In her picture on display at the memorial, Harriet was beautiful, her short dark hair blowing around her face, the woods out of focus behind her. Mike, something of a novice photographer, had asked Victor about the shot. Victor, who had been rigid and quiet since Friday, had thawed for a moment, explaining that he’d been the one to take it, a few years prior. “Mom always loved that shot,” he’d told Mike. “So when I suggested we blow it up and use it, Dad thought it was a good idea.”
Victor Fogarty struck Mike as a serious person, even outside the circumstances. He was twenty-eight, seemed highly intelligent, had a good job, and was about to marry a surgeon from Sloan Kettering. Mike hadn’t met her yet – she’d already come and gone, surgeries scheduled for the week. According to Terry Fogarty, Elizabeth, the fiancée, had attempted to move things around but Victor had implored her not to, to stick to things as they were, and she’d abided by his request.
“Come on in, Mike,” Crispin said from inside his office. The medical examiner had white hair, liver spots, eyebrows a bit unruly above half-rimmed glasses. He was pushing retirement, temporarily filling a vacancy after the previous pathologist had left. They’d met a month ago on another case – Crispin had worked in Chicago but moved back east after his wife became ill.
“Thanks, Doc,” Mike said, and took a chair.
“You want to see it?”
“I thought we’d just talk, if that’s alright with you.”
“That suits me fine. Haven’t had my lunch yet. You mind if I eat while we do it?”
“Not at all.”
Crispin opened the kind of lunch box Mike thought city construction workers might use: black, shaped like a mailbox. The doctor pulled out an unblemished apple, then a sandwich cut in a perfect diagonal – evidence, perhaps, of his exacting nature.
“Here’s the full report,” Crispin said, “external and internal,” and he pushed the file across his maple-topped desk. Behind him was a wall of books and there were copious plants in the office, making the place almost tropical.
“That a Boston fern?” Mike asked, looking.
“It is,” Crispin said with an approving raise of those considerable eyebrows. “They say it removes air pollutants.”
“I do a little gardening.”
Crispin took a bite of his sandwich and nodded. “That’s right,” he said after swallowing. “I heard that about you – you like your hobbies.”
“Not that the work doesn’t have me running. I have open cases right now – got one B&E I haven’t been able to crack since last October.”
Crispin nodded, swallowed, looking thoughtful. “I’ve always kept busy too. But I had this friend, Marcus, died a few years ago. Anyway, near the end, he said to me, ‘Bernie, take it slow.’ I sort of nodded, said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ you know, like you do when someone tells you that life is short.”
Mike smiled, enjoying the sound of Crispin’s voice. Like his father’s used to be.
“Marcus says, ‘You never know when it’s going to hit you. But it hit me one day when my kids were all zipping around and jumping everywhere… and I just sat there.’ That’s what he says to me – ‘I just sat there,’ he says, ‘and I got it.’ He goes, ‘Otherwise, I was always on the move, and the whole thing went by in a blink, it went by too fast, and I wish I had more moments like that, just sitting there.’” Crispin chuckled. “So, what do I do with this pearl of wisdom? I get some plants. I figure, plants are slow. They’ll slow me down.” He paused and added, “I never had kids. You have any kids?”
“One. A daughter.”
Crispin nodded and took another bite, and with a mouth half full of food, waved his hand in the air. “Sorry; none of this rambling is why you’re here.”
“No, please,” Mike said, but he flipped through the file and scanned the external report first to refresh his memory.
He lingered over the line on the report where the number of knife wounds were indicated. Time to get into it. “Twelve is a weird number,” he said.
“You think?”
“I do.”
“You ever worked a stabbing before?”
“Two of them. People say a lot of things about stabbings.”
“People do.”
“That they indicate intimacy. That there’s pathology tied to the method.”
Crispin dabbed his face with a napkin. “Crime of passion. And what do you think?”
“I think a knife doesn’t necessarily indicate something significant in and of itself. Sometimes it’s just lack of access to a gun. But the number usually means something. Twenty, thirty stab wounds show a lot of anger – the passion you’re talking about. Only a few stabs might mean it was utilitarian. It depends on the victim, though. You’re trying to kill somebody with a knife, there’s a big difference if it’s a small person or some 250-pound guy with a lot of meat on his bones.”
Mike bent and read the report in more detail, noting the depth of the wounds and the differing classifications. There were more incised or “cut” wounds than there were stabs or punctures. It made some sense, given the killer’s position. And the depth of the three wounds classified as stabbings was important because it gave some character to the murder weapon.
“And then there’s the intent,” Mike said, half to himself, half to Crispin. “To what extent is inflicting pain the MO, to what extent is the death itself. Is this a display?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Crispin said.
“A knife like this, death is going to require either precision or multiple stabs. Pain is guaranteed…”
He and Overton had gone over this a little already, and were searching for a jackknife with a six-inch blade. The murder weapon would have Harriet Fogarty’s DNA all over it, even if the killer wiped down the blood. It would be nice to locate Jamie Rentz and check out his collection.
“I feel like you have an idea,” Crispin said.
“Well, I’m anxious to hear your view on things,” Mike said. “But yeah, I’m wondering about the possibility this was a mistake. It’s just one angle we’ve got on this – that she’s an accidental victim – and I’m wondering if the evidence – this number, twelve knife wounds – supports that.”
Crispin nodded and Mike said, “But, whenever you’re ready. We can wait until after you’re done eating.”
Crispin shook his head. “Good to go. So, the first laceration we see is here, along her forearm.”
“Like he surprised her in the back seat, she tried to get away, and he took hold of her.”
“Probably that, exactly. He grabbed her arm then made a lateral incision, about three inches across, here.” Crispin dragged a finger across his forearm.
“The second incision began here,” he said, and pointed to his upper lip. He made a diagonal motion toward his jaw. “Four and a half inches.”
Mike remembered Terry sobbing when he saw his wife, the way she was disfigured. Victor had just stood there, his initial emotion hardening somewhere inside. “So by this point,” Mike said, “she’s facing him. Maybe looking at him. Can’t really reach around for this, right?”
“I would say no. Given the depth, the trajectory, this is head-on.”
“No sign of strangling, right?” Mike asked. “Nothing to show that he grabbed her neck.”
“Correct. No petechial papules, no bruises behind the ears, nothing like that. No involuntary urination, either. But we found some hairs were pulled.”
“So she’s trying to escape again,” Mike said, “and he does a downward stroke across her back, from her scapular, down at an angle. Then grabs her hair, yanks her back. What does she do? She reaches back, like anyone would…”
“Yes, exposing her underarm, where there was a deep gash.”
“She probably let go immediately. I know I don’t have to ask you…”
“Nothing under her fingernails but some of the same material we found on her arm which we sent to your lab; some type of leather. Maybe cheap leather, the kind you get at a department store. I’m sure you’re looking into that – sales of leather gloves in the area.”
Mike nodded. “Or they’re older gloves, sort of disintegrating.” His thoughts returned to the recreation of the crime. “He’s just sort of randomly striking, depending on where she is, but then he gets her neck, the fifth strike with the knife. He’s going for the kill here.”
“Severing the carotid.”
“There was blood everywhere,” Mike said.