Eight Perfect Murders(51)

I decided to drive to New Essex early the next morning, stake out his house, watch him for a while. It might give me an advantage.





Chapter 21




Early the next morning, before driving to New Essex, I went to Old Devils. Nero came up through his cat door from the basement to greet me, walking with purpose, his head up. I picked him up and cradled him in my arms, scratching under his chin. I’d asked myself before whether it had been worth it to save him, and I believe it had. I don’t know if there really is a way to rate an animal’s happiness, but I believe he loves his life in the bookstore. I put him down, picking one of his hairs off my wool coat. Would they have collected his hairs from Norman Chaney’s house in Tickhill during the investigation of his murder? Would they have considered them important or irrelevant? I didn’t really know.

I left a note, with a list of things to do, for Emily and Brandon, then went back out into the cold morning.

I was in New Essex a little over an hour later, idling along the curb across from where Nick Pruitt lived, a small square house with a mansard roof. It was eight in the morning, and I felt conspicuous. Corning Street was almost entirely residential, and all the houses had driveways. Mine was the only car parked along the curb. There was a corner store back about a hundred yards. I U-turned and parked in front of it, turned off my engine. I still had a view of Pruitt’s house, and if anyone questioned why I was sitting in my car, I could say I was about to go into the store.

The car began to steam up, and I cleared a small patch on the bottom right of the windshield so that I could still watch the house while slumped in my seat. I took small sips from my thermos of coffee. There was a car parked in his driveway—something sporty that might be a Porsche—but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was still home. He worked at the university, only a few blocks away. If he was teaching a morning class, he could easily walk there.

While waiting, I went over my list of books in my mind, connecting them with the murders. Unless Gwen Mulvey hadn’t spotted one of them, then Charlie had committed murders described in four of the eight books on my list, possibly five. The first one, of course, was done with me. Eric Atwell and Norman Chaney. The swapped murders from Strangers on a Train. Then Charlie had re-created the plot from The A.B.C. Murders, substituting people with birds in their names. Bill Manso had been killed using the idea from Double Indemnity. Elaine Johnson had been killed the same way that the playwright’s wife had been killed in Deathtrap. And was it possible that Steven Clifton had been murdered by using the method in The Secret History? How had Charlie even have known about Clifton? But, of course, he might have. He knew about me, and my wife. How hard would it have been to discover that Claire Mallory had gone to a middle school where a teacher had been accused of improper behavior with his students. It was unlikely, but not impossible. That left three books, three murders to go. The Red House Mystery, Malice Aforethought, and The Drowner. For all I knew, one or more of these had already happened, but somehow, I doubted it.

At about eleven I got out of the car, stretched, then went into the convenience store. It was one of those places that sells milk and basic groceries, but only exists because of lottery tickets and cigarettes. I bought a granola bar and a dusty bottle of water from the man behind the register and paid in cash. As I walked back toward my car, I saw a young woman in jeans and knee-high boots striding toward Pruitt’s front door. She pressed the doorbell as I got back into the driver’s seat. I swiped a hand across the inside of my windshield to watch the woman as she waited, rocking slightly on her heels. She rang the bell again, then tried knocking, then peered through one of the rectangular panes of glass that lined the side of the door. Finally, she gave up, looked at her phone, and turned around and walked back down the street.

I got out of the car and began to follow her. I figured that if she was looking for Nick Pruitt, she’d eventually find him, and if I was following her, then I’d find him as well.

She was walking fast, almost jogging at times, so I picked up my pace. At the end of Pruitt’s street, she turned left onto Gloucester Road, climbing a short hill toward New Essex University, and eventually entering a two-story brick building on the edge of the campus. A sign above the awning read Proctor Hall. I raced to the double glass doors, and pushed through into a lobby-style entrance, catching the retreating figure of the woman, her boots rapping down a long hall to the left. A bearded man behind an information desk looked up at me, and I smiled and nodded like I’d seen him a hundred times, then followed the woman down the fluorescent-lit hallway. She was pushing through the third door at the left. A small placard told me she was in Classroom 1C, and I peered through an inset window of wire-reinforced glass. All I could see was the curved back row of stadium-style seating, about twelve students sprawled at their desks. I pushed through the door and slipped inside, seating myself at the end of the back row. It was a large room that sloped down toward the front. It probably had room for about a hundred students, and I guessed that 60 percent of the seats were taken. The woman I’d followed had removed her black parka and her wool hat and was now standing at the front of the room, looking nervous.

“Unfortunately,” she said. “Professor Pruitt won’t be able to make today’s class. I’ll be here for the remainder of the time in case anyone has any questions, but unless you hear otherwise, Friday morning’s class is the same as scheduled, and the reading assignment hasn’t changed.”