The Kind Worth Killing (35 page)

One week after I'd been interviewed for a second time by Detective Kimball, I drove back to Concord Center. I'd been following the progress on the Severson murder case every night on the local news, even though there were never any developments. I knew there wouldn't be. Brad Daggett was not going to be found. It felt good knowing that I was the only human being in the world who knew where Brad was—who knew that he was never going to be found drinking a daiquiri on some beach in the Caribbean. He was slowly rotting in a forgotten meadow. I knew it, and so did the birds and animals that passed his way. They'd smell him, and think that some large animal had died, and then they'd go about their day.

It was the first Sunday since daylight savings time had ended. The morning had started cold, snow squalls moving through at dawn, but the snow had cleared by noon, the sky now a low, threatening shelf of chalky clouds. I took back roads from Winslow to Concord, driving slowly, listening to classical music on one of the public radio stations. It was midafternoon by the time I arrived in Concord, and I parked
my car along Main Street. The sidewalks were busy: a throng of families waited outside a popular lunch place; middle-aged women in sporty gear came in and out of the jewelry shops. I walked slowly toward Monument Square, crossing the wide intersection toward the entrance to the Old Hill Burying Ground. I squeezed through the stone markers and trudged up the steeply inclined path to the top of the hill. There was no one else in the cemetery.

I went to the very peak of the hill, passing the bench where I'd sat with Ted Severson the last time I'd met with him, just over a month ago, and looked out over the roofs of Concord. Since I'd last been here, the trees on the hill had shed all their leaves and I could see all the way to where I'd parked my car. I stood for a while, in my bright green jacket, enjoying the solitude, and the bite of the cold New England air, and the godlike view of the scurrying pedestrians, going about their errands on a Sunday that came with an extra hour. I looked at the spot where Ted and I had kissed, tried to remember what it had felt like. His surprisingly soft lips, his large strong hand sliding up against my sweater. After five minutes, I turned my attention back along the spine of the hill with its sparse stone graves. Dead leaves had been blown by the wind and piled up against the backs of several stones. I walked slowly back down the flagstone path, randomly picked a grave that was partially obscured by a twisted, leafless tree, and knelt in front of it. It marked a woman named Elizabeth Minot, who had died in 1790 at the age of forty-five. She “met lingering death with calmness and joy.” At the top of the stone was a winged skull, a banner around it that said
BE MINDFUL OF DEATH
. I stayed crouched, studying the headstone, wondering what Elizabeth Minot's short, hard life had been like. Truth was, it didn't matter anymore. She was dead, and so was everyone who ever knew her. Maybe her husband had smothered her with a pillow to end her misery. Or to end his own. But he was long gone now, as well. Their children were dead, and their children's children dead. My father used to say: every hundred years, all new people. I don't know exactly why he said it, or what it meant to him—a
variation on being mindful of death, I suppose—but I knew what it meant to me.

I thought of the people I'd killed. Chet the painter, whose last name I still didn't know. Eric Washburn, dead before his life really got started. And poor Brad Daggett, who probably never stood a chance from the moment he first laid his eyes on Miranda Severson. I felt an ache in my chest; not a familiar feeling, but one I recognized. It wasn't that I felt bad about what I had done, or guilty. I didn't. I had reasons—good ones—for everyone I'd killed. No, the ache in my chest was that I felt alone. That there were no other humans in the world who knew what I knew.

I came down off the hill and walked back into town. I felt my cell phone vibrating in my purse. It was my mother. “Darling, have you read the
Times
yet?”

“I don't get the
Times,
” I said.

“Oh. There's a whole piece about Martha Chang. You remember Martha, don't you? The choreographer?” She described the feature in detail, reading parts out loud to me. I sat down on a cold bench with a view of Main Street.

“How's Dad?” I asked, when she was done.

“Woke up screaming in the middle of the night last night. I went in, thinking he was just trying to get me into the bedroom, but he was a wreck. Shivering and crying. I went to get him some hot milk and whiskey and when I came back he was asleep again. Honestly, darling, it's like having a child in the house.”

