A Perfect Crime

12

Wearing his black suit from Brooks Brothers, Roger took a little business trip to Lawton Center, New Hampshire, an old mill town where the mills were all boarded up and the river, a tributary of the Merrimack, flowed through unimpeded, clean and useless, as it had in the past. The river was frozen now. A vacant-eyed boy in a Bruins sweater rattled slapshots off the bridge support as Roger drove across. An ugly town-he didn’t care for the countryside either, preferred the south of France to anywhere in New England, anywhere in the United States for that matter. Why not live there? Why not buy a mas in the Vaucluse or the Alpilles? No reason at all… after. He parked in front of the public library and went inside.

The library had microfilm volumes of the Merrimack Eagle and Gazette going back to 1817. Roger found the year he was looking for, spooled the roll onto the machine, slowly scrolled his way through the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Whitey Truax.

The first thing he liked was the photograph of Whitey, age nineteen. He had crudely cut hair, very pale, eyebrows paler still, eyelashes invisible, but dark, prominent eyes; and a strong chin, slightly too long. He looked confident, crafty, and stupid: a combination Roger couldn’t have improved on if he’d invented the character.

But even better, almost startling, was the photograph of the victim, Sue Savard, accompanying her obituary. She looked like a cheap version of Francie. The resemblance amazed Roger. Staring closely at the woman’s image, he could blend it into Francie’s in his mind, the way the director in some art film Francie had dragged him to long ago had blended the faces of two actresses. At that moment, Roger realized that writing Francie’s obituary would be his responsibility. He quickly sketched it out in his mind, doing a conscientious job, dwelling on her love of art, her contributions to the artistic community, mentioning her tennis in passing. Probably wise to read Nora the rough draft when the time came, in case she had any suggestions. And Brenda, too-no doubt Brenda had a soft spot for him after that business with the lilies.

Photographs: good and better, but best of all were the details of Whitey’s crime. Rimsky’s Puzzle Club account of the crime on Little Joe Lake, a few miles to the west, had been promising; the Eagle and Gazette delivered. Whitey had been arrested at his mother’s place near the lake within an hour of the event. Sue’s husband-and there was a sidebar about him that Roger scanned quickly: a rookie cop in Lawton, apparently, and he’d caused what the paper called a disturbance when they finally brought Whitey to the station in Nashua; but not material, and Roger factored it out-the husband, driving to his cottage to celebrate their anniversary that evening, and thus discoverer of the crime, had passed Whitey’s pickup on the way out, and was able to give the police a good description. Whitey’s first story was that he’d been passing by the cottage, seen an open door, and gone to investigate, like a good neighbor, so finding the body. When the police asked him why the Savards’toaster oven was in the bed of his pickup, Whitey admitted that he’d gone there to steal but had found the body, already dead. The police then turned to the cuts and scratches on Whitey’s hands and face. Whitey should have asked for a lawyer at that point, or long before, but instead again changed his story, now claiming that the woman had attacked him in the course of the robbery, and he had struck out in fear, killing her unintentionally in self-defense. The medical examiner arrived soon after that with his preliminary report that there was evidence of rape, and other outrages not spelled out in the small-town paper. Mrs. Dorothy Truax-the whole discussion had taken place in her trailer-jumped up and shouted that Sue Savard was a well-known whore. Prompted by that cue in a direction his mother hadn’t intended, Whitey then said that the woman shouldn’t have been wandering around naked in the first place-he wasn’t made of stone, after all. If only she hadn’t threatened to sic the cops on him, no real harm would have been done. He signed a statement to that effect.

Faced with this confession, Whitey’s public defender sent him to a psychiatrist in hope of manufacturing some sort of insanity defense. The psychiatrist did his best, testifying that Whitey’s compulsive housebreaking was rooted in a desire to avenge himself for early childhood abuse by his mother, to recover the parts of his personality that had been lost, the form of the residential dwelling, with its narrow doorway leading to a mysterious interior, being essentially female. Further, when an actual female suddenly appeared, the modus of symbolic compensation was instantly destroyed, and Whitey, decompensating rapidly, descended into madness, the rape and murder being the result of an insanity that was necessarily temporary due to the uniqueness of the circumstances.

Whitey’s peers on the jury were not persuaded. After a two-hour deliberation, they found him guilty of murder in the first degree as charged. The judge, taking into account Whitey’s age, handed out fifteen to thirty years, instead of a life sentence. There was a final photograph of Whitey climbing into a police van, a silly half smile on his face, as though he’d thought of something funny.

