“Just for a while,” I said. “Sorry I’ve left you two alone so much lately.”
“What’s going on with you?” Brandon said, standing now, holding a copy of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
“Honestly,” I said, “I haven’t been feeling too well.” It was the first lie that popped into my head. “Just extra tired and a little achy. Don’t know what it is.”
“Well, don’t come here and spread it all around,” Brandon said. “E and I have got it covered, don’t we, E?”
She didn’t respond but I saw Emily look up from behind the desk. The customer she’d been helping, a semiregular whose name I could never remember, but who always bought the new Michael Connelly from us, was now shuffling toward the exit.
“I have some work to do in my office, then I’m going to head back home, I promise,” I said, and made my way there as Brandon started to tell Emily how his mother had had a cold for an entire year once.
Nero was in my desk chair, curled into a circle, but he perked up when I came in, stretched his back, then leapt to the ground. I sat and turned on my computer. I was suddenly worried that I’d deleted the Duckburg bookmark—the smart thing to do, in all honesty—but once I’d gone online, there it was. I logged on, went to the section called Swaps, and did a quick perusal of the last fifty or so entries. It was the usual stuff—offers of work with the payment of either sexual favor or drugs. There were outliers, of course, a man looking to trade his wife’s entire shoe collection (“at least eight jimmy choos”) for a ticket to a sold-out Springsteen concert. I didn’t see anything that referenced Strangers on a Train. I wasn’t surprised. Charlie didn’t need to get in touch with me because he already had, in a way. He knew exactly who I was. Still, it was worth a shot to send him a message on the off chance he was watching this site.
I created a new fake identity, calling myself Farley Walker, and posted a message. Dear Strangers on a Train fan, I’d like to propose another swap. You know who you are. I stared at the message for about five minutes after I’d posted it, wondering if a reply would come through instantly, but nothing did. I logged off Duckburg and did a quick search of New Essex University to see if anything had popped up in the news. I wasn’t surprised to find nothing. Even if Nick Pruitt’s body had already been discovered, and it probably hadn’t yet, then it would hardly be newsworthy. It would look like an accidental overdose from an alcoholic who fell off the wagon. Unless Charlie had screwed up, it was a perfect murder. No one would suspect a homicide.
I did wonder how he’d done it. My best guess was that he’d gone to Pruitt’s door with the bottle of whiskey and a gun and forced him to drink. Maybe he’d drugged the whiskey, as well.
The bigger question I had was how had Charlie targeted Pruitt in the first place. The only people who knew I was interested in him were Marty Kingship and Jillian Nguyen. Of course, Pruitt was related to Norman Chaney. And if Charlie had arranged for Chaney’s death, then he’d have a connection with Pruitt as well. I suddenly remembered the book, Little Fish, and that I’d left it here at the store. Emily was now back at her own desk, dealing with online orders probably, so I went to the register. Little Fish was there, where I’d left it. I realized how incriminating it was that I had a library copy of this book and decided that the least I could do was not leave it where it was.
“You had a visitor last night,” Brandon said.
I looked up. “Oh, yeah?”
“Brian Murray’s wife—is it Tess?—was here looking for you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Did she say what she wanted?”
“Nah. She said she was just dropping by because she hadn’t been for a while, but I could tell she was a little disappointed you weren’t here. She’s not usually in Boston, is she? Not when it’s freezing cold like this, right?”
“Brian broke his arm,” I said. “I saw them two nights ago, and apparently she now has to be here to help him with everything.”
“Oh, man, that’s hilarious,” Brandon said, although I wasn’t sure it really was.
I wasn’t too surprised that Tess had stopped by the store. She had been in the book business, after all, as a publicist. And I was sure she was tired of babysitting her husband. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the way she’d hugged me good-bye after we had drinks at the Beacon Hill Hotel.
“She buy anything?” I asked.
“Nah. But she rearranged all the Brian Murrays for us.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said.
Before leaving I copied the complicated link for the Duckburg site onto a piece of paper, so I could check the site from my laptop at home. Then I grabbed Little Fish, told Brandon and Emily they might be on their own for a while, and headed home. Outside, tiny ice flakes of snow had begun to swirl in the air. Another storm—not a very big one—was threatening to arrive that night. I kept thinking of Tess Murray, how she’d come into the store. Had she seen my copy of Nick Pruitt’s book? And if she had, so what? Still, it bugged me.
I unlocked the outside door and climbed the stairs to my attic apartment. Inside, it was surprisingly cold, and I realized that I’d left the windows cracked, not something that I remembered doing at all. I shut them, then went immediately to my computer to check the Duckburg site. There was no response. I looked up Tess Murray. It occurred to me that I knew hardly anything about her besides the fact that she was the much younger wife of my business partner, and that she’d been a publicist when they first met. I found who I thought was her on a LinkedIn page, although there was no photograph. It listed one of the big publishing houses as a place of former employment, plus a business called Snyman Publicity, and I remembered that Snyman was her name before she changed it to Murray. Her current place of employment was the Treasure Chest on Longboat Key in Florida, the small jewelry store she now ran. I wondered if she’d quit the book business because of her association with Brian Murray. It had been a minor scandal when they’d gotten married, mostly because she’d broken up his marriage, but also because she was so much younger. And so much more attractive. The fact that they had been married for over ten years hadn’t changed anyone’s opinion that she was a gold digger.
