A Perfect Crime (22 page)

“What’s that, Donald?”

“Get the fuck away.” He listened for her retreating footsteps, heard them.

—and he was as tough as they come. He found a satin thing, cushion or whatever it was, full of needles, selected the thinnest, threaded it with beige thread, to blend with his skin, tied a knot in the end, got to work. Whitey had seen it done before, between periods in his last season. A skate blade had sliced his forearm, right above the glove, and the beery-breathed doc who came to all the games had sewn him up in the dressing room. Whitey stitched the chin flap back into place, hissing from time to time, but getting it done, making himself whole again; he was no fucking bullfrog.

He put his shirt and jacket back on, went into the kitchen. She was standing in the middle of the room, squeezing her hands together.

“Where’s that Pepsi?” he said.

“In the fridge, Donald. Are you all right?”

Whitey popped the can open, sat at the rickety table, drank. It hit the spot. He liked Pepsi.

She came closer, hovered. “A bit to eat, maybe?”

He wouldn’t have minded, except for the smell. “What stinks in here?” he said.

She sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”

“What’s the matter with you? It’s like a goddamn shithouse.”

She sniffed again. “Maybe it’s the Kitty Litter. I’m not strong enough to carry it out anymore. And Donald? You know the awful part? Harry’s gone.”

“Who’s he?”

“The cat.”

Gone as far as the barn. Maybe he’d tell her, maybe not.

“I must have mentioned our marvelous cat,” she was saying. “On the phone, wasn’t it, at that New Horizons place? And now you won’t be meeting him. Isn’t that the way? He disappeared the day that man came to visit. Vanished.”

“What man?”

“A sort of preacher man, but not with the Redeemers. He said a prayer for you.”

“Huh?”

“A beautiful prayer—
please hear this prayer for our beloved Donald
—I made him change it from Whitey, such a silly nickname—
and help guide him in useful ways
.”

“Are you making this up?”

“No, Donald, that’s what he said. The most beautiful prayer I’ve heard in my entire life. How could I forget?”

“Guide him in useful ways—is that what he said?”

“Don’t shout, Donald. My hearing’s perfectly fine. It’s the vision that—”

“When did this happen?”

“Oh,some time ago.”

Smack, smack, smack, but only in his mind, even though he was feeling a little better now, what with Vicodin and Pepsi. No smacking Ma. “Where was I?” he said.

“Where were you?”

“Yeah. When this visit happened.”

“Why, down there at the New Horizons establishment, naturally. And I wanted so much for you to meet Harry. He was the smartest little—”

“What did he look like?”

“Gingerbread, I guess you’d say, although—”

“The man, asshole—what did he look like?”

Her forehead got all cross, the way it used to: kind of funny now, with her eyes like that, and no belt buckles possible. “Look like?” she said.“I’m afflicted with vision problems, or can’t you get it through your thick skull?”

Not that funny. Smack. He did it then, but who wouldn’t have? And it felt good; why hadn’t he done it long ago? He picked her up off the floor, sat her at the table. “What I’m trying to find out, Ma—I know you like when I call you Ma—is would you know him if you heard him again?”

Ma repositioned her dentures, gave him one of her hateful looks, but not so hateful now with no eye power behind it, and said, “Honor thy father and mother.”

“Accidents happen. Would you know him if you heard him again, yes or no?”

“You could try saying please.”

“If I do you won’t like it.”

One of the best things he ever said. It silenced her. At last she hung her head—oh, why hadn’t he done it long, long ago?—and said, “I’d know him.”

“’Cause why?”

“He talked fancy.” She sniffled.

“Fancy?”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

“Fancy. Like with Harry. Harry has these long claws. The gentlest possible cat, but long claws. And this preacher man said they gave him an
inadvertent scratch
.
Inadvertent,
Donald. Now, who on God’s earth talks like that?”

Whitey knew the answer to that; he didn’t know what or why, but he knew who. He was nobody’s fucking bullfrog, nobody’s . . . puppet. Did Roger really think of himself as the master? Whitey would see about that.

First things first. It took him no time to find his mother’s purse, pocket what was in it, walk out the door without another word, a six-pack of Pepsi in his hand.

