The Kind Worth Killing Read online

  “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?”

  “Right. Why fuck that up?”

  That had been the extent of our conversation on the subject. We’d been a little awkward for a while at work, but it went away. And now we were back to regular get-togethers, and discussions of my love life.

  “So, are you planning on following her again tomorrow?” James said, pouring us each a little more scotch.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I should take a day off.”

  “Maybe you should. I’m sure you’re very good at it, but it’s only a matter of time before she spots you, and makes a complaint.”

  “You’re right,” I said, knowing I wasn’t going to listen to her.

  When Lily was toward the end of Main Street, down near the rotary, I got out of my car and started to follow her on foot. I watched her cross the wide intersection, make her way toward a white, boxy church, its steeple wreathed in scaffolding, then turn right and enter a hillside cemetery. I sat on a low stone wall, and began to roll a cigarette. She was about two hundred yards away but easy to see in her green jacket. I watched her slowly walk up the cemetery path. She wandered for a while, briefly disappearing behind the slate roof of an old stone house with a pergola. I lit my cigarette, and a middle-aged woman in a spandex biking outfit clattering by on her biking shoes shot a look in my direction as though I’d just murdered her children. I kept my eye on the cemetery. Eventually, I could see Lily again, walking along the top of the hill. She must have found the grave she was looking for, a stone marker under a twisted tree. She crouched and read its inscription, staying in that position for a while before standing and coming back down the hill. I wondered whose gravestone that was, and if it meant anything.

  When Lily reached the sidewalk in front of the cemetery, and began to cross Monument Square in my direction, I retreated, crossing Main Street, and going into an upscale women’s clothing store that was fronted with glass. I pretended to study a rack of scarves—all priced at about the cost of a decent used car—and kept my eye on Lily, who had made her way to a stone bench, where she was now talking on her cell phone. I was close enough to see that one strand of her red hair had fallen out from under her dark hat.

  “They’re all cashmere,” said the shopkeeper, who was suddenly about two inches behind me.

  I jumped a little. “They’re beautiful. So soft.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  I moved away from the scarves, and looked around the little store some more. Lily looked like she would be at the bench for a while. After a few minutes I thanked the woman who worked there and headed back out onto the sidewalk. Lily was gone. I was worried that maybe she’d crossed the street toward me to shop and that I would accidentally bump into her, so I walked away from the shops, back toward the low wall I’d sat on earlier. What I really wanted to do was walk up the hillside cemetery myself and take a look at the gravestone that Lily had read with such interest. The grave was immediately under a gnarled tree that jutted out from the crest of the hill, and I was sure that I could find it. But it would be better to visit the cemetery when I knew that Lily wouldn’t spot me there. I decided to wait.

  I took a long look around from my perch. Lily had disappeared, and I began to get nervous that she would suddenly appear and spot me. I decided that I didn’t need to find her again. Instead, I stood and walked away from Concord Center. I passed an old gray-shingled hotel called the Concord River Inn. Smoke was issuing from its chimney and it looked like the type of place that probably had a bar. I went in. There was a dining room in front with white tablecloths and ornately papered walls, but I could hear voices coming from the rear of the inn. I walked down a low-ceilinged hallway and found a small bar, wedged into a space not a whole lot bigger than a parking space. I quickly scanned the room to make sure Lily wasn’t there—there were two couples finishing up their late lunches, and one lone man reading the newspaper and drinking a bottle of Grolsch. I pulled myself onto an uncomfortable wooden stool at the short bar, and ordered a Boddingtons on draft. My plan was to slowly drink my beer, then go and check out the gravestone that Lily had been looking at. I didn’t expect to learn anything from it. In that old cemetery, it was probably a marker for someone who had died over two hundred years ago—but I felt a compulsion to look at it. Lily had stared so intently at its words and I wanted to know why. I thought of my dinner with James the night before, and her unspoken warning that I was becoming obsessed with Lily Kintner in an unprofessional manner. Probably I was.

  I took a sip of my beer, ate a tiny pretzel stick from the bowl on the bar, and took out a pen from my jacket pocket. On one of the bar napkins I scrawled a limerick.

  There once was a copper named Kimball

  Whose brain was as big as a thimble.

  He followed a girl

  All over the world

  In hope that at sex she’d be nimble.

  I crumpled the napkin up and shoved it in my jacket pocket. I peeled a new napkin away from the pile on the bar and tried again.