I told her I had to go, and she told me a few more stories about friends of hers I didn't remember. When we hung up I noticed that the crowds around the lunch place had thinned, and I went in, got a large coffee to go. Then I walked some more, back past the Concord River Inn, where I'd had drinks with Ted and plotted the murder of his wife. Our plan would have worked. It was very close to what had eventually happened. Framing Brad for the murder of Miranda, then making sure Brad disappeared forever, that his body was never found.
The details were different. His body was going to be dumped in the ocean while I drove his truck into Boston, leaving it where it would get stolen and stripped, but the outcome would have been the same.

I strolled along quiet back roads, lined with stately Colonials. I was working my way toward the back side of the cemetery I'd just been in. A crew of gardeners was clearing leaves from one of the larger yards. A preteen boy was throwing a football straight up in the air, then catching it himself. I saw no one else. I got onto a dead-end street that abutted the back side of the cemetery. I hopped a short fence, leaned against a tree, and waited. I could see the top of the hill, the headstones spread along it like the knuckles of a spine. The sun, a glimmer of whiteness behind the pall of clouds, was low in the sky. I pulled my coffee close into my chest to keep me warm. My hair was up under the same dark hat I'd worn the night that Brad and Miranda had died. I wondered, not for the first time, what would have happened between Ted and me if things had gone according to plan. We would have become involved, I knew that, but how long would we have stayed together? Would I have told him everything? Shared my life with him? And would that knowledge—the knowledge both of us would have had about each other—have made us stronger? Or would it have killed us in the end? Probably killed us, I thought, although it might have been nice for a while, nice to have someone with whom I could have shared it all.

I finished my coffee, slid the empty cup into my open purse. And I waited.

I had discovered that if I parked my car at the Dunkin' Donuts at the five-way intersection just off of Winslow center I could spot Lily Kintner driving down Leighton Road away from her house. Very few cars came down Leighton, and she was easy to spot in her dark red Honda. I'd waited here every day since our second interview, following Lily a total of seven times. I'd followed her to and from her offices at Winslow College. I'd followed her to a grocery store, and to a farmers' market one town over. Once, she'd gotten onto the interstate heading south; I guessed she was probably going to Connecticut to see her parents, and I turned back. The few times she'd driven into Winslow center to do errands I'd followed her a little bit on foot, keeping a big distance. I had seen nothing of interest.

I was doing all of this on my own, using my own nondescript silver Sonata. I didn't know what I hoped to accomplish. I just knew, in my heart, that Lily Kintner was somehow involved, and if I kept watching, then maybe she might screw up somehow.

I was parked at Dunkin' Donuts on Sunday afternoon and just
about to give up when I spotted Lily's Accord. She turned left on Brooks, heading east, away from the town center. I pulled out of the parking lot, slotting in about three cars behind her. Her Honda was an older model, boxier than the usual Hondas on the road now, and easy to follow. I trailed her through Stow, then Maynard, then into West Concord. I tried to keep at least a couple cars between us at all times. I only lost her once, going through Maynard Center, where I got stuck behind a UPS truck, but I guessed correctly that she was staying on Route 62, and I caught up with her again. She drove into Concord Center, parked on Main Street, and got out of her car. She was wearing her bright green coat, buttoned up to her neck. I watched her walk toward what looked like a large rotary that looped around a smallish park.

The only person who knew I was trailing Lily Kintner was Roberta James, my partner, although she didn't know how often I was doing it. She certainly didn't know that on two occasions I had parked after dark on Leighton Road and worked my way through the woods to spy on Lily's house from the edge of her property. I'd watched her for an hour one night, as she sat in her red leather chair, her legs tucked up under her, reading a hardcover book. While she read she absentmindedly twirled a long strand of hair in a finger. A cup of tea next to her sent up a ribbon of steam. I had kept telling myself to leave, but I felt glued to the spot, and if she had suddenly come outside, and spotted me, I don't think I could have left even then. I would never tell James any of that—she was already suspicious of my motives. “What does she look like, Hen?” she'd asked me the night before. I'd had her over for spaghetti carbonara and scotch.

