In the Shadow of Gotham - By Stefanie Pintoff Page 0,20

smoothly until the day he vanished. And we have seen no sign of him for the past two weeks, until last night when I received word of the murder that happened in this very room.”

“But you still haven’t explained why—exactly why—you believe Michael Fromley is Sarah Wingate’s killer?” I countered. “I understand he is dangerous and has brutally assaulted a young woman in the past. And it’s worrisome that he’s now missing. But I see no particular reason to suspect him in my case.”

Alistair swallowed hard. “You are right, to a point, but there is more—which only you can confirm. Because from what I’ve heard about your crime scene, it exactly mirrors the fantasies Michael has nursed these past years. Read this”—he handed me a piece of paper—“and tell me if you do not share my concern. It is just one of my many case notes. There are more that will say the same thing.”

A strong November wind whipped around the house and rattled the windows in the room. I took the paper from Alistair, quickly scanning his words.

Thursday, March 18. Today he reported another incident of his daydream. This is the fifth time this month. The trigger was a young woman of about twenty who boarded his car on the El downtown. A blonde, she wore a blue dress and was exceptionally pretty. He imagined her to be a seamstress and conjured many sordid details about her life. Then he began the process I have noted before:

1. Objectification: He degrades her until he no longer views her as a human being worthy of respectful treatment.

2. Imagination: He envisions himself interacting with her with the same result: a rush of excitement when she obeys him after he displays his knife; a pleas urable feeling of control as he decides where and how she will die.

3. Method: He cuts her dress away from her body into long strips of ribbon. Finally, he plunges his knife into her heart, before he slashes her skin at random. When she is dead, he describes the impulse to take some part of her as a remembrance. The remembrance varies; in today’s version, it is the tiny signet ring she wore.

4. Effect: The experience is so intense he loses track of time and space. Here, he travels on the El two stops beyond his destination.

I felt physically ill, my stomach lurching as I thought of Sarah Wingate’s battered corpse. I could distinguish the cases and focus upon their differences. But the similarities were striking: Sarah Wingate was a blonde; she had been slashed multiple times; she was wearing a blue dress that had been cut into ribbons. And even if I managed to dismiss that evidence as mere coincidence, there was no getting away from the remembrances he had taken. The killer had taken a braid of Sarah’s hair and likely attempted to take Sarah’s locket, dropping it as he left the premises. The similarities were far too compelling to disregard. I shuddered as I remembered the crime scene. Any man who could do such terrible things was deserving of nothing—not Alistair’s help, and certainly not the limited freedom he had enjoyed.

My response to Alistair was accusing. “How could you in good conscience have helped someone with these kinds of thoughts? Couldn’t you see—the moment he began telling you such vile things—that you had made a terrible mistake and he should be locked up?”

“But I judged there to be no imminent danger, for even his daydreams were a tangible sign that he was still working himself up to it. And my hope was that, with conscious effort, he could begin to change the direction of his thoughts and fantasies. Besides, the bodyguard provided us a mea sure of protection.”

“And why did his bodyguard not prevent this recent disappearance?”

Alistair looked uncomfortable. “We felt Michael was making such significant progress the bodyguard was no longer necessary. We dismissed him last summer.”

Botched private justice was what it was—no more and no less. And I didn’t understand it. To strive to learn why a man succumbed to a life of crime was well and good, but only when the stakes were hypothetical and no lives were at risk. Here, it seemed an innocent girl had died as a result of this failed experiment, and nothing Alistair Sinclair had learned could be worth that cost.

“Tell me more about what happened two weeks ago, when he vanished,” I asked quietly.

“There is no more. He simply disappeared. We last saw him October 22,”