In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff Read Free Book Online

desk. “But those fellows are unstoppable when it comes to newsgathering.” He smiled congenially, assuming we understood each other.
    “True enough,” I said. News reporters could be downright predatory. I knew not all of them were so single-minded in their pursuit of a story as to behave indecently, but I did not hold them in high regard.
    “How much did you learn about yesterday’s murder?” I asked. I wanted to be sure he knew what he was talking about and was not wasting my time.
    He folded his arms in front of him and recited the facts ofthe case. “A young woman, mid-twenties, was killed late afternoon at a local residence. She suffered multiple lacerations and bruising.” He went on to detail other relevant facts that allayed any doubts I had about his being fully informed.
    “And what about this local case attracts the attention of a professor from Columbia Law School?”
    He looked at me with both surprise and respect, for he had told me nothing of who he was or what he did for a living. “It would appear you have cultivated your own sources of information. Those individuals who described you as exceptionally smart and resourceful were quite right.”
    I never would have put it that way. And I was very curious as to whom he had spoken about me. But I could not give Alistair the satisfaction of knowing it.
    My own inquiry into his background had been rather simple: A brief telephone call last night to the Seventh Precinct had produced a basic outline of Alistair Sinclair’s life. Personally, he had recently celebrated his fifty-second birthday; socially, he was from a wealthy family who counted themselves among Mrs. Astor’s New York Four Hundred; and professionally, he held advanced degrees from both Harvard and Columbia, where he had spent the past ten years as part of their law faculty with a specialty in criminal law. Mulvaney had dug up those facts for me and even remembered one thing more, since it was the tough Irish cop’s guilty pleasure to follow the society pages in the
Journal
. He recalled that Alistair was separated from his wife, who had moved abroad after their only son died tragically two years ago.
    “Can’t remember how the son died, though,” Mulvaney had said. “I do recall the obituary mentioned he died while on an archeological expedition in Greece.”
    These scraps of information had sated some of my curiosity about the man, but they could not explain his interest in this local murder case. I pressed him once again to explain himself.
    “As you’ve already learned, I am a teacher of criminal law,” he said, stretching his long legs out to his side to become more comfortable, “but I consider myself a criminologist. Do you know the term?”
    “It means you study crime?” I hazarded a guess.
    “Yes—but with a specific focus on criminals and their behavior.” He leaned in closer toward me, and I grew uncomfortable under his direct gaze. “When you arrest a man for a particularly heinous crime, don’t you often wonder why he did it?”
    I had to confess I did not.
    “Most of the time there’s a pretty simple motive,” I said. “Revenge, jealousy, greed . . . those are the reasons why most criminals kill or steal.”
    “Yes, you’re absolutely correct in a general sense. But have you never wondered specifically—
why him
? To put it a different way, suppose fifty men are in dire economic straits, equally desperate for money. But only one will kill to get it. Fifty women may find themselves unhappily married. But only one of them will poison her husband. Why? What makes him—or her—different from the forty-nine others who don’t resort to criminal acts?”
    He continued to talk. “I’m taking part in a broader research effort pioneered by criminal scientists in Germany, France, and Italy to further our understanding of criminal behavior by using the collective wisdom of different fields, including sociology, psychology, anatomy, and, of course, law.