“She's beautiful,” I said, deciding not to lie.

“Uh-huh,” James said, not needing to add anything more.

“Listen,” I said. “Eric Washburn was her college boyfriend. He was also the boyfriend of Miranda Severson, or Faith Hobart, as she was known then. Miranda told me that Lily had stolen Eric from her, then Lily told me that Miranda had stolen him back. Eric died from
a nut allergy the year he graduated from college. He was with Lily in London.”

“You think she killed him with nuts?”

“If she did, then it was pretty brilliant. You can't really prove that something like that wasn't an accident.”

“Okay.” James nodded, took a sip of her Macallan.

“Now, years later, she becomes friends with Miranda's husband. Maybe more than friends. And then he gets killed—”

“He was killed by Brad Daggett. We know this. Do you think Lily also knew him?”

“No, I don't. I just know that she lied to me, and that it's a pretty huge coincidence that she was somehow involved with both the death of this Eric Washburn and now with Miranda.”

“We can bring her in, question her some more. Did you ask her if she had an alibi for the night that Miranda got killed?”

“No, I didn't ask her. I mean, we know that Brad did that as well. Is it possible that she knew Brad all along, that she got him to do these two murders, and now she knows where he is?”

“Sure, it's possible, but why would she do it? People don't go around murdering the girl who stole their boyfriend in college.”

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“That's all you've got—‘yeah, well'?”

“Yeah, that's all I've got.” James smiled. She didn't do it often, but when she did, it changed her face from something a little severe to one that radiated beauty. We'd been partnered up in the department for just over a year. The scotch and pasta nights had started about three months ago. So far, our partnership had been the greatest nonsexual partnership in my life. From day one, we'd slipped into an easy back-and-forth conversational pattern that made me feel like we'd been friends for years. It was only recently that I realized how little I knew about Roberta James, besides where she'd grown up (coast of Maryland), where she'd gone to school (the University of Delaware), and where she lived (third floor of a triple-decker in Watertown). I
assumed she was gay, but we'd never talked about it. When I had finally broached the subject, at the first of our pasta nights, she'd said, “I like men, but only in theory.”

“Meaning in reality you like women?”

“No. I mean I'm voluntarily celibate, but if I ever decided I didn't want to be celibate, I would be with a man.”

“Got it, James,” I said, and didn't ask for any more clarification. Her usually unwavering stare had wavered a little during the brief exchange.

Most of our scotch and pasta nights were at my place, probably since I always overdid the scotch, and when James hosted, she always made me sleep on her couch. On one of those nights, I'd gotten up from the couch to get a glass of water, and when I walked back down the hallway past James's bedroom, I noticed her door was cracked open, yellow light slanting through. I pushed the door open a little farther, saying, “Knock, knock.” James was on the bed, reading a paperback. It was a warm night, and she had kicked one of her long legs out from under the single sheet that covered her. She wore reading glasses, and looked quizzically at me over the frames. “Can't sleep,” I said. “I thought you might like some company.”

I'm not sure how I expected James to react to my proposition, but I hadn't expected the explosion of deep laughter that I was greeted with. I held up both my hands and backed out of the doorway, saying, “Okay, okay.”

She tried to stop me from going, but I quickly retreated to the couch. In the morning, James was up at dawn and brought me a cup of coffee. “Sorry for the laughter last night,” she said as she handed it to me.

“No,” I said. “Sorry for the late-night bedroom visit. Totally inappropriate.” My voice was gravelly, and my head felt like it was gripped in a vise.

“I think you caught me totally by surprise. The last three times I've been hit on was by a woman. Anyway, I feel bad about it.”

“You shouldn't. I was the one who was trying to cross the line. Besides, we make good partners at work. Why fuck that up?”