his own vest. “It’s because of this, sir. They told me to keep it safe, and I’d forgot I put it in my own pocket to do so.”
I cradled the gold pocket watch in my hands. On the back was clearly etched an inscription: Michael J. Fromley, 8–11–98 from your loving Aunt Lizzie. I did not yet allow myself to feel more than initial relief. Watches were often stolen or borrowed; only a proper autopsy would firmly establish whether this was truly Michael Fromley. I dared not hope just yet.
“Any other identifying information?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Jennings replied. “They’ll have already contacted the family for dentals, as this corpse has got a gold tooth. If that matches Fromley’s dental records, then I’ll have no trouble making a positive identification during the autopsy. But now all I’ve got is that watch. And of course, the fact that Fromley has been reported a missing person.”
So the Wallingford family had filed an official report. My one-time meeting with Clyde Wallingford had left me skeptical as to whether they would do so. Wallingford had seemed to believe Michael Fromley was entirely Alistair’s responsibility.
“Tell me how he died,” I said, returning to Fromley’s corpse—for I had begun to accept that it probably was Fromley’s body that lay exposed on the coroner’s wagon.
“He was killed before he went in the water,” Jennings said as he put on his gloves. He motioned for me to come closer to the corpse’s head. “First, look at the eyes.” He pried open one of the dead man’s eyes and explained something I did not quite follow about lines. “Furthermore, see how his head is rotated all the way to one side?” he instructed. “You never see that position in a drowning victim. His head got that way because rigor mortis set in while he was still on land.”
“Any sign of violence to the body?” I asked, knowing from my quick glance at the swollen, discolored remains how difficult a question I was asking. If the river had not erased signs of foul play, it may have actually created them. Underwater branches and rocks could take a toll upon whatever came near them.
“You’re in luck there.” Jennings’s eye glinted as he looked at me slyly, proud of himself. “We think he was a gunshot victim. I’ll know more when I do the autopsy, but there were holes in his clothes consistent with a gunshot wound to the chest. Including on the coat you examined over there.” He gestured to a pile of effects that had been pulled from the river.
My mind raced with possibilities. If this were indeed Fromley, perhaps he had committed suicide, as his mind became unhinged by the murder he had committed and the gruesome fantasies that haunted him night and day. Or had he been killed in the heat of a fight? It had been clear that his volatile temper repeatedly got him in trouble. If this proved to be Fromley . . .
“What’s your interest in him, anyway?” Jennings asked.
I opted for the truth, knowing I could count on Jennings to be discreet. “Actually, he’s the prime suspect in a murder I’m investigating—that of a young woman in Dobson this past Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?” He looked at me sharply, standing up straight. “You surely don’t mean Tuesday of this week?”
“Yes,” I replied, and wondered why he seemed so surprised.
“Well, if this corpse is indeed Michael Fromley”—he returned to the disfigured body in the wagon and removed the blanket entirely, revealing the corpse’s full state of decomposition—“I’d say you can clear him of that suspicion.”
The corpse was a grotesque mass of black, with little remaining semblance of humanity.
Jennings continued to talk. “Look at the protruding eyes and tongue, the distended abdomen, and the extensive skin maceration. This bloke’s been dead, by my guess, for at least two, maybe even three weeks.”
It was impossible.
And yet, as I gazed at the dark, mottled, distended corpse in front of me, I knew Jennings spoke the truth.
And if so, I realized with dizzying certainty, then everything we had learned and thought about the case up to this point was utterly, stupidly, and senselessly wrong.
CHAPTER 20
Dead for at least two weeks. I walked north on the riding path along the Hudson River with no particular destination in mind; I simply needed to walk. Maybe Jennings was wrong. Maybe the corpse wasn’t Fromley. Maybe it was some poor sod murdered so Fromley might fake his own death. Until Jennings’s autopsy was complete, I could believe