JOHN D. MacDONALD
Crime of Omission
THIS SECOND SHORT piece by John D. MacDonald first appeared in Detective Tales for August 1951, a year and a half before the demise of that fine magazine (and of all the other Popular Publications pulps). It is a simple story with a simple plot built on the classic theme of the eternal triangle; but in MacDonald's hands, with his impeccable characterization and his knack for creating suspense, it outclasses the vast majority of longer, more complex pulp fiction.
"Crime of Omission" has not been published anywhere since its initial appearance, an oversight that is happily rectified here.

PAUL PRENTICE SAT on the camp porch at midnight, deep in the brooding knowledge that his world had faltered, stopped, surged in a new direction at three that afternoon, in the sunglare on snow. He had always been a quiet, amiable man and he could not accustom himself to the recurrent cycles of anger, hate, disgust.
His law partner, Jay Alber, widower of seven months, sat bundled in sweaters and jackets in a porch chair a few feet away. They both looked out at the hard grey sheen of the frozen lake, pallid in the moonlight. Inside the camp the fire roared in the chunk stove and the sides glowed dull red in the darkened room.
Anne was in there, warmly asleep by now, the blankets pulled over her head. From the four years of marriage he knew precisely how she would feel to his hands, the scent of her, the sleepy murmur of welcome.
He wondered how she could sleep with the sound of the frozen lake. The temperature was still dropping. The lake thundered, rattled, cracked with startlingly loud reports. It was a monster, stirring under the moonlight.
"How cold you think it is now, Paul?" Jay asked. His breath made a pale plume in the night.
"Thirty below at least," Paul said. His voice sounded old and rusty and tired.
That was the bad thing-that it was so dirty, and so sordid. The sort of trite and nasty situation relished by the authors of the cheaper love novels. Eternal-triangle stuff with all the fixings. The husband, getting a bit thick through the middle, a bit thin on top. The young partner, almost ridiculously good-looking. The young wife.
But Paul couldn't make his young wife fit the standard pattern. Not Anne. There had always seemed to be such a desperate honesty about her. And his abiding trust had been built on that honesty he saw and felt. And all that honesty, that level-eyed sincerity, had been false.
The lake made a low growl that ended in a crack like the sound of a rifle.
Paul thought back to the Thursday when they had planned this weekend. He remembered Anne taking his hand and saying, "Darling, let's ask Jay if he'd like to come. He's still pretty lonely, you know. He doesn't get out enough."
Incredible deceit! How long had she played him for a fool? He wondered if there had been . . . others. The very thought brought nausea.
Oh, the trip up had been very gay. All of them singing as Paul drove the car, the skis racked on top. Anne in the middle. Jay with his arm carelessly across the back of the seat. Had subtle signals been exchanged? Was there an unholy glee in their hearts at the wickedness of the situation?
"I guess every other camp is empty," Jay said. "What a weird night!"
"A very weird night, Jay," he said.
The strangest night of his life, when all values had to be reassessed, re-weighed, sorted anew.
As a laywer, he thought, I should have carried professional skepticism over into the home. I should have known what people are. All people. Even Anne. Maybe if there had been children . . .
"Like a landscape on the moon, eh?" Jay said.
"I see what you mean." He remembered how he and Anne had joked about this good-looking partner, how Anne said that she would never trust a man who looked like that.
"You go for the old-shoe type?" he had asked.
"Hi, old shoe," she had said.
Good-bye to the laughing years. But what now? What was the next step? Face them with it? That seemed so feeble, so reasonable, so civilized. The anger that clotted in his throat frightened him with its virulence.
If there were only some possibility that he had misinterpreted what he had seen. The increasing cold had driven most of the skiers down to the hot buttered rum and mulled wine at the lodge. He and Anne and Jay had been on the far side of the intermediate slope, over near the dips and hollows of the open trails. The scene was driven hard and clear into his mind, as though etched there with acid.
