The Kind Worth Killing (28 page)

“What about my kids?” he said, his voice cracking. He raised his big fat head toward me, and I saw that his eyes were genuinely wet. We'd never talked about his kids. Not even once.

“Shh,” I said. “Let's not talk about it now. You need to get somewhere and sleep, and we can talk about this tomorrow night. Remember: stay away from your house and off your phone. Drive somewhere in your truck and sleep there, okay? Just in case the cops come early in the morning. I'll meet you in Portsmouth outside that restaurant that Ted and you and I went to way back when. Okay? At nine at night.”

I arrived back in Boston just as the rising sun was beginning to edge the city roofs in a thin cold light. I entered my house, taking Tuesday's newspaper in with me, and made a pot of coffee. While it brewed I showered and changed. I would try and nap later in the day but knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep right now. I was in a shit storm. The police hadn't bought the burglary angle, and they were closing in on Brad. And now, this craziness with Lily. I couldn't even wrap my head around it. There had always been something freakish about Lily Kintner. She was watchful. I remembered that. I'd met her when she was probably eighteen, but she seemed much older at the time. Composed, and sure of herself, and definitely not like other freshman girls.

Had she known that I'd stolen Eric from her that one summer before he died? I hadn't stolen him, not really, but we were sharing him without Lily's consent. Had she found out and been stalking me ever since, waiting for an opportunity to kill me? If Eric were still here, I thought . . . and suddenly I went back to that half-formed thought.
Had she killed Eric in London?
He'd died of an allergy attack, but she could have been the one to give him the nuts, knowing he couldn't get to his medicine. It was crazy, but it was also possible. I tried to remember back to what I'd heard around that time. All my friends in New York had been talking about it. He was drunk and went out for Indian food and the chicken dish he got had nuts in it, and he died. Something like that. One thing I remembered for sure was that Lily had been right there with him, probably watching him die. Had she kept his medicine away from him? It now seemed entirely possible that she had.

The day passed, in slow chunks of time. I kept changing my mind about what to do that night. I wanted Lily dead, but what worried me was being present at the scene of a crime. I'd been so careful to make sure that I would never be convicted for Ted's murder, that there would be no evidence connecting me to any crime. Picturing the night ahead, I felt like I was walking into a trap. I
was
walking into a trap—Brad
had told me that much—but even knowing what Lily had in mind, I felt unsettled, unsure of myself for the first time in a long time. But I also knew, without a doubt, that if Lily somehow knew everything she said she knew, she needed to be eliminated. With Lily gone, I'd be able to breathe a little easier. And then I could focus on dealing with Brad.

My phone was charging on my bedside table. I went and lay down, scrolling through the missed calls and listening to the voice mails. One of the messages was from Detective Kimball, letting me know that the coroner was done with Ted's body, and I could alert the funeral home that they could pick him up at their convenience. He also asked if I knew of a good way to get in touch with Brad Daggett. Hearing that was a relief; Brad was doing what I'd told him to do, and disappearing for a while. I thought of calling the funeral home but decided against it. Instead, I sent text messages to a couple of friends letting them know that I was okay, just lying low. I called my mother, and we spoke briefly. I told her I was overwhelmed by all the little chores associated with a husband's death. “Tell me about it, sweetheart,” she said. “Divorce is no picnic either. All that paperwork.” I tried to sleep, falling into a doze as thin as tissue paper, but thoughts of Lily kept rippling up at me. I tried to remember what she looked like, and all I could see was her slender, hipless frame, her shiny red hair, her unsettling stillness. When I tried to picture her face, I could get a general sense of it, but I couldn't picture any specific features. What did her nose look like? Her mouth? Every time I thought I had it, it flew away from me, like a butterfly I couldn't quite net. I realized I was chewing at the edge of my thumb, and made myself stop before I drew blood. I was wearing yoga pants, and I touched myself through them, thinking of a featureless man, someone rich, in Italy, a married neighbor who came over to my lakeside villa to fuck me. It started to work, and I shucked the yoga pants halfway down my thighs, but before I could come, I started to think of Ted, how on the first night in this house, on this bed, he
had sprinkled rose petals, and laid out an expensive negligee for me, and how much it had turned me off.

