Eight Perfect Murders(40)
“Was it special?”
“What, the bat?”
“Yeah, was there something unusual about it? Was it from the 1950s or anything? Signed by Mickey Mantle?”
“No, it was new, and it was a brand that’s sold at just about every sporting goods store. It didn’t go anywhere. Also, it didn’t actually deliver the killing blow. Bradshaw was hit by the baseball bat, but he’d been killed with a sledgehammer, directly to his head. Sorry for the image.”
When Gwen pulled up in front of the bookstore, she said, “Here you go,” then quickly added, “Oh, maybe you wanted to go to your home. I didn’t even ask.”
“This is fine,” I said. “I should probably check in here anyway, and I only live a few blocks away.”
“Thanks for coming. As soon as I get those photographs of the books, can I send them to you?”
“Sure,” I said.
The store was open for another fifteen minutes and I could see Brandon behind the front desk, a book splayed open in front of him. I swung through the front door and he looked up. “Boss,” he said.
“Hey, Brandon.”
He tilted the book he was reading so I could see the cover. It was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, who not so long ago had been revealed to actually be J. K. Rowling. “Good,” he said, and went back to reading.
“I’m just popping in. Anything happen while I was away?”
He told me how yesterday afternoon a woman in a fur coat came in and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of new hardcovers and arranged to have them shipped to her address in Malibu. And he told me that he thought he’d finally fixed the faucet in the employee bathroom that was always leaking.
“Thanks,” I said.
I heard Nero’s plaintive meow and bent down to greet him.
“He misses you, I think, when you’re not here,” Brandon said, and something about those words caused me to have one of those periodic waves of deep sadness that suddenly infect me from time to time. I stood suddenly, and the light swam in front of my eyes. I was hungry, I realized. It was late, and I hadn’t eaten since lunch in Rockland.
I walked home and got my car, then drove over the river to Somerville, the town I’d lived in with Claire. I sat at the bar at R.F. O’Sullivan’s, a place I hadn’t been for years, drinking Guinness and eating one of their softball-size burgers. Afterward I drove to the Somerville Public Library, pleased to see it was still open. I went to the second floor and found a computer with an open internet browser, punched in the name that Marty had given me earlier, “Nicholas Pruitt.”
Not only was he an English professor at New Essex University, he had published a book of short stories called Little Fish. There were two pictures of him I could find online, an author photograph, plus a candid from a faculty cocktail party. He was about what you’d expect a college English professor to look like, tall and stoop shouldered, with a slight paunch and hair that stuck up at the front as though he constantly ran his fingers through it. His hair was a brownish black, but his closely trimmed beard was salted with gray. In his author photograph he was turned to a three-quarters profile and was staring toward the camera with an expression that seemed to be asking for validation. Take me seriously, it said. I just might be a genius. Maybe I’m being harsh, but that was what I saw. I’ve always been suspicious of literary writers, with their attempts at immortality. That is why I much prefer thriller writers, and poets. I like the writers who know they are fighting a losing battle.
While there was plenty of online information about Nicholas Pruitt, who went by Nick, it seemed, there was very little information about his personal life. If he was married, or had kids, I couldn’t find any confirmation of that fact. The most telling thing I read about him was on a site that enabled students to anonymously grade their professors. The bulk of his reviews pointed to a decent professor who was sometimes a hard grader, but one user wrote: To be honest, Professor Pruitt gave me the creeps. He was FAR too into Lady Macbeth to be honest. I don’t know why he insisted on acting out all her parts.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. I had already constructed an entire fantasy of what might have turned Nicholas Pruitt into Charlie. The way I imagined it was that Pruitt’s sister Margaret marries Norman Chaney, who turns out to be not only a creep, but a criminal, and a man who murders Pruitt’s sister and gets away with it. Pruitt decides to kill Norman Chaney, but knows that if he does it, he will be the prime suspect. So, thinking he might be able to hire someone to kill Chaney, he goes onto Duckburg and finds my message about Strangers on a Train. He’s an English professor and knows that book well; he knows what I’m suggesting, and we exchange names and addresses. He kills Eric Atwell. It goes well, not just because he gets away with it, but because he actually enjoys it. It gives him the power he has always craved. When Norman Chaney dies, while Pruitt is away somewhere, establishing an alibi, he feels further empowered. Killing feels good. He decides he has to find out who he swapped with, who murdered Chaney for him. It wouldn’t have been hard. A little snooping and he’d discover that Eric Atwell had been questioned by police in regard to a motor vehicle accident that took the wife of Malcolm Kershaw. Not only that, but Malcolm Kershaw works at a mystery bookstore. He’d even once posted a list of eight perfect murders in fiction. It included Strangers on a Train.