Rules for Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

  I bundled up and walked down to Charles Street, to a café that served oatmeal. I was at a corner table reading a copy of yesterday’s Globe that had been sitting on the table when my cell phone rang.

  “Malcolm, it’s Gwen.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Oh, no. I’m getting breakfast. I’m about to go into the store. Are you still in Boston?”

  “No, I got home yesterday afternoon, and all the books I’d ordered had arrived, so last night I read Strangers on a Train.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “I’d love to talk with you about it. Is there a good time?”

  “Can I call you back when I get to the store?” I said. My oatmeal had just arrived, steam pouring from the bowl.

  “Sure,” she said. “Call me back.”

  After finishing breakfast, I went to Old Devils. Emily was already there, and Nero had been fed.

  “You’re here early,” I said.

  “Remember that I’m leaving early.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, although I hadn’t remembered that.

  “Mr. Popovitch complained again,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “He wants to return his last shipment.”

  “The whole shipment?”

  “Yep. He says they were all improperly graded.”

  David Popovich was a collector who lived in New Mexico, but all of us at the bookstore felt like he might as well live next door. He bought a ton of books from us and returned half of them, at least. He occasionally called to complain but mostly he sent us snide emails.

  “Cut him off,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Write him back and tell him that we’ll accept whatever returns he has but that he can’t order through us, anymore. I’m done with him.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yes. Would you rather I write the email?”

  “No, I’m happy to do it. Should I cc you?”

  “Sure,” I said. Banishing Popovich would probably hurt our bottom line in the end, but for the moment I didn’t care. And it felt good.

  Before calling Gwen back I sent an email to a publicist at Random House that I’d been ignoring and confirmed a date for her author to come and give a reading in March. Then I opened up the glass case and got our first edition copy of Strangers on a Train, bringing it back with me to the phone. Its cover was deep blue, garishly illustrated with a close-up of a man’s face and a sickly-looking woman with red hair.

  Gwen picked up after one ring.

  “Hi, Gwen,” I said, and her first name sounded strange coming out of my mouth.

  “Thanks for calling me back. So, this book.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Bleak. I knew the story, because of the movie. But the book was different. Darker, I thought, and do both the men commit murders in the movie?”

  I tried to remember. “I don’t think so,” I said. “No, definitely not. I think the main character in the movie—the tennis player—almost kills the father but doesn’t. That probably had a lot more to do with the production code than with what Hitchcock actually wanted to do. I don’t think they were allowed to have characters get away with murder.” I hadn’t read the book in many years, or seen the movie again, but I remembered both of them pretty well.

  “The Hays code,” she said. “If only it was that way in real life.”

  “Right.”

  “And he’s not a tennis player in the book.”

  “Who?”

  “Guy. The main character. He’s an architect.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Was reading the book helpful?”

  “You mentioned in your list that you thought it was the very best example of a perfect murder,” she said, ignoring my question. “What exactly did you mean?”

  “It’s a perfect crime,” I said, “because when you swap murders with someone else, a stranger basically, then there is no connection between the murderer and their victim. That’s what makes it foolproof.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “What’s clever about the murder in the book,” she continued, “is that the person committing it can’t be connected to the crime. It has nothing to do with the method.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Bruno kills Guy’s wife at an amusement park. He strangles her to death. But there’s nothing clever about that. I’ve been thinking about Charlie’s rules again. So, if you were Charlie, just humor me, then how would you commit a murder based on Strangers on a Train?”

  “I see what you mean. It would be very hard.”

  “Right. You could just go strangle someone at an amusement park but that wouldn’t be following the philosophy of the crime.”

  “He’d have to find someone else to commit a murder with him.”

  “That’s what I thought, but not necessarily, really,” she said. “If I were Charlie, if I were trying to copy Strangers on a Train, then I would select as a victim someone who is already likely to be murdered. My mind is going blank right now, but suppose someone just went through a bitter divorce, or …”

  “Who’s the guy in New York, who stole everyone’s money?” I said.

  “Bernie Madoff?”

  “Right, him.”

  “He’d work, but there are maybe too many people who want him dead. I would pick one-half of a bad divorce, I think. Something slightly public, then I would wait until the spurned spouse was away, and I would commit the murder. I think that would be the best way to honor the book.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “I think so too. Worth looking into. How about you, did you have any new thoughts last night?”

  “I was pretty tired last night, after staying up the night before. So, no. But I’ll keep thinking about it.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’ve been helpful.” Then she added, in a slightly different tone of voice, “Don’t forget to send me your flight information for the trip you took to London this past fall.”

  “I’ll do that today,” I said.

  After I hung up, Nero came clicking along the hardwood floor to settle himself down by my legs. I watched him, in a slight daze, thinking about the phone conversation I’d just had.

  “I did it,” came Emily’s voice, and I turned around; she was coming toward me, a rare grin on her face.

  “Did what?”

  “Sent the email to Popovich. He’s going to be in shock.”

  “You seem very pleased.”

  “No, I’m … you know how much he drives me crazy.”

  “It’s fine. Honestly, I think he needs us more than we need him. The customer isn’t always right, you know.”