Lawton Ferry, 97 Carp Road. No pickup: an unpromising deficiency, but not definitive, and because not definitive, Roger took the ax with him when he left his car and went to the door.

He knocked.

“Donald? Is that you?”

“A friend of his.”

Pause. “I know your voice.”

“I’m your friend, too.”

Pause. How slow people were. “But how could you be Donald’s friend? You don’t know him.”

Slow, and they didn’t even get there. “I prayed for him. Doesn’t that make me his friend?”

“I don’t know.” Pause. “Harry disappeared the day you came.”

“But he’s right here, by the trash can.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“As I live and breathe.”

Pause. “Are you sure it’s him?”

Roger described the animal as he remembered it.

“Merciful God—it’s Harry!”

“Why don’t I bring him in?”

“I’d be obliged.”

“Here, kitty,” said Roger into the night. “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”

The door opened. The woman had a split lip, far too insignificant to account for all the blood Roger saw—on the kitchen table, the counter, the refrigerator, down the hall to the back.

“Have you got him?” said the woman, her sightless eyes gazing up at him. He didn’t like seeing sightless eyes again so soon, therefore was a little gruff perhaps when he said, “He’s absconded once more.”

“I don’t understand,” the woman said. “Harry,” she called, leaning outside, “Harry.”

Roger went past her into the house. He followed blood down to the bathroom; formed meaning from gauze, tape, needle, thread; returned to the kitchen; saw the open purse, a hideous object made of shiny green plastic; made meaning of it, too.

“Harry, Harry.”

“It’s useless,” he said. “Close the door. Snow’s coming in.”

“But he’ll freeze.”

“Harry? He’s a survivor.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Without question. Nine lives, and all that related folklore.”

She closed the door, came inside. “You’re right. Harry’s a survivor.”

“Then shall we agree not to worry about him? The pertinent question is—what are we going to do about Whitey?”

“Donald.”

“Donald.”

“Good question.” She moved to the table, sat down, closed her eyes. A tear or two escaped her almost lashless slits. “He wasn’t the nicest boy to his mother, not tonight, not anytime. And after all the sacrifices I made.” She gazed up at Roger, unseeing. “Do you know what I’ve done for him?”

“What you could,I’m sure. Now our job is to help him, don’t you agree?”

“But how?”

“You must think.”

“Should we say another prayer?”

“In a minute. But first, we should establish where he’s gone.”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Roger laid the ax silently on the table. “Perhaps he let slip some clue.”

“Clue? You talk like a cop.” She turned her head sideways, trying to catch a glimpse of him. “What’s your name,anyway?”

“Harry.”

“But that’s the cat’s name.”

“No matter. What matters is where your son has gone.”

“No need to raise your voice. That’s the same thing I said to him. Now I suppose you’ll smack me, too.”

“What a suggestion. All I’m saying is that surely even someone of your—surely you can appreciate that in order to help him, I have to know where he is.”

“He didn’t say. Maybe back to New Horizons.”

“It’s a thought.”

“You know about New Horizons?”

Her face tilted up in inquiry. This, as Roger had suspected for some time, was an impossible situation. Simply put, oversimply perhaps, this woman was negative. She knew all of the bad and none of the good: a potential witness of the most damaging kind.

“Useless now, dangerous in future.”

“What’s that?”

“Did I say something?” Roger rose.

“It sounded like a prayer, the beginning of prayer. Like the next line is
oh Lord, hear my humble call
.”

“Yes,” he said. “Why not?”

“We’re going to pray for Donald?”

“Let us kneel.”

They knelt.

“Maybe that’s a good omen,” she said, “you having the same name as Harry.”

“There are no omens,” said Roger.

Still, how odd, his idle thought at their previous encounter of the ease of snapping her neck. And now here they were. Data: her memory of his voice, the timing of his visits, her knowledge of his awareness of New Horizons—those were his rationale; her split lip, Whitey’s bloodstains, the psychiatrist’s testimony establishing motive—those were his protection. Anything else? Oh, yes, the gloves, still on his hands, rendering him immaculate. His gloved hands: he raised them.