I parked my car in the back alley behind the restaurant in Portsmouth where Brad and I had agreed to meet. It had turned cold, and I wore a long coat and a cap with my hair tucked up under it. One of the streetlamps in front of the restaurant was busted, and I stood under it, watching for Brad's truck. It was a bright night, though, and I still felt exposed. Brad showed up, exactly at the time we had planned, and I hoisted myself up into the passenger seat, hoping that he was relatively sober.

“We still doing this?” I asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Fuck, yeah,” he said, and I recognized from his overly loud intonation that he was at least partly loaded, but not wrecked.

“Tell me again what we're going to do.”

“On Micmac Road I'll turn off my lights and drive up to the house. You get out and go in the front door using the key. I'll go around to the back of the house and come in through the patio doors. Then I'll walk up to both of you and hit her on the head with a wrench.”

“Why don't you just shoot her?”

“I don't have that gun anymore. You knew that.”

“Right. I forgot. Then what?”

“I left plastic wrap in the house. You help me roll her up. She goes in the truck and I take you back to your car. I can get rid of her body.”

“Tell me again why I need to be there.”

Brad turned his head slowly toward me. We were heading north on Route 1, and the lights of an oncoming car lit up his features. For one moment, I saw real hatred in his eyes and I involuntarily flinched. “Because she's coming there to see you. If I show up alone, who knows what will happen? And because you need to be part of this. I did the first one on my own, but I need you for this. I'm not doing this alone again.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. I knew that what he really wanted was for me to see someone die. I hadn't forgotten the haunted look in his eyes the first time I'd seen him after he shot Ted. He probably thought I couldn't handle it, but I was prepared. I was nervous about things going right, but I wasn't nervous about seeing Lily Kintner get her head bashed in.

We were a little early, so Brad drifted through the empty streets of Kennewick. Along the beach I looked out toward the ocean, a swath of it sparkling with silver moonlight. I really did like Kennewick, not to live all the time, but as a place to get away from the city. But after the estate was settled, and all of Ted's money was solely in my name, I'd sell the house along the bluff. There were better places to live. I pictured islands in the Mediterranean. I pictured palm trees and beach bars that didn't look like Cooley's. I'd wasted my life in New England for far too long.

It was close to 10:00
P
.
M
. when Ted doused the lights on his truck and turned off Micmac onto the gravel driveway of my property. He drove slowly, the truck seesawing, the driveway more rutted than ever after the recent rains. The house loomed up, looking simultaneously massive, its dark outline dwarfing the landscape, and small and fragile against the expanse of the ocean. Brad parked next to the Dumpster and killed the engine. A steady wind buffeted the truck. “She's probably already inside,” Brad said. “Watching us.”

“Don't waste time, okay,” I said. “Once I enter the house, then you should start to move. I don't want to be fending off a psycho bitch in there.”

“I'll be fast. I want this over with.”

“Okay,” I said. Even in the dim light of the truck's interior I could see that Brad was trembling slightly. I pressed a hand against his prickly cheek, and he jumped as though a snake had bit him.

“Jesus,” I said. “Jumpy?”

“You scared me. I can't see a thing in this truck. You should go.”

I opened the door and Brad put his hand over the cab's light. “See you in there,” I said, and shut the door. The engine ticked, cooling down. I pulled the keys from my pocket and walked toward the stone front steps. The moon was behind the house, and as I got closer, the house was like a black wall with nothing beyond it. I breathed deeply, shocked by how cold the air had become. I fumbled with the keys, finding the right one, and unlocking the door, swinging it inward and stepping inside. For a moment, I had the surreal sense that I had merely passed through the facade of a house, and I was still outside. I looked up to see stars, but there was nothing there.

