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?”
“Yes, that’s him. I’m sure of it.”
That had been Tuesday morning. I’d called the sheriff, then driven up myself. Daggett was still nowhere to be found. Not at either of the construction sites that he was supervising, and not at his home, one of a string of rental cottages that he owned along Kennewick Beach. White paint and green trim. Made me think of my own childhood vacations at Wells Beach, just a little farther north. When it was clear he wasn’t home, and wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I tried out the key I’d found hidden in Ted Severson’s bedroom drawer. It fit Brad’s cottage door. Why did Ted have a key to his general contractor’s house? Had they been having an affair? I peered into the tiny, immaculate cottage but didn’t enter yet. A local judge granted a warrant just after his lunch break and we searched the place, finding nothing.
I’d been kicking myself all day that I hadn’t acted faster after Miranda gave me Brad Daggett’s name. I should have brought his mug shot immediately to Rachel Price, but Miranda’s halfhearted identification hadn’t left me with much hope. Of course, now it seemed abundantly clear that Miranda only identified Brad because she felt she had to, and she was covering herself. And she must have been the one who had warned Brad to stay away from his house and turn off his phone. It was the oldest story in the book. The wife had had her boyfriend kill her husband. The curveball was that hidden key in Ted’s drawer, the key to Brad’s cottage in Maine. Was it Miranda’s key and she had hidden it in her husband’s drawer? Possible, I