Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

Whitey went inside. He still got that rush, right away, of being inside a living thing that knew but couldn’t do shit about it. Besides, it was nice and warm in the cabin, and even quieter than usual, probably because of all the muffling snow.

Whitey moved into the kitchen. Not much there: toaster oven, coffeemaker, china bowl on the table, unopened bottle of gin on the counter. He checked the fridge, as he always did. Usually they were shut off and empty except for baking soda or moldy lemons, but sitting on the top shelf of this one was a cake. A chocolate cake with pink icing flowers, Happy Anniversary Sue, and a big pink One. He plucked a pink flower, popped it in his mouth, washed it down with a hit of gin. He liked gin.

Whitey went into the living room. Not much there either: brass fireplace set, framed Sacred Heart of Jesus on the mantel, cases full of books, useless to him. He mounted worn stairs to the floor above, looked in on a bedroom: a bed, unmade, more books. Nothing. Not even a TV. He was about to turn and go back down when a door opened inside the bedroom, a cloud of steam floated out, and then a woman-naked, except for the towel wrapped around her head. Her eyes opened wide, her hands went to her mouth, then her breasts. How satisfying was that? And there he was, in the leather jacket, with the gold chain around his neck and the glass cutter in his hand. Whitey knew right then that this was what the rush was all about; this was what he’d been waiting for.

“Hi, Sue,” Whitey said. Christ, he was quick, putting it all together like that. He heard a sound like buzzing in his head.

“Truax,” called a voice. “Phone.”

Whitey sat up in bed. Sunlight in the room, Rey already gone. Morning, but he hadn’t slept at all, and nothing but a doctor’s note could get him off work-one of the parole conditions. He rose, went to the front hall, picked up the phone.

“Donald?”

“Ma.”

“You’re in the new place?”

“Yeah.”

“How is it?”

“How is it?”

“Nice?”

“Yeah, Ma, nice.”

“Well, it has to be a sight better than that other…”

In the pause that followed, Whitey heard a clicking sound that might have been her dentures. “Got to get to work, Ma.”

“You got yourself a job?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of job?”

“For the municipality.”

“My God, Donald. For the municipality?”

“Got to go, Ma.”

“But, Donald-when are you coming home?”

“Home?”

“Course, I’m in a different place now. Had to, ’cause of… all the fuss.”

“I know that.”

“But there’s plenty of room, for a visit, I’m talking about. And they say there’s ice on the river already-I’m on the river, did I tell you? Knowing how much you like the skating-and besides, you haven’t met Harry.”

“Who’s he?”

“My cat. He’s the funniest little cat, Donald. Why, the other day-”

“Bye, Ma.”

“Good to talk to-”

Whitey speared trash on the median, speared it angrily when he bothered to spear it at all. He was exhausted, robbed of a night’s sleep by that dickhead Rey and that asshole social worker. And the fucking sun was hotter than ever. He’d been in Florida for three years now-cheaper for New Hampshire to farm him out for the last part of his sentence-but he hadn’t got used to the heat. He saw another bullfrog and didn’t even bother; he might have if it had tried something or even looked up at him, but the frog sat there doing nothing. Then a scrap of newspaper drifted by and came to rest against the steel tip of his pole. Glancing down, Whitey saw a baldness ad and above it a short article headlined HOTEL CLERK REMAINS IN COMA. Next to the article was one of those police artist sketches of a man: an ugly son of a bitch who didn’t look like him at all, except for the hair. He stabbed the paper and buried it deep in his bright orange trash bag.

Wearing his black suit from Brooks Brothers, Roger took a little business trip to Lawton Center, New Hampshire, an old mill town where the mills were all boarded up and the river, a tributary of the Merrimack, flowed through unimpeded, clean and useless, as it had in the past. The river was frozen now. A vacant-eyed boy in a Bruins sweater rattled slapshots off the bridge support as Roger drove across. An ugly town-he didn’t care for the countryside either, preferred the south of France to anywhere in New England, anywhere in the United States for that matter. Why not live there? Why not buy a mas in the Vaucluse or the Alpilles? No reason at all… after. He parked in front of the public library and went inside.

The library had microfilm volumes of the Merrimack Eagle and Gazette going back to 1817. Roger found the year he was looking for, spooled the roll onto the machine, slowly scrolled his way through the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Whitey Truax.

The first thing he liked was the photograph of Whitey, age nineteen. He had crudely cut hair, very pale, eyebrows paler still, eyelashes invisible, but dark, prominent eyes; and a strong chin, slightly too long. He looked confident, crafty, and stupid: a combination Roger couldn’t have improved on if he’d invented the character.

But even better, almost startling, was the photograph of the victim, Sue Savard, accompanying her obituary. She looked like a cheap version of Francie. The resemblance amazed Roger. Staring closely at the woman’s image, he could blend it into Francie’s in his mind, the way the director in some art film Francie had dragged him to long ago had blended the faces of two actresses. At that moment, Roger realized that writing Francie’s obituary would be his responsibility. He quickly sketched it out in his mind, doing a conscientious job, dwelling on her love of art, her contributions to the artistic community, mentioning her tennis in passing. Probably wise to read Nora the rough draft when the time came, in case she had any suggestions. And Brenda, too-no doubt Brenda had a soft spot for him after that business with the lilies.

Photographs: good and better, but best of all were the details of Whitey’s crime. Rimsky’s Puzzle Club account of the crime on Little Joe Lake, a few miles to the west, had been promising; the Eagle and Gazette delivered. Whitey had been arrested at his mother’s place near the lake within an hour of the event. Sue’s husband-and there was a sidebar about him that Roger scanned quickly: a rookie cop in Lawton, apparently, and he’d caused what the paper called a disturbance when they finally brought Whitey to the station in Nashua; but not material, and Roger factored it out-the husband, driving to his cottage to celebrate their anniversary that evening, and thus discoverer of the crime, had passed Whitey’s pickup on the way out, and was able to give the police a good description. Whitey’s first story was that he’d been passing by the cottage, seen an open door, and gone to investigate, like a good neighbor, so finding the body. When the police asked him why the Savards’toaster oven was in the bed of his pickup, Whitey admitted that he’d gone there to steal but had found the body, already dead. The police then turned to the cuts and scratches on Whitey’s hands and face. Whitey should have asked for a lawyer at that point, or long before, but instead again changed his story, now claiming that the woman had attacked him in the course of the robbery, and he had struck out in fear, killing her unintentionally in self-defense. The medical examiner arrived soon after that with his preliminary report that there was evidence of rape, and other outrages not spelled out in the small-town paper. Mrs. Dorothy Truax-the whole discussion had taken place in her trailer-jumped up and shouted that Sue Savard was a well-known whore. Prompted by that cue in a direction his mother hadn’t intended, Whitey then said that the woman shouldn’t have been wandering around naked in the first place-he wasn’t made of stone, after all. If only she hadn’t threatened to sic the cops on him, no real harm would have been done. He signed a statement to that effect.