A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

The autopsy report said she died of blunt force trauma. As I knew from my studies, blunt force trauma is the ME’s go-to attribution for accidents, suicides, and homicides. Deaths from blunt force trauma occur for a range of reasons, whereas death from gunshot wounds or stabbings, for example, are confined to fewer possibilities. I read quickly, looking for the answer to a key question: Was the blunt force trauma inflicted by the collision with the cart, or did she sustain the deadly injury prior to contact? The autopsy report was clear on this — the cause of death was listed as a blow to the back of the head with an instrument the size of a silver dollar, consistent with a hammer. Yet no hammer was found at the scene or during an extensive search of the building and surrounding area.

It was one thing to push a person out a window in a rage, another thing to have brought a hammer. Death would have been instant.

I skipped past the environmental conditions at the crime scene — I had no need to know the “exterior ambient temperature.”

I skipped past the reporting officers’ accounts, past the location description and “injury extent,” past occupation, and started to read when I got to the evidence inventory.

The tox screen showed no blood alcohol or drugs. She wasn’t impaired in any way until she was attacked by the unidentified figure photographed by a security camera in a bank across the street from the shelter. The shelter’s own camera was broken.

Witnesses included the shelter’s security guard, who claimed he heard a woman cry out, “No, no, no, no!” when he stepped outside for a smoke, followed by the sound of Susan Rorke’s landing less than a hundred feet away. Other witnesses — three shelter residents in the infirmary — say they saw a figure wearing a hoodie running down the hallway. Two kitchen volunteers preparing the day’s lunch saw the same hooded figure leave the building shortly after the time of death.

I turned to the photograph of Bennett’s car going through a tollbooth on I-93 north at 1:57—forty minutes after Susan Rorke’s death — on his way to meet me in Old Orchard Beach.

Then the most incriminating evidence: the DNA in the semen found in Susan Rorke matched the DNA of the body of “Bennett” in the Manhattan coroner’s office.

I took a deep breath. I was upset just then by the discovery that Bennett met me in Maine after inseminating another woman, rather than by the possibility that he came to me after killing her. If I was this jealous, why not Samantha? The police report had included a 911 call Susan had made the week before she was killed. Her tires had been slashed, she said. This was Samantha’s MO, if she was the “Sam” Bennett had told me about. The hoodie and baggy clothes concealed the suspect’s gender. Bennett may have slept with Susan Rorke the night before and been in Boston the day she was killed, but it wasn’t a slam dunk that he was the killer. Knowing that 68 percent of all murders of women are committed by their husband or boyfriend, the Boston police would have looked at Bennett first. Wouldn’t I, too, if I could be impartial? But I wasn’t. In my experience, Bennett’s anger was not annihilating, it was controlling. But what about someone else’s experience of him, someone perhaps more knowledgeable than I had been? Such as his ex-wife. If he was capable of murder, she might know.

I caught the Hampton jitney at the Eighty-Sixth and Third stop in Manhattan so as to get first dibs on a good seat. Seating in autumn wasn’t the problem it was in season, but it was a habit from past summers when I had a share on the East End. I had been planning to use the trip to Sag Harbor to get work done on my three-quarters-finished thesis. The trip is advertised as taking two hours, but it’s always rush hour on the LIE.

I chose a window seat midway back and opened my laptop. For the nth time, I reviewed the data I had collected over two years. Matchmaking sites work on a problem-solving model, seeking a solution. It’s a basic algorithm — gathering information to find patterns in raw data. Even Petfinder works like this — only better because more hookups lead to love. Usually, however, the popular dating sites ask superficial questions that are too general to define patterns: Do you like action-adventure films or romcoms? Do you prefer beaches or mountains? What kind of animal would you be? I was operating on a different plane: I had put together questions that could be phrased for both potential victims and potential predators. For example: Do you like a man to order for you in a restaurant without asking what you want? / Do you enjoy ordering for a woman in a restaurant? Are you flattered by the attention when a man checks in with you frequently? / Do you feel the need to frequently check in with the woman you are dating? Do you find jealousy in a man flattering? / Are you interested in learning about a woman’s romantic past? Do you think honesty is always the best policy? / Do you think honesty is always the best policy? With enough raw data, you can suss out unexpected correlations. For instance, the statistician Amy Webb, in her search for a husband, discovered that “men who drink Scotch reference kinky sex immediately.”

More chilling was the discovery made by the forensic psychologist Adrian Raine. He found that psychopaths shared one biological factor — a low pulse rate. The significance of this discovery is that increasing levels of risk are necessary to create a heightened feeling of excitement. Dr. Raine also found that successful psychopaths — the ones who elude capture — are able to increase their pulse rate enough to make them careful. Less successful are the psychopaths who do not experience a significant rise in pulse rate; their attempts to feel excitement become increasingly reckless until they are caught.

Not all sociopaths are psychopaths. It’s not just a matter of degree. The predisposition to violence is high in a psychopath, whereas it varies in the sociopath. In criminal behavior the psychopath leaves clues, whereas the sociopath schemes to minimize exposure. Most pertinent to my research was that a psychopath is unable to maintain a normal relationship, while a sociopath can appear superficially normal while actually functioning as a social predator.

Clinical definitions differentiate on the basis of the ability to feel empathy — the received wisdom says that psychopaths feel none, while sociopaths experience a diminished form of empathy, but choose to ignore it. Psychopaths are fearless; sociopaths aren’t. Psychopaths don’t understand right from wrong; sociopaths do, though it doesn’t change their behavior. Bennett was a sociopath if he lied so comfortably and completely to me and everyone else. He was a psychopath if he killed Susan Rorke and then drove to Maine for a romantic weekend with me.

My theory was provocative: both sociopaths and psychopaths may lack empathy, but sociopaths are aware enough of other people’s feelings to see what they are missing — love — and they want some of that. They seek out goodness as well as weakness in their victims (Speck killing nurses, Bundy asking for help), because where there is goodness, there is often love.

Working on my thesis had been a worthy distraction from the meeting with Pat Loewi that I had arranged the night before. I told her that I had information about her ex-husband that I needed to discuss with her. When I sensed her hesitation, I offered to go to her and she acquiesced. I recognized her before I stepped off the jitney because she said she would have her dog with her. Two women were holding on to leashed dogs, waiting. A stock figure of the equestrienne in jodhpurs and riding boots was wrangling a retriever; and then there was, I felt certain, Bennett’s ex-wife. A slight woman with curly, shoulder-length red hair, gray at the roots. She wore an oversize barn jacket, jeans, and wellies. Sitting at attention beside her was a sleek and powerful-looking rottweiler.