So I presented the plan. I told him to tell Miranda that I wanted to meet with her, that I knew all about the murder, and that I wanted money. We would meet in the house the Seversons had been building, sometime the next night, after dark. “She’ll be suspicious,” Brad said.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. So instead of telling her that I’m going to blackmail her, tell her that it’s a setup, that I told you to tell her it was blackmail, but that I’m planning on killing her, that I’ve been waiting for my moment since college. She’ll come. I know she will. Then I’ll get rid of her, and you can help me bury her body. If she gets discovered I’ll make sure that you have a solid alibi. I’ll say that you and I met up here in Kennewick, and we hooked up, and you came back down to my house in Massachusetts. You’ll be fine, I promise.”
“What about the money?”
“You’re never going to see that money, Brad. Never. You’re going to go to prison, and I’m offering you a way out. If Miranda’s gone, then you are safe.”
He nodded rapidly, like he’d just been scolded. “How are you going to kill her?”
“I’ll take care of that,” I said.
“I could do it,” Brad said, and there was something new in his eyes. Not fear, anymore, but hatred, plus maybe a little bit of craziness. I wondered if he’d slept at all since killing Ted.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I could send her into the house, and then I could come in through the back patio entrance and sneak up on her. I have this big wrench. I could hit her over the head with it. That way you wouldn’t have to do it. You don’t want to know what it’s like.”
It was perfect. It solved my biggest problem, that if I was the one to kill Miranda, there would inevitably be some sort of forensic test that would prove a five-foot-eight-inch female had dealt the deadly blow and not a six-foot-two-inch man.
“You won’t need to sneak up on her,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell her that you’re planning on killing me because I know everything. Tell Miranda that you’re going to sneak up on me and hit me with the wrench. Then, even if she hears you coming into the house, she’ll think you’re after me. She won’t even know it’s coming.”
“Okay.” He nodded.
“Are you sure about this?”
He told me he was, and I believed him. We talked more, going over every detail of the plan. I reassured him several times that everything was going to be okay. When I left his house, I was convinced that he would do everything he had told me he would do.
And he had.
I had wondered, as I was standing in the dark with Miranda, whether I had been stupid, and Brad was going to kill me instead of Miranda. But at the last moment, when Brad lifted that massive wrench, I knew. I knew that I had won, and Miranda, like others before her, was going to die, and that I was going to live.
With the windows of the truck rolled up, and Brad smoking, the cab filled with pungent smoke. “So she was willing to kill me?” I asked Brad, needing to know.
“Yeah. Like you said she’d be. She was surprised, though . . . she said you guys weren’t that close in college.” He rubbed at his lips with his spatulate fingers. “How’d you know about everything? How’d you know so much about what happened with Ted? I never asked you last night.”
“I met Ted Severson on a flight back from London. He told me that his wife was cheating on him with his house contractor. He watched you through binoculars from the path out along the bluff. We continued to meet. He decided he wanted to kill Miranda. And you, as well. I told him I’d help.”
Brad took another long drag on his cigarette, but it was down to the filter. He cranked the window down and flicked the cigarette away. I heard it sputter out as it hit a puddle. “You’re shitting me,” Brad said, swinging his head in my direction. The chloral hydrate was kicking in. Brad’s speech was starting to slur, and his eyes were drooping.
“No. I wish I was. Ted was planning on killing Miranda and she was planning on killing Ted, but she got there first. Well, you got there first. It’s all over now, though.”