  There once was a girl with red hair
<
br />   Whose bottom I hoped to see bare.

  The chance this would happen

  Was one in a million,

  But I’d settle for lace underwear.

  I crumpled that as well, shoved it into my pocket with the other napkin, then continued to drink my beer. I suddenly felt ridiculous—not so much for the terrible limericks—but for the fact that I had been obsessively following a woman tangentially involved in a case without my department’s knowledge. James was right. If I thought Lily Kintner was hiding something, I should simply pull her in and question her. The chances were that her only involvement in this case was that Ted Severson had fallen in love with her shortly before getting himself murdered. She had lied to me because of a stressful situation with her father, a public figure who was involved in his own murder case. She had nothing to do with Brad Daggett, who had killed both Ted and Miranda on his own, and disappeared off the face of the earth. The latest theory was that after killing Ted, Brad had most likely blackmailed Miranda, somehow insisting that the handoff of the money take place at the unfinished house. It would explain why they had met there late at night, and it might explain why Brad was able to vanish so completely—a substantial amount of cash would make it that much easier. I finished my beer and paid for it. I would leave the inn, go back to my car, and return to Boston. Tomorrow I would talk with my superintendent, ask him if he thought pulling Lily Kintner in for questioning was a good idea. If he agreed that it was worth a shot, I’d have James accompany me. If he thought I was barking up the wrong tree, then maybe I’d wait a week, give Lily a call, see if she wanted to get a drink sometime.

  I stepped back through the low door of the inn. The day had darkened considerably in the half hour or so that I’d been inside. I reminded myself that daylight savings time was over, and dusk would come earlier. As I was walking back toward my car, I took a long look at the hillside cemetery. It was empty. In the fading light I could make out the tree and the gravestone; it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. I crossed the large intersection, found the small entranceway to the cemetery. A newish stone in dark polished granite told me that this was called the Old Hill Burying Ground. I walked up the steep path toward the tree, its leafless branches blackly etched against the stone-colored sky. I found the marker that Lily had studied so intently, crouched as she had done, and read its inscription. Mrs. Elizabeth Minot, dead in 1790. I suddenly wondered what I had possibly hoped to find from coming up here. I ran a finger along the worn inscription. It was a beautiful gravestone, with a soul effigy carved at the top, along with a warning: BE MINDFUL OF DEATH. I shivered a little, and stood up, both of my knees making popping sounds. My head swam a little in the colorless light of dusk. A steady wind began to swirl the fallen leaves on top of the hill. It was time to return home.

  I heard the snap of a branch coming from the other side of the hill. I turned; Lily Kintner was a few steps away, her hands in the large pockets of her coat, coming purposefully toward me. Her presence felt unreal, as though she were an apparition, and I smiled, not knowing what else to do. Should I admit to following her? Should I pretend this was a total coincidence?

  She kept coming, till she was just inches away. I thought for a moment she was going to kiss me, but instead she said, in a low whisper, “I’m sorry.”

  I felt a stinging pressure against my ribs, and when I looked down I saw her gloved hand pushing the knife up and into me, up and toward my heart.

  CHAPTER 34

  LILY

  From my spot under the horse chestnut tree on the outskirts of the cemetery, I spotted the solitary figure along the ridge. The light was fading fast, but I could see that it was Detective Kimball. I watched him crouch, and take a look at the gravestone, the same one that I’d looked at earlier. Mrs. Minot.

  I took a moment—shaking my arms to get the blood moving—to congratulate myself on how easily I’d lured Kimball to an isolated spot, just as dusk was coming on. As I began to walk toward him, I looked around, on the off chance that there were other visitors to this cemetery. But we were alone.

  When I was less than five yards from Kimball, I stepped on a fallen branch, and he turned.

  In one pocket was my stun gun, and in the other was my filleting knife. I had planned on stunning Detective Kimball first, then stabbing him, but he seemed so surprised, so dazed, to see me that I simply stepped in close and slid the knife between his ribs, angling it so that the knife would reach his heart.

  It was all so easy.

  His face went white, and I felt his warm blood as it spilled onto my hand.

  With our eyes locked, and my own heartbeat loud in my ears, I only barely registered the thudding footsteps climbing the hill to my left. “Step away from him and put your hands up,” barked a female voice over the rustling wind.

