The Kind Worth Killing (17 page)

“You sure? Where's your EpiPen?” I said.

“Bag.” He jabbed frantically at the air with his hand, finger toward where his bag was.

I pulled his bag up from where it was resting on the floor and put it on the foot of the bed. Eric put the container down on my bedroom's bureau and went quickly to the bag, shoving me out of the way. He searched through the zippered pocket where he'd left the pens, then turned toward me, panic in his eyes, and the redness of his skin now rising. One hand was now scratching at his neck. “You didn't bring them?” I asked in a raised, panicky-sounding voice.

“Yes,” he said, and I could barely make out the word. It sounded as though it was coming from a great distance, the shout of a man trapped far underground in a narrow damp cave.

Eric dumped the contents of his suitcase on the bed, then began rapidly searching through them. He sat down, his body held rigidly, his lips pursed as he tried to pull air into his lungs. I began to help him sort through his clothes and toiletries but he grabbed my arm, mimed the action of making a phone call. “You want me to call for help?” I asked.

He nodded. The redness around his neck and throat had puffed out alarmingly, like landmasses on a topographical map. But his face stayed pale, now taking on a bluish tinge. I ran into the adjoining room, picked up the phone, and stood for a moment, just listening to what was happening in the bedroom. I heard another zipper being opened, then a soft thwumping sound. I put the receiver gently back onto its handset, slowly counted to ten, then walked to the doorway, peered toward the bed. Eric was laid out, one hand still at his neck, but he was no longer scratching at it. His hand was just lying there, still. I watched him for long enough to know that he wasn't breathing, then, just to make sure, I waited a minute, then crossed the room and placed two fingers along his throat and felt for a pulse. There was none. I went back to the phone and dialed 999, gave my name and address, told the woman with the chirpy voice on the other end that my boyfriend was in anaphylactic shock.

After making the phone call I moved quickly. I took the few whole cashews from the paper towel in the refrigerator and put some in the chicken korma that was still in Eric's bowl (and still warm from the microwave) and some in the take-out container. Then I flushed the paper towel and washed my hands. In the bedroom, Eric hadn't moved. I slid my hand beneath the mattress and pulled out the plastic Baggie with the two unused EpiPens. Eric's belongings were spread around the room. I wiped my prints off the Baggie with a pair of socks, then pushed the entire thing into one of his running sneakers. It seemed like a place where someone might keep emergency medicine. Eric never would have, but he wouldn't tell anyone that. And he wouldn't tell anyone that I had said the chicken korma didn't have nuts in it. I would tell them that he was drunk, and that he must have just decided to eat the chicken anyway, and I was in the bedroom, and then we couldn't find the EpiPens. I tried to think if there was anything else I needed to do to set the scene. I thought it might look good if I pressed on Eric's chest a few times, just to make it look as though I had tried CPR. Would a coroner be able to tell that sort of thing? I was about to start when the buzzer sounded again.

I ran up the stairs to let the medics in.

Three days later, after Eric's family had been notified, and arrangements had been made to have the body shipped home, the constable who had arrived after the medics that Friday night came to my door to tell me that there would be no inquest.

I was pleased, of course, but surprised. I had read so many English mysteries that I just assumed that any slightly unusual death would result in an inquest, one in which all the evidence would point toward an accidental and tragic death. In a small way, I was disappointed.

“Okay,” I said, making my face look confused. “What does that mean?”

“Just means the coroner deemed the death accidental and doesn't
see the need for further review. It's the right decision, I'd say, although an official inquest might have called into question the Bottle and Glass and that pub challenge of theirs. I might pop over there myself and talk to them about it.” The constable had kind eyes and a mustache that obscured his upper lip. Twice now, I had told him all the relevant facts. How Eric was drunk, and how I had let him know about the nuts in the korma and how he ate it anyway, and then he didn't remember where he kept his medicine.

“Thank you so much,” I said.

