In the Shadow of Gotham (9 page)

“That’s a good idea,” Horace Wood said, for no apparent reason other than wanting to be included in the discussion.

“Tom, I appreciate the reminder. That’s exactly where we should begin.” Alistair seemed genuinely relieved to have other minds helping him. “Could you summarize our views?”

“Sure,” Tom said. “And then I’d like to hear more about the evidence that convinces you Fromley is the man Detective Ziele seeks.”

Tom walked to the front of the room. “Even before criminological theorists like Alistair’s mentor, Dr. Hans Gross, began to spell it out for us in journals such as
Kriminologie
”—he tapped a large line of journals on the bookcase shelf immediately behind him—“I think even regular police officers like Detective Ziele recognized that different criminals commit crimes in ways that reflect their unique identity. The detective can correct me if I’m wrong, but suppose we found a dead body in an East River warehouse with a bullet to the back of the head. I’m sure he would immediately suspect Paul Kelly or Monk Eastman.”

These were—or had been—the leaders of two notorious street gangs, the Five Points gang and the Eastman gang. Though now that Monk Eastman was doing time in Sing Sing, it was Kid Twist Zwerbach who headed the Eastman gang. What Tom had just described was an execution-style murder, and he was correct that the police would suspect an organized crime figure, not an individual offender.

Tom went on. “On the other hand, if we found a man shot or stabbed to death on the street, we might suppose that he died
following an argument that got out of hand; in that case, the detective would look for someone with a quarrel or grudge against the victim.” He took a deep breath before offering his final example. “And if we found a man poisoned to death from arsenic, we might look to the victim’s wife or another woman in his life.” Tom looked to me for confirmation.

“That’s right,” I said, “because the method itself suggests something important about the culprit. Certain personalities are likely to choose particular methods, as your last example suggests.”

“Criminals are best understood through their crimes,” Alistair clarified, with a slight smile. “But you can flip it around, and say that crimes are best understood through criminal behavior at the crime scene. The idea is not a new one—if you would like to understand more, you should read my former teacher’s seminal work here.” He thumped a worn copy of Dr. Hans Gross’s
Criminal Investigation, A Practical Textbook for Magistrates, Police Officers, and Lawyers
, which occupied a central spot on his massive desk.

Apparently worried that Alistair was about to launch into a long theoretical lecture, Tom interrupted, explaining that while law enforcement officers have made these kinds of judgments for years, what he and his colleagues had tried to do was to refine and extend this type of analysis. He went on to detail how the behavior Fromley had exhibited during past assaults suggested something important about his personality and motivation. For example, where Fromley had caused extensive wounds to his victim’s face, it suggested that Fromley harbored intense anger toward the victim for a reason real or perceived.

“Let us consider this in the context of the Dobson crime
scene, then,” Isabella said, redirecting our focus to the task at hand, “if Detective Ziele will be so good as to describe it for us.”

“Of course.” I cleared my throat, and walked over to the giant black chalkboard. “Sarah Wingate’s autopsy this morning shows she was killed by an eight-inch wound to her throat in the guest bedroom of her aunt’s house. But she was extensively injured after her death. Postmortem, she suffered blows about the head and upper torso. Then”—I slowly placed a handful of selected crime-scene photographs on the board, each picture displaying some part of yesterday’s horrific murder—“she was posed by the side of the bed as you see in these pictures.”

I moved slightly to the left so everyone might see better, pulling the autopsy notes out of my folder. I had given the report a cursory review during our trip; Joe, writing for Dr. Fields, had efficiently rendered the brutal injuries Sarah had sustained into medical terms. The official cause of death was the incision across the throat, which extended from just below the left ear to within two inches of the right, penetrating the trachea, or windpipe. But I explained to the others that her secondary injuries were also sufficient to cause death. Her skull had been shattered; or, as the autopsy described it, her occipital bone (which is located at the back of the head) was fractured, her nose was broken, and there were several contusions around her forehead.

As I was speaking, Isabella joined me by the blackboard and began to list the main points in neat capital letters above the pictures that rested on the ledge. I had expected we would be uncomfortable discussing such material with Isabella present, but she appeared nonplussed.

Alistair asked, “Did the doctor who performed the autopsy indicate what type of weapon caused the throat and head wounds?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because the throat wound was a very clean incision, with no extraneous tearing, Dr. Fields believes an extremely sharp weapon was used, such as a razor. Moreover, a large weapon was used to effect the head injury, and Dr. Fields goes so far as to suggest it would be some kind of metal object, such as a crowbar or pipe.” I quickly scanned the report to find the relevant margin note he had written for me. Tapping the report with my pen, I explained, “In his opinion, a different material, such as wood, could not have lacerated the skin as cleanly as was done in this case.”

“I see,” Alistair said. He was staring at the list of injuries on the board, apparently absorbed in thought; he barely looked up as Horace excused himself and left the room.

“Do go on,” Fred Ebbings urged, and I noticed they were all listening attentively.

“There were traces of chloroform in her body. From that, in addition to some peculiar bruising on Sarah’s heels, and the fact that she has no defensive wounds on her hands or wrists, it is the doctor’s opinion that she was incapacitated elsewhere in the house and dragged to the guest bedroom. There, her killer arranged the room to look as we found it.” I went on to describe the other details apparent in the photographs: how her long braid of hair had been cut, and how her blue dress had been slashed, with one fragment of cloth used to cover her face.

“Part of his plan revolved around blood. As Dr. Fields has explained it, her throat was slit first, and it bled extensively as she died. But bleeding stops within a few minutes of death, so the postmortem wounds to her head generated less blood than
would otherwise be expected. To compensate for this, her killer appears to have struck the same head injuries—over and over, using his metal weapon—in order to create the blood-spatter effect we saw.”