She lifted her head in unseeing synchrony, waiting for his prayerful words, exposing her scrawny neck. Roger performed the logical act, but it wasn’t as easy as he’d anticipated, in the doing.

28

F
rancie tucked her car in behind a plow and stayed there, creeping along through the rolling country on the west side of the river at twenty miles an hour. In the darkness of late afternoon, she could see nothing but the back of the plow, lit in a way not at all comforting, more like an alien spaceship with monstrous creatures hidden inside. An alien spaceship leading her on to her wretched task: Francie tried rehearsing the little speech for Ned in her mind. It sounded pitiful; aloud, would be even worse.

At the intersection of the lane that led to Brenda’s gate, the plow continued north and Francie turned east, out of its shelter. Any local could earn extra money by clearing the roads, and someone had done a quick job on the lane, perhaps an hour or two before. Blowing wind and fresh snow were undoing it almost as quickly, but the lane was still drivable, and Francie was halfway to the gate when her car phone buzzed.

“Hello?”

“Francie?” It was Ned.

“Yes.”

“Are you on the way already?”

“I am.”

“I hope you haven’t gone too far.”

“I just left,” she said, lying because she sensed what was coming, didn’t want to waste emotion, his or hers, on what would now be a side issue.

“Still in the city?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a relief,” Ned said. “Because I’m not going to be able to make it. Something’s come up, and I just can’t.”

“Something about Anne?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Work related. I’ll explain later.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Francie began, and prepared to blurt out the whole thing, get it over with. Why had she cared about the
setting
in the first place? Why had she wanted to pretty it up? Doing it, getting it done, was all that counted. “It doesn’t matter, Ned,” she repeated, “because—”

“You’re too good to me,” Ned interrupted, then lowered his voice, as though there was a risk of being overheard. “But it does matter. It matters to me. I’m really sorry, Francie. And I wish I could say it won’t happen again, but you know I can’t even promise that. Oh, how I wish—” His voice caught, the way it did sometimes, a hint of the emotions underneath that always stopped her in her tracks but that she couldn’t allow to stop her now. “I can promise I’ll make it up to you somehow,” he went on.

“No, Ned, it doesn’t—”

“But right now I’ve really got to go—I’m already running late. Call you tomorrow. I’m sorry, Francie.”

“Just—”

Click.

Why go on? That was the first thought to rise out of Francie’s confusion. She had no desire to be in the cottage alone and stepped on the brake, too abruptly. Her car fishtailed in momentum-gathering swings, then whipped around and glided backward, weightless and out of control, but slower and slower, straight up the lane toward Brenda’s gate. Francie did nothing to stop it, felt no fear, just waited for the out-of-control period to end. It was easy to see this spinout, this loss of control, as a metaphor, and Francie did, even as it happened: a metaphor of her and Ned in toto, and even of their coming denouement as well, now slipping away from her. She had to tell him, had to tell him now, would have no peace until she did.

Gravity reasserted itself; the car came to a soft padded halt halfway up the hill. Francie still had the phone in her hand. But where was he? Not at work, because
Intimately Yours
had been bumped by the Pops Christmas concert. And calling him at home was out, because Anne might answer, and saving her from all this was the whole point. Anne, that two-stories-tall Anne of the fairy tale, was the only one who mattered now, had become the master, in some funny way. Francie’s car was pointed back toward home, the engine still running. She gave it gas, rolled down Brenda’s lane, and realized at that moment that she would never see the cottage again.

A self-pitying thought she attacked immediately: too fucking bad. Was there a right to be happy, if that insipid word was the word? She’d been happy with Ned, happier than ever in her adult life, but she’d been sucking the happiness out of someone else’s universe. There was no right to that. A clear decision, and once made the hard part was done: in her mind if not yet in life, she and Ned were over, finished. Telling him was all that remained. Anne would never know. Period. No harm done, and nothing to cry about.

