The Kind Worth Killing (26 page)

“Okay,” he said.

“You tell anyone about this . . .”

“I won't.”

A week later I told him that sometimes I dreamed about killing my husband. Two weeks later Brad told me he'd do it for me if I wanted. It was that easy. I told him if we did it right, and made no mistakes, that no one would ever suspect either of us, and we'd be able to marry, buy a yacht, take a yearlong honeymoon. When I'd mentioned the yacht, Brad's eyes had lit up in a way I'd never seen, even when we were having sex. Sex had hooked him, but greed would keep him, and I had thought all along that he would hold his nerve, but now I wasn't so sure.

I got off the couch, shook my arms out, bounced up and down a
couple of times on the balls of my feet. My skin was crawling, my mind racing. I poured myself some Ketel One on ice, and wandered through the dark house. There was a stain on the second-floor landing where Ted had bled out. The police had told me about it so I wouldn't be shocked. I touched it with my bare toe, a dark brown pool that almost matched the stain of the wooden floor. The cleaning service was coming tomorrow and I would make sure to tell them about it. I brought my drink into the media room and flipped through channels for a while, settling on
Pretty Woman,
my favorite film from when I was a young girl. It had been on television all the time then, as well, and I'd loved it, years before I even understood what a prostitute was. It seemed stupid now, but I watched anyway, saying the lines to myself before they said them on TV. I calmed down, and when the film was over, and my drink finished, I knew that I needed to drive back to Maine and talk with Brad. He needed to be prepared for what was coming, and I felt that if I had a little time with him it could make a difference.

My car was on the street instead of in the garage. I dressed in jeans and a dark green sweatshirt with a hood, and left the house. Walking to my car through the rain, I resisted the urge to look around, to see if somehow I was being watched. I didn't think I was. My car was parked at the corner of my street. I got in, pulled straight out of the spot, and drove toward I-93. The roads were quiet, and it didn't seem as though anyone was behind me, any lights suddenly appearing. I merged onto the highway, still feeling sure that I wasn't being followed. I settled into a middle lane, slid a CD into the player, and tried to relax. The rain-shiny highway unspooled in front of me. It was late by the time I reached Crescent Cottages, the steady rain now a drizzle. Brad's truck was not in front of his unit. I assumed he was at Cooley's but I'd wait him out. It meant he'd be hammered when I finally got a chance to talk with him, but I hoped he wouldn't be so far gone that nothing would sink in. My plan was to prep him for being questioned, make sure he knew what he was going to say, then drive back to Boston before daylight.

I parked my car across the road, under an oak tree, its branches lowered by the rain, and waited. I didn't have to wait long. Brad's truck slid into his spot in front of his unit about 11:00
P
.
M
. I'd cracked my window, but even so, the inside of the Mini had steamed up while I waited, and Brad's truck was a blur. I rolled my window all the way down and watched as another car, a boxy Honda maybe, slid in next to Brad. Fuck, I thought, probably Polly. I watched as first Brad, then a tall, slender woman, got out of their respective cars. Brad held the door open, and the woman entered his cottage first. She wore some kind of slick, reflective jacket and tight jeans. Way too thin to be Polly, and way too steady on her feet. Brad followed. Something about the way they entered the house made me think this wasn't a typical pickup. They'd moved like businessmen entering a meeting room. I waited five minutes, then pulled my hood up over my head and got out of my car. I thought it was still raining but it was just the oak tree, rain dropping from its few remaining leaves.

I crossed the road and approached Brad's cottage—I'd never been inside, but I'd stood in the doorway once, months ago, delivering blueprints, back before Brad and I had become involved. I remembered noticing how neat it was, and how sterile. I crept toward a window that was to the left of the front door. There were slatted blinds, but the way the interior light was coming through made me think I could see through them. I wanted to see if I recognized the woman. I was almost at the window when a light mounted above the door turned on, harsh white light flooding the front of the house. I moved fast around toward the side, my sneakers crunching on the crushed-shell driveway. I pressed my back against the wooden siding where the shadows were the darkest, and waited for the exterior light to extinguish itself. It did, after a very long minute. I heard no one stirring inside the house, and the road remained quiet. There was one window on the side of the house, just low enough that I could look through it while standing on tiptoe. The blinds were closed but there was a little space between them, and I could see through into a kitchen—a
white refrigerator, an empty countertop—and, beyond that, into the living area, where Brad and a woman with red hair sat talking on the couch. In front of them, on the coffee table, sat two bottles of beer. For one brief moment, I thought it was Lily Kintner from Mather, and a shiver went through me, but the woman moved her head a little and I decided it wasn't Lily. She wore cheap makeup: dark eyeliner and bright lipstick, and unless Lily had changed, she was not the type to wear makeup at all.