“Yeah, I'm thinking I might go round that pub and talk to them some more,” he repeated. He lingered briefly in the doorway, then turned to go. He had told me his name, but I didn't remember it.

My adviser at the Faunce Institute asked me if I'd like to return to America, and I told her that I was fine staying in London. That if there was a memorial service I would probably go back for that, but that, despite the trauma, I was happy in London and happy in the program. It was the truth—I loved my basement flat in Maida Vale, and I loved that Addison, since the incident, was almost never there. I had never thought of myself as a city person, preferring the quiet of Connecticut to the oppressive humanity of New York City, but residential London was different. There was something calming about its long rows of flats, its leafiness, its anonymous, polite bustle. The streets near where I lived were so quiet that birdsong was more common than the sound of humans. I was happy when I heard via e-mail that the Washburns had decided on a private family funeral, and that there would be a larger memorial service planned for sometime in the future. I planned on attending. For one, it would look strange if I didn't, but I also wanted to see if Faith showed up, and if she did, what her reaction to me would be. I still wondered if she had willingly conspired with Eric to cheat on me during the summer, or if she was a fellow victim of his duplicity. It was something I intended to find out.

A month and a half after Eric's death, I took a different route from the Tube station back to my flat and walked past the Bottle and Glass.
It was a cold, dark evening, and the windows of the pub brimmed with soft light and the outlines of after-work drinkers. I had not been in since the day Eric died. I pushed through the doors into the crowded space, filled up with the murmur of low English voices. I ordered a pint of Guinness at the bar and took my glass over to the wall that explained the rules and regulations of the beer challenge. Nothing had changed, and I wondered if the friendly constable had ever popped around to talk with the pub owners about changing the challenge. If he had, they hadn't listened to him. Next to the rules was a large wooden board, filled with embossed name plates, the mostly male names of those who had completed the challenge. I went to the end of the list. Eric Washburn was the second-to-last name. There was also a bulletin board, covered with tacked-on Polaroid photographs. All the snapshots looked the same—pale, bleary-eyed men holding aloft an empty pint glass. I found Eric's picture in the upper-right-hand corner. He held his head slightly back at an angle, and his eyes were bright with what I recognized as pride. He was still a little tan from the summer, and with his head cocked back, his girlish beautiful eyelashes were even more apparent. I thought of taking the photograph for myself but decided against it. It belonged here. A testament.

Finishing my Guinness, I thought that my career as a murderer was over. Not because I had lost the stomach for it, but because there would never be the need. I would never allow anyone to get that close to me again, to hurt me in the way that Eric had. I was a grown woman now. I had survived the vulnerability of childhood, and the danger of first love. There was comfort in knowing that I would never be in either of those positions again, that, from now on, I would be the only person responsible for my own happiness.

I walked back that night to my empty flat, made myself a simple dinner, then settled into my favorite chair to read.

A long, uncomplicated life stretched out before me.

I backed into the foyer, my eyes on the gun in Brad's hand.

“What the fuck?” I said, and glanced at his face. He didn't look well, his normally ruddy complexion gray, and his neck muscles taut. He was wearing a jean jacket with a sheepskin lining and there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead. He seemed drunk.

“Nice place you got here,” he said, and the words came out in a strange rhythm, as though he'd rehearsed them.

“Can I show you around, Brad? Can I get you a drink?”

His brow lowered, as though my words had confused him. “Yeah, a lot nicer than my temporary little shithole, right? This is where a real man lives, right?”

A memory flashed through me. The night that Brad and I were drinking. Me saying something about where Brad lived. A hateful look on his face. And suddenly I knew that Brad was here to kill me, and instead of panicking, I became calm and rational, my mind in overdrive. I knew I could talk him out of this. I knew that I was smarter than he was.

“Seriously, Brad, what are you doing with that gun?”

“What do you think I'm doing?” he said, and raised it so that it was pointed at my head. Everything in the room disappeared except that gun.

