Eight Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

  Around noon my phone buzzed. It was Gwen, texting to let me know she was on her way. I told Emily that I was leaving early that day, but Brandon was closing up, and I also told her that there was a possibility she would have to open up the store herself the following morning. Both Brandon and Emily had their own keys to Old Devils. If she was curious about where I was going, she didn’t show it.

  Around one I began to keep an eye on the front door, with its view out to Bury Street. My bag was packed, with enough clothes and toiletries for a possible overnight stay. Despite the anxiety I was feeling about the situation, and about what Gwen might discover, I was looking forward to the trip. I’d been feeling confined by Boston this winter. I was looking forward to the highway, to snowy vistas, to visiting a place I’d never been before.

  At one thirty I poked my head out the front door and spotted Gwen pulling up in front of a hydrant in a beige Chevy Equinox. I said good-bye to Emily and headed out just as my cell phone began to ring. I saw Gwen’s number on the screen, ignored it, and walked across the street to the passenger-side door, knocking on the glass. She glanced in my direction, turned off her phone, and I got inside the car. It smelled new, and I wondered if it was a company car. I buckled up and put my small bag on the floor between my feet.

  “Hi,” she said. “I did book us two rooms in Rockland, just in case. You have everything you need?”

  “I do,” I said.

  She continued down Bury Street toward Storrow Drive. We were both quiet, and I decided to not speak first, not knowing if she was trying to concentrate on getting out of Boston. Once we hit 93 North, however, she thanked me for coming.

  “It’ll be nice to get out of the city,” I said. I turned and looked at her for the first time since I’d gotten into the car. She’d taken her coat off to drive and was wearing a cable-knit sweater and a pair of dark jeans. Her hands were correctly positioned on the steering wheel (ten and two) and she was studying the road as though she needed glasses. She was so intent that I was able to study her face a little; it was easier for me to see in profile, more distinctive, with her slightly upturned nose, her dominant forehead, and smooth, pale skin, dusted here and there with a flush of red. Whenever I really look at people, I can’t stop myself from picturing them as either very young or very old. With Gwen I saw her as a five-year-old, wide eyed, chewing at her bottom lip, tucked in behind a parent’s leg. Then I pictured her as an old woman, gray hair knotted down her back, her skin with that papery quality some old people get, but pretty with her large, intelligent eyes. There was something familiar about her, as well, about the pale oval of her face, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “We’re meeting Detective Cifelli at Elaine Johnson’s house at six o’clock. Have you eaten lunch?”

  I told her I’d had a late breakfast, and we ended up stopping at a rest area around Kennebunk in Maine. There was a Burger King and a Popeyes. We each got burgers and coffee and ate quickly at a booth near a window. It was so bright outside, the sky cloudless, and the ground covered with recently fallen snow, that we both squinted as we ate.

  After eating her burger, then popping the tab on the lid of her coffee, she said, “They arrested someone for the murder of Daniel Gonzalez. Last night.”

  “Oh,” I said. “The guy who was shot while walking his dog?”

  “Yeah. Turns out he was also dealing MDMA to his students at the college he was working at, and he was shot by a rival drug dealer. I guess we got that wrong.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Right. We’ve got many definites. The A.B.C. Murders are definite, the Double Indemnity murder is definite. And I feel pretty sure about what we’re going to find at Elaine Johnson’s house in Rockland.”

  “Pretty sure we’ll find what?” I said.

  “Something. He’ll have left something. He’s theatrical, Charlie. Like it wasn’t just enough for him to murder three people who had a connection between his names, he had to send a feather.”

  “What feather?” I said.

  “Oh, I forgot I didn’t tell you. That’s what arrived at the police stations after Robin Callahan and Ethan Byrd and Jay Bradshaw all were killed. The police received an envelope containing a single bird feather. I shouldn’t really have told you that, since it’s being withheld from the press, but I guess I trust you now.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” I said.

  “And now you know what I mean by theatrical. That’s why I think we’ll find something at the scene of the crime. That, and because you knew her. Because whoever is following your list knows you. I don’t mean that you know them . . . I mean, you might. But they know you. Charlie knows you. And I think we’ll find something there . . . something to connect the crime to the list. Something solid. I feel good about it. You still eating?”

  I realized that I’d been holding my half of a burger for the past two minutes. “Oh, sorry,” I said and took a large bite, even though I was no longer hungry. I knew everything Gwen was saying was correct, but it was still spooky to hear it from somewhere besides my own head.

  “You can take it with you if you want but we need to get back on the road. It’s another two hours at least to Rockland.”

  Chapter 15

  The inside of Elaine Johnson’s house was pretty much as I’d imagined it, cluttered and dusty, books everywhere.