Roger switched off the machine, rewound the spool. It was a shabby little library, with no one inside but himself and the librarian at her desk. She was looking at him now and her lips were moving.

“I said, is there anything I can help you with, sir?”

“Perhaps the local phone book,” Roger said.

She brought it to him: a smooth-skinned but gray-haired woman with fingerprint smudges on her glasses. “Looks like quite the winter we’ve got coming,” she said.

“Does it?” said Roger. He glanced out the window, saw hard little snowflakes blowing by. The librarian withdrew.

The uniqueness of the circumstances. What were the circumstances? Cottage, break-in, unexpected presence of a woman. If Whitey’s psychiatrist was right, that combination, given his background, had guaranteed the result. Roger inferred that if such a combination were to occur again, and Whitey were introduced into it, he would replay his role, unless he had changed in some fundamental way. And if the psychiatrist’s explanation was wrong, Whitey still might come through, for other reasons that might yet be fashioned, especially with that amazing resemblance.

No use speculating. Roger opened the phone book to the T s, found one Truax: Dot, 97 Carp Road, Lawton Ferry. He found Lawton Ferry on a map, seven or eight miles to the east, on the Merrimack-not far downstream from Brenda’s cottage. The details were still unclear, but somehow geography, too, was on his side.

Lawton Ferry wasn’t one of those picturesque New England towns city people liked to visit; now, mostly hidden under the falling snow, it looked its best. Carp Road ran along a bluff on the west side of the river but took no pleasure in the view, the houses, small and worn, all lining the wrong side of the street. Number 97 was the last house, the smallest and most worn, a peeling box with a single duct-taped window facing the street. Roger drove slowly by, came to a chain-link fence at the end of the road, turned around. A dented minibus with writing on it-LITTLE WHITE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER-came up the street and parked in front of 97.

The driver climbed out, slid open the passenger door, helped a thin old woman step down. She wore enormous square-shaped sunglasses, carried a white cane. The driver took her arm, led her around the minibus to the recently shoveled walk. There she shook herself free of him and tap-tapped to the front door by herself. The driver, annoyed, got back in the minibus, closed the door hard, made a three-point turn, and drove off while the woman still fumbled with keys.

She opened the door. A cat darted out. The woman disappeared inside.

Roger stayed where he was, parked by the chain-link fence, running the engine to keep warm. After a while, the door to 97 opened slightly and the woman, no longer wearing her sunglasses, stuck her head out. Roger switched off the engine. “Harry,” called the woman, “Harry.”

Roger could see the cat, foraging in an overturned trash can in her driveway, in plain view from the house. The cat stopped, swiveled its head toward her.

“Harry,” she called again, “where are you, you naughty boy?” The cat didn’t move. The woman closed the door. The cat crept back into the trash can.

Roger got out of his car, approached the old woman’s house, stopped before the trash can, conscious of arriving at the border between theory and practice, between thought and action: his Rubicon. He crossed it without hesitation, saying, “Here, kitty.” A fine beginning. The cat emerged at once, tail up. Roger bent down, held out his hand. The cat brushed its whiskers against his skin, laid back its ear. Roger picked it up and carried it, purring, to the house. Cats had always liked him.

He knocked at the door.

“Who is it?” called the woman.

“Missing a cat?” Roger called back.

The door opened. The woman peered out; that is, held her head in the attitude of peering. Her eyes, pale blue irises encircling glazed pupils, seemed to stare over his shoulder. “You’ve got Harry?” she said.

“If that’s the little fellow’s name,” said Roger.

She put on her sunglasses. “Reason I have to ask, I can’t see, not down the center. Just at the edges a little, if I turn my head like this.” She turned her head. Roger covered his face, as though rubbing his brow. “And even then it’s no good, all flickering, like when the picture tube is on the fritz. Come to Ma, you bad boy.”

Roger put the cat in her arms; it resisted for a moment, digging its claws into the sleeve of his funeral jacket before letting go.

“Naughty boy,” she said, stroking it. “God bless you, mister.”

“Bless you, too, ma’am.” And then his memory reached back to chapel at Exeter for something if not exactly apposite, then at least suggestive: “Better a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.”

The woman went still, her head tilted up at him as though searching his face. “You’re a Christian?” she said.

“Certainly,” Roger said, “although I wouldn’t impose my belief on anyone.”

“No danger of that here,” said the woman. “Jesus is my life.”