“Jesus, Brad, think for a moment.” I stared at the gun, probably the same one I'd seen in Brad's drawer in Kennewick. A double-action revolver. I watched as Brad slid his thumb onto the hammer. Did he not know that he could just pull the trigger? I needed to make a move, either attack or run. I was less than two feet from him, and I found myself lunging forward. The last time I'd been in a fight I was a third grader and I'd lost to a kid named Bruce in the first grade. I simply shoved at Brad as hard as I could, spinning his body so that the gun pointed away from me. He flew backward, his head striking the front door with a loud crack. I thought he might have been knocked out, but he hissed out a word I didn't understand. I turned and ran toward the stairs. As I hit the first step, already thinking about the phone on the first landing, I heard the loud pop of Brad's gun, and felt a slap of air at my back, as though the bullet had missed me by less than an inch. I kept bounding up the stairs. By the time I reached the top I could hear Brad behind me, his work boots hitting the first few steps of the stairway. I reached toward the phone, sitting on an antique phone table, and stumbled, falling to the carpeted floor, knocking the phone and the table over. Something warm had spilled across my stomach and I put my hand there. When I pulled it back I was surprised to see blood, and for a second, wondered where it was coming from. Then Brad was standing over me, the gun pointed in my direction. He was breathing heavily, a strand of saliva hanging from his lower lip.

“Why?” I said, but as soon as I said it, I knew. Brad was no psychotic, deciding to kill me because I'd insulted where he lived. He was doing this because of my wife. And in a few moments, it all unfolded in front of me. Miranda was using Brad to get rid of me. She wanted all the money for herself. Why hadn't I seen this before?
A sharp pang of pain went through my gut, and I grimaced, then almost laughed.

I looked up at Brad with his stupid face and shaking gun. “Miranda would never be with you,” I said.

“You don't know a fucking thing.”

“Brad, she's using you. Who do you think they're going to suspect? She's in Florida. You two are having an affair. Everyone knows it.”

I saw an expression of doubt on his face, and felt a sliver of hope. I held my hand against the exit wound on my stomach. The blood pulsing through my fingers was warm and thick.

“You think you're such a big deal,” he said.

“Brad, you're an idiot.”

“We'll see,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

“Hello, there,” I said to Ted Severson. He was sitting at the bar in the business class lounge at Heathrow Airport. I had recognized him right away but doubted he recognized me. We'd only met once, a couple years ago, when I had run into Faith Hobart at an outdoor market in the South End.

“I go by Miranda now,” Faith had said to me, then.

“Oh.”

“It's my actual name. Faith's my middle name. Miranda Faith.”

“I don't think I knew that. So you've lost your faith.”

She laughed. “I guess you could say that. This is my fiancé, Ted.”

A handsome, somewhat stiff man turned from looking at a vintage letterpress tray and shook my hand. He had the dry, firm grasp of the professional hand shaker, but after a cursory few words about how nice it was to meet me, he turned back to the stall. I told Faith/Miranda that I was meeting someone, and needed to go. Before leaving, she said, in a low voice, “That was terrible about Eric. I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with you afterward but you were in London, and . . .”

“Never mind, Faith, it's okay.”

I walked away. I had thought many times about what might happen if I ran into Faith again. (I suppose I should call her Miranda now.) How would she react to me? Had she been surprised when she found out Eric died in London while visiting me? Had she been two-timed as well? But after meeting her at the market, seeing her with her new ink black hair and her five-hundred-dollar boots and with an oblivious fiancé, and seeing the casual way she expressed concern for me, I knew. I knew that she had actively deceived me as well. When she was with Eric in New York, she knew he was still seeing me on the weekends in Shepaug. Was it payback for my dating Eric in the first place? Was she just one of those women who got off on taking men away from other women? For a brief moment, there in the South End of Boston, I re-experienced that stab of pain in my chest I had felt when I knew for sure that Eric had betrayed me with Miranda, and that my life would never be the same again.