“It is,” he said. “It is.” His words were heavily slurred—is sounded like ish—and I could just barely understand what he was saying. His head was angled down, and he reminded me of a boxer trying to stay awake in the ring, not realizing that he’s already been knocked out. He started to lean a little toward me, and I moved back in my seat, the bags on my feet rustling against the floor of the truck.
“Why do you . . . why do you have bags on your feet?” His words were almost complete mush and I would never have known what he was saying but I could see where he was looking. He fell forward, slumping sideways so that his right shoulder landed hard on my thigh. I grabbed two handfuls of his thick denim jacket and managed to move him upright in his seat. His head tipped backward, his mouth open. I unlatched my door and got out of the truck, shutting it quickly so that the light didn’t stay on too long in the cab. I looked up. The night sky was filled with clustered stars, brighter now than when I had parked the car. The ocean shushed unseen. I allowed myself ten seconds of just standing there, and then I got to work.
I had brought extra bags, and I had my knife, but before resorting to either of those, I hoisted myself onto the bed of the truck to check out the toolbox that was secured with a bungee cord against the rear of the cab. The corrugated metal lid was unlocked and I used my penlight to look inside. There were all the tools I’d expected—hammers, handsaws, a tire iron, a plastic box that contained a drill—but what caught my eye was a length of coat hanger wire that had been repurposed into a long hook, for jimmying the lock when the keys were left inside. I picked it up and straightened it out. It would be perfect; I didn’t want any blood in the truck.
I slid back onto the passenger seat, and shut the door behind me. I rolled down my window; the smell of Brad’s last cigarette still lingered in the cab, plus there was something else . . . the chemical odor of distilled alcohol coming from Brad’s breath. Maybe also his body. He had begun to snore—high nasal rasps on each outtake of breath. I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him as hard as I could, and he showed no signs of coming out of his deep sleep. I wondered if the combination of alcohol—how much had he drunk today?—and the chloral hydrate would eventually kill him, but I couldn’t take the risk that it wouldn’t.
I got onto my knees on the passenger seat. I pushed Brad’s head away from me so that it fell facing the driver’s-side window. It was still tipped back and there was space between his thick neck and the truck’s headrest. I circled the coat hanger wire around his neck, and twisted the ends together so that the wire was tight against his neck. I took out the Leatherman from my backpack, and clipped the excess wire from the coat hanger so that the twisted-together part was only about an inch long.
I gripped the ends with the tip of the Leatherman pliers and I twisted, tightening the wire until I knew that Brad was dead.
PART III
Hide the Bodies Well
CHAPTER 27
KIMBALL
I couldn’t sleep.
This was nothing new to me, especially when I was working on a case. I checked the clock on my bedside table. It was a little after three in the morning. Pyewacket the cat was sleeping on my discarded clothes on the floor. He looked cold, curled into a ball like a woolly bear caterpillar that’s pretending it’s dead. He probably wondered why those metal strips along his apartment’s floor hadn’t started making burbling sounds and getting warm. Late October had turned cold, but I liked to hold out till November, at least, before turning the heat on.
I thought of getting out of bed and going to see what was playing on Turner Classic Movies but knew that if I did, I would never get back to sleep again. I needed to be at least a little sharp for the following day. Ted Severson had been murdered on Friday night, and it had now just tipped over into the following Wednesday. Almost a whole week. We had a prime suspect—this Brad Daggett character—but he’d pulled a runner, and no one could find him. I’d spent the day up in Maine, in the company of the mostly helpful Kennewick police force, keeping an eye on Daggett’s house, checking any and all leads as to his whereabouts. He was our man, for sure. After Miranda Severson identified our sketch as possibly being Brad Daggett, I’d checked the system, and Daggett was there. He’d been arrested twice. Five years earlier on suspicion of domestic assault, and two years ago on a DUI. I’d called him with the number that Miranda had given me, but he didn’t pick up. Then I called the local police, and asked them to swing by and check to see if Brad Daggett was home, maybe do some initial questioning, ask him if he had any information on the death of Ted Severson. They did as I asked, but he wasn’t at his house. I told them it could wait till the next day, that I’d be questioning the primary witness in the morning and we’d know more then. I printed Daggett’s most recent mug shot, and took it to Rachel Price’s apartment in Somerville the following morning. When she looked at the picture, she hopped a little on her toes, and said, “Oh, that’s him. That’s definitely him.”
“That’s the man you saw entering the house at six o’clock on Friday night?”