Rules for Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

  “Thanks for coming. As soon as I get those photographs of the books, can I send them to you?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The store was open for another fifteen minutes and I could see Brandon behind the front desk, a book splayed open in front of him. I swung through the front door and he looked up. “Boss,” he said.

  “Hey, Brandon.”

  He tilted the book he was reading so I could see the cover. It was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, who not so long ago had been revealed to actually be J. K. Rowling. “Good,” he said, and went back to reading.

  “I’m just popping in. Anything happen while I was away?”

  He told me how yesterday afternoon a woman in a fur coat came in and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of new hardcovers and arranged to have them shipped to her address in Malibu. And he told me that he thought he’d finally fixed the faucet in the employee bathroom that was always leaking.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I heard Nero’s plaintive meow and bent down to greet him.

  “He misses you, I think, when you’re not here,” Brandon said, and something about those words caused me to have one of those periodic waves of deep sadness that suddenly infect me from time to time. I stood suddenly, and the light swam in front of my eyes. I was hungry, I realized. It was late, and I hadn’t eaten since lunch in Rockland.

  I walked home and got my car, then drove over the river to Somerville, the town I’d lived in with Claire. I sat at the bar at R.F. O’Sullivan’s, a place I hadn’t been for years, drinking Guinness and eating one of their softball-size burgers. Afterward I drove to the Somerville Public Library, pleased to see it was still open. I went to the second floor and found a computer with an open internet browser, punched in the name that Marty had given me earlier, “Nicholas Pruitt.”

  Not only was he an English professor at New Essex University, he had published a book of short stories called Little Fish. There were two pictures of him I could find online, an author photograph, plus a candid from a faculty cocktail party. He was about what you’d expect a college English professor to look like, tall and stoop shouldered, with a slight paunch and hair that stuck up at the front as though he constantly ran his fingers through it. His hair was a brownish black, but his closely trimmed beard was salted with gray. In his author photograph he was turned to a three-quarters profile and was staring toward the camera with an expression that seemed to be asking for validation. Take me seriously, it said. I just might be a genius. Maybe I’m being harsh, but that was what I saw. I’ve always been suspicious of literary writers, with their attempts at immortality. That is why I much prefer thriller writers, and poets. I like the writers who know they are fighting a losing battle.

  While there was plenty of online information about Nicholas Pruitt, who went by Nick, it seemed, there was very little information about his personal life. If he was married, or had kids, I couldn’t find any confirmation of that fact. The most telling thing I read about him was on a site that enabled students to anonymously grade their professors. The bulk of his reviews pointed to a decent professor who was sometimes a hard grader, but one user wrote: To be honest, Professor Pruitt gave me the creeps. He was FAR too into Lady Macbeth to be honest. I don’t know why he insisted on acting out all her parts.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something. I had already constructed an entire fantasy of what might have turned Nicholas Pruitt into Charlie. The way I imagined it was that Pruitt’s sister Margaret marries Norman Chaney, who turns out to be not only a creep, but a criminal, and a man who murders Pruitt’s sister and gets away with it. Pruitt decides to kill Norman Chaney, but knows that if he does it, he will be the prime suspect. So, thinking he might be able to hire someone to kill Chaney, he goes onto Duckburg and finds my message about Strangers on a Train. He’s an English professor and knows that book well; he knows what I’m suggesting, and we exchange names and addresses. He kills Eric Atwell. It goes well, not just because he gets away with it, but because he actually enjoys it. It gives him the power he has always craved. When Norman Chaney dies, while Pruitt is away somewhere, establishing an alibi, he feels further empowered. Killing feels good. He decides he has to find out who he swapped with, who murdered Chaney for him. It wouldn’t have been hard. A little snooping and he’d discover that Eric Atwell had been questioned by police in regard to a motor vehicle accident that took the wife of Malcolm Kershaw. Not only that, but Malcolm Kershaw works at a mystery bookstore. He’d even once posted a list of eight perfect murders in fiction. It included Strangers on a Train.

  Years go by, and Pruitt can’t forget how alive he felt when he’d taken a life. Every semester when he teaches Macbeth, he feels the bloodlust in him grow a little more. He decides that he needs to do it again, commit murder. Inspired by the list of eight perfect murders he begins to look for victims. Maybe he’ll even make it obvious; that way Malcolm Kershaw and he might finally meet.

  It made perfect sense, and I was filled with excitement mixed with dread. I needed to meet Nick Pruitt and see how he’d react. But first I wanted to read his book of short stories. I logged on to the Minuteman Library Network to see where the book was available, hoping it was here at Somerville, but it wasn’t. There was, however, a copy listed as available at Newton Public Library. They weren’t open now but would be the following morning at ten.

  CHAPTER 17

  I began rereading The Secret History the next morning at the store. I was tired of waiting. Waiting for Newton Public Library to open so I could go get a copy of Nicholas Pruitt’s Little Fish, waiting to hear from Gwen, waiting for more information from Marty Kingship on the murder of Norman Chaney.