Francie reminded herself of that last part several times as she turned left on the highway, headed home, was so deep in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice she’d drifted across the center line until the headlights of an oncoming car were almost upon her. Francie swerved, once more losing her grip on the road; the other driver, also across the center line, swerved, too. They missed each other by inches, Francie continuing south, the other car—a minivan—going north, much too fast. As her wheels gained traction, Francie had a crazy thought: what if they’d collided, what if she’d been killed at that moment, with Ned still untold? A tidy ending for everyone, all loose ends forever unknown. She slowed to thirty miles an hour and kept the speedometer there until she reached the interstate. Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary—exemplars from a superseded age, a darker one for women, and not for her.

“Chief Savard?”

“Speaking.”

“John More,returning your call.”

Savard, just back in the office after clearing a pileup out at the Route 139 three-way stop—invariable pileup site whenever it snowed—thought he recognized the voice but couldn’t recall the name. His caller sensed that before he had to admit it out loud.

“Reverend More, of the Little White Church of the Redeemer.”

The pickup. A minor matter, especially on a night like this, but he had the reverend on the phone. “It’s about your pickup.”

“My pickup?”

“The church’s, I guess it is. I happened to see it over near my place on Little Joe Lake and ...” And he’d been curious, as he would have been about any vehicle parked there. Curiosity gave him no legal right to ask any questions,so he didn’t.

“Is this about the taillight on the minibus? It’s going into the shop on Friday. I really hope you’re not planning to issue a ticket. They were booked solid.”

“This isn’t about the minibus,Reverend. It’s about the pickup.”

“We don’t own a pickup.”

“A white one,with the name of the church on the side panel.”

“Oh,” said the reverend. “That doesn’t belong to us in an official sense. It’s registered to a parishioner. We do use it from time to time, for dump runs and such.”

“The dump’s closed on Sunday.”

“As well it should be.” There was a silence. “Was there some question you had,sir?”

“That’s when I saw your pickup,” Savard said. “Yesterday. Sunday.”

“Impossible. We only use it in the summer, and never on Sundays, of course. It isn’t even insured right now—we renew the policy in May.”

“I thought you said it belonged to a parishioner.”

“And so it does. But since she can’t drive it herself and has been generous enough to provide it, we handle the insurance and registration.”

“Why can’t she drive it herself?”

“The poor woman’s legally blind.”

“Well, someone was driving it.”

“I don’t see how that could be. It’s shut up in the barn behind her house.” The reverend paused. “Oh my goodness—you’re not suggesting that someone stole it?”

“I’m not suggesting anything.”

“Would it be asking too much for you to drive out and have a look?”

“Can’t do it tonight, Reverend, not with the storm. But give me the address.”

“Ninety-seven Carp Road, Lawton Ferry.”

“And the name of this woman?”

“Perhaps you should mention me first when you call on her. Not that she’s in any way lacking as a citizen. She’s quite an independent sort, that’s all—lives alone with her cat, remarkably self-reliant.”

“I’ll do that,” Savard said, opening his notebook, taking out his pen. “What’s her name?”

“Truax,” said the reverend. He spelled it.

Savard didn’t write;his pen was still, poised above the unblemished page.

“Mrs. Dorothy Truax,” the reverend continued, “but everyone calls her Dot. God bless.”

The snow had stopped by the time Savard parked in front of 97 Carp Road, and the air had stilled, but the temperature was falling fast, as it often did after a storm. The moisture in his nostrils froze before he reached the front door.

Savard knocked. No answer. The house was dark, but why would a blind woman and a cat need lights? He kept knocking, kept getting no answer. “Mrs. Truax,” he called, loudly in case her hearing was going, too. “Mrs. Truax.” Speaking the name did something to him, something unpleasant. That made him knock harder, but it didn’t bring a response.

Savard went back to the cruiser for his lantern, shone it on the barn. The doors were unlocked but closed, and would be kept that way for a while by a snowdrift two or three feet high. Savard walked around the barn, found a hole in the wood, down at kicking level. He knelt, shone light through it, saw lots of rusted junk in the barn, but no pickup. Savard was just starting to rise when something twitched in the darkness. He reached for his gun—a first in his career, despite many provocations much stronger than a stirring in a shadowy barn—and a cat leaped out of the hole in the wall, flowed out of it, really, and landed soundlessly at his feet. The cat faced him, registered his presence, ran across the snow to the house, scratched at the front door.