“Mine as well.”

She reached out with her free hand, touched his arm. “Maybe you’d like a cup of tea?”

“No need to go to any trouble,” said Roger, looking beyond her to a photograph on the television: Whitey in hockey uniform. “Although I wouldn’t mind a chance to wash my hands-Harry gave me a little inadvertent scratch.”

“Oh, the bad, bad boy. Come right in. My name’s Dorothy, by the way, Dorothy Truax. But you can call me Dot.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Roger, stepping inside but leaving his own name unspoken. He looked around the tiny room: couch, TV, icebox, hot plate, card table, two folding chairs, sink.

“Bathroom’s just down the back,” said the woman.

Roger took two steps down a dark corridor and into a bathroom full of unclean smells. He ran the water for a few moments and returned to what the woman no doubt called the parlor. She had plugged in a kettle, was hanging tea bags over the sides of two stained cups, moving with the confidence of a sighted person in her own home.

Water boiled. They sat-Roger at the table, Dot on the couch-drinking tea. Not drinking, in Roger’s case. “This hits the spot,” he said, reaching his cup toward the sink without rising and pouring the tea slowly and silently down the drain. “Who’s the fine-looking hockey player?”

Dot rested her cup on the saucer in her lap. “That would be my son Donald. But everyone called him Whitey practically from day one, no matter what I did.”

“Who does he play for?”

“Oh, Donald doesn’t play anymore. How could he? That picture’s from before all the trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Which was really what drove me into the arms of Jesus, since it was all my fault, according to that wicked doctor. And he must of been right since I’ve gone blind, too, for my punishment.”

“What wicked doctor was this?”

“The psychiatrist at Donald’s trial. He said the most disgusting things. What he couldn’t understand was that a boy needs discipline, firm discipline, especially after his father run off, and at such an early age.”

“Discipline’s essential when it comes to children.”

“You’re so right. You have kids yourself, Mr.-?”

“A houseful.”

She raised her chin, an aggressive chin slightly too long, like her son’s. “Then you know they sometimes need the buckle end of a belt to keep them in line, especially suggestible ones like Donald.”

“Suggestible?”

“Easily led astray.”

“For example?”

“For example? There are examples aplenty. Why else would he have served such a horrible long sentence?”

“You’re saying he was manipulated?”

“By everyone, his whole life. Nothing easier than manipulating Donald-on account of he’s basically a good person.”

Roger, on the verge of asking again for an example of his straying, decided not to push it too hard. Easily led: that was good enough. “He’s free now, I take it?” he said.

“If on parole is free. They’ve got him at the New Horizons House.”

“Is that nearby?”

“Of course not. It’s in Delray Beach. Just to make things worse they made him finish his time in the stinking heat down in Florida.” Her hands squared off into bony little fists.

“What are his plans?” Roger said.

“Do you think he tells me? He never calls, and when I call him he’s short with me, so short. Since he heard what that doctor said, things haven’t been the same between us.” Tears rolled down from under her sunglasses, glistened on her wrinkled face: an unpleasant sight. “Mr.-sir, being as how you’re a good Christian, maybe you could see your way clear to helping me now.”

“How?”

“Just by praying with me-saying a little prayer for Donald.”

Without further warning, the woman fell to her knees on the dusty, threadbare carpet, held out her hands. Roger knelt in front of her, took her hands, ice-cold hands that seized his in a death grip.

“Dear Lord,” said Roger, “please hear this prayer for our beloved Whitey-”

“Donald, if you don’t mind,” the woman interrupted.

“-for our beloved Donald, and help guide him in useful ways. Amen.”

Dot toppled forward on him, sobbing. “Sweet, sweet Jesus, what a beautiful prayer.” Her tears wet the side of Roger’s face, ran down his neck; he cringed. “So perfect,” said Dot, her mouth moving against his shoulder. “‘ Guide him in useful ways. ’That’s all Donald needs, all he’s needed his whole goddamn life.” She clung to Roger. “You’re a preacher, you must be. Praise the Lord.” She raised her hands, felt his face with her fingertips. Roger flashed forward to a little scene of Dot Truax doing it again, only this time with him seated in a witness box and a jury watching. He glanced at her scrawny neck, doubtless easy to snap, but that wasn’t him, wasn’t smart.

“A preacher,” the old woman breathed, fingertips still on his face. At the same time, Harry rubbed up against the side of his leg. Roger’s skin crawled.