Eight Perfect Murders(28)
Detective James put her hands on her knees, and said, “Unless you have anything to add, I think we’re probably done here.”
“I don’t,” I said, and we stood up at the same time. She was almost exactly my height.
“I will need some corroboration about the conference in Florida,” she said.
I promised to send her flight details, and I also gave her Shelly Bingham’s name and address.
The detective left a card. Her first name was Roberta.
Chapter 12
The sign that welcomed me to Tickhill, New Hampshire, also informed me that the total population was 730 inhabitants.
It was March 14, 2011, a Monday. I had left Boston at just after five in the morning and it was now eight thirty. The village of Tickhill was just north of the White Mountains. I’d done some research on the town, and some on Norman Chaney, the man I was there to kill, but not too much. And what research I’d been able to do I did at a library computer, jumping onto one of the desktops after a patron had left without logging off. I’d had my notebook with me and was able to take notes. What I learned about Tickhill was that it had one diner, and two bed-and-breakfasts, both popular because of their proximity to several ski areas. I pulled up a map and got an exact location for Norman Chaney on Community Road. The house, at least according to the map, looked fairly isolated. After sketching the location in my notebook, I began to research Norman Chaney, who had purchased the Tickhill house three years earlier for $225 thousand. The only other possible hit I got on Norman Chaney was an obituary from 2007 for Margaret Chaney, a schoolteacher from Holyoke, in western Massachusetts, who had died in a house fire. Margaret Chaney, forty-seven years old when she died, had left behind two children, twenty-two-year-old Finn and nineteen-year-old Darcy, and her husband of twenty-three years, Norman Chaney. It wasn’t much, but it made me wonder. Could Norman Chaney have been responsible for the death of his own wife, and, if so, was that why he’d been marked for death? And was that why he’d left Holyoke to live in a town of less than a thousand residents?
It had occurred to me that I didn’t really need to kill Norman Chaney. If Duckburg, the site where I’d arranged the murder swap, was as anonymous as it promised, then there was no way that the stranger I’d communicated with would ever find out who I was. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Even if this stranger—this shadow version of myself—knew nothing about me, he did know one thing. He knew that I wanted Eric Atwell to die. That might put me on a long list, but it also might not. I had decided to go through with my half of the bargain; it seemed the safest thing to do, but also maybe the right thing to do, in a twisted way.
Before shutting down the library computer, I quickly looked up both Finn Chaney and Darcy Chaney. Unlike their father, they each had online presences. If I’d found the right people, then Finn Chaney was currently working at a small bank in Pittsfield, where he was also a trivia host at a local pub. Darcy Chaney now lived outside of Boston, attending graduate school at Lesley University in Cambridge. There were pictures of them both, and they were undoubtedly brother and sister. Jet-black hair, heavy eyebrows, blue eyes, small mouths. Neither of them seemed to live with their father, and that was the most important piece of information that I got. If Norman Chaney lived alone, then my job became substantially easier.
It had just begun to snow as I entered Tickhill, light flakes that filled the air without seeming to land. I found Community Road, a sparsely populated and poorly paved road that wound up a hill. I slowed down as I approached number 42; the mailbox, painted black with white letters, was the only indication that a property even existed. Driving slowly by, I peered down the dirt driveway but couldn’t make out the house in the woods. At the end of Community Road, I U-turned, then made a decision. This time I turned down the driveway. It twisted to the left and then I could see the house. It was an A-frame construction, more windows than wood, made to look like a miniature ski chalet. I was very happy to see that there was no garage and that only one vehicle—some kind of SUV—was parked out front. The chances that Norman Chaney was alone just went up significantly.
Wearing gloves, and with a balaclava on my head but not pulled all the way down over my face, I stepped out of the car, holding a crowbar down near my leg. I approached the house, stepping up the two steps to the front door. It was solid wood, but there was a strip of beveled glass on either side. After ringing the doorbell, I peered into the dark interior of the house, made wonky by the ripple effect of the glass. I’d decided that if anyone other than a middle-aged man came toward the door, I would pull down my balaclava and make my way back to the car. I’d already smeared enough mud on the license plate so that both the number and the state were obscured.
No one answered the door. I rang the bell again—a four-note chime—then saw a large, heavyset man lumbering slowly down the stairs. Even through the glass I could see he was wearing gray sweatpants and a flannel shirt. His face was ruddy, and his thick dark hair was sticking up in tufts, as though it was unwashed.
The man pulled the door open. There was no fear in his expression, not even any hesitation. “Uh-huh,” he said.
“Are you Norman Chaney?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” he said again. He was over six feet tall, even though he stooped slightly, one shoulder noticeably higher than the other.
I swung the crowbar, aiming for the side of his head, but Chaney reared back, and the tip of the bar connected with the bridge of his nose. There was a splintery crack as he staggered back, blood falling in a sheet down over his chin. He raised his hands to his face and wetly said, “The fuck.”