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.”
“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