He had missed them and he had come down in his usual conservative stem turns, the cold biting his lips, pinching his nostrils. He had made one turn so sharp that it had thrust him against an up-slope and he had lost momentum. He decided to go over nearer the fringe of woods to take the last part of the drop. He angled over and then saw them in a hollow beyond the crest, not fifty feet away. They stood motionless, gay figures against the snow. Jay's broad back was toward him, and he could tell by the head-tilt strain of her figure that their lips were together. Jay's gloved hand was at the nape of her neck.
It was a long, incredible, frozen fragment of time before he backed with exaggerated caution, crouched, turned his skis down the slope and went all the way down to the lodge in the most reckless schuss of his short skiing career, the wind freezing the unexpected tears on his cheeks, tears that seeped under the lower edge of the goggles.
They were not out alone long. They came into the bar not over ten minutes later, stamping their feet, slapping their arms, grinning at him with their bland conscienceless faces. He could not say anything then. He tried to drink too much. He ordered so many drinks that Anne began to watch him with an odd expression. But the drinks made no effect other than a numbness of his lips.
Later, as they went into the dining room Anne took his arm and whispered, "Are you all right, Paul?"
"I'm fine. Dandy."
"I thought you acted a little glum, darling."
Brandy after dinner and then the drive back here to the camp. It seemed quite a bad joke of the fates that this was the camp Anne had inherited, the camp where they had spent the long sweet days of honeymoon in an eternal August of the past.
They sat on the porch until Anne said, "I give up, gentlemen. To be vulgar, the lady is pooped. A nice day was had by all."
He noted that she patted Jay's shoulder before coming to him to kiss him good night. In spite of the cold on the porch her lips tasted lax and warm and sleepy.
And now she was asleep. Did she dream of Jay? Paul, with a hard feeling of shock, remembered the trip he would have to take the following week. He remembered Jay saying, "I'll hold down the fort." Three days. And three . . . nights.
Jay said softly, "Barb would have liked this. She liked crazy landscapes and strange places."
It was only lately that Jay seemed able to speak of his dead wife. Paul remembered how he had secretly rejoiced when first Jay had been able to speak of Barbara. He had been glad for Jay, glad that there were signs that Jay was coming out of it. Now he was sardonically amused. For Jay to speak of Barbara was a pleasant way to allay the suspicion of one Paul Prentice, husband.
"Can you walk on that stuff?" Jay asked.
"It's thick enough to drive on," Paul said absently.
Jay stood up, the earflaps of his ski cap pulled down, his mittened hands shoved into the slit pockets of his jacket so that his elbows were out-thrust.
"I'm going out and walk on that thundering stuff. Crazy idea, isn't it? Want to come along?"
"No, thanks. I'll stay here and watch you."
He heard Jay slip and grunt as he went down the snow covered steps. The wind of the previous morning had swept the ice clear of snow. Soon Jay appeared out from under the overhang of the porch, walking carefully out across the slippery surface.
Paul sat on the porch and looked at the dark figure in the moonlight. Hate was like one of those directional hands painted on a sign. A huge hand, suspended above the lake, the finger pointed at the dark figure walking slowly.
I'm supposed to think you're thinking of Barbara, Paul thought. You, my loyal partner, my friend.
And his mind swooped back to another day, a summer day. Rifle on the porch. Railing for a rest. Splashes around the dancing can. Then the direct hit, the can sinking out of sight. They had brought a rifle. Anne loved to shoot. Right now it was standing by the side door of the camp, under the edge of the porch roof for protection. He got it and sat down again in the chair.
Paul slid his chair into a better position. He took the glove off his right hand. The metal of the rifle seemed to radiate cold like that of imagined outer space. Softly he worked the bolt, slid it forward, locked it down. Ninety to a hundred yards. A simple shot with a target that size, with the moonlight aiding the sight pattern. The rifle had a peep sight. He breathed heavily and the metal turned frosty white as the moisture condensed on it. He laid his cheek against the metal, centered the little dot within the circle on the middle of Jay's back.