  The house was a Cape with chipped gray paint on the outside. It was on a street about half a mile from Route 1, dwarfed by pine trees, and almost unreachable because of the recent snowfall. Gwen parked the Equinox on the rutted street, just behind the police car that was waiting for us, along with its occupant, Detective Laura Cifelli, a middle-aged woman with a round, pretty face mostly obscured by the fur-lined hood of an enormous coat. It was dusk, a pale sun low in the horizon, our breath billowing in the sub-zero air. All three of us quickly said our hellos, then tramped through the snow to the front door, where we stood for what felt like five minutes while Detective Cifelli retrieved the key from one of her pockets. There was a car in the driveway, one of those old boxy Lincolns, probably too big for the attached single-car garage. The detective told us, once we were inside the house, that the last she’d heard, the house was unclaimed property at this point since Elaine Johnson had died without a will, and with no immediate relatives.

  “Are there lights?” Gwen asked, and Detective Cifelli answered by hitting the nearest switch, which flooded the kitchen with harsh overhead lighting.

  “Utilities haven’t been switched off, yet,” she said. “And I guess they’re keeping the heat on low, so the pipes won’t freeze.”

  I looked around the kitchen, surprised to see an open peanut butter jar on the tiled island, a knife stuck inside of it. I hadn’t liked Elaine Johnson, but that didn’t mean I rejoiced in her dying a lonely death.

  “Did any scene-of-crime officers file a report?” Gwen asked.

  “No. Just the coroner. It was ruled a natural death. Heart attack. Since the body was taken out of here no one’s been back, far as I know.”

  “Were you here?”

  “I was. I got the call. The body was in the bedroom, halfway between her closet and the bed. I can show you if you like? Corpse was here alone for over a week. I knew it was a dead body as soon as I got this far into the kitchen.”

  “Ugh, sorry,” Gwen said. “Who reported it?”

  “Neighbor across the street let us know her mail was piling up. Their mailboxes are side by side. When I came to check, the front door was unlocked, so I entered. Knew it was bad news right away.”

  “Did the neighbor report anything else? Any suspicious activity in the neighborhood?”

  “Not that I know of. We didn’t consider this a suspicious death, though, so she was never asked. You’re more than welcome to ask the neighbor yourself. Maybe tomorrow? You’re spending the night?”

  “We are,” she said. “I might want to talk with the coroner, as well. It depends on what we find here in the house.”

  I’
d been watching the two have this conversation, but I had begun to look around the kitchen, as well. There were two shelving units above the back wall of the kitchen, probably meant for cooking supplies, or food items, but Elaine had filled them with hardcover novels. I studied the spines, a lot of Elizabeth George novels, and Anne Perry’s, two of her favorites, but there were also a few books that I’d categorize as being in the romantic suspense category, veering toward romance, something Elaine Johnson had claimed to despise.

  “That would be fine,” Detective Cifelli said, then added, “So, I’m happy to stay here with both of you, help you look around. I’m equally happy to leave you the key and let you have at it, just so long as you return it back to us in the morning.”

  “You don’t need to stay,” Gwen said. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Great, then. I’ll leave you here, and you can swing by the police station any time in the morning.”

  “Sounds good.” We both said our good-byes and watched as the detective trudged back through the snow.

  Gwen turned toward me. “Ready?” she said.

  “Sure. Should we have a plan of attack or just look around?”

  “I thought you could focus on the books, and I’d look at everything else.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We stepped through into what had probably been intended as a dining room, and Gwen found the light switch that turned on a flickering chandelier. Every surface was covered with books, most just stacked haphazardly on the floor or on the rectangular dining room table. “Maybe I’ll need some help on the books,” I said.

  “You don’t need to study them, but just look for anything out of the ordinary. I’m going to head upstairs to the bedroom.”

  I stayed in the dining room. It was hard to look at Elaine Johnson’s collection of mystery novels without thinking about what they were worth. She had plenty of worthless books—stacks of mass markets in questionable condition—but I quickly identified a first edition of Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem, and one of Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo. I wondered what would happen to these books, then reminded myself that I wasn’t here on business.

  “Malcolm.” It was Gwen, shouting down from the second floor.

  “Hey,” I shouted back.

  “Can you come up here?”

  I went up the stairs, also stacked with books along the edge of each step, and found Gwen in the bedroom, staring at a pair of handcuffs, hanging from a nail. I pointed at them.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Gwen quickly said. “I think we should get fingerprints.”

  “There’s a handcuff on the wall in Deathtrap. It plays a crucial role in the play.”

  “I know,” she said. “I watched the movie again last night. And look on the floor.”

  There was a framed print—a photograph of a lighthouse—that was leaning up against the wall. “You think Charlie brought the handcuffs, took down that print, and hung them up, just so we’d be sure it was an homage to Deathtrap?”

  “I do,” Gwen said, then turned to look toward the closet. “He’s hiding, probably in that closet, maybe with a mask, and then he jumps out and scares her to death.”

  “It’s strange,” I said. “As far as we know it’s the first time he’s staged something to point specifically to the list.”

  “It’s also the first time he’s killed someone that you knew.”

  We were both standing, looking toward the closet. Gwen said, “I’ve seen enough, honestly. I just want these handcuffs photographed, and fingerprinted.”

  “He probably wore gloves.”

  “We won’t know until we look, but, yes, he probably wore gloves.”

