Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson Page 0,66
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.”
Halfway through her announcement all the students had begun to slide their laptops into their backpacks and put their coats back on. I got up, as well, and quickly left the room, walking back down the hallway, then outside, hoping my presence hadn’t been too noteworthy to anyone. I wandered toward a bench, with a view out toward the Atlantic, dark gray under a leaden sky. I sat for a moment, angling my body so that I could see the front of Proctor Hall, students now streaming out, moving quickly out of fear that their professor would suddenly show up and they wouldn’t get the morning off.
It was clear what had happened. Pruitt hadn’t shown up to his class, hadn’t responded to texts or calls to his cell phone. His teaching assistant had resorted to running down to his nearby house and seeing if he was home. I had a bad