a moment and sees the holes in it. “They won’t know whether anything happened to you. You go missing all the time. That’s what’s gonna happen again tonight.”

  He turns onto a dark dirt road, into a wooded area. I want to ask him where he’s taking me, but I know the answer. He’s taking me to my death. “If I disappear after what I told the police, they’re going to know it’s you. They’ll dig into it and they won’t let it go.”

  He laughs again. “Not if I tell th
em you got away, call a BOLO, tell them you’re still on the run out there, and you’re armed and dangerous. Oh, and there might be another body I set up with your possessions at the scene. I have your personal effects right here, sweetie. It’ll just add to your body count.”

  I meet his eyes in the mirror. “I’ve never been armed,” I say. “But I am dangerous. Even dead. The wheels are in motion to release it all to the press. You didn’t think I would go without a safety net, did you?”

  His grin fades, and he looks away. He slows at another dirt road and turns into it, lights it up with his headlights and sees a gate that’s locked there. He’s trying to find a place where he can murder me. At least I know he doesn’t have a shovel in this rental vehicle. He probably hasn’t chosen a place yet—he’s figuring this out as he goes. Maybe that can play in my favor.

  Trying to stall, I bite my cheek until it bleeds, then I lift my hands together and get the blood on my fingertips. I wipe some on my face so he can see it. “I’m bleeding,” I say.

  Of course he doesn’t care . . . yet.

  “It’s going to upset your apple cart. If there’s blood evidence in this car, they’ll seriously doubt your story that I escaped.”

  He looks back at me and sees the blood I’m wiping on the seat, and I’m pretty sure his face is a whiter shade of pale. He curses and swerves.

  I bite my cheek again, ignoring the pain, the metallic taste spreading on my tongue. I wipe more of it on the seat and the door, then I spit it to spatter it farther.

  He speeds up now, muttering profanity, and I can see the homicidal intentions glistening in his eyes, but I may have bought myself a little time. He doesn’t quite know what to do.

  “They’ll know there was at least a struggle. Some of them will wonder if you killed me.”

  He gives up on the dirt road he’s on, shifts into reverse, slams on the accelerator, and screeches back up the road again. He turns and drives back the way we came, his lights on bright, looking for another dirt road that he can turn into.

  That’s when I know I have no choice. I have to fulfill the story he was going to tell about me anyway. I have to escape. I try the door handle, but he has the child lock on.

  He’s probably going forty miles an hour now as he tries to find a place to turn, but somehow I have to get out of this car. If I can get him to roll my window down, he’ll have to unlatch the child lock. “I’m going to throw up,” I say.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I’ve never made myself throw up before, but I jab my fingers down my throat until I gag, and then jab a little harder, making myself heave. The ham sandwich comes up.

  He curses again, growling that I’m leaving more evidence, and he rolls my window down.

  The lock is now disengaged. I throw open the door and fling myself out. I hit the ground wrists first, slide painfully across the dirt, and roll down an embankment. I scramble to my feet and run faster than I knew I could until I’m in the trees, bushes scraping my skin, and then I go deeper, downhill into the woods.

  I stop to catch my breath, wincing at the pain in my wrists and knees, and look back to see if I can tell where he is. His car has stopped and the interior dome light is on. He left his door open and came after me. I see the beam of his flashlight moving the wrong way . . . away from me. The orchestra of the forest muffles my breaths. I stay still as that beam moves in the opposite direction.

  I look at the car, my backseat door and his driver’s door still open. My personal effects are in there on his front seat. If I could just get up there I could get my phone.

  I wait until he’s far enough away, then I limp as quietly as I can back up the hill to the car, go around it and lean in on his side. I glance through the windshield. The beam is still moving in the woods. My wrist is swollen as I reach in and look for the keys, but he took them with him. The paper sack of my personal effects is sitting on his passenger seat with a label on it that has my name. I grab it, open it, and see my phone and purse. Wadding the top, I tuck the bag under my arm and cross the road and go deep into the woods on the opposite side. After several minutes of running, I look back toward the road. Through the trees I see glimpses of light and assume he’s moving back toward his car. I hear the doors close, and the car begins to move, his headlights on bright.

  He’s searching for me, desperate. I hunker down as the light passes. He goes a couple of miles up the road and makes a U-turn and comes back, looking again. I try to think like he’s thinking. He could call for backup, get the police to swarm out here looking for me, but how would he explain being so far off the path to Shreveport? How would he explain taking me to a remote place nowhere near the interstate? The blood on my seat?

