Read Online A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams - Free Book Online Page A

where Francie kept all the household accounts. He found the latest cellular phone bill, noted her number, and dialed it, leafing through the bill as he waited for a ring.
    “The cellular phone customer you have called is not available at this time,” said a recording.
    Roger wondered where she was.
    Francie drove down to the stone jetty, printing fresh tire tracks in unbroken snow. The snow should have warned her of what lay ahead, but not until her headlights shone on the river, white instead of black, did she realize it was frozen. She got out of the car, stepped onto the jetty, looked down into the dinghies: five or six inches of snow on their floorboards, caught in the ice.
    Francie gazed across at the island, the tops of the elms white against the night sky. She hadn’t anticipated this; a New England girl, and she hadn’t foreseen winter, the changes it would bring for Ned and her. Now she saw them very clearly-motel rooms, dark parking places, furtiveness. Her mind recoiled, and Ned’s would, too. Without the cottage, they had a relationship entirely mental, like some Victorian exercise in frustration. How long could that last?
    Francie walked to the end of the jetty, sat down. Her feet took charge, lowering themselves to the ice. Then she was standing. Nothing cracked, nothing split; the ice felt thick and solid. She went back to her car for the painting, then moved out onto the ice, one step after another.
    Francie walked across the river. She wore leather city boots, not even calf-high, but high enough. The snow on the river was only an inch or two deep, the rest blown away by the wind. This was easy—good traction, and no rowing, no tying up—with Brenda’s wintry island more beautiful than ever. A moonless, starless sky, but she could see her way easily; the snow brightened the night. A shadow stirred in the elm tops, rose high above. The owl. Francie paused to watch, lost it in the darkness, took another step. The next moment she was plunging to the bottom.
    Down she went in complete blackness, icy water bubbling around her, so cold it made her gasp, swallow, gag. Her foot touched something: the bottom? She pushed off, a panicked, reflexive kick, and frantically kicked toward the surface—or what she hoped was the surface, because she could see nothing but bubbles, silver on the outside, black within. But the surface didn’t come. Was she moving at all? So heavy: she struggled with her coat, freed herself from it, tried to get rid of her boots, could not. She kicked, wheeled her arms, felt pressure building in her chest like an inflating balloon, and always the never-ending shock of cold. Her head struck something hard and she sank.
    As Francie sank, she had a strange thought, not her kind of thought at all. She wasn’t religious, certainly didn’t believe in any kind of quid pro quo, deal-making God. But still, the thought came—
If you let me live, I’ll
never see Ned again
—as though she were guilty, and this the punishment.
    Francie kicked again, once, twice, the bubble about to burst from her chest. Her head had struck something hard: the underside of the ice? She raised her hands in protection, and her fingers reached into night air. Francie broke through the surface, choking, retching, but alive. She floundered in a pool of black water, no wider than the top of a well.
    Francie commanded her hands: on the ice. They obeyed. Pull. They pulled, but the ice broke off. Francie tried again, and again, and again, hands, face, body numb, teeth chattering at an impossible speed, breaking off chunks of ice, breaking, breaking. She heard a terrible cry, her cry, and then the ice held for her. She flopped onto it, drew herself up, inches at a time, to her chest, her waist, and out.
    Some shivering mechanism now controlled her body. She staggered across the ice, onto the jetty, into her car. The keys? In her coat: gone. But then she saw them glinting in the ignition, left by mistake. What was happening