In the Shadow of Gotham (33 page)

She trembled, biting her lip. “But Sarah was dead already, I saw that. And I was so scared. I had to force myself to move, just inside the linen closet across the hall. It’s a shallow closet and I didn’t quite fit—I couldn’t close the door all the way—but it was the best I could do. I just couldn’t
move,
you see.” Stella’s breathing came fast now. “It seemed an eternity before he was done. I heard sounds that made me think he was stuffing something in a bag, and his footsteps came close as he left the room. If he’d turned left, he would have seen me. And I thought he was going to for a moment. He stood outside the guest room door for a long time, listening—and I got scared I was breathing too loud, so I held my breath until I thought I’d pass out. Then he finally turned, and I heard him go down the stairs. When he was gone, I went to my room on the third floor, grabbed my coat and some money, and ran all the way to town and the next train.”

She fought back tears. “I should have warned Mrs. Wingate,
I know. All I could think about later was that maybe he’d hurt them, too. But I was so scared, I just had to get away.”

“But you never saw Sarah’s killer’s face?” I asked her to confirm.

She had not.

“I recognized him, though,” she said, adding, “he was the same man who attacked me last January. I could never forget him. His name was Michael Fromley.” Her voice was soft but unwavering, leaving no room for doubt.

But it couldn’t be; it was impossible.

The pit in my stomach grew larger as I felt my control over this case begin to slip. The dead ghost of Fromley had once again resurfaced to confuse us, making us doubt everything we had learned.

When we explained that Fromley’s involvement was out of the question—that Fromley himself had been dead by the time of Sarah’s murder—she was initially disbelieving.

“Impossible,” Stella insisted. “Sarah’s murderer did to her exactly what he intended to do to me. And I know it,” she said, “because that monster described exactly what he wanted to do the day he assaulted me. He liked seeing how much his words scared me.”

I could only imagine.

It was only after we explained the autopsy results, and how definitive they had been, that she finally accepted the truth.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she swore softly, finally understanding. “But how could anyone else have—”

“Have possibly known?” I finished her question for her. “That is our question, too. As well as this one: How do we explain what you saw?”

It was Alistair who supplied the most logical explanation
why Stella believed she had seen Michael Fromley on Tuesday. She had seen only the man’s back. The crime scene had embodied his previous threats. Then her imagination—fueled by terror and fear—had supplied the rest.

“Do either of you,” I asked, turning to Cora, who had been hanging back during our conversation, “have any idea as to who else might know the details of Stella’s assault last January?”

The two women looked at each other. “Perhaps one of the girls at Mamie’s place knew,” Stella said. “I think most of them were aware of what happened, though only a couple knew me well enough to hear the details.”

“Actually,” Alistair said, “we would be more interested to know whether any patrons knew? Perhaps one of the girls spoke too freely about it?”

I divided our well-thumbed stack of suspect photographs in half, passing some to Cora and the remainder to Stella.

Cora stopped abruptly when she passed over one particular photograph. “Why do you have a picture of Lonny in here?”

We had clipped it from a recent Columbia yearbook.

“You know him?” I asked.

“Of course,” she replied cautiously. “He used to stop in regularly; at least, he’d go through periods when he did. Then he’d disappear for months at a time.”

I was almost relieved to hear of a connection with Lonny, whose animosity toward Sarah was well known. He certainly had the strongest known motive for wishing to harm Sarah.

“Would he have been there around the time you were assaulted?” Alistair asked.

“I don’t know,” Stella finally answered. “I don’t remember many details from that time.”

“Would there be any record at Mamie’s?” I asked.

Cora’s response was immediate. “Oh, no, Mamie never would keep records. It would be the end of her business.”

Alistair offered another idea. “But is it possible he was there and one of the girls told him about it?”

“Possible, but doubtful,” I said. “To so perfectly replicate Fromley’s crime fantasy, I would think he would need to see—or hear—a greater level of detail than a secondhand account could provide.”

“You know, perhaps Michael and Lonny were acquainted,” Cora said. “They both came to Mamie in recent years. And they were cut from the same cloth, I’d say—too much money and neither one right in the head.”

It was one possible explanation.

“What about Mamie herself?” I asked. “Obviously she knew the details. Could she have shared them with the wrong person?”

Cora laughed. “Not Mamie. You don’t know Mamie if you think that. She has no close friends. No confidants. She keeps her own counsel, makes her own decisions.”

“It sounds like a lonely sort of life,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Cora. “But it protects her. She trusts no one. And honestly, no one trusts her, either.”

Given Mamie’s dealings with us, I could understand why.

“Are we done here?” Stella asked. She appeared exhausted and no doubt wanted to return home.

“Miss Gibson,” I asked, “may we help you in any way? Until this case is solved, we can offer you a measure of protection. We can even help you leave the city if you like.”

She thanked us, but declared herself perfectly comfortable with her current arrangement. “I’ve got a room on East Seventy-third Street that suits me fine.”

I watched her walk away, her blue scarf catching in the breeze behind her. From what I’d been told, Stella’s life had not been an easy one even before Michael Fromley terrorized her last winter. What she had now witnessed was undeserved. I could only hope that with time—and the care of friends like Cora—she could once again live a normal life.

We headed back uptown, talking over the new information we’d uncovered, and I considered a new angle: Had it been possible we were looking in all the wrong places—first, for Michael Fromley, and then for Sarah’s unknown assailant? We had been searching for connections to Sarah, connections to her world at Columbia. But my nagging suspicion that Mamie Durant somehow played an important role in this case had intensified.

That also raised a new possibility we had not yet considered: What if the killer had come to Dobson with Stella as his intended target—and encountered Sarah instead? If so, we would need to alter our approach to the investigation. I mentioned as much to Alistair as we descended into the Seventy-second Street subway station.