  I read the prologue and the first chapter and was instantly swept up in the narrator’s obsession with the small coterie of classics students at the fictional college of Hampden. Like Richard Papen, I have always been fascinated by intimate groups, by close-knit families, by sibling bonds. But unlike Richard I never found a group to join, the closest being my fellow antiquarian booksellers, but more often than not, when we gather, I feel like an impostor in their midst.

  The temperature had risen that day and snow was melting all over the city. Puddles were forming, and gutters were overflowing, and the pedestrians were out in droves. It was a busy morning, a steady stream of browsers dripping on the hardwood floor.

  At just before noon I told Emily that I was going home for lunch and could she cover the register. I’d parked out front at a meter, so I got into my car and took Storrow Drive to Newton, then cut through some back roads to get to the main library, an enormous brick structure close to Commonwealth Avenue. I found Little Fish on the library’s second floor and took the slim paperback volume to a cushy leather chair in a corner of the library near the poetry section. I quickly perused the list of story titles on the contents page, looking, I suppose, for something that might indicate a crime story, something with a murder in it, or some malice, but most of the titles felt either generic or self-consciously literary. “The Garden Party.” “What Was Left After It Happened.” “Hence the Pyramids.” “A Platonic Kiss.” Nothing jumped out, so I decided to read the title story, “Little Fish.” I was only halfway through it when I realized that it was not particularly helpful. In the story a college senior at a thinly disguised Bowdoin College remembers how his father took him on a fishing trip in Upstate New York when he was ten. The lessons of the trip—throwing the little fish back being the most obvious one—reverberate with the narrator’s current relationship. The story was not impressive. At least not to me, and I gave up on it halfway through. Then I scanned the remaining stories in the collection, not finding much. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but maybe just one story that pointed toward an unhealthy attitude toward revenge or justice. I flipped to the front of the book to see if there was a dedication, and there was, a simple one: “To Jillian.” I got up and wandered until I found an unmanned computer, then opened a browser window and put in Jill
ian then New Essex University. The name that most frequently came up was Jillian Nguyen, who had been an English professor at New Essex before getting a job at Emerson College, here in Boston. I memorized her name, deciding I’d contact her, but not until I found out some more about Nick Pruitt.

  Then I flipped to the back of the book and saw that there was an author photograph, different from the one I’d seen online. It was also a three-quarters profile—clearly Pruitt thought he had a good side—but in this one he was wearing a hat, a felt fedora, the type of hat that detectives wore in old movies. As soon as I saw it, I thought of the man at the end of my street I’d seen on Saturday night, the man I thought was following me. He was wearing a hat similar to this one.

  Before leaving I riffled through the pages of the book to see if it had one of those security tags. I didn’t find one, and I considered going to the bathroom and hiding the book under my shirt. But the library was busy, people coming and going, and I simply decided to walk out with the paperback in my hand, as though I’d already checked it out. I didn’t think they’d miss it, and it seemed prudent that there was no record on my library card of me having borrowed a Nicholas Pruitt book.

  I walked through the sensors—no alarms sounded—and out into the warm afternoon.

  Back at the store I emailed Gwen to find out if she’d gotten photographs yet of the books we’d seen in Elaine Johnson’s house. Then I tried to read some more of The Secret History but couldn’t concentrate. I ended up pacing through the store, trying to figure out what to do next, straightening shelves.

  After Brandon came in for his afternoon shift, I decided that I could probably go home. It was Tuesday, and quiet, and I was waiting to speak with Gwen, something that I’d rather not do in a place where people might hear me. I put The Secret History in my messenger bag and asked Brandon if he minded being alone.

  He frowned, and said, “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Okay, then. Call me if anything comes up.”

  “Will do.”

  The temperature had dipped, so that all the melted snow had now transformed into ice, the sidewalks littered with dirt and salt. The afternoon was bright, and I was reminded that the days were already getting longer, even though winter would continue unabated for at least two more months. I didn’t mind it, personally, but I could read the faces of the passersby on my walk home. Pale and grim, resigned to this gray city, and to the long, wet slog toward springtime.

  Out of habit I peered through the plateglass windows of the Beacon Hill Hotel and into their snug bar, always wondering if my co-owner, Brian, would be in residence. He was in today, wearing one of his familiar Harris tweed jackets, anchoring the far side of the oval bar. I hesitated on the street, deciding whether I should join him when I saw his large shaggy head lift up and notice me through the glass.

  “Hey, Brian,” I said, sliding onto the stool next to him, curious about the half-filled martini on the bar with the lipstick imprint on its rim.

  “Tess is here,” he said, and just as he said it, I turned to see Tess Murray, his wife for the past ten years, returning, I assumed, from the bathroom, fresh lipstick on her lips.

  “Oh, sorry, Tess,” I said, stepping back to let her retake her seat.

  “No, sit there. We’re always thrilled to have a buffer between us, aren’t we, Bri?” She slid her martini over, and I sat down between them. I saw Tess far less than I saw Brian, and it was very unusual that she was out for a drink with him, especially early on a Tuesday afternoon. She was his second wife and had to be at least twenty years younger than he was. Everyone said that she’d been his publicist and that was how they met, but I knew that it wasn’t true. She was a publicist, or had been, back when she worked full-time, but not for him. They’d met the only year he’d attended Bouchercon, the annual crime writers’ conference. He didn’t usually go, but they’d made him guest of honor and that had forced his hand.

