Eight Perfect Murders(15)

“It’s going to be a short list,” I said. “My only ex is my wife, and she’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, but it was clear from her expression she already had that information.

“And I’ll keep thinking about the books on the list.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Don’t hold back. Let me know any thoughts you have, even if they seem insignificant or unlikely. It can’t hurt.”

“Okay,” I said, folding my napkin and putting it over the uneaten portion of my breakfast. “Are you checking out, or are you staying here?”

“Checking out,” she said. “Unless for some reason the train is canceled, then I guess I’ll spend one more night here. But I’m not leaving right now. You haven’t told me if you looked at the unsolved crimes I gave you last night.”

I told her that none of them had jumped out at me, except for possibly Daniel Gonzalez, the man who’d been shot while jogging.

“How does it relate to your list?” she asked.

“It probably doesn’t, but it made me think of the Donna Tartt book, The Secret History. In that book the killers wait for their victim at a place they think he might be hiking.”

“I read that book, in college,” she said.

“So you remember?”

“Sort of. I thought they killed someone doing a sex ritual in the woods.”

“That’s the first murder; they kill a farmer. The second murder is the one I reference in the list. They push their friend off a cliff.”

“Daniel Gonzalez was shot.”

“I know. It’s a long shot. It has more to do with the fact that he was out walking his dog. Maybe it’s a walk he does every day, or once a week. It probably has nothing to do—”

“No, it’s helpful. I’ll look into it further. There were several persons of interest in the Daniel Gonzalez case, including a former student who is still under investigation. But it does seem like a possibility.”

“Was Daniel Gonzalez . . . an asshole?” I said. “For lack of a better word.”

“That I don’t know, but I’ll check it out. It seems likely, though, if there were several persons of interest in his killing. So that was the only case, the Gonzalez one . . . ?”

“Yes,” I said. “I did think that you should look outside of unsolved homicides, though. Look at accidental drownings and, also, accidental overdoses. Oh, that reminds me.” I opened my bike messenger bag and pulled out the two books I’d brought with me, the paperback copy of The Drowner that I’d reread the night before, plus a paperback copy of Malice Aforethought that I’d found in my personal collection that morning. It was a Pan Books paperback in very poor condition, the cover almost falling off. I slid both across to Agent Mulvey. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll make sure they get returned to you.”

“Don’t worry too much about it,” I said. “Neither is irreplaceable. And I read The Drowner last night. Read it again, I mean, because it had been a while since I last read it.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Any insights?”

“There are two murders in it. There’s the woman who gets killed while swimming. She’s pulled down from below, basically what the cover is showing you. But there’s a second murder, a really disturbing one. The killer, who’s this very physically strong woman, almost supernaturally strong, kills a man by giving him a heart attack with her hand. She holds it rigid like this”—I demonstrated by holding up my hand, fingers extended—“and pushes it slowly up under his rib cage until she can feel his heart and then she wrenches it.”

“Ugh,” the agent said and made a face.

“I don’t know if it’s even possible,” I said. “And even if it was, I’m pretty sure an autopsy would show what happened.”

“I’d think so, too,” she said. “I still think we should look for drownings. I think our Charlie would want to copy the drowning killing, especially since it’s the title of the book.”

“Right,” I said.

“Did you get anything else from the book?”

I didn’t tell her how I hadn’t remembered just how sexualized the killings were. That Angie, the insane murderer, imagined two personalities for herself, a Joan of Arc side in which her purity made her impervious to pain, but then there was a side to her that she called her “red mare” feeling, her back arched, her nipples erect, and how she experienced both of these personalities when she committed a murder. It made me wonder if all murderers needed to do this, needed to disassociate during the act, become someone else. Was Charlie like this?

But what I said to Agent Mulvey was “It’s actually not a great book. I love John D. MacDonald but, except for the Angie character, this wasn’t one of his best.”

She shrugged and put both the books in her own bag. I realized that my critical assessment of the book was not exactly relevant. Still, she looked up and said, “You’ve been incredibly helpful. Do you mind if I send you anything I might have for your opinion? And if you’d keep rereading the books . . .”

“Of course,” I said.

We exchanged emails, then stood, and she walked me to the entrance of the hotel. “I want to look at the weather,” she said, stepping outside with me. The snow was barely falling now, but the city was transformed, drifts of snow gathered in corners, the trees bent over, even the brick walls of nearby buildings coated with a scrim of white.