The Kind Worth Killing (23 page)

I breathed through my nose, savoring the smell of gasoline while I waited for the attendant to run my credit card. The rain began—fat, intermittent drops that made snapping sounds on the roof of the car as I drove away from the gas station toward I-95.

I kept worrying about Brad for most of the drive to Boston. Maybe he'd rise to the occasion when the police spoke with him. Maybe his alibi would hold up. And maybe—hopefully—the sketch that the detective had wouldn't look anything like Brad. That would be the best-case scenario, but, down deep, I knew somehow that the sketch was going to look just like Brad, that he had fucked up and let someone see him. After a while, I forced myself to think of something else, and began to think about Lily Kintner, the woman who lived in Winslow, and about whom I would never be thinking if Ted hadn't gone there last Friday and gotten a parking ticket. There had been a time when Lily had been a constant and annoying presence in my life. She was two years behind me at Mather. I'd met her my junior year when my boyfriend Eric Washburn gave her an invite to St. Dun's.

“Who is she?” I'd asked. I hadn't been invited to a St. Dun's Thursday night party until my sophomore year, and only after I'd been fucking Eric Washburn for three weeks.

“Do you know David Kintner, the novelist?” Eric said.

“No,” I said.

“She's his daughter.”

She came to that first Thursday night party, and I almost didn't see her. She was like some waif from a Victorian novel—thin and pale with long red hair. I watched her, and at first I thought she was nervous, blending into the wall she stood against with a drink in her hand, too frightened to talk with anyone. But I got closer to her, took another look, and decided that she actually didn't care that she was at St. Dun's. She seemed almost disinterested, like a girl in the back row
of a boring lecture. Did she even understand what it meant to get a skull card as a freshman? I thought she'd never return, but she kept coming back, every Thursday, and it was clear that Eric had become interested. I found one of her father's books in the library and read some of it in a basement carrel. It was supposed to be a comedy but it was mainly about boarding school boys in England being cruel to one another. It struck me as the kind of stupid book that Eric would idolize. I didn't care so much at that point, since I'd started sleeping with Matthew Ford, who made Eric look practically middle class.

Senior year, Eric and Lily became a couple. I was fine with it. Matthew and I were a much better fit than Eric and I had ever been. Unlike Eric, Matthew was insecure enough to make up for it by buying me anything I wanted. I told him elaborate stories, how I came from a rich French-Canadian clan but that my father had been disinherited for moving his family to Maine and teaching his daughter only English. Before Christmas break of that year I told Matthew that I needed a thousand dollars to sneak into Montreal and visit my paternal grandmother who was dying. He gave me the money in cash. It was a good relationship, but I didn't harbor any illusions that it would continue past our senior year of college. I assumed that the same would be true of Eric and Lily, especially since she was only a sophomore, but the more I saw them together, the more I realized that they were serious about each other. At least Lily was serious; I could tell that much. I wasn't sure if Eric was capable of love. He was like me in that way, someone who could turn it on and turn it off. He told me once when we were together that he felt he could easily be in equal relationships with two women at the same time. I always remembered that he had said this, and reminded him of it during senior week, when our exams were done and underclassmen were still busy studying.

“You suggesting something?” he asked. We were sitting on the stairwell at St. Dun's, sharing a cigarette and listening to the remnants of a party down below. Radiohead was playing, and someone was shouting to change the music.

“I don't know,” I said. “Everyone thinks you and Lily are serious.”

“What about you and Matthew?”

“Over with as of graduation day.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Look,” I said, and touched his prickly jaw. “It's senior week. What do you say?”

We hooked up that night, and continued to hook up the rest of that summer. Eric visited Lily at her parents' place on weekends, and spent the weeks with me. Lily never came to the city, and he told his group of friends that he was visiting his sick father on the weekend. As a joke, I dyed my hair red and told Eric to just pretend that he had only one girlfriend. I loved my weekends alone that summer in New York. I was subletting my own one-bedroom in the Village, so Saturday and Sunday were entirely my own. I imagined Eric and Lily in the country, in love, and it didn't bother me one bit. In fact, it made me laugh.