Savard waited by the barn. He remembered the woman from the trial, everything about her, could picture her perfectly as she was then; remembered, too, the psychiatrist’s testimony. Nothing would have surprised him less than seeing the door open, glimpsing a bony hand usher in the cat. But that didn’t happen. The door remained closed, with the cat outside.

Savard arced his beam over the house, noticed the peeling paint, the duct tape on the lone front window. He considered peering through it, had taken a first step in that direction, when his radiophone buzzed.

He took it out of his pocket. “Savard.”

“Hi, Chief.” Carbonneau—all the others called him Joe. “Got a call from a snowmobiler, out on the river.” Savard heard shuffling paper, waited for whatever it was Carbonneau had misplaced. He was long past the stage of being amazed that snowmobilers would be out on a night like this, prepared to hear that one or more had fallen through, even though the ice was six or seven inches thick by now. No matter how cold it was, there were always soft spots in the river, as one or two snow-mobilers learned every year. “Had the name somewhere here, Chief,” Carbonneau said.

“Are we going to need Rescue?” Savard said. “Dive team?”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Carbonneau said. “I don’t think. This guy was on the river, out by Pinney Point.”

“The lookout?”

“Yeah. Not our side . . . but now that you mention it, Chief, what about that island?”

“With the cottage?” Savard said. He hadn’t mentioned anything, only thought it; Carbonneau was far from perfect, but there were advantages in having worked together for a long time.

“Yeah. Whose side is that on?”

“I don’t know,” Savard said. “What’s up?”

“This guy—I’ll have the name in a minute—saw lights on in the cottage. All lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“So?”

“That’s what I said. It’s Christmas, right? The thing is, this guy goes out on the river every winter, year after year, like. And he’s never seen lights on in there, not once.”

“Sounds like kids.” Cottage break-ins weren’t common on Savard’s side of the river, at least not ones committed by local boys; local boys knew that Savard was strict about cottage break-ins—he’d dealt summarily with one or two cases in his early years, and that had been enough.

“That’s what I thought, ” said Carbonneau. “Maybe still out there, Chief.”

“Send Berry,” Savard said.

“Berry’s back down at the three-way. More bumper cars. And Lisa called in sick.”

So it was him. Savard turned from the darkened house, walked down to the street. As he got in the cruiser, the cat made a screeching sound that ended on a high, keening note. A cold night, but cats could take care of themselves; this one would find its way back to the barn, wait for Dot Truax there. Savard put the cruiser in gear and headed for the river.

*    *     *

Francie slept a troubled sleep, caught in one of those partially controllable dreams where the real and the fantastic were all mixed up. Outside, the city was quiet, except for the rumble of the plows she half heard, muted by sleep, muffled by snow. In her dream, she wrestled with a problem:
oh garden, my garden
was back under her bed, the bed she was sleeping in, and she had to get rid of it at once, but what explanation would she give to Anne, two-stories-tall Anne, watching through the window? She had to come up with some scheme to make Anne go away, but what?

The phone started ringing. Maybe that would work, maybe Anne would answer it, giving her time to grab the painting and run from the room. But Anne couldn’t be distracted that easily; the phone rang and rang until finally Francie reached out of her dream and answered it.

“Francie?”

“Brenda?” The glowing red numbers on the bedside alarm read 4:37. Perhaps Brenda had made some mistake with the time difference.

“Oh, Francie, thank God you’re there.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Thank God it’s you. I was going out of my mind. Something awful’s happened. At the cottage.”

“At the cottage?”

“There’s been a murder, a horrible killing, Francie. Some policeman, the chief, I think, just called me—my number’s on the tax roll, of course. And I thought it might be you. An unidentified woman, he said. They must have assumed it was me, I guess. A local-type policeman, he wasn’t very clear. Are you sure you’re all right, Francie?”

“Yes. You’re positive he—”

“Wait—I’ve got another call.”

Francie, on her feet beside the bed, phone clutched in both hands, waited.
You’re positive he said a woman?
That was the question she’d begun. What if Ned had gone to the cottage anyway, had changed his mind, changed his schedule because he hadn’t believed she was still in the city, had felt guilty in consequence, or had simply worried about her out there in the storm? What if it was Ned?