I remembered a story I’d heard about her, probably from another local crime writer. This had been when Tess was still working as a publicist but had just started seeing Brian. She’d been at a cocktail party at Thrillerfest in New York City when someone made a disparaging remark about Brian, how he’d been mailing in his increasingly flimsy thrillers for years. It was not an untrue accusation, in my opinion, but apparently Tess slapped the person who had said it out loud, then stormed away. I remember that whoever had told me that story seemed to be telling it to show what a lunatic Tess was, but I’d heard it as a story that confirmed her essential love for Brian. I believed they had a good marriage.
I checked my phone to see if I had Tess Murray’s information on it. I did: both her email address and her cell number. I sent her a message:
Hey Tess, Malcolm here in case you don’t recognize the number. Heard you were in the store and asked after me. Let’s have dinner soon—the three of us. I’d love to catch up some more.
I turned my phone screen off after sending the message, but as soon as I set it down it buzzed, and there was a message from Tess: Yes!!! Come for dinner tomorrow night!!!
I wrote back telling her I’d love to come and asked her what time and what could I bring.
Seven and yourself!!! came the reply, so instantaneously that I wondered how she had time to even type the words. After the exclamation marks, she’d included a single red heart.
I went to the refrigerator to get a beer. I had some eggs and cheese and decided to make an omelet for dinner, even though I hadn’t felt any kind of hunger since seeing Pruitt’s body in the morning. I put a bunch of Michael Nyman CDs in my old CD player and listened to his score for The End of the Affair first. I made the omelet and ate half of it, then opened another beer. I went to my bookshelf and found the s
ection where I kept my Brian Murray books. I had almost all of them. Definitely all the recent ones, because Brian had his book launch parties at Old Devils and he always inscribed a book for me. But I also had most of the old paperbacks, the early Ellis Fitzgerald novels that I’d started reading when I was about ten years old. I didn’t have to get those particular books from Annie’s Book Swap because my mom was an Ellis Fitzgerald fan and bought all the books herself. The early ones were really good, like funnier Ross MacDonald novels. And it was a fairly big deal back then that the detective was a female, and a tough, uncompromising one at that. Brian had told me several times that in the first draft of the first Ellis Fitzgerald novel, The Poison Tree, Ellis had been a man. His agent told him that the book was good but that it was a little familiar. He made Ellis a woman without changing anything else, and the book sold.
I pulled out the paperback edition of The Sticking Place. It was the fifth Ellis Fitzgerald book and the one that won the Edgar Award. For fans, it was either their favorite book in the series, or their least favorite book. For me, it was my favorite, at least it had been when I’d first read it as an adolescent. At the end of the previous book in the series, Temperate Blood, Ellis’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Peter Appleman, is killed by a member of the Boston Mafia. In The Sticking Place, Ellis gets her revenge, carefully and brutally murdering everyone who had been remotely involved in Appleman’s death. The book has very little in common with the other books in the series. There are no buffoonish clients, or Ellis witticisms; it has more in common with one of Richard Stark’s Parker novels.
I took The Sticking Place, along with a fresh bottle of beer, with me to my sofa. The book had been read so many times that some of the pages were slipping away from the cracked binding. The creased cover was black, with an image of a revolver, its cylinder cracked open to reveal six empty spaces where the bullets had been. I opened to the title page, not surprised to see my mother’s name, in her handwriting, in the top right corner. Margaret Kershaw, and the date she’d bought the book. It had been July of 1988. So, I’d been thirteen years old, and it was almost certain that I’d read this book as soon as I could get my grubby hands on it, probably immediately after she’d finished. I think I remember her telling me it was very violent. I’m sure that made me all the more eager to read it for myself.
The book was dedicated to Brian Murray’s first wife, Mary. I’d never known her, but Brian told me once that the reason he dedicated almost all his books to her was because she’d sulk for days if he didn’t. He told me that divorcing her was good for many reasons, but mostly because he was now free to dedicate books to other people in his life.
I began reading the book and was instantly hooked. It opens with Ellis meeting with the head of the Boston Mafia at the bar at the Ritz and handing him a list of names. “Either you’ll punish them, or I will. It’s up to you.” He scoffs at her, tells her that she needs to forget it and move on. The rest of the book is her single-minded pursuit of those responsible for her boyfriend’s death. It’s suspenseful and violent, and Ellis comes across as slightly psychotic. After each killing, she applies lipstick and kisses the dead man on the cheek, leaving an imprint. The book ends with her at the Ritz again, drinking chardonnay with the Mafia head, who apologizes for underestimating her, and together they agree that balance has been restored. She’s gotten her revenge. He does ask her about the lipstick. “I thought it would give the police a kick,” she said. “Nothing they like more than some killer with a trademark. Makes them think they’re in a Clint Eastwood movie.”