Eric died that fall in London. He was visiting Lily and forgot to bring his allergy medicine. Dropped dead from eating nuts. I used to wonder what it had been like for Lily. I'd heard he died in her apartment while she watched. I imagined her frantically searching for his EpiPen, trying to keep him alive. I always thought that Lily lucked out. She only knew Eric Washburn as a faithful boyfriend. She never learned the truth about him.

I ran into Lily a few years later. She wasn't on Facebook, but I'd heard rumors about her—that she was some sort of librarian at Winslow College—and something else about her father being involved in a car accident that killed his second wife. I recognized her right away. She hadn't changed at all, pale and waifish, Pippi-Longstocking-color hair in the exact same cut, blank face. I told her I was sorry about what had happened with Eric Washburn, and she stared at me for a moment with a flat, unwavering stare. That was the extent of our interaction. I tried to remember if I'd introduced her to Ted, and I think I probably did but couldn't be sure. I did remember her cold
stare, her green, almost translucent eyes. Did she know about Eric and me that summer? And if she knew, then was it a possibility that Eric hadn't accidentally died? I didn't think so, but it unnerved me somehow that she was back in my mind. There were many reasons why Ted might have gone to Winslow on Friday; the chance that it had something to do with Lily was incredibly slim.

I got back to Boston at four in the afternoon. I parked on the street about three blocks from my house, and went to the bar of a boutique hotel, where I drank a vodka on the rocks and ordered a plate of lobster orecchiette. I was starving. When I'd finished the pasta, I returned to my car and called Detective Kimball. He picked up immediately.

“I'm in Boston,” I told him.

“Great,” he said. “Where are you? I can pick you up if you like, take you to the station.”

I told him I was just down the street from our house, parked on the street, not knowing what to do, or where to go. I put a little hitch in my voice as I said it.

“Understandable. If you just wait there I can come get you. Then, if you want, you can make some calls from the station. Maybe there's a friend's house you'd like to stay at, or a hotel . . .”

The detective arrived ten minutes later in a white Mercury Grand Marquis, and drove me to the station. The interior of his car smelled of hand-rolled cigarettes and peppermint. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket. His tie looked vintage, and was frayed a little along one side.

“Thank you so much for coming back to Boston,” he said as he weaved through traffic, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on his knee, index finger tapping to nonexistent music. “We're feeling very good about this lead. We think we have a detailed description of the man who killed your husband.”

“How?” I asked.

“There was a woman visiting one of your neighbors who was sitting in her car texting. She watched a man exit from the house that
was burglarized—the Bennetts at 317, you know them?—and then walk to your house. She said she kept watching him because he seemed shifty and nervous. He passed right under a streetlamp and she got a good look at his facial features. She worked with our sketch artist and we have a pretty good likeness, I think.” The detective glanced toward me. He was smiling a little shyly, as though he wasn't sure how he should act. I watched his eyes scan my face.

“Why do you want me to take a look at the sketch? Do you think I might know him?”

“We think it's a possibility. Our witness said that the suspect rang the doorbell at your house. Your husband came to the door, and talked to the man for a while. In fact, the witness says she stopped watching because it seemed like they might have known each other. Next time she looked up he wasn't there, and she assumed that he'd entered the house.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “It was someone Ted knew?”

“It's just a possibility, Mrs. Severson. It's possible he was a random burglar who talked his way into your house. That's why we want you to look at the sketch.”

“Are you sure that this man who came to the door was the same man who shot . . . who shot my husband?”

The detective casually spun the wheel of the car and looped his way into a parking space in front of the precinct.

“We think so,” he said, killing the engine. “The witness said she was sitting in the car sometime around six at night, and that's approximately the time of death that the coroner came up with. She didn't hear a gunshot, but her car was running and your house has thick walls, or so they tell me.”