“It strikes me,” Alistair said, “that Sarah’s murder was carefully timed during a moment when she was alone in the house. If the killer’s target were truly Stella, it would have been even easier to isolate her during one of her household errands—to the ice house, to the basement, even alone in the kitchen or outdoors.” He paused a moment. “What troubles me more is the fact that Lonny Moore so little resembles the man Stella and Abigail had both described seeing the day of Sarah Wingate’s murder. They described a stout, heavyset man of medium height, whereas Lonny is short and pudgy.”

I had a different view.

“Though I’d like to think otherwise,” I said, “I fear neither
Abigail Wingate nor Stella Gibson are the most reliable of witnesses. Abigail’s memory latched on to the only man she had seen that day. And as for Stella, until just a few minutes ago, she was convinced that the man she saw in Sarah’s room during the murder was Fromley himself.”

There were no strong leads. But based on what evidence we had, Lonny Moore seemed the most likely suspect. He had hated Sarah, and his jealousy had prompted him to steal her work. Either at Columbia or at Mamie Durant’s, he might have crossed paths with Fromley. There would be much to talk about with him, but after the ups and downs of this investigation, I would not pin my hopes on Lonny—at least, not yet.

Upon our return to the research center, Alistair was greeted with sobering news: Two of the major papers—the
Tribune
and the
Post
—planned to run a story on Monday about possible improprieties on the part of Judge Hansen in the Michael Fromley case. Alistair’s name was as yet unmentioned. But that was only, Alistair maintained, because he had so thoroughly cowed yesterday’s reporters with the threat of a libel suit should they report the wrong facts. I wondered whether it was possible that a generous bribe had also worked to keep Alistair’s name clear of the story. It was understood that many news editors were not averse to such persuasion, especially when scandal was involved. With his personal reputation at stake, Alistair began to telephone his more influential contacts. But given what I knew about
the yellow sensation newspapers, I doubted even Alistair’s connections and money would be sufficient to keep his name out of the spotlight for long.

With Alistair otherwise occupied, I met with Lonny alone. Sullen and scowling, he glared at me as I entered the second-floor meeting room. He was dressed nicely, even expensively, in a green cashmere sweater and heavy brown tweed pants; I also noted the gold pocket watch draped from his vest, which he made a point of checking the moment I came in. While he affected the manner of a man who has been delayed for an important meeting, he reminded me more of a schoolboy brought in for a reprimand. Did he truly understand that I was interviewing him on suspicion of murder? And how reasonable a suspicion was it? I wondered, as I searched his pale blue eyes for any sign of a man both violent and intelligent enough to have committed this particularly brutal murder.

Once our initial greetings were dispensed with, we got down to my true business. “Could you tell me your whereabouts this past Tuesday afternoon, November 7?”

“Don’t you talk with your colleagues? I already told the professor working with you. I had a card game going over at Sam’s,” he said, annoyed that he had to repeat the information. “That would be Sam Baker, one of my friends. He and the others there can vouch for me from two o’clock until well past dinner.”

“Policemen like me tend to recheck people’s alibis multiple times,” I said easily. “It’s our way of determining whether you’re telling the truth. I will need the names of the other persons in Tuesday’s card game.”

His response was belligerent. “You’ve got nothing on me.”

“I had understood from Professor Sinclair that you wished
to cooperate. That you were interested in helping us in this investigation,” I said.

He glared at me a moment, then thought of something. “Say”—he leaned forward, eyes gleaming with curiosity—“I’ve still not heard how she was killed. Was she strangled? Shot? Stabbed?”

“I ask the questions here; not you,” I said sharply. His question left me cold. Either he had wished her dead so fervently he now relished the details of it—or worse, if he
were
the murderer we sought, then he wanted to hear me recount the details. Either way, I had no plan to indulge him. “I’m sure you understand all details of a murder investigation are confidential.”

Disappointed, he sank back into his chair.

“A number of people have mentioned your name in connection with Sarah Wingate,” I said. “How did you know her?”

“My name in connection with her?” He practically spat the words. “I had no connections with that woman.”

“No?” I arched my eyebrows, feigning surprise. “From what I’ve been told, I understand that she was your classmate in at least two courses.” I looked through my notes to ensure I had the right facts. “Those would be organic chemistry and an advanced mathematics course. In fact, you were sufficiently familiar with her and her work, or thought you were, to challenge her grade in organic chemistry.”

If possible, Lonny’s face turned an even brighter shade of red. It was anger; not embarrassment or even frustration. The mere mention of the incident seemed to rekindle a long-nursed animosity.

“That was not a connection,” he said, sneering. “That was how I tried to get decent treatment for the rest of us. She had the professor fooled into thinking she was brilliant, so she could
steal what was rightfully someone else’s, take credit for it all. I tried to tell them, and they just didn’t listen. They bought her side of the story, hook, line, and sinker.” He glowered darkly.

“Did your interaction with Miss Wingate ever extend beyond the classroom?”

“No, I never saw Sarah Wingate outside of class. I met her in the chemistry class you just mentioned. We were classmates, nothing more.” Then he tried to turn the questioning. “Who else are you interviewing from her classes?”

“Why do you want to know?” I asked.

“Because if you haven’t been talking with certain people, I can point you in the proper direction. Have you spoken with John Nelson?”

“Why would it be important to speak with him?” I asked coolly. I remembered John Nelson had been mentioned previously as one of Lonny’s close friends.

“He knew Sarah Wingate for what she was,” Lonny said. “He wrote an article about her and her rabble-rousing friends last year for the
Spectator,
exposing their conspiracy to disrupt the campus. What about Cyril McGee?”