  Brian had told me many times that the only way their marriage worked was that Tess spent six months at their house on Longboat Key without him, and that he spent the other six months at their cabin in down east Maine without her. They occasionally ran into each other in Boston.

  “How are you not in Florida right now, Tess?” I said.

  “You didn’t hear? Brian, show him your arm.”

  I turned, and Brian lifted his left arm, ensconced in a device that looked vaguely bionic. “Oh, no.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I fell a week ago stepping down from this very same barstool. Didn’t feel a thing except the remainder of my pride leaving my body. But, apparently, it’s broken in two places, and you’d be surprised how hard it is to be a one-handed drunk at my age.”

  “Are you writing right now?”

  “Turned in the new one just before Christmas but I’ve got copy-edits to do, and cans of soup to open up, so Tess is making the sacrifice.”

  “I tried to talk him into coming down to Florida, but you know what that’s like,” Tess said. “We’ve been meaning to call you, Mal, ask you for a drink. And now here you are.”

  “He knows where to find me,” Brian said, then finished his drink, almost always a scotch and soda in a lowball glass with two cubes of ice.

  I ordered a Left Hand Stout and managed to talk Brian and Tess into letting me buy them each a drink. Another scotch for Brian and a Grey Goose martini for Tess.

  “How’s business?” Tess said. “I’d ask Brian but he never knows.”

  “It’s the same,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

  “What’s selling?”

  Even though she no longer worked as a publicist—last I heard she owned a boutique jewelry store in Florida—she still loved to hear about the business. I liked Tess and had defended her on a number of occasions to other people in the industry, some who saw her as a gold digger who didn’t even have the decency to spend much time with her older, rich husband. But she was always nice to me, and Brian had told me several times how much he valued their marriage, how she understood how important solitude was to him. How she loved him in her own way.

  I stayed for two beers, aware the whole time that my phone might ring, or buzz, with a message from Gwen. When they ordered dinner, I said that I’d leave, that I had food at home to cook, which was a lie, but Brian was starting to slur a little and I wanted to get out before the monologues started.

  Before I left, I said, “Did you hear about Elaine Johnson?”

  “Who?” Brian said.

  “Elaine Johnson. She used to come into the store every day before she moved to Maine. Coke bottle glasses.”

  “Sure,” Brian said, and I was surprised that Tess, to my right, was nodding along as well.

  “She died. Of a heart attack.”

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  I almost told him, told the two of them, I guess, about Agent Mulvey, and the list, but stopped myself, for some reason.

  “Another customer told me,” I lied. “Just thought you might be interested.”

  “Good riddance to her,” Tess said, and I turned toward her, surprised.

  “You knew her?” I said.

  “Sure. She cornered me at one of Brian’s readings to tell me what a hack he was. I told her I was his wife, and she burst out laughing, asked me if I read his books before I married him. I’ll never forget it.”

  Brian was smiling. “She was all right, actually. I remember her now. Told me once her favorite writer was James Crumley, so I figured she couldn’t be all bad. She moved to Rockland, in Maine, didn’t she?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Emily, probably, last time I did a shift at Old Devils. She keeps track of all the problem customers for me.”

  “Huh,” I said, slightly annoyed that Brian, who saw Emily probably every three months, seemed to have a better relationship with her than I did.

  Tess walked me out. I wondered why, but when we got to the sidewalk, she said, “This stupid accident has changed him completely. He’s
terrified of everything now. Walking. Getting out of bed. Doing anything. I can stay with him but not forever. I’ve got the store in Florida and I just can’t deal with him all the time, and I’m not sure he can deal with me.”

  “Maybe you should get some help?”

  “Exactly. That’s what I’ve told him a hundred times, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Look, if we have you over for dinner some night, will you bring it up for me? Maybe if he hears it from someone else …”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Thanks, Mal. I appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d do absolutely anything for Brian, and he’d do absolutely anything for me, but helping him get out of a bathtub was not part of the deal.” She pushed a strand of her long dark hair behind one of her ears, then leaned in and kissed me on the lips before pulling me in for a hug. She’d done this before, even in front of Brian, who never seemed to mind.

  Tess shivered in my arms as we hugged. “How do you stand this weather?” she said as she released me. Walking home I could smell her on my skin. A lemony perfume and the smell of olives from her martini.

  I ate cereal for dinner that night, read some more of The Secret History, and waited for Gwen to get in touch. I sent her one more text before going to sleep, saying that I hoped everything was all right. And it was her face I thought of as I lay in bed, not my wife’s.

  CHAPTER 18

  The door buzzer went off at just past eight the following morning. I was up already and dressed, starting to brew some coffee.

  I pressed the intercom and a male voice came over, saying that his name was Agent Berry and asking if he could come up. In the interval it took for the two sets of footsteps to loudly climb the stairs I had enough time to think about what to do when the questions came. I made several quick assumptions. They were here either to arrest me, or to question me about the death of Eric Atwell or Norman Chaney or both. The reason Gwen hadn’t returned my messages the day before was because I had become a suspect in a homicide.