“In here,” a voice said, and Lily materialized briefly in a pool of light, then disappeared again. “Come in,” she said. “Your eyes will adjust.”

I let the door shut behind me. The lofty ceilings of the foyer began to take shape in the gray light.

I tested my voice. “Isn't this dramatic?” I said, and it echoed sharply in the house.

“Did Brad tell you what I wanted?” Lily said.

I moved toward the voice, one of my hands going instinctively to my pocket. I'd brought the small canister of pepper spray that I sometimes carried with me in the city. I told Lily I'd been surprised to hear that she wanted money. I asked her if it was to help her father, hoping that was a sensitive subject and that it would piss her off.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice sounding calm, almost casual.

“He killed someone, right? In England. He must have legal fees.”

“No,” she said, “the money is for me.”

I told her I couldn't get her money right away, and she told me she just wanted to meet me face-to-face, to hear that it wouldn't be a problem. We were about a yard away, and I wasn't planning on getting any closer. My eyes had adjusted, but Lily was still just a featureless blob. She hadn't moved since I'd come in, as though she were rooted in place. If she moved toward me, I was planning on bolting. I knew
every square foot of this house, and it was an advantage I planned on using.

“Were you sleeping with Ted?” I asked her. Brad would be arriving any moment, and I genuinely wanted to know. “How did you two even meet?”

“We were on a flight together. He knew everything about you, you know? He knew you were cheating on him with Brad. You didn't fool him.”

“So why didn't you just turn me in?” I said. “If you're so sure I'm this awful person.”

“I will turn you in, Faith, if you don't do everything I say.”

It was strange to hear my old name, and it brought me back to college, to the smoky rooms and boozy parties. Suddenly I could picture Lily's face, her cold green eyes.

“Is this about Eric?” I asked as I saw a dark figure moving toward us. Brad, coming to kill Lily. I almost wanted to make him wait a moment. I wanted to know if Lily had killed Eric in London all those years ago. I needed that.

“No,” Lily said, amusement in her voice. “It isn't. This is all about you.”

And then Brad was there, his face ghostly, lifting his large wrench. I watched, fascinated, then realized that both faces, Brad's and Lily's, had turned toward me. The wrench came down, a sharp pain exploding in my head. My knees buckled, and I was suddenly on the cold sawdusty floor, a hand on my head. Brad was over me. He grasped my hand and moved it away from my head. My hat had fallen off. I'm about to die, I thought. I heard the whistle of the wrench as Brad swung it again.

Brad brought the wrench down on Miranda's head. She dropped first to her knees and then to the floor, her hat coming off. She brought a hand up, touched herself where she had been hit. For a second I thought that Brad wasn't going to be able to finish, but he crouched and hit her several more times. Without the hat to block the blows, the wrench made sharp thunking sounds against her skull. The last time he swung it I heard a raspy crunch, the sound of someone punching his hand through a wall. I gently pulled him away when it was clear that she was dead, when, even in the fuzzy light of the house's interior, I could see that the side of her head was caved in, and that a black pool of blood had spread out across the floor.

“Leave the wrench here with her. Let's step outside for a moment,” I said.

Brad did as I said, laying the wrench almost gently beside Miranda's inert body. I gripped him above the elbow and led him to the front door and through it. The air outside was the same temperature as it was inside the house, but it felt cleaner, filled with the salty smell of the ocean. I let the door shut behind us. “It's done,” I said to Brad.

“You think she's dead?” he said.

“Yes, she's dead. It's over. You did a good job. Did she suspect anything?”

“No, I told her everything just like you told me to. She saw you, though.”

“What do you mean she saw me?” I asked.

“Last night. After you left my house, she was there. She'd come up to see me and saw you there. She recognized you.” Brad had pulled his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and was unsuccessfully trying to extricate one from the packet.

“Let's sit in the truck for a moment and have a cigarette,” I said. “Then we can deal with the body.”

We got inside Brad's truck. I'd pulled my backpack off and held it in my lap. “You cold?” Brad asked. “I can turn the heater on.”