I lowered my head and took a deep breath through my nostrils.

“You okay?” the detective asked.

“I've been better. Sorry. I just need a moment . . . let's go in and look at the sketch.”

We were quiet as Detective Kimball escorted me into the station,
and had us buzzed past the heavily fortified reception area into a hallway with scuffed linoleum floors and brick walls. I followed the detective to an open-space area that had been carved into cubicles. I moved slowly. It was clear from what I'd heard that Brad had definitely been spotted. I controlled my rage, and thought about what I needed to say to the detective. If the sketch looked remotely like him I would need to say so, otherwise I would look suspicious when they did finally catch up with Brad. What I was desperately hoping for was a sketch that didn't look like him at all, so that I could honestly say that I had no idea who I was looking at.

We reached the detective's desk, in a cubicle framed by temporary partitions. He offered me a molded plastic chair to sit in and he settled onto a swivel chair with a padded seat. His desk was cluttered, but the piles of folders and loose paper seemed organized into distinct towers, each topped by a Post-it note in a different color. He pulled a folder off the top of one of the smaller towers and unfolded it. “Can you see okay here?” he asked. We were under a bright fluorescent light built into the low ceiling of polystyrene tiles, and I told him I could see fine. He slid out a piece of paper from the manila folder and twisted it so that I could see the sketch. It was a pretty good likeness of Brad—the thick neck, the black goatee, the dark eyes a little too close together under thick brows. His most distinctive feature—the thick hair and low hairline—was covered up by the baseball cap he wore. I could feel Detective Kimball's eyes on me. I could sense his giddy anticipation.

“I don't know,” I said, and jutted out my lower lip, studying the sketch to give myself another few seconds. But it was too close a likeness for me not to mention it. “You know who he looks like,” I said. “He looks like our contractor up in Maine. Brad Daggett. But Brad barely knew Ted, and he doesn't even live in Boston, so . . .” I sat up and looked at the detective. “I don't know if that's helpful.”

“Brad Daggett?” the detective said. “Can you spell that for me.” He wrote it down. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much, really. I work with him closely, but I don't know anything about him personally. I really can't imagine any reason that Brad would have for coming down to see Ted, or for actually killing him. It doesn't make any sense.”

“He was your contractor? Is it possible that your husband and he were having some dispute over money?”

“Not without my knowing about it. I was the only one who worked closely with Brad, and I was making most of the money decisions. No. Not a chance.”

“So, had
you
had any disputes with him? Any issues at all?”

“Small stuff here and there, like maybe he bought the wrong ceiling molding, but nothing important. He was totally professional, and he was being paid incredibly well. There's just absolutely no reason I can think of that he would have anything against Ted.”

“Is he married?”

“Who, Brad? I don't think so. He
was
married because I'm pretty sure he has kids, but he's never mentioned a wife.”

“And was he ever inappropriate with you? Did he ever give you the impression that he . . . uh, that he found you attractive.” He stammered a little as he said it, and seemed uncomfortable, and I wondered briefly if his nervous energy was for real, or if it was an act.

“No. He might have, but if he did he never let me know. As I said, he was totally professional.” I looked again at the sketch, impressed by how much it looked like Brad, and pissed that Brad had been stupid enough to get spotted, then added, “The more I look at it, it still looks like him, but only superficially. It's a man with a goatee, that's all.”

“Okay.” Kimball put his finger on the sketch and swung it back toward him. “We'll check him out. Do you have his number?”

I pulled out my phone and gave the detective Brad's number. “I really don't think . . .” I said.

“No, no, I know. But we'll need to follow up, just to eliminate him from the investigation. My guess is that your husband's murder
is exactly what it seems to be. Someone breaking into houses, looking for jewelry and other small items to steal. Maybe the killer had some sort of cover story that enabled him to talk his way into your house. Would you say that Ted was the trusting type? Would he have let a stranger past his door if that stranger had a good story?”