In the Shadow of Gotham (34 page)

I recognized the name from the list Professor Muller had given us. I pulled out my notebook and wrote the name down, as well as a memo to myself to review those articles from the campus newspaper that mentioned Sarah Wingate. When I finished, I looked at Lonny expectantly.

“You’ll see he has useful information, too,” Lonny said, in answer to my look, beginning to feel self-important.

“What about the name Michael Fromley?” I said. “Do you know him?” Cora had suspected they were acquainted, and I was curious whether he would admit it.

“Is he a suspect, too?”

I pulled out his picture and showed Lonny. “Do you know him?”

He shook his head.

“Think harder,” I said, “maybe you saw him someplace. Here at Columbia, perhaps. Or farther downtown, at Mamie Durant’s.”

His eyes widened.

“It is my business to know these things, Mr. Moore,” I said. “Did you think you would be able to keep that quiet?”

“But how did you find out?” he whispered.

I ignored him and repeated my own question. “How long have you known him?”

He shrugged. “Ran into him a few times, that’s all. I don’t know him well enough to recognize his name. Michael, you said?”

I didn’t believe a word of it.

“Where else did you see him beside Mamie’s?”

He had grown red in the face and was breathing hard. I had clearly struck a sore point. “Also at a gaming house,” he finally said. “But only once.”

“Which one?”

“The House with the Bronze Door. On West Thirty-third.”

I wrote down the name of a place I knew well by repute. It was an upscale gambling establishment that catered exclusively to gentlemen. For those with the money and social connections to gain admittance to the game, the house offered a high-class experience. They guarded against cheating, lavished patrons with food, drinks, and cigars, and kept all identities safe by practicing the utmost discretion.

“You and he have rich tastes,” I said. “When did you last see him there?”

I knew Fromley had been hard up for money, even blackballed at the lower-class gambling houses according to my friend Nicky. It was likely Fromley’s behavior and financial problems had extended into the upper-class houses, as well. Not that it mattered anymore in terms of Fromley—but in terms of evaluating Lonny’s connections with Fromley, it might.

Lonny thought a moment. “I think it’s been at least a year since I saw him there. I only saw him once or twice. That’s the result of my habits, though, not his. I lost a lot one night, and when my father helped me out, he forbade me ever to go there again.” He sighed. “It was the best place I ever played. But he said we weren’t rich enough for such high stakes.”

I suspected there were other reasons, as well. Alonzo Moore Sr. would have had no choice but to answer for his son’s debts at a place like the House with the Bronze Door. Its clientele must have overlapped with his business clientele—and for a son to renege on obligations within that world would reflect badly on the father.

“How does a student like you have money to gamble?” I asked. In reality, I knew the answer to this question, given the easy credit found in the hundreds of gambling houses operating in the city. But I was looking for a reason to connect Lonny with the funds diverted from Alistair’s research center.

His voice took on a mean, hard edge. “I’ve got more in the bank than you’ll make in five years. At least, it’ll be mine as soon as I turn twenty-one. Why is this any of your business?”

“Just need to be thorough,” I said, keeping my tone mild. “Other than the incident you mentioned at the Bronze Door, have you had to ask your father for money?”

“Nah. I’ve been lucky of late. Haven’t lost much—not more than $25 to $50 a night.”

Not much money, indeed. The sums he mentioned were large. Why, $25 would easily finance the monthly rent on a middle-class apartment in a decent neighborhood. Still, if he were telling the truth, these numbers were on a far smaller scale than the thousands taken from the dean’s fund.

There was a sharp rap on the door and a man with silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a dark suit rushed in before we answered. “I got here as quickly as I could. Lonny—not another word more. And you”—he fixed me with an angry stare—“who are you and what business do you have with my client?”

I stood up without extending my hand. “Detective Simon Ziele. And you are?”

“John Bulwer, criminal defense attorney. I’ve been retained by Mr. Moore’s father to represent him.”

“How does my father—” Lonny began, looking ashamed.

“Young man, you’re lucky you have friends who were concerned enough about you to make the call you should have made yourself,” the lawyer said sternly. He went on to explain that Lonny’s friend Sam Baker, upon learning this morning about Lonny’s meeting, had telephoned Alonzo senior at once.

I was impressed by one thing: Late on a Sunday morning, it had taken Lonny’s father no more than an hour to secure Mr. Bulwer’s services and arrange for him to come uptown.

The lawyer turned to me. “Now, what business do you have with Lonny?”

“Lonny was acquainted with a young woman—also a student here at Columbia—who was murdered earlier this week within my jurisdiction in Dobson, New York. I have some questions for him; he has been kind enough to agree to answer them.” I tried to sound as pleasant and nonthreatening as possible.

“Is he under arrest?”

“Of course not, Mr.—” I pretended to have forgotten his name.

“Bulwer. John Bulwer.” He grimaced. “So if Lonny’s not under arrest, then he is free to leave anytime.”

“Absolutely.” My words remained pleasant, but my tone turned more severe. “Of course, I could compel him to come to Dobson’s police station for questioning. But Lonny may prefer to continue answering my questions here. It is certainly more convenient and probably more pleasant.”

John Bulwer looked displeased but did not object to continuing. “What have you discussed so far?”

I glanced at my notes. “Let’s see. We reviewed Lonny’s alibi for the time of the murder. We talked about his relationship with both the murder victim and the man who was once our prime suspect. And I was about to ask him about one more issue.” I reached for the file Alistair had left me containing the materials Lonny had stolen from Sarah. I presented the contents to Lonny and his attorney. They included several pages of handwriting in neat, perfectly formed letters that in no way resembled what I knew to be Lonny Moore’s scrawled hand. Certain phrases stood out: “. . . symmetric about the critical line Re(s) = ½. . . . The unproved Riemann hypothesis is that all of the nontrivial zeros. . . . distribution of prime numbers. . . . definition of ζ(
s
) to all complex numbers
s.
”

“Is this your work, Lonny?”