  I looked around the rest of the room while Gwen pulled out her phone and stared at what looked like a text message she’d just received. There was an old four-poster bed, loosely made up, and covered with a pink chenille bedspread. The hardwood floors had woven throw rugs on them that had faded over the years. The one at the foot of the bed was covered with fur.

  “Did she have a pet?” I said.

  “I don’t remember reading about one in the report,” Gwen said.

  I tried to remember back to when Elaine Johnson used to come in to Old Devils, and I didn’t remember her ever paying attention to Nero. My guess is her sister had a dog or a cat, and she just had never cleaned the rug. In fact, nothing was clean in the house. I went and looked at a framed photograph on the wall above the bureau. The frame was white, and its top edge had turned a shiny black with all the grime. The photograph in the frame was of a family on vacation, a father in a golf shirt, a mother in a short, plaid dress and horn-rimmed glasses. There were four children, two older boys and two younger girls. They were posed in front of an enormous tree, a redwood probably, somewhere in California. I leaned in trying to pick out which one of the preadolescent girls was Elaine, but the photograph was slightly blurry, and had faded with age. I assumed, however, that Elaine was the younger of the two, the one with glasses, holding a doll by her side. She was the only child not smiling.

  “Ready?” Gwen said.

  “Sure.”

  When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I peered into the living room, lined with shelves. “Can I look at the books in here real quick?” I said, and Gwen shrugged and nodded.

  It was clear that Elaine’s sister had been a reader, as well, and that most of the books that filled the living room shelves had belonged to her. There was a lot of nonfiction, and historical fiction. One entire shelf was devoted to James Michener. But there was also a tall bookcase crammed into a corner that looked as though it had been brought by Elaine. One of its shelves was filled with a dusty collection of vintage glass paperweights. The rest were crammed with more mystery novels, arranged by author. I was surprised to see the collected works of Thomas Harris, a writer that Elaine had once told me was an “overrated pervert.” I was also surprised to see a copy of The Drowner until I saw that it was sitting between Strangers on a Train and a copy of Deathtrap. A little shiver went through me. All the books were there—all eight from my list—in order. I brought Gwen over, and her eyes went big. She took a photograph with her phone.

  “Do you think he brought these here himself or were the books already here?” she said.

  “I think he brought them, probably. Elaine might have had all these books, but I doubt it.”

  “Think we’ll be able to tell anything from these copies?” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “He bought them somewhere. Maybe from my store, or maybe from somewhere else. Usually, when you buy a used book there’s a penciled price on the first page, and sometimes there’s a sticker with the name of the dealer.”

  “I don’t want you to touch them, but can you tell anything by looking at the spines?”

  I studied them, all eight books from my list, sitting together like an accusation. The only spine that jumped out was the one for Malice Aforethought. I recognized it as a UK paperback edition released as a tie-in with a TV miniseries from about ten years ago. It was a copy that had definitely come through the store, because I remembered how much I disliked that edition. In general, I hate all tie-in book covers. I told Gwen that I thought I recognized one of the books as one I had had in the store.

  “Okay, good,” she said. I could hear the excitement in her voice. “After I get them checked for fingerprints, I’ll have them photographed and we can look at them together. Let’s go check in to the hotel.”

  She’d booked us two rooms at a Hampton Inn & Suites about a mile out of Rockland’s town center. It was across the street from a McDonald’s and I was worried that was where we’d end up eating dinner, but she mentioned a place she liked on Main Street. “I made reservations for two but . . . if you’d rather go someplace else . . .”

  “No,” I said. “I’m happy to follow your lead.”

  We checked in then met back in the lobby an hour later and drove into town. It was off-season, so I was surprised that several restaurants seemed to be open. We
parked right in front of a two-story brick building, only a few steps away from the entrance to the Town Tavern, advertising itself as an “ale and oyster house.” It was a Sunday night and the place was predictably empty, although two couples sat at the bar. The hostess, a youngish woman wearing a Bruins sweatshirt, took us to a booth.

  “This okay?” Gwen said.

  “Sure. You said you’ve been here before?”

  “My grandparents have a house on Megunticook Lake, which is not far from here. I come up to the midcoast at least two weeks every summer. Honestly, it’s my grandpa who reveres this place because they do baked oysters the way he likes them.”

  The waitress came. I ordered a Gritty McDuff’s English-style bitter and a lobster roll. Gwen ordered a Harpoon and a haddock Rueben.

  “No baked oysters?” I said.

  She turned to the waitress. “Can we get six oysters to start?”

  After the waitress left, Gwen said, “For Grandpa. I’ll let him know.”

  “Where do they live the rest of the year?” I asked.

  “Upstate New York, although they keep talking about moving here year-round. But they’d have to buy a new house. The lake place isn’t winterized. Have you been to this part of Maine before?”

  “I’ve been to Camden. Once. That’s close to here, right?”

  “Next town, yeah. When was that?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Ten years ago. Just a vacation.” I’d gone with Claire, of course, back when we frequently took road trips all over New England.

  Our beers arrived, along with a basket of bread. We each took sips, then Gwen said, “Can I ask you about your wife? Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind, no,” I said and tried to look normal. But I was aware that we’d lost eye contact across the table.