Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson Page 0,23

yet. I do. And someone else does, as well.

If these words are ever read, then I am sure that the reader might have already guessed that I have more to do with these crimes than I’ve been letting on. It’s not as though there haven’t been clues. For instance, why did my heart beat faster when Gwen Mulvey first began interviewing me?

Why didn’t I immediately tell her that I knew who Elaine Johnson was?

Why did I only eat two bites of my sandwich the night after I was visited by the FBI agent?

Why do I dream of being chased?

Why did I not immediately tell Gwen about the comment from Doctor Sheppard?

And a really astute reader might even have noticed that my name, shortened, is Mal—French, of course, for bad. That’s taking it too far, though, because that really is my name. I’ve changed some names for the purposes of this narrative, but not my own.

*

IT IS TIME TO tell the truth.

It is time to speak of Claire.

That was her real name, as well. Claire Mallory, who grew up in a wealthy town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, one of three sisters. Her parents were not particularly good people, but they weren’t bad enough to really figure into this story. They were well-off, and shallow; her mother, in particular, was obsessed with all three of her daughters’ attractiveness and weight, and because she obsessed about it, that meant their father—devoid of any independent thoughts, himself—agreed with her. They sent their children to summer camps in Maine and to fancy private schools, and Claire, who was the oldest, chose to go to Boston University, because she wanted to be in a city, and both New York City and Hartford felt too close to where she’d grown up.

At BU she majored in film and television, wanting to be a documentary filmmaker. Her first year was okay, but in her second year, prompted by a boyfriend majoring in theater arts, she got heavily into drugs, particularly cocaine. As her habit grew, she began to have panic attacks, and that caused her to drink excessively. She stopped going to classes, was put on academic probation, briefly rebounded, then failed out her junior year. Her parents tried hard to get her to come home, but she stayed in Boston, instead, renting an apartment in Allston and getting a job at the Redline Bookstore, where I’d just been promoted to manager.

It was love at first sight, really. At least for me. When she came in to interview it was clear that she was nervous, her hands trembling slightly, and she kept yawning, which seemed weird, but I was able to recognize it as a sign of extreme anxiety. She sat on a swivel chair in Mort’s office, her hands resting on her thighs. She wore a corduroy skirt and dark leggings, plus a turtleneck. She was thin, noticeably so, and with a long neck. Her head seemed too big for her body, her face almost perfectly round. She had dark brown eyes, a thin nose, and lips that looked puffy and bitten. Her hair was very dark, cut in what I thought of as a bob. It looked like a dated style to me, something an intrepid amateur detective might wear in a 1930s film. She was so pretty that a dull throb had taken up residence in my solar plexus.

I asked her about work experience. She had very little, but during the past few summers she’d worked at a Waldenbooks at her local mall down in Connecticut.

“Who are your favorite writers?” I’d asked, and she’d looked surprised at the question.

“Janet Frame,” she said. “Virginia Woolf. Jeanette Winterson.” She thought for a while. “I read poetry, as well. Adrienne Rich. Robert Lowell. Anne Sexton.”

“Sylvia Plath?” I’d asked, and inwardly cringed. It sounded stupid, mentioning the most famous confessional female poet, as though I were somehow reminding her of the name.

“Sure,” she said, then asked me who my favorite writers were.

I told her. We kept talking this way, about writers, for the next hour, and I realized I’d only asked her one question about the actual job.

“What hours will you be available?” I said.

“Oh.” She touched her cheek when she thought. I noticed it right away, not aware in that moment of how many times I’d see her make that gesture, and how eventually I would see it not just as something endearing and individual, but as something worrying. “I don’t know why I’m thinking about it,” she said,