  No, I don’t think he can take that chance. He’s going to have to go with his original story even though this time, parts of it will be true. He’ll have to claim it happened somewhere else, along the way to where he should have been going.

  Yes, he’s desperate, and he isn’t going to give up easily. I got away from him. I’m not lying in a grave somewhere with my personal effects. I really am out here like a ticking bomb.

  I wait him out for at least two hours before he finally gives up and leaves. I know he’s probably not really gone, and then I see his car coming back up the road, the headlights off this time. I cut behind a tree again, afraid he has some kind of technology I don’t know about. Infrared glasses, maybe.

  But after another hour of searching, he finally disappears and doesn’t come back. I walk up that dirt road—limping on a knee that has swollen to the size of a melon—until I see lights shining on the other side of the trees. It’s a convenience store with gas pumps. I wipe the blood off my face onto my sleeve, tuck my bound hands under my shirt, and walk in fast until I get to the bathroom.

  When I’m locked in the ladies’ room in the bright lights, I dump my personal effects out of the bag and find some nail clippers. I bend my swollen wrists until I leverage the clippers just right, and I cut the plastic tie and free myself. Then I wash the blood and vomit off my face and hands and clothes. I finger-brush the leaves out of my hair. Then gathering up all my things and putting them back into my purse, I head out. I check my cell phone for bars and a charge. Please, God.

  The battery is at 10 percent and there’s one bar out here, but it might be enough. I click on Dylan’s number. He answers after the first ring, and I’m so grateful I almost can’t get the words out. “Dylan, it’s me!”

  30

  DYLAN

  When I hear her voice I almost run off the road. My eyes sting as gratitude rushes through me. Thank you, God. “Casey, are you all right?”

  “Yes.” I can hear wind rushing into her phone. “I got away.” Her voice bounces as if she’s walking, and she’s out of breath. “My phone’s about to die. I’m walking down Highway 14, behind the buildings. I’m behind a furniture store that’s about half a mile down from a BP station right now. There’s a sign on the gate that says Brainard Furniture. I guess I need to call a taxi but they’ll recognize me.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “You’re here? In Memphis?”

  “Yes! I was trying to beat Keegan here. Where is he?”

  “Looking for me. I left blood in his car. He’s probably trying to clean it before he reports my escape.”

  I turn my car around and follow its GPS. “Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No!” she almost shouts, then she lowers her voice. “I bit my cheek to draw blood. I’m fine. Please hurry. He’s desperate.”

  “Stay on the phone with me. Don’t hang up.”

  “It’s about to die.”

  I see the Highway 14 sign and I turn. “Casey, I’m coming from I-40—are you north or south on Highway 14?”

  She hesitates. “I’m not sure.”

  “Hold on, I’m looking for the furniture store.”

  “It should be about two m—”

  The call cuts out. “Casey?” I’ve lost
her, but I’ve figured out that I’m going the wrong way. I pull over into the left lane and turn around. Then I speed toward her, my eyes scanning the lit buildings for the BP station or the furniture store.

  There it is, up ahead, on the left. I almost hit a car as I speed past it. I see something ahead in the dark.

  There she is. I recognize her frame. She comes running toward me as I pull into the parking lot. I lean over and unlock the door to let her in.

  She slides into the passenger seat and throws her arms around my neck. I kiss her face and realize mine is wet. I don’t want to let go, but I hold her at arm’s length to check her out. Her hands and arms are scraped, and both of her wrists are swollen. Her shoulder is still bandaged and there’s blood dotting the gauze.

  “I’m not dead,” she says. “That’s what matters. We have to get out of this part of town.”

  I turn the car around and drive back into traffic. We’re quiet as I try to decide where I should go. I head back to the interstate, intending to get out of this town. When we’re far enough away for her to feel safe, she seems to wilt.

  “He was taking me . . . to the middle of nowhere . . . and he was going to kill me and leave me there, then stage another murder and leave my personal effects at the scene. He may be setting me up right now.”

  My mind races. Yes, he would do that. Find a random person—anyone—to kill, and then blame her. Something to prove she’s alive, something to make people fear her even more.

  “He’s digging a deeper and deeper hole,” I say.

  “That’s why he’s desperate.” She looks at me. “Where’s your regular phone?”

  “I got rid of it.”

  “You need to get rid of the other one too. I’m afraid they’ll track mine. They may have gotten the number of your burner when they had mine. I got it back because he had it in my personal effects.”

  I take out my phone’s battery and roll my window down, then throw both mine and hers out. “I’ll get new ones tonight.”