Haven office and had a few questions. Behind him stood a much shorter woman, also in a suit. He introduced her as Agent Perez from the Boston office. I invited them both in, said that I was about to make coffee, and asked if they wanted some. Agent Berry said he wouldn’t mind. Agent Perez, who was now looking out the window, said nothing.
I started the coffee and felt surprisingly calm. All the adrenaline that had flooded through me after the buzzer sounded had dissipated with their arrival. I was light, almost spacey, as I walked the short distance to the chair and directed them to the sofa.
Agent Berry adjusted his suit pants above the knees before sitting down. He had enormous hands, spotted with age, and a large, elongated head with heavy jowls. He cleared his throat and said, “I was hoping you’d be able to shed some light on your relationship with Gwen Mulvey.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Can you tell us when you first met her?”
“Sure,” I said. “She called me at the bookstore—at Old Devils, where I work—last Thursday and asked if she could come in and ask some questions. Is she all right?”
“What were the questions she wanted to ask you?” he said. Agent Perez still hadn’t spoken, but she had pulled out a small spiral-bound notebook and had uncapped a pen.
“She had questions about a list I’d made, a blog post from several years ago.”
Berry pulled out his own notebook and peered down at it. “Called ‘Eight Perfect Murders’?” I could hear what sounded like disdain in his voice.
“That’s right,” I said.
“And what were her questions related to?”
I was under the impression that they already knew all about the conversation Gwen and I had had but decided to tell them anything they wanted to know. Well, anything that I’d already told Gwen. So, I began, explaining how Agent Mulvey had noticed a connection between the list I’d written in 2004 and several recent crimes. I mentioned how at first, I’d considered the connection to be dubious, probably coincidental, but how we’d found the eight books from my list at Elaine Johnson’s house in Rockland.
“Did it strike you as odd that Agent Mulvey asked you to accompany her on official FBI business? To visit the scene of a possible crime?” This question came from Agent Perez, the first words I’d heard her speak. She leaned forward as she spoke them, the buttons of her suit jacket straining a little as though she’d recently gained weight. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty, with short black hair and a round face dominated by large eyes and thick brows.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I think she honestly believed that since I’d written the list, since I’d read all the books on it, that I was the expert. She thought I might be able to notice something in Elaine Johnson’s house. Also, I knew her. I mean, I’d known Elaine Johnson.”
“So what did you find out? From your visit to her house?”
“What I found out—what we found out, Agent Mulvey and myself—was confirmation that someone really is using my list to commit murders, and that quite possibly it has something to do with me—”
“Quite possibly?” Agent Berry said, his jowls quivering.
“Elaine Johnson was someone I knew, someone who used to come into my bookstore all the time. It’s clear that her death signifies my involvement. Not my immediate involvement, but the fact that whoever is doing this either knows me, or wanted me to find out about this, or is somehow framing me.”
“You discussed all this with Agent Mulvey?”
“Yes, we talked about all the possibilities.”
Agent Berry looked down at his notebook. “Just to confirm, you discussed the murders of Robin Callahan, Jay Bradshaw, and Ethan Byrd?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you discussed the murder of Bill Manso?”
“The man killed near the train tracks? … Yes, we did.”
“What about Eric Atwell?” he said, looking up at me.
“We talked about Eric Atwell a little bit, because of his relationship to me. But we didn’t discuss him as a victim in this particular series of crimes.”
“And what was his relationship to you?”
“Eric Atwell’s?”
“Yes.”
“It’s clear that she wrote all this down,” I said. “I don’t know why you can’t just speak with her or consult her notes.”
“We just want to hear it from you,” said Agent Perez. I’d noticed that any time she spoke Agent Berry would shift on my sofa, uncomfortably, as though he had an itch he was too embarrassed to scratch.
“Eric Atwell had been