I watched for a while, Brad and this woman talking intently, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they must be talking about. Brad seemed beaten down, his shoulders slumped, his mouth hanging open. The woman, whoever she was, was doing most of the talking. Brad looked like a dumb student trying to follow what his teacher was saying. This was not what I had expected to see at all. I expected to see Brad and some slut from Cooley's writhing around his couch. I wouldn't have liked it much, but I would have preferred it to what I was seeing now. What could they possibly be talking about?

Brad nodded, several times in a row, like a puppet having a string pulled, then he fumbled around in his jacket pocket, pulling out his cigarettes. The woman stood, stretched, her shirt lifting to reveal a sliver of pale stomach, then walked toward the kitchen. It took all my will but I kept looking through the slats, praying she wouldn't glance in my direction. I wanted to get a better look at her. She swung open the door of the refrigerator, bent at the waist to peer inside, and I was able to stare at her profile. She really did look a lot like Lily Kintner—the same gamine body, pale complexion, red hair. But the clothes were wrong.

The woman pulled a water bottle from the fridge, uncapped it. Before she went back to the living room, she swung her head, her eyes scanning the spotless countertops of the kitchen. I got a better look at her, the kitchen's overhead fluorescent reflecting off her eyes, an unworldly green that seemed to glow for a moment. I dropped down off the tips of my toes. It
was
Lily Kintner. I'd seen her eyes and now
I was sure. Without hesitation, I quickly walked back to my car, swinging wide of the front of the house so I wouldn't activate the motion-sensor light again. I slid back into my Mini. It was Lily. I was sure of it. But how was that possible? How had she possibly become involved with Brad? And it wasn't just Brad, obviously. Ted's trip to Winslow had clearly been to see her. So she must have been involved with Ted. Were they having an affair? Had she initiated it, after some long gestating need for revenge? But, more importantly, at this moment, how had she found Brad, and what did she want from him?

I slid farther down in my seat to wait. My mind reeled. The rain had stopped but the sky was still blanketed by clouds, and I felt protected in the black shadow of the tree I was under. I watched Brad's cottage, wondering if Lily would spend the night there, but knowing I needed to wait it out in case she didn't. My mind was filled with a swarm of possibilities, but in all of them, I was being hunted. Somehow, Lily was hunting me.

It felt like two hours but it was probably only one when Brad's front door opened and Lily emerged. The outside light flicked on and I watched her get into her car. She backed out of the driveway and turned south on Micmac Road. Part of me wanted to follow her, to see where she went, but it was more important that I talk with Brad and find out what was possibly going on. I forced myself to wait for five minutes, just in case Lily realized she'd forgotten something and turned around, then I bolted across the road and rapped on Brad's door. He cracked the door and looked out at me, his puffy eyes confused for a moment. I pulled the hood off my head. “It's me, Brad. Let me in.”

“Shit,” he said and opened the door for me. I took a step inside and pushed the door closed behind me. I could smell cheap perfume.

“What the fuck was Lily Kintner doing at your house?” I said.

“Is that her name?”

“Jesus, Brad, what did she want?”

“I just met her tonight. She was at Cooley's. She came up to me in
the parking lot.” His eyes were shifting, as though he were trying to figure out exactly what to say to me. I resisted the urge to punch him as hard as I could in the throat.

“Brad, what the fuck did she want from you?”

He slumped a little, looking like a dog that had just been swatted in the nose, and said, “She wants to kill you, Miranda. She wants me to set it up. She told me it's the only way I won't end up in prison. I was going to tell you, I promise.”