  Emily grinned again, then said, “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. You seem distracted, that’s all. I didn’t know if there was anything going on.”

  It was so out of character for her to express this much interest in me that I realized that I must be acting noticeably different. I think of myself as stoic, as someone who never reveals too much of themselves, and it worried me that that might not be the case.

  “Would it be okay if I go for a walk?” I said. “You can cover the store?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’ll be a quick walk,” I said.

  Outside it was still bitterly cold, but the sun was out, the sky a hard, unforgiving blue. The sidewalks had been cleared and I walked toward Charles Street, thinking I’d cut up to the Public Garden. I kept thinking about the conversation with Gwen about Strangers on a Train, a book that I’d worked hard at not thinking about for many years.

  There were more people in the park than I thought there would be, considering the temperature. A father was wiping snow off one of the Make Way for Ducklings bronze figures so that he could put his toddler on top of it and take a picture. I must have walked past those ducklings a thousand times and there was always a parent, or a set of parents, posing the
ir child for a photograph. In summertime there was often a line. And I always wondered what the parents got out of it, their insistence to document a particular moment. Not being a parent, I don’t really know. It was actually something that Claire and I had never talked about, having children. I had told myself it was up to her, but maybe she’d been waiting for me to broach the subject.

  I walked around the frozen pond, the wind now spinning dead leaves, and started to make my way back to the store. I was not innocent, even though sometimes I allowed myself the luxury of thinking that I was. And if Gwen Mulvey discovered the truth, then I would have to accept it.

  CHAPTER 11

  I knew that I was going to kill Eric Atwell the moment I’d finished reading Claire’s diary. But it took me many more months to work up the courage to admit that to myself.

  I also knew that when Atwell was dead, I was going to be an immediate suspect. My wife had been coming from his home on the night she died in a car accident. Atwell had even confessed to providing the drugs that were found in her system, and the police, no doubt, had also determined that Claire Kershaw née Mallory had been having an affair with the wealthy owner of Black Barn Enterprises.

  I thought of hiring someone to kill Atwell, then making sure that I was far away (out of the country?) when it happened. But there were so many reasons this wouldn’t work. For one, I doubted I had the kind of money it would take to hire a professional hit man, and even if I could scrape it together somehow, it would be obvious to anyone looking at my suddenly depleted bank account. I also had no idea how to go about hiring a killer. Nor did I even want to support such a profession. Anyone who killed people for money was not someone I wanted to be involved with; besides, it would be giving someone far too much power over my own life.

  So I decided that I couldn’t hire a killer. But I did like the idea of being far away when Eric Atwell was killed.

  A year earlier, sometime in 2009, a young woman had come into Old Devils with a stack of incredibly valuable first editions. They weren’t primarily mystery novels, although there had been an 1892 Harper & Brothers edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that had made me ache with longing. There were about ten books in all—including two Mark Twain firsts that must have been worth thousands—and the woman, who had stringy hair and scabbed lips, had been carrying the books in a grocery bag. I asked her where she got them.

  “Don’t you want them?” she said.

  “Not if you can’t tell me where you got them from.”

  She’d left the store, as quickly as she’d come in. In retrospect I began to wish I’d simply bought them from her with whatever money was in the register. And then I’d have been able to find the owner—she must have robbed someone’s home—and returned the books. As it was, I did call the police to report the incident, and they told me they’d keep an eye and an ear out for reports of stolen books. I never heard anything back from them, and I never saw the young woman again. At that time, Old Devils had an employee named Rick Murphy, who worked weekend shifts. Rick was a collector, primarily interested in anything horror related.

  I told Rick about the woman who’d come in with the rare first editions.

  “She might try and sell them online,” Rick had said.

  “She didn’t look like the type who goes online.”

  “Worth checking, though,” he said. “There’s this pretty tasty little site, more of a dark web place, where people sell collectibles under the table.”

  Rick, who worked in IT at an insurance company during the week, showed me a site called Duckburg. To me it looked nearly incomprehensible, like message boards from the early internet days, but Rick pulled up a section where rare collectibles were offered for sale. It was all anonymous. We did searches for some of the books that had been brought into the store, but nothing popped up.

  “What else is on here?” I said.

  “Ah, the gentleman is intrigued. A lot of it is just a place to chat anonymously. To tell the truth, this isn’t the true dark web, but it’s darkish enough.”

  Rick went to get his gigantic soda and I quickly bookmarked the page. I thought I might check it out later, but never did.

  After deciding in late 2010 to kill Eric Atwell, I went to my bookmarks and discovered I still had that link. I spent a few hours one night after closing time, exploring the different portals, and creating a fake identity, calling myself “Bert Kling.” Then I logged on to a portal called “Swaps” that didn’t specify exactly what it was for but primarily seemed to be sexual in nature. Sixtyyearold man wants to buy you a 1000dollars in clothes. Young and sexy only. Won’t mind me accompanying you into changing room. No touching, just looking. But there were also offers such as Looking for cleaning ladies that want to be paid in oxy.

  I opened up a dialogue box and wrote, Any Strangers on a Train fans out there? Would love to suggest a mutually beneficial swap. I posted it and logged off.