His finger was on the trigger. The lake made another series of loud reports. Like artillery fire at close hand.
Anne would not hear the shot. Off to the left was a dark place, an air hole now skimmed by new ice, thin enough to break easily.
He aimed carefully and exerted gentle pressure on the trigger. And then knew that he could not pull it all the way, could not fire, could not commit murder. He knew that even had he found them together committing the very act, he could not kill. And he despised himself for the softness that made this true.
And then Jay dropped from sight.
For one moment he thought he had fired. His mouth went dry as he thought he had fired. But there was no huddled spot of darkness on the ice. Instead a hole and a frightened cry, hoarse. A faint, echoing nightmare cry.
"Better!" a voice said in the back of his mind. "You fell asleep on the porch. He wandered out and stepped on the thin ice over an air hole. He'll die in minutes."
The metal of the rifle was stuck to the skin of his cheek. He was but faintly conscious of the sharp pain as he pulled it away. He fell on the steps, rolled out onto the ice, and scrambled to his feet. In one still part of his mind he sat up on the porch, waiting, listening for the cries to cease.
He ran recklessly, and too fast. When he neared the hole he thought for one moment he wouldn't stop, that he too, would plunge in. He lay on his belly and extended the rifle. Jay grasped it and Paul worked his way back. Jay came out over the edge of the firmer ice, his feet splashing madly at the black water which froze into a crackling, glistening sheath on his clothes.
He got Jay up onto wobbling feet. He supported him with an arm around him. The heavier man lurched against him with each step, shaking uncontrollably, unable to speak.
I cannot commit a murder of commission, or of omission, Paul thought hopelessly. I shall have to let him have her.
He got him through the door and over by the stove, as close as he dared put him. He shook Anne awake roughly. "Help me! Quick! Jay fell through a hole into the lake."
She came awake at once. Together they worked at the stubborn frozen clothes. Jay tried to grin at them, but his teeth chattered so badly that it was a grimace. His hands were so curled and helpless with the cold that he could not help them. Paul threw more wood on the stove, picking thin pieces that would give off the maximum of heat. They striped him and the strong body had a white, waxy look. Paul pulled a cot close to the stove, rubbed Jay with all his strength with a big towel. Anne uncorked a bottle, filled half a tumbler, supported Jay's head while he drank it. His teeth chattered on the rim of the glass. A few moments after the whiskey was down, the shudders quieted.
Paul helped him into two pairs of long woolen underwear from Jay's luggage, first heating them over the stove. They gave him two more drinks of whiskey, rolled him in warm blankets and watched over him.
"Thanks, fella," Jay said weakly just before he dropped into sleep.
"How close, and how horrible," Anne said.
"It was close," Paul said dully. She sat near the stove, warming her hands. The light picked out glints in her hair. Her face was that of a sleepy child.
"What on earth happened to your face, darling?"
He lifted his fingertips mechanically to his cheek. "This? Oh, I was fooling around with the rifle. The metal stuck to my skin."
"Let me get something for it. I think butter would help. It's sort of like a burn. You should have let Jay help you, darling."
"What do you mean?"
She turned in the kitchen doorway. He knew, looking at her, that the same weakness that kept him from killing Jay would keep him from hating her. He was forever trapped in his love for her.
"I forgot to tell you, darling. This afternoon like a clumsy fool I touched the metal tip of the ski pole to the corner of my mouth and it stuck there. Jay came up and diagnosed the trouble and breathed on the tip until he warmed it so that I could pull it free without taking half my mouth with it."
She came back with the butter, softened it by the fire, rubbed it gently on the torn place on his cheek.
"Now that's a strange expression!" she said, sitting back on her heels.
He smiled and fought back the sting in his eyes. "Love," he said.