with Alistair. I desperately wanted to talk with him tonight.
I was preoccupied by all we had seen today, from the disturbing photographs hidden in Fromley’s closet, to the violent injuries he had inflicted on Clara Murphy, to the attack he—for it had to be Fromley—had orchestrated against me. It hadn’t been a random attack. As my mind raced through possible scenarios, I decided he must have followed us after we visited his rooms at Mrs. Addison’s. Then, while we were in Clara Murphy’s building, he had plotted the attack and bribed Hal Jones to help. It had involved a degree of planning and foresight I had not expected, given what Alistair had said about him.
I wanted to hear Alistair’s thoughts on the matter—because what struck me as important was that the attack had been designed to do more than just scare me. The man had tried to steal my bag. Assuming Fromley were responsible, he had gone to great lengths to recover and destroy the evidence I’d obtained—evidence that included the photographs, the glass I had taken for prints, even my case notes. It was a stroke of luck that the glass had not broken during the fracas. Was it possible he knew what I had taken? I supposed it was, if he had surveyed his room after we left.
A troubling thought lingered at the edges of my mind, just beyond my reach.
Could it have been anyone other than Fromley who orchestrated the attack this afternoon? I had enemies from old cases in the city, to be sure. But the timing alone made Fromley a suspect. We had visited his home and interviewed his last girlfriend immediately before the attack. And who else would have wanted my bag?
Probably what troubled me most was the fact that the man we wanted to locate had instead found us. It was an uncomfortable sensation.
With these thoughts weighing on my mind, I felt a renewed sense that Alistair was right: Michael Fromley must indeed be the killer we sought. I had been foolish ever to doubt it. And I would be even more foolish if I did not do my damnedest to find him straightaway.
CHAPTER 14
I would have preferred to take Isabella straight home, for she was clearly disturbed by the day’s events—but she insisted on returning to the research center. I suspected she also wanted to talk with Alistair. And she had left her dog uptown and would not hear of going home without him.
“You must at least eat something,” I said as we arrived at Alistair’s offices.
“Will you ask Mrs. Leab to prepare something? I don’t care what.” Her voice was weary.
I had learned yesterday that Alistair maintained a kitchen in the building for his meals, managed by Mrs. Leab, a capable woman he had brought over from England for light secretarial and house keeping duties at the research center. When Columbia first moved uptown, it had been a necessity, given the few amenities available in the neighborhood. Now that the area around Columbia had begun to attract restaurants and coffeehouses, it was simply convenient.
Alistair’s office was empty, but I found Fred Ebbings down the hall, working with Tom Baxter.
“What happened to you?” Tom asked, noticing the scratches on my face. I filled them in on the day’s events, which they agreed were not in keeping with behavior they might have anticipated from Fromley.
“I’d have expected him to go to ground,” Tom said. “He was the type to run and hide, not hover on the fringes of this investigation. I wonder if he thinks you really have evidence incriminating him?”
“But if so,” Fred added with a sniff, “why does he care? Michael never thought of the future. He lived moment to moment. That’s why this attack against you, for instance, seems out of character to me. It involves a fair amount of foresight and planning—skills I always thought he lacked.”
I disagreed. “He used roughly half an hour to plan and execute the attack. That’s not a lot of time. And how much planning does it take to find someone in the Tenderloin who will take a swing at a stranger for extra cash?”
No one answered. Switching topics, I asked, “Have you seen Alistair?”
“He was here earlier,” Fred said, shrugging. “We were reviewing our interviews with Fromley from August of this year. I just reread the transcript of one session in which he discussed a recent dream. It was remarkable—in the dream, he first killed himself and then worked to dispose of his