Rules for Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

  “I forgot,” she said, a little bit breathless. “Brian really wanted you to have this. It’s an ARC of his new one. Don’t tell him I told you but he’s going to dedicate it to you.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I was home an hour later, cold and damp, and out of breath from clambering up my steep street in the accumulating snow.

  I shed my coat, and my shoes and socks, and lay down on the sofa in the dark. I needed to think. If nothing else, the long walk home had sobered me up, and images from the farcical night I’d just spent at Brian and Tess’s kept repeating in my mind. It now seemed ridiculous that I had accused Tess of murdering Nick Pruitt and the others from the list, but when I’d said it, when I’d been there, convinced my coffee had been poisoned, it made perfect sense. I wondered what Tess was doing right now. Had she woken Brian up, told him the story of how I’d shoved her to the ground and accused her of murder? Did she think I’d gone insane? I decided that I’d call her first thing in the morning, maybe confide in her a little more about what had been going on recently. I also thought a little bit about her offer, about the reason I was brought to their house in the first place. In different circumstances, I might be in bed with Tess Murray right now.

  I sat up, and Brian Murray’s book fell off my lap and onto the floor. I turned on the lamp, then picked the book up, looking at it for the first time. The title was The Wild Air, and the cover art, like the art of so many of his covers, showed the back of Ellis Fitzgerald looking out toward some sort of landscape, or crime scene. On this cover, she was looking at a single tree on the horizon line, a flock of birds taking off from its branches, one of the birds lying on a snow-covered field. Presumably dead.

  I turned to the page where the dedication usually was, and all it said was Dedication TK, editor-speak for text that wasn’t available yet. I wondered if Brian would still dedicate the book to me after he found out I thought his wife was a murderer.

  The book began with a line of dialogue: “What’ll you have?” Mitch asked. Ellis hesitated. Her answer was a glass of wine—it was always a glass of wine—but this time she said, “Soda water and cranberry, thanks.”

  I thought about reading the rest, but I decided I needed to get some rest instead. I put the book on the coffee table, turned off the lamp, and turned onto my side on the sofa, closing my eyes. I lasted about five minutes. My mind kept revving, going over and over the events of the past few days. Then I remembered the message I’d left on Duckburg trying to reconnect with Charlie and wondered if I had a response. I went and got my laptop, bringing it back to the sofa, and logged on under Farley Walker, my new alias. A blue dot indicated that I’d received a response to my latest message. I clicked through and read it: Hello, old friend was all it said.

  I wrote back: Are you who I think you are?

  There was no time stamp on the message, so I didn’t know when I’d gotten it. Still, I waited, staring at the screen. Just when I was about to give up, a new message popped up: Do you even know my name, Malcolm?

  I wrote back: I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?

  Maybe I will but we should go to a private chat first.

  I checked the box that made the conversation private. My heart was beating, and my jaw was clenched so tight that it was starting to throb.

  Why? I wrote.

  Why what? Why did I keep going with something that you started? I think a better question is why did you stop?

  I stopped because there was only one person that I wanted dead. And once he was dead there was no reason to go on killing.

  There was a lengthy pause, and I was suddenly nervous that Charlie had logged off. I wanted to talk with him more. Also, this was ridiculous, but it felt safe, somehow, seeing the words he was typing on the screen. It meant he wasn’t doing anything else, I suppose.

  Sorry for the delay, he eventually wrote. I need to be quiet where I am.

  Where are you?

  I’ll tell you, but not right now. It will ruin the rest of this conversation and I’m really happy to be having this conversation.

  Something about his tone was starting to get to me, and I wrote, You are fucking insane, you know that.

  A short pause. Then: I thought I was too. After I killed Eric Atwell for you I felt so incredible good that I was convinced that I was a monster. It was all I could think about. I shot him five times and it was the fifth shot that killed him. The first shot went into his stomach. He was in a lot of pain but after I told him why he was going to die, I saw all that pain get replaced by fear. I saw the knowledge on his face, the knowledge that he was about to die. Did you see that with chaney?

  No, I wrote back.

  Did he know why he was dying?

  I don’t know. I didn’t tell him.

  Maybe thats why you didn’t enjoy it like I did. Maybe if you’d seen it in his eyes, him knowing what was happening to him and why, then you’d understand.

  I didn’t get any pleasure out of it, I wrote. And you did. That’s a big difference between us.

  Thats why I think you’re the insame one, he wrote. You write a list that celebrates the art of murder and then I decide to actually do what that list proposes, to create actual art, and that doesn’t make sense to you?

  There’s a difference between fiction and reality.

  Not as much as you’d think, Charlie wrote. There’s beauty in both and I know that you know that.

  I wrote out the words There wasn’t any beauty when I killed Norman Chaney then deleted them. I needed to think for a moment. I needed to get Charlie to trust me, to tell me either who he was, or where he was.

  I wrote, Can we meet?

  Oh, we’ve met came immediately back.

  When?