I finished the book at just past midnight, kept thinking about trademarks. Ultimately, that was what Charlie’s murders were about, leaving a mark of a kind, a signifier that told the world that the murderer was more important than the victim. Charlie might have been inspired by a sense of revenge, or justice, when he’d asked me to kill Norman Chaney. But now it was about him. And about my list. And about me, too, I guess. What kind of person puts himself above his victims? What kind of person becomes obsessed with a list of books?
One of Brian’s writer’s tips he shares is that when you can’t figure something out in the plot of your book, go to bed, and let your subconscious pick at it. I decided to do that, to try and finally get some sleep, and maybe even some answers.
CHAPTER 23
I spent the next morning flipping through all my Brian Murray books. I even speed-read his latest novel, Die a Little, in which Ellis Fitzgerald solves a gang murder at a local high school. The novel was so dated that it was a little embarrassing. Brian hated research, and I got the feeling that all he did to prepare for writing his latest book was watch a double feature of Boyz n the Hood and whatever that Michelle Pfeiffer movie was where she taught inner-city kids.
At just past noon I got a phone call from Agent Perez reminding me that I hadn’t yet provided my whereabouts and movement for the times of the murders.
“Sorry,” I said to her. “I got busy. Can we do them right now? Give me the dates and I’ll see if I know where I was when they occurred?”
“That’s fine,” she said.
I opened up my calendar on my laptop and we started going over dates; first, she asked me about Elaine Johnson.
“I sent that information to Agent Mulvey,” I said. “I was in London when she died. September thirteen, right?”
“That’s right,” Agent Perez said. Then she asked me about Robin Callahan, who had been shot on August 16 of 2014. My calendar had nothing that week except for the fact that I would have been at work that day. I told Agent Perez that, and she asked if anyone could vouch for me. August 16 had been a Friday, so I told her that both of my employees had probably worked that day, and that she was more than welcome to question them. Next, she asked me about Jay Bradshaw, the man who was beaten to death in his garage in Dennis on the Cape. It turned out that that had happened on August 31.
“I flew to London on that Sunday,” I said.
“What time?”
“The flight was at six-twenty so I probably left for the airport at three.”
“That’s pretty early,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I like to get there early if I can. I’d rather have extra time there than be running late.”
For the two other cases she asked me about—Bill Manso and Ethan Byrd—I had no solid alibi, even though they were probably days when I was at Old Devils.
“Sorry I can’t help you more,” I said.
“You’ve been helpful, Mr. Kershaw. I would like you to send me the exact flight numbers for your trip to London if you have them.”
“Sure,” I said, deciding not to remind her that I’d already sent those to Agent Mulvey.
“And just so we’re being thorough, and I know this is a long time ago, but can you tell me where you were on August twenty-seventh of 2011?”
“I’ll look. What was it that happened on that date?” I said.
“That was the date that Steven Clifton was killed in a bike accident near Saratoga Springs.”
“You mentioned his name before. I don’t know who he is. Agent Mulvey never said anything about him.”
“His homicide was in her notes,” Perez said.
I had flipped backward through my online calendars. I thought of making something up, but said, instead, “I was probably working that day, but, honestly, it was a long time ago. My calendar has nothing.”
“That’s fine, Mr. Kershaw. Not a problem, but I thought I’d ask.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
I thought that would be the end of the phone call, but Agent Perez coughed, then said, “I know I already asked you this, but when Agent Mulvey came to you, were you convinced right away that there was a connection between your list and the unsolved crimes? I’d like to hear your response again.”
“I wasn’t convinced, not right away, but maybe that had something to do with me not wanting to admit to a connection. It’s a bad feeling, you know, having written some dumb list, and the
n finding out that someone else is using it to commit actual murders.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“She told me about the bird murders, first, and how she connected them to The A.B.C. Murders—”
“The Agatha Christie book?”
“Right. It seemed a stretch, honestly. But the man killed on the train tracks—Bill Manso—that murder did sound like it was emulating Double Indemnity, but, like I said, I didn’t really believe it until we found the books at Elaine Johnson’s house. Then it was obvious. And it was obvious that the murderer wanted me to know about it. Or wanted it to point to me, I guess. I don’t really know. We talked a lot about it, the two of us.”
“Who? You and Agent Mulvey?”
“Yes. We thought about what the person, what Charlie—that was the name we gave him—was trying to accomplish with the murders. And we thought that he really was trying to accurately convey the spirit of the original murders from the books.”
“Can I ask you about one of her notes? She had written down the three names of what she called the ‘bird murders,’ and then she’d written: Who was the actual target? Do you know what that meant?”
“In The A.B.C. Murders a series of murders are committed so it will look like a lunatic is on a crime spree. But the murderer had only one victim in mind that he really wanted dead. The other murders were cover.”
“So you think that might be the case with the bird murders?”
“I don’t know if I think that, but it’s a possibility.”
“Maybe it’s a possibility that all these crimes—all the ones tied to your list—are just covering for one murder.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s a possibility, but if that were the case, that’s a lot of murders to commit to conceal one.”
Rules for Perfect Murders Page 17
