Free A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams Page B

certain. A foundation of very little. If he had made one mistake in his life, in his work, it was letting his brilliance speed him along too quickly.
Homo sapiens
was a jealous species.
    Roger smoothed the duvet, went downstairs. He stood in the kitchen for some time, watching the snow fall. Then he put on his boots and went out, making sure the door was locked behind him.
    Roger walked back across the river, poking ahead automatically with the oar, his brain rearranging the few pieces—irises, wine, wet boots, call-in show—and projecting the shapes of missing ones that might not even exist. He almost didn’t notice the bump in all the white smoothness of the river, a protrusion like driftwood covered in snow.
    Bending over it, Roger dusted off the snow. Underneath he saw not driftwood but a brown-paper-wrapped package, frozen stiff. He got his hands on it, pulled; the package didn’t budge. Clearing away more snow with the blade of the oar, he saw that the package, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, was stuck in the ice.
    Roger went to his car, returned with the shovel, chipped away carefully. After a few minutes, the package came free. Then he was down on his hands and knees, tearing at the frozen paper.
    A painting. One half blurred and damaged, all murky brown and green. But the other half showed a crumbling plinth, a few dangling red grapes, the front wheels of a skateboard.
    The wind began to blow at the wrapping paper. Roger scrambled around, gathering it up. He came upon a white envelope, threw off his gloves, ripped it open. Inside a note:
To Ned, with all my love, Francie
.
    Roger stood in the middle of the river, snow falling harder, wind whipping icy flakes at him from different directions. His mind was the same—a turmoil of thoughts, racing by too fast for even him to examine.
Must clear,
must clear, must clear,
he thought, and with great effort he forced his brain to stop, his mind to go blank. He stood panting, his head empty, feeling nothing, not cold, snow, wind.
    And into this calm, a meditational calm, although he’d always despised the idea of meditation, came a first brief thought, or rather, memory.
A perfect crime: it’s got to be
absolutely unconnected—a penny drops off the Empire
State Building, goes right through your skull
.

8
    R oger drove back to the city, still at a prudent fifty-five, but his mind was racing. He was used to the speed of his mind, had known it to run far ahead of him before, but never in this supercharged way. His whole body was shaking slightly, like a shell that could barely contain the forces within.
Hold on to one thought,
he instructed it, or at most a single train of thought. He settled on one right away, a simple syllogism. Major premise: F tries to make a fool of R. Minor premise: R is not a fool and will not bear it. Conclusion: question mark.
    Not quite a question mark, because he knew that some action was required. She had come into their house—his house, his ancestral house—with another man’s sperm inside her, perhaps many, many times. Another man’s sperm: a vulgar, dirty, contemptuous betrayal, almost slimy, like a plot development in one of those movies about alien beings in human shape. Another man’s sperm—what a primitive fixation she had with the substance, on reflection—inside her, and she talking and smiling away at him. Smile and be a villain, Francie. There was no fixing anything now, no going back. And what was society’s answer? No-fault divorce. If this were Sicily, or Iran, countless other places, he could now—what?
Kill her with impunity
. A crime of passion, almost expected. Divorce implied nothing more than absence of affection, lack of feeling. Therefore divorce did not apply. He felt. He felt the opposite of everything husband should feel for wife. She was his enemy, had proved him wrong in one of the basic decisions of life, whom to marry. What action was appropriate? Question mark.
    Not quite a question mark. Deep in