Tom Baxter leaned forward against the table, brow furrowed, trying to make sense of it all. When he spoke directly to Alistair, his tone was carefully measured. “You know, I admit many of these elements fit what we’ve learned about Fromley’s murderous fantasies. But the use of chloroform does not. And neither do the postmortem injuries to her head. How do we explain the inconsistencies?”

“Those discrepancies initially bothered me, too,” Alistair conceded. “What I have concluded is that, given the environment in which Fromley confronted his victim—with her aunt and the house maid Stella nearby on the grounds—he subdued her with chloroform as a method of control. Otherwise, she might have made too much noise and commotion. But to make the experience emotionally satisfying for him, he needed her injuries to mirror what he had imagined. So that is why he inflicted the wounds that Detective Ziele might describe as ‘overkill.’ ”

“Yes,” Fred Ebbings said. “Putting aside Fromley’s possible involvement for the moment, what we need to remember when we look at this crime scene is that it reflects the mind of the killer. He has killed in the first place because his distorted thinking led him to believe he needed to. And when he killed, he did so in
this
manner because it made the experience satisfying in a way that no other method could.”

“By that you are referring to the blood spatter?” I asked. I recollected I had had a similar thought at the scene last night.

“Yes, that’s definitely part of it,” Ebbings said. “But it’s also
about fulfilling his fantasy. The fantasy is something he has replayed countless times in his own mind, and he is finally at the point of making it a reality. To change some aspect of a scenario he has so long imagined would disappoint him.”

I did not mention it to the group, but I thought briefly of a recent visit paid to the police department by Detective Abberline of Scotland Yard, the senior detective involved in the still unsolved “Jack the Ripper” case in London some fifteen years back. While discussing a number of new procedures and techniques such as fingerprinting, he had also revisited the case of George Chapman, one of the chief Ripper suspects. Chapman had been in London during the time of the Ripper murders, but then he returned to the New York area and proceeded to poison three different women. Abberline had wondered why a killer whose method had been “mutilation” would suddenly turn to poison—and questioned whether it was even possible. It led him to have serious doubts about Chapman. By analogy, I worried whether we should have similar doubts about Fromley.

“What about her facial wounds?” I asked. “You mentioned earlier that the shattering blows to her head may suggest her killer was angry with her. But that implies a personal relationship, and there’s no indication such a relationship existed between Sarah Wingate and Michael Fromley—right?”

“Strictly speaking, you are right,” Alistair said. “But we must remember that he perceives the entire world around him in a distorted manner, and within this mind-set, a ‘personal relationship’ means something altogether different to him than it would to you or to me. He may have built the relationship entirely within his head, with little or no participation from his
victim. Or she could be a stand-in for someone else, since Sarah Wingate shares some of the same characteristics as the women in Michael’s fantasies.”

Ebbings picked up Alistair’s thread of reasoning. “And what we learned from our interviews with Michael was that before he killed in his fantasies, he first dehumanized his victims so as to make his own actions easier. The brutal facial injuries are a way of dehumanizing her, since with each blow, she less resembles a real person.”

“I agree,” Alistair added. “Our killer in this scenario wants two things. First, I read him as wanting
control
above all else. Through killing he exercises the ultimate control. First, he determines whether she lives or dies. Next, he determines exactly how she dies.”

“And the locket?” Horace asked. “Why take her jewelry?” Horace Wood had rejoined the group, though at what point I could not say.

“It provides a tangible way for him to remember the experience,” Ebbings said. “It serves as a memento, to put it another way. In this case particularly, since the locket contained a picture of her, I can see why it would appeal. He would have wanted to take it out, look at her photo, and fantasize yet again about the experience of killing her.”

“So it sounds like it’s safe to assume Fromley is the guy who did this, right?” Horace voiced my own question for me. “It’s hard to imagine another criminal who thinks and behaves like him.”

“Well,” Tom replied, “while I may have some lingering doubts, the fact that the actual crime scene so closely mirrors the fantasy that Fromley described seems too coincidental to disregard.”

“I do have one last question,” I interjected. “Why do you believe the killer covered Sarah’s face with part of her dress?”

Alistair’s eyes lit up, as though he had been waiting for just this question. “Your question has just, in a nutshell, hit upon why I held out such hope for Michael Fromley’s rehabilitative potential. Covering his victim in some manner was always part of his more violent fantasies, and I read the act as signifying remorse for what he has done. At the very end, he felt a flicker of shame, so he covered the victim and left her with some dignity. To put it another way, he rehumanized her at the end of a long process of dehumanizing her.”

“Do we know anything yet that would suggest why she was chosen?” Tom asked. “If Fromley is her killer, what would have led him to pick her, specifically, as his victim?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Fred Ebbings said. “But her physical profile does resemble a woman in one of Fromley’s recurring fantasies. I’ll check my case notes.”

My mind was churning, trying to make sense of so many ideas at once. I could not see how Alistair and his colleagues could claim to know everything they had just suggested. And yet, they each spoke with a comfortable authority and spun a narrative that was both cohesive and logical.

“From all you have said, Michael Fromley certainly is a suspect who must be thoroughly investigated—and I appreciate the help you can give me toward that end,” I said. “Alistair, can you arrange for us to meet with whomever of Fromley’s family and friends you believe might help us locate him? Meanwhile, I can begin to talk with some of Sarah Wingate’s acquaintances to learn more about her. I want to pursue this investigation on both traditional and nontraditional fronts.”

“I asked Horace to speak first thing this morning with Richard
Bonham, a professor of mathematics here, to get some basic information about Sarah. He knew her both as a graduate student in his department, and also as his daughter Mary’s closest friend,” Alistair said. “We discovered Sarah actually lived with the Bonham family at their town house on 113th and Riverside.”