He looked at Mr. Bulwer, who was quick to respond. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“What about this letter?” I leafed through several more pages of notes and proofs, then pulled it out. Addressed to the editors of the
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society,
the letter stated that a proof for Riemann’s hypothesis, accompanied
by an expository article, was available for immediate publication if they were interested. It was signed “Alonzo Moore Jr.”

“I take it the letter is yours. But I believe this work”—I touched the stack of papers lightly—“belongs to the late Sarah Wingate. She had apparently finished the proof not long before she was killed.”

Lonny’s face went white and he slumped deeper in his wooden chair.

“Don’t say a word, son,” Mr. Bulwer warned, his voice stern.

“You have a long history of hostility toward Sarah Wingate.” I leaned in close to him. “And this letter clearly shows”—I tapped it with my finger—“that you planned to pass her work off as your own.”

Lonny stared at me, wide-eyed. “You—you’ve got it all wrong,” he stammered. “I didn’t kill Sarah.”

“You stole her notes and proofs, and were planning to publish her research as your own,” I said. “You expect me to believe that you stole from her, but did not otherwise harm her?”

“We’ll be leaving now.” Mr. Bulwer stood up and tried to pull Lonny along with him. But Lonny pushed the lawyer’s hand away and gripped the sides of his chair so tightly that his knuckles shone white.

“No—I’ll answer this one.” Lonny turned to me. His demeanor had changed; now, he was scared.

“I swear to you I didn’t kill her. I did steal her papers. But that wasn’t something I planned. I was in the library when I heard she had been killed. So I checked her library carrel to see if she had left behind anything interesting. That’s when I found all those notes. And I figured if she’s dead and not using all that research anyway, then why shouldn’t I get something out of it?”

The three of us stared at each other in silence.

I finally said, “But your professors would have known the work was not yours. They would have known you for a fraud.”

Lonny shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not.” He repeated himself again. “You have to believe me. I admit I stole her work, but I didn’t kill her for it.”

I stared at him. He had given me enough to build a circumstantial case against him—one that provided me with a tangible answer to the question of why Lonny’s hatred of Sarah had erupted into murder
now.
She had obviously just finished the proof, one that he intended to claim for his own. He had been acquainted with Fromley, so I could argue he had reason to know about Fromley’s criminal fantasies. And while two close friends had supplied him an alibi, I had been suspicious of that alibi since I first heard it. It seemed too convenient. Time and again, I’d seen the testimony of friends crack during questioning.

I thought some more.

While I had nothing on him in terms of the money stolen from the dean’s fund, that could yet come—or, as Alistair had said, prove a coincidence unrelated to Sarah’s murder.

I didn’t like Lonny Moore. And watching him now, I wanted to believe he was the killer responsible for Sarah’s death. It would be an easy solution. And yet something about it didn’t sit right with me. So I didn’t arrest him. In fact, I let him go with a stern warning to stay in town and prepare for more formal questioning.

After seeing Lonny and Mr. Bulwer out, I checked each office to see where Isabella was working. I couldn’t find her.

“Have you seen Isabella?” I asked Fred, who was leaving the first-floor kitchen with a cup of tea in hand.

He shrugged. “She was here earlier. But she brought the dog with her today. I think she mentioned taking him for a walk.”

I decided to look at the financial records myself when Tom raced down the stairs, stopping short the moment he saw me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

It was true. Tom’s skin was ashen and he uncharacteristically appeared at a loss for words.

“There’s been another murder.” Tom’s face was anguished.

“Who?” An uneasy chill ran down my spine, and I knew I didn’t want to hear the name Tom would say.

“Stella Gibson. Cora just called to tell us—actually, to blame us. She believes you were followed earlier today, and that is why Stella is now dead.”

I stood still, dumbstruck by the news. We had seen Stella just hours before, alive and well. But also afraid, I acknowledged with a sharp pang of guilt, remembering her anxiety.

“How?” I asked, still almost refusing to believe it.

“She was shot once in the head.”

“Shot once in the head.”
Tom’s words echoed a refrain through my mind as the two of us made our way to the nondescript limestone building on East Seventy-third Street where Stella had found the briefest of sanctuaries.

We had taken the subway downtown to Seventy-second Street, but now we needed a crosstown cab. I raced toward one waiting a block away, and Tom puffed heavily as he tried to keep up with me. He had not wanted to come—but with Alistair nowhere to be found, I had asked Tom to assist me. I had no idea what we would find at the crime scene, and an extra pair of hands could prove useful.

I was racked with guilt. Had Cora been right? Had Alistair—or had I—unwittingly been followed as we met with
Stella? If so, then we had led Stella’s killer right to her. While I did not want to leap to conclusions, my pangs of conscience were unrelenting. Almost worse was my sense of failed professional responsibility. Another young woman had died because we had been too slow to identify Sarah’s killer.

Our cab made its way through the park, the horses’ hooves drumming a steady beat. Tom looked pale with tight lines drawn around his face. Nerves, I supposed. His experience with crime had been limited to studies, statistics, and the occasional interview. Today he faced the real thing.

When we reached East Seventy-third Street, I was struck by the activity in the neighborhood. While the area was not crowded, there was regular street traffic as well as an occasional passerby. Only a block away from Stella’s building, a large church was finishing its late morning services. This killing had been audacious. His method this time—by gunshot—had been loud enough that it should have attracted someone’s attention. Yet he had risked it, which made me fear that our initial inability to catch him had emboldened him.