  I turned and watched as a tall, black woman in a trench coat scaled the path, holding a gun in both hands. Her unbuttoned coat whipped out behind her, snapping in the wind. I let go of the knife, and Kimball fell to both knees, one of them cracking loudly on a flagstone. I raised both hands and took a step backward. I watched the woman’s eyes scour Kimball as she kept moving forward. She registered the knife protruding from his ribs and began moving faster, reaching Kimball and swinging the gun one-handed in my direction. “Get the fuck on the ground. Right now. Face the fuck down.” I could practically hear the adrenaline coursing through her as she spoke, and I did as she said, stretching out along the cold hard ground of the cemetery. I had no intention of fighting, or running away. I had been caught.

  “Just lie there, and don’t move, Hen. Leave the knife where it is, okay?” The woman’s voice, talking to Kimball, was low and purring. I turned my head so I could just make out the scene, the woman rapidly punching numbers into her cell phone, the gun still pointed in my direction. She called 911, requesting an ambulance to “some fucking cemetery in Concord Center. It’s on a hill.” She identified herself as Detective Roberta James of the Boston Police Department and told the dispatcher that there was an officer down. She ended the call, checked briefly on Detective Kimball—“This doesn’t look so bad, Hen, just lie still”—then turned to face me. I heard a whiskering sound as she whipped her cloth belt out of the loops on her coat. She planted a knee in the center of my back and leaned all her weight on it. I felt the cold tip of her gun pressed against my neck. “Don’t give me a fucking reason,” she said. “Hands behind your back.”

  I did as she said, and, with one hand, she tightly and expertly knotted her cloth belt around the wrists of my hands. “You move at all, and I’ll shoot you in the head,” she said. I relaxed my body. The wind blew a crumpled leaf against my cheek. I closed my eyes, and thought, with disbelief and horror, how my life was over. I could hear the female detective’s low voice humming to Kimball. He said something back, but I couldn’t make out the words. Now that I’d been caught there was no reason for me to want him to die. In fact, I hoped he’d live, and thought he probably would. I hadn’t pushed the knife all the way in. In the distance I heard the approaching siren of an ambulance. I listened as the woman detective told Kimball that he was going to be all right, that he was going to live. I opened my eyes. A strand of my hair was obscuring my vision, but I could partially see the tableau before me: Detective Kimball laid out in front of Elizabeth Minot’s grave, the woman over him, her hand pressed against his side to slow the bleeding. The sky darkened to the color of slate, and the faint, flashing lights of the ambulance were just beginning to illuminate the scene.

  Twenty-four hours later my bail was denied at the Middlesex County Courthouse.

  “We’ll try again,” my state-appointed lawyer said. Her name was Stephanie Flynn, and she was about twenty-five years old. She was small-featured and pretty but her fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and she looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.

  She came back with me to my holding cell. “They’ll grant a bail review, and they won’t be able to hold you. Not with these circumsta
nces.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You did your best. I do realize I stabbed a police officer.”

  “A police officer who was harassing and following you,” Stephanie said, staring intently at me through her stylish glasses. “He’s in the clear, now, by the way,” she continued. “Just got moved out of ICU.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  My lawyer checked her watch, promised me she’d be back at the same time tomorrow. I could have paid for my own lawyer, or had my parents send one, but I chose to have one appointed for me, and right now, I felt good about that decision.

  After she left I laid back on my cot in my dark green jumpsuit. My lunch—a hamburger with a side of mixed vegetables—was delivered by a grim-faced policewoman in uniform. I wasn’t particularly hungry but ate a little of the burger, and drank the plastic cup of apple juice that had come with the meal. I refilled the cup with tepid water from the tap in my cell and drank several glasses, then lay back down on my cot. My parents, whom I’d finally called this morning, collect, from a wall-installed pay phone down the hall, were coming soon, and I was savoring the little bit of quiet before they arrived. The previous day, as I remained still and quiet at the Old Hill Burying Ground, while first one ambulance, then several, then a flotilla of cop cars arrived, I thought about what I’d say when I was questioned later. I considered telling the truth, the whole truth, about the two bodies in the well, and what happened with Eric Washburn in London, and my involvement with Ted and Miranda Severson and Brad Daggett. I imagined what that would feel like—to confess it all—and pictured the cold, fascinated eyes on me as I told the stories, and then I imagined that this fascination would hover around me for the rest of my life. All those years in prison. David Kintner’s infamous daughter. I would become a specimen, a curiosity. People would clamor to write books. I would lose all of my anonymity forever.