Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

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 Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary-exemplars from a superseded age, a darker one for women, and not for her.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.”