I arrived in Kennewick at 8:00
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M
. on Tuesday, twenty-four hours after making the plan with Brad. Without traffic, the drive from Massachusetts was just over an hour. I parked my car at the Admiral's Inn, a brand-new resort hotel shoehorned onto a bluff on the other side of the beach in Kennewick Harbor. The parking lot wasn't full, but it wasn't empty either. I had circled and parked so that I was facing the short sliver of beach, and beyond it, the soft lights of the Kennewick Inn. I sat in my car for a moment. It was a cloudless night, the black sky pocked with yellow stars. A three-quarters moon reflected on the ocean. I had brought a small penlight so I could navigate along the cliff walk to Ted and Miranda's house, but I didn't think I'd need it.

Earlier, after making myself a simple cheese omelet for dinner, I'd called my boss at his home, and told him that I still had a sore throat, and that it might be getting worse.

“Don't come in tomorrow. Stay home. Get better,” he said, rising panic in his voice.

“Well, I'll definitely stay home tomorrow.”

“Yes, you should. Take the week if you need it.”

After the call, I went over the details of my plan. It was risky. It all hinged on whether Brad was able to set it up the way I'd asked him to, and I hated relying on someone else. I'd never done that before, and I wouldn't have done it this time except that I needed to act fast. The detective I'd met the day before—Henry Kimball—was probably closing in on Brad and Miranda, or maybe just Brad, fast, and I wanted to get there first.

I sat for a moment in the car. I was in my darkest clothes—black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater that I wore over several layers, since the temperature was supposed to dip into the 30s. I wore my hiking shoes with the good soles, and a dark green winter hat in wool, pompom cut off, my braided hair tucked under it. I had a small gray backpack designed for day hikes, and I filled it with a pair of gloves, my stun gun, the penlight, a thermos with hot coffee, a flask filled with apricot brandy, the fish fillet knife with the leather sheaf, a Leatherman multi-tool, and a handful of plastic bags.

When I stepped out of the car, it was colder than I thought it would be, a steady brisk breeze coming off the ocean, and I wished that I had brought a windbreaker. I put the penlight in my back jeans pocket, pulled the backpack over both shoulders, locked the car behind me, and walked down off the bluff toward the start of the cliff walk. I walked as casually as possible in case I was being watched, imagining myself as the type of person who always strolled along the shore on moonlit nights. As far as I could tell, there was no one to see me, however, and I reached the cliff walk unobserved.

I had plenty of time, and walked slowly, only turning on the penlight once, when the footpath passed below an alcove of twisted trees. As stunning as the walk had been two days earlier on that blustery afternoon, it was more beautiful now—the vistas of the ocean were silver beneath the high white moon. I felt as though I'd stepped into a black-and-white movie from the 1930s, the ocean and the sky some fantasy projection of a perfect glittering evening, romantic and moody
at the same time. I kept moving, all my senses prickling, as though I were a small animal that had emerged from its burrow into a giant world. Something rustled in a bayberry bush, and I paused, waiting to see if it was another animal like me, or just the pulsing wind from the ocean. I heard nothing else and kept moving. When I reached the end of the path, I crouched and looked at the looming house. In moonlight, it looked finished, its three-gabled roof outlined against the sky. The stretch of land between the ocean and the back of the house, which in daylight looked like chewed-up dirt, was transformed by moonlight, resembling the sloping magisterial lawn it was destined to become. I looked behind me at the sky; a scrap of cloud was moving quickly, about to pass in front of the moon. I watched it progress, and when it blanked out the moon, and the world turned temporarily darker, I took a deep breath and crossed the property toward the house, making sure to skirt the half-dug hole where the swimming pool was supposed to go. I took the two wide steps up to the finished patio, crouched again, and removed the backpack from my back and unzipped it. I took out the stun gun and the knife, my pair of leather gloves, and two plastic bags, then rezipped the backpack and stood back up, putting the knife in one front jeans pocket and the stun gun in the other. I pulled the plastic bags on over my hiking shoes, tucking the ends down into my wool socks, then put on my gloves and tested the sliding glass doors that Brad said would be unlocked. They were, and I entered the pitch-black house.