  I can see were your going with this. Just to save time I am not going to tell you who I am. Not now, like this. Theres more work to be done. Its amazing how you keep leading me to new perfect victims. You handed me Nick Pruitt on a silver plattter.

  He wasn’t guilty of anything.

  He was guilty of something, believe me. I thought it would be harder to get him to drink himself to death but I think he almost enjoyed it. The first drink was the hardest, then he just kept drinking whatever I gave him. He seemed amost happy.

  I don’t suppose I can get you to turn yourself in before you do anything else.

  Only if you go with me, he wrote, like I hoped he would.

  Of course, I wrote back. You and I together. We’ll tell the whole truth.

  There was a long pause, and I thought I’d lost him. Or else I thought he was actually thinking about it. Finally, he wrote:

  Its tempting but I’m not done yet. And the thing is that you’ve provided me with two more victims, one who will die and one who’ll go missing, just like red house mystery. You can help ifyou like.

  My body went cold.

  Let me think about it, I wrote back, already standing. I dressed quickly, pulling my damp socks back on, and putting on my shoes. I was shaking. He would be on his way right now to Brian and Tess’s house. Or else he was already there. I grabbed my cell phone and immediately called Tess’s number, thinking I could warn her not to let anyone into the house. It went straight to voice mail, and I didn’t leave a message. I thought of calling 911, but somehow I knew that if I did make that call, the police would show up to find nothing, and I’d be stuck explaining why I’d made the call in the first place. I told myself I was making the right decision.

  *

  OUTSIDE, IT WAS SNOWING harder than it had been all night. I went up the hill to where my car was parked. The roads would be terrible, but I still thought I could get to the South End faster by car than on foot.

  I U-turned and drove too fast down the hill, the car sliding at the bottom when I applied the brake, turning almost sideways. I took my foot off the brake and started tapping it, but the car kept going, sliding on its own accord through a red light and onto Charles Street. I braced for an impact, but there were no other drivers on the street. And just a few p
edestrians, including a couple that had stopped on the sidewalk to watch my near accident.

  When the car finally stopped, it was angled diagonally but pointing more or less in the right direction. I straightened it out and kept driving, going slower this time, telling myself that spinning off the road was the worst thing that could happen. Unless he was just trying to scare me, Charlie had identified his next victims. If I could get there first, I could at least warn them. But I was also wondering if Charlie was already there. He might have been in their house when we were having the conversation on Duckburg, writing from his phone. It would explain the typing errors. I tried to concentrate on steering, and not think about it. The snow was driving now, directly into my windshield. My wipers were working but ice was building up along the edges, and the windshield was fogging. I turned the defrost all the way up, rolled down my window, and stuck my head out, driving along the edge of the Common on Arlington that way. Then I got onto Tremont, and my windshield had cleared a little. I knew that I couldn’t turn onto the Murrays’ one-way street, so I’d already planned on leaving the car at the corner and walking the rest of the way. But then I passed their street and decided to keep going, to take my next right and see if I could loop back.

  My body ached, and I forced myself to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. The side street I was on hadn’t been plowed recently, and my wheels were spinning as I whipped along. As soon as I could I turned right then right again, hoping that would put me on the Murrays’ side street. It looked right, even though all the residential streets in the South End looked alike to me. I slowed down, peering out my window to see if I could pick out the Murrays’ house, with its blue door. I was about three-quarters down the street when I spotted it. Unlike most of the brick town houses, light glowed still from its street-facing windows. I tried not to think what that might mean, what I might find when I entered the house.

  I parked in front of a hydrant, killed the engine, and stepped out of the car into three inches of icy slush. As I crossed the street toward the Murrays’ house, I heard someone shout out “Can’t park there,” and turned to see a woman standing under a streetlight with her dog about four houses down. I waved at her and kept going.

  I reached the door and suddenly wished that I had some kind of weapon, anything, really, and almost considered going back to my car to get the tire jack from the trunk. But I didn’t want to waste any more time. I tried the door and it was locked, then I pressed the doorbell while knocking at the same time, wondering what I’d do if no one answered. I was wiping at the octagonal window in the middle of the door when I heard footsteps on the other side. The door swung open.

  CHAPTER 27

  Mal,” Tess said in a husky voice, reaching out and taking hold of the inside of my jacket, pulling me inside.

  “Is everything okay here?” I said, but she was shutting the door. And then she pushed herself up against me, and we were kissing. I kissed back, part of it relief that she was still here, still alive, and part because it just felt good. I also didn’t want to tell her right away that I’d come back because I thought she was in danger. It would sound ludicrous.

  We stopped kissing and hugged. She felt heavy in my arms, and I asked her again, “Everything okay here?”

  She stepped out of our embrace, backed up, and said, “Why do you keep saying that?” Her voice was thick, and she blinked rapidly.

  “You just seem … Are you drunk?” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “So what? You’re drunk.” She turned away from me, and her whole body lurched, as though she were about to fall. I moved quickly and took her by the arm, led her to one of the two facing couches just outside of the entryway to the kitchen. We both sat.

