I didn’t know how long it would take for it to kick in, but I wanted to hear more about Miranda’s visit to Brad the night before.
“Tell me about last night,” I said. “Then we’ll deal with the body.”
Brad flicked his lighter and lit his cigarette, blowing a blue plume against the windshield. “She scared the shit out of me is what she did. You left the house, and about five minutes later she showed up. I thought it was you returning at first.”
“Why was she there?”
“She came because she didn’t want to call me on the phone. She said the police have some kind of witness and that they are going to question me, and I needed to keep my shit together. We didn’t talk about that much because she was so freaked out about seeing you.”
“And you told her what we talked about?”
“Yeah. I told her exactly what we planned. I said you tried to convince me to help you kill her, and that I told you I’d think about it, but that I thought we should double-cross you. I told her I’d be willing to kill you for her. She bought it.”
The night before, when I’d approached Brad in the parking lot of Cooley’s, my plan had been simply to get Brad to bring Miranda to the house on Micmac Road. That was step one. Once I was alone with Miranda, I knew that I could kill her, using my stun gun first, then either smother her with a plastic bag, or use my knife. But when I began to talk with Brad outside Cooley’s, I recognized that he was a man on the verge of breaking. In the dim light of his truck’s cab, I could see that his eyes were haunted and scared. I was reminded of an animal with his leg in a trap, half-starved and desperate. I changed plans immediately, telling him that I’d known Miranda since college, and I knew what she had done, and that he’d been set up all along.
“She’s going to turn you in, Brad. You know that, don’t you?” I said to him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Brad, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Miranda is an evil person. Is there any proof whatsoever that Miranda had anything to do with killing Ted? Besides your word, that is. All she has to do is say that you did it on your own accord. You won’t be able to prove otherwise. You’re going to go to jail for the rest of your life, and Miranda is going to get off scot-free. You’ve been used.”
“Oh, God,” he said, and wiped at an eye with one of his large hands.
It had been that easy to get him on my side. It was clear that he had not been completely fooled by Miranda. Far from it. I told him we should go back to his house and discuss options. I followed him in my car to the rental unit where he lived. Ted had described it to me, telling me how sterile and bleak it was, and he was right. The furniture was solid but uninteresting. Magazines had been fanned across the coffee table, and the whole place smelled of cleaning products. I wondered if it was even cleaner than when Ted had seen it—wondered if Brad, in his distress, had been compulsively straightening his apartment. We sat on the couch. I had turned down the offer of a beer but Brad had got himself a Heineken from the tiny alcove kitchen attached to the living room. He emptied half the bottle with his first sip.
“Are you in love with her?” I asked him.
“I thought so,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know. You’ve seen her. You saw her. She’s going to be fucking rich.”
“Yeah, she’s going to be rich, but she’s not going to share that with you. Trust me. This is how she operates. She gets men to do what she wants them to do and then she eliminates them. She got you to kill her husband for her, and she got you to do it when she was a thousand miles away.”
He nodded at me, his face slack. “That’s the worst part,” I continued. “She turned you into a murderer, and that’s something that you can never reverse. But it wasn’t you, Brad. It was Miranda. She manipulated you. You never stood a chance.”
I watched as tears spilled in two steady streams from Brad’s eyes, falling down his leathery