  I told myself to wait for twenty-four hours before getting back on, but only managed about twelve. It was a quiet day at the store, and I logged back on to Duckburg under my alias. I’d gotten a response. Big fan of that book. Would love to discuss. Go to private chat?

  Okay, I responded, clicking the box that made the chat visible to only the two parties involved. Two hours later there was a new message: What did you have in mind?

  I wrote, There’s someone who deserves to disappear from the face of the earth. Can’t do it myself, though. I somehow couldn’t bring myself to actually write the word die.

  I have the same problem, came back almost immediately.

  Let’s help each other out, okay?

  Okay.

  My heart was beating, and my ears had gone warm. Was I being trapped? It was possible, but all I had to give up was Eric Atwell’s information, not my own. I decided, after about five minutes, that it was worth it.

  I wrote: Eric Atwell, 255 Elsinore Street, Southwell, Mass. Anytime from February 6 through February 12. I was going to be at an antiquarian bookseller’s conference in Sarasota, Florida, during that week. My ticket was already bought.

  I watched the screen for what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten minutes. Finally, a message appeared. Norman Chaney, 42 Community Road, Tickhill, New Hampshire. Anytime from March 12 through 19. After that message another one popped up thirty seconds later. We should never message again.

  I wrote, Agreed. Then I copied down Norman Chaney’s address on the back of an Old Devils bookmark and logged out. From what I understood of Duckburg’s policy, the conversation would now disappear forever. It was a comforting thought, even though I doubted its veracity.

  Taking a deep breath, I realized that I’d been barely breathing for the past twenty minutes. I stared at the name and address I’d written down and was just about to punch it into the computer when I stopped myself. I needed to be more careful than that. There were other ways to find out about this person. Right now, the name was enough. I was glad, I had to admit, that it was a man I was supposed to kill. And I was very glad that I was going second. Obviously, I would only have to go through my half of the bargain if Eric Atwell died while I was in Sarasota.

  *

  IN FEBRUARY 2011 I attended the conference. I’d never been to Sarasota before and I fell in love with its old brick downtown. I made a pilgrimage to what had been John D. MacDonald’s house on Siesta Key, peering through the locked gates at a midcentury modern structure surrounded by lush vegetation. I even attended some presentations and had dinner with one of my few friends in the antiquarian world, Shelly Bingham, who had owned a used bookstore in Harvard Square before “retiring” to Bradenton, Florida, and selling used books at Anna Maria Island’s weekly flea market. We drank martinis at the Gator Club, and after our second Shelly said, “Mal, I was so gutted to hear about Claire last year. How are you doing?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but began to cry instead, loudly enough that several heads swiveled toward me. The suddenness and force of the tears was shock
ing. I stood up and walked to the restroom at the back of the dark bar, where I composed myself, then returned to the bar, and said, “Sorry about that, Shel.”

  “No, please. I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s have another drink and talk about the books we’re reading.”

  It was later that night, back alone in my hotel room, that I got onto my laptop and checked out the Boston Globe’s online site. The top story was related to an off-season trade the Red Sox had just made, but the second story was about a homicide in Southwell. The name of the victim had not yet been disclosed by the police. I was tempted to sit with my laptop, refreshing the site until Eric Atwell was named as the victim, but I forced myself to try and sleep instead. I opened the window of my hotel room, lay on the bed under a single sheet, and listened to the breeze, plus the occasional truck rumbling by on the nearby highway. Sometime near dawn I fell asleep, waking up a few hours later, skin damp with sweat, the sheet twisted around my body. I logged back on to the Globe website. The body that had been found had been identified as Eric Atwell, a prominent local entrepreneur and angel investor. After throwing up in the hotel bathroom, I lay back down on the bed and savored, for a moment, the fact that Atwell had gotten what he deserved.

  By the time I was back in Boston, I’d learned that Eric Atwell had been reported missing on Tuesday night by one of his housemates. He had gone out on one of his daily walks earlier in the day and had never returned. The following morning the police conducted a search and Atwell’s body was found near a walking path on conservation land about a mile from his house. He had been shot several times; his wallet had been taken, along with an expensive set of headphones, and his cell phone. The police were investigating the possibility of a robbery and asking for help from nearby residents. Had anyone seen someone suspicious? Had anyone heard the gunshots?

  The article went on to mention that Atwell was a renowned philanthropist, someone with a keen interest in the local arts scene, who frequently hosted gatherings and fund-raisers at his restored farm in Southwell. The article didn’t mention drugs, or extortion, or anything about Atwell’s role in the vehicular death of Claire Mallory. For that, I was glad. A week passed, and I had begun to believe that no one had made any connection between me and Atwell. Then, on a Sunday afternoon, nursing a cold, I was surprised by the sound of the door buzzer. Before I even answered it, I was sure it was the police, come to take me away. I braced myself. And it was the police—a tall, sorrowful-looking detective named James—but she did not have the look of a police officer preparing to make an arrest. She said she had a few quick questions. I let her in, and she explained to me that she was a Boston Police detective following up on some leads on an unsolved homicide in Southwell.