  “I feel strange,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and leaning in. Her breath was bitter with the smell of coffee.

  “Tell me what you’ve been doing since I left,” I said.

  “When did you leave?”

  “Two hours ago. Maybe less. I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Oh, right. I licked my wounds, because, you know … and had some more coffee, and then I got tired, real tired, and I was going to go upstairs and get ready for bed, but thought I might take a little nap here on this couch, and then I heard the door, and you were here.”

  “Anyone else come by?”

  “Anyone else come by? Here? No. Just you. Do you want to kiss again?”

  I leaned in and kissed her, hoping to keep it short, but she opened her mouth and pressed hard against me. My eyes were open, but her hair was falling in waves and for a moment I couldn’t see anything. I stopped the kiss and brought her head down to my chest.

  “That’s nice,” she said, then mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

  We were like that for a minute. I could tell she was falling asleep on me, and I let it happen while I looked around at what I could see. It looked just as it had when I left, our coffee cups still on the dining room table in front of the bay window, a single lamp still on by the table. And what I could see of the kitchen was lit by the under-cabinet lighting. The house was quiet, although I thought I could hear Brian snoring in the downstairs guest room. I wasn’t sure. But if it was him, it was a good sign. He was still alive.

  I knew that Charlie was in the house.

  I’d already constructed a scenario. He’d followed me here tonight, probably waiting outside while I was inside having dinner with Brian and Tess. When I’d left, maybe he’d been planning to follow me, or maybe he’d been planning on breaking into Tess and Brian’s house. But then an opportunity had presented itself. Tess had rushed out to give me Brian’s book, leaving the door open behind her and unlocked. Charlie snuck inside. And then what? He’d hidden in the house, and somehow, he had managed to put something in Tess’s coffee, probably whatever it was that he’d spiked Pruitt’s whiskey with. I didn’t believe she was drunk, or that she was any more drunk than she’d been when I’d left two hours earlier. No, she’d been drugged. And then I’d arrived before Charlie had done anything else to her. And now here we all were in the house together. Where was Charlie, exactly? Where would I be, if I were him?

  I slowly eased Tess off my chest, and onto the couch, then stood up.

  “Where you going?” Tess said, but her voice was low and mumbled. She tucked a hand under her cheek and breathed deeply in through her nose, her eyes still closed. I walked as quietly as I could into the kitchen. A side door led to the first-floor hallway; from there you could get to a half bathroom, and to the guest room where Brian was sleeping. There was also a closet, if I remembered correctly. I went to the counter and found the rolling pin I’d noticed earlier, picking it up in my right hand. I thought of getting a knife instead, but I liked how the rolling pin felt. It was a heavy piece of wood, obviously useless if Charlie had a gun. But it was something, and I felt better with it in my hand.

  I considered staying in the kitchen, just standing there with my view on both the swinging side door and the large cutout that led to the dining and living room area. I could stand here all night, waiting for Charlie to make a move first. But I was also worried about Tess. Whatever was in her system might be enough to kill her. In what I hoped was my normal voice, I said, “I know you’re here,” out loud to the empty kitchen.

  Nothing.

  I waited for what felt like another five minutes and began to wonder if I was just being paranoid. Maybe Tess had just kept drinking after I’d left, and she was simply drunk. And maybe Charlie had been playing with me at this point, trying to manipulate me into rushing over here for nothing. I walked slowly back through into the living area. Tess hadn’t moved; she was still curled up on the couch, a hand under her face. I crouched down and could hear her steady breathing. I turned left toward the hallway, aware that the old floor was creaking under every step. After I walked past the stairway, I pushed open the door to the bathroom. There was enough light from a lamp in the hallway for me to see that it was empty.

  Then I heard the soun
d of steps behind me, and I froze.

  The steps stopped coming, but I could hear heavy breathing. I turned, tightening my grip on the rolling pin. Humphrey the hound dog stood looking at me quizzically. I put my free hand out, and he came forward, sniffing at it, then losing interest and turning back toward the living room.

  I turned again, deciding that I needed to look in on Brian, asleep in the guest room, and to make sure he was alone. Then maybe I could just leave the house? Maybe I didn’t need to be here.

  “What’s the dog’s name?”

  The voice came from behind me. I recognized it, of course, and turned to see him, standing at the bottom of the stairs, the foyer light behind him so that his face was in shadow.

  He held a gun at his side, casually, but when I took a step toward him, toward Marty Kingship, he lifted it and pointed it at my chest.

  CHAPTER 28

  Humphrey,” I said.

  “Huh,” he said. “Like the actor?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know.”

  “Some guard dog.”

  “Yeah,” I said. There was something in Marty’s other hand, and it took me a moment to realize it was a cell phone. It looked out of place on Marty. I’d had drinks with him many times, seen him at readings at my store, but somehow, I couldn’t recall ever seeing him look at a cell phone. I’d never seen him with a gun, either, but the cell phone looked more foreign on him than the gun.