City of Silence (City of Mystery) by Kim Wright Read Free Book Online

give us
insight into his mind.”
    “And
if we know how he thinks, we can better predict what he’ll do next,” Davy said,
seeming to come round at last. “Maybe figure how to trap him.”   
    Trevor
nodded. “They’re studying the same sort of thing with murderers by the way,
drawing conclusions about how well the perpetrator might have known his victim
by the methodology of the attack.  You can poison someone without being in the
room, so it’s a more distant, calculating sort of crime.  But if you smother or
choke them, in contrast, that implies a personal rage.  You want to be there in
the moment of the death, to actually see them suffer.”   
    “I’m
sorry to likewise muffle your collective enthusiasm,” Tom said, leaning even
farther back and putting his boots on the table, “or mock this shiny new
forensics toy that you are all so eager to play with.  But I must say that in
comparison to medicine or chemistry, criminal profiling doesn’t seem like much
of a science at all.”
    “I
doubt any science seems like much of a science when it begins,” Trevor said
amicably.  “Apples falling from trees, kites and keys in thunderstorms and all
that sort of rot.  Admittedly, we are dealing with an unformed arena of study,
but I expect it shall evolve in time, as they all do.  And I should be
delighted to think the people at this table might in some small way aid that
evolution.”
    “What
if the scarf isn’t to hide his face?”  Emma abruptly asked.
    “I
don’t follow,” Trevor said.
    “We’ve
assumed that he covers her face so that she cannot see him,” Emma said.  “But
what if just the opposite is true, that he covers her face so that he cannot
see her?   Then she becomes a generalized victim, an everywoman, perhaps even a
substitute for someone else.”
    They
sat for a moment, pondering this.  “You said the weapon of choice was an
indication of the level of rage,” Emma eventually added, her comments addressed
mostly toward Trevor.  “And by that logic, rape would indicate a very specific
type of anger, would it not?  The weapon of choice being the most intimate of
all?”
    She
was looking right at him, but Trevor found he could not sustain eye contact for
long.  He dropped his gaze back to his glass of claret, aware of the cowardice
in the action.
    “You’re
suggesting he obliterates her face to sustain a particular type of fantasy,”
Rayley said slowly, also looking into his own wine glass, but in his case the gesture
was merely meditative.  “There’s a woman he wants to punish but he can’t –
because she’s unreachable, gone away somewhere, or is perhaps even dead.  So
his anger is directed toward some random woman who stands in her stead.”
    “That’s
madness,” said Tom.
    Rayley
raised an eyebrow. “We’re talking about violent criminals.  Of course it’s
madness.”
    “But
what we must remember is that they do not see it as such,” Trevor said. The
clock behind Tom trembled in anticipation, and then began to strike twelve. 
Trevor waited for each gong to sound.  They had overstayed, as they so often
did, had drunk more than they should, had eaten past the point of satiety and
into excess, had teetered once again on the edge of discord.  The ponderous
sequence of the twelve bells of midnight gave Trevor time to compose his thoughts. 
He knew he might not see these people again for weeks, perhaps the better part
of a month, and he did not wish to leave them like this, to conclude their last
meeting in such an inconclusive way.
    “Criminals
most often do not see themselves as criminals,” he continued, when the final
gong had sounded, leaving a subtle reverberation in the air.  “I doubt very
many men, or women as the case may be, awaken in the morning and think to
themselves ‘Today I shall go out and perform a criminal act.’  They instead
feel justified in their actions, and this is what we must remember.  That they
consider themselves