Murder Most Conventional
Page 34
Those indicators are an example of Locard’s Exchange Principle, which states that when two objects come into contact, information is exchanged. Formulated by the French forensic pioneer Edmund Locard in the early 1900s, the Exchange Principle is a central philosophical concept in forensic science. All evidence consists of stuff left behind or picked up while committing a crime. Whether DNA, fingerprints, wounds, fibers, or instant message files, they are all the “leftovers” of past criminal actions discovered in the present.3 The remnants may be very small or obscure but it is the viewer’s responsibility to see the traces for what they are: flags, clues, evidence.
As Edward Heinrich, another pioneer of forensic science, said, “Rarely are other than ordinary phenomena involved in the commission of a crime. One is confronted with scrambled effects, all parts of which separately are attributed to causes.” Detectives and forensic scientists must understand “ordinary phenomena” in order to unravel the clues left behind at crimes.
Saying that the egg “fell” may seem a bit passive, both temperamentally and grammatically, but that kind of distance is necessary until an agent—in police parlance, a suspect—is suggested. This is where many real investigations go wrong, by not considering all of the reasonable hypotheses open to the circumstances under inquiry. Biases creep in, potential avenues of questioning get closed off, and mistakes are made.
Confirmation bias is a good example. Looking for, collecting, and using only those bits of information that support or confirm a particular pet theory is confirmation bias. “The husband was out and has no alibi for the time period when we think the wife was killed,” says the detective. “That’s funny. Let’s focus on him.” The husband was out with an old female friend (“Must be an affair”), had a couple of beers (“He didn’t get the promotion; his wife must have been nagging him”), and won’t hand over his cellphone without a warrant (“He’s hiding something”). Fixated on the ‘husband theory’, the detectives ignore other possible reasons for the evidence they find. This is one of the big reasons that wrongful convictions happen. Interestingly, a host of analytical thinking methods to avoid this kind of mental error is openly available and is used by professional intelligence analysts.4 Why this kind of training is not required at police academies and in forensic science programs is a different kind of mystery that should be solved, and soon.
Detection Works Backwards
How do these indicators, these clues mean something? Because time only works in one direction. Time does not flow, per se, but rather is a series of events that form an irreversible sequence that is cumulative in only one direction. Broken eggs do not spontaneously reassemble.5 Thus, the world is asymmetrical in time and that provides detectives, historians, and the like with the ability to sort out what actions have taken place—to reconstruct the egg, so to speak—if given enough evidence (shells, mess, etc.).
If a video was taken of the egg dropping and breaking, running the video backwards would look ridiculous and be obvious for what it is. Again, broken eggs do not suddenly become whole. If the video were cut up into individual images and scrambled (much like the egg), they could be re-ordered into a sensible sequence because the asymmetry of time is intuitively understood. What is revealed, in real life by the crook and in fiction by the author’s plot, is the logic of the criminal actions, the logic that the real or fictional criminal has imposed on the world through plotting and committing the crime.
That detectives are historians is a short leap in logic (or faith). Many professions are historical in nature, including astronomy (you think that starlight just left the Crab Nebula on Monday?), geology, paleontology, archaeology, forensic science, and investigations of many sorts.
The three things these professions all share are the manipulation of space, time, and scale.
First, space is manipulated by the choice of where to look, what to pay attention to, and how much to use. For example, not everything at a crime scene relates to the crime and not all evidence at a crime scene can be collected. Evidence may degrade or decay, be lost or damaged, or be obscured. Working a crime scene involves hundreds of decisions about what is relevant (Do you collect a kitchen knife in a shooting case?) based on the various hypothesized scenarios (plural) of the crime. Not every scrap of evidence can be collected at a scene and not every bit that is collected can be used to solve a case or reconstruct a crime. Some of it just will not make sense or be relevant.
Second, historical professionals play with time by being in more than one place or time at once. The detective is here now but is thinking about the scene yesterday and when the crime occurred last week. Authors do this routinely, if more abstractly. This mental time travel helps to sort through the individual images (like from the egg video) and put them in the correct order.
Finally, historical professionals play with scale by looking at the “big picture” and then a tiny scrap of incriminating or misleading evidence, and then stepping back to the larger view to see how it compares. Macro, micro, macro. Similarly, detectives jump scales by looking at evidence (like egg shells), interviewing suspects and witnesses, talking with informants, comparing activities to larger patterns across a jurisdiction, and so on.
Why space, time, and scale? Because a literal interpretation of reality is too cumbersome and impractical. A distillation of relevant information (editing, in other words) is required to present a coherent story or narrative. Again, plot is bound within these elements and makes use of the author’s abilities to manipulate space, time, and scale to best effect in storytelling.
We have an expectation of how things are going to work, time being asymmetrical and all, and when they do not behave as expected, we are surprised. Plot twists do just that; they bend our expectations of space (The killer is in the back seat of the car!), time (The killer knew the victim in high school?), or scale (The postage stamps are the fortune!), and violate our previous assumptions about the story or characters. A proper plot twist is enormously satisfying (“I am your father”), but a clunky or wholly unbelievable one can ruin the entire narrative. Just as bad are twists that the reader has not been properly prepared for; too-clever-by-half authors also make assumptions about what they have told the reader and the groundwork they have laid. Caution and craft are therefore recommended when twisting plots.
The main reason a literal interpretation of reality is impractical is because of the asymmetry of time. Ironically, because time is asymmetrical, far more evidence of a past action is produced than is actually needed to conclude it happened.6
Consider this: A baseball is thrown through the window of a living room. Not every piece of glass would be needed to conclude that the window was broken. Notwithstanding the baseball on the floor, many other types of evidence also could lead to that conclusion, such as sounds (the birds are now louder), moisture (rain on the floor), a breeze, and then there are all those glass fragments on the floor.
Time’s asymmetry highlights why the perfect crime is nearly impossible to commit. ALL the evidence, every last speck, each skin cell, all the tiny traces would have to be eliminated to cover up the crime. Miss one piece of evidence and a modern-day Sherlock Holmes will discover it. And each clue is not independent: removing a fingerprint does not erase the footprint or the other fingerprints. As Raymond Chandler said, “The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.” The spontaneous crime will have fewer moving parts, less complexity, fewer anomalies and patterns to leave evidence. As a final proof that time is asymmetrical, consider that there is a very easy way of erasing all traces of a crime and eliminating any potential evidence: Don’t do it. But that would make for a very boring plot.
* * * *
The stories in this collected volume range from poisonings and defenestration to digi
tal death by social media, as well as more tried-and-true methods. The motivations are the usual sack of baser primate emotions that led us from the savannas to the cities, dooming us in the process, like revenge, greed, and love.
The one thing these stories all share is that the crimes involve that most human of activities, a social gathering. The gatherings in this book are all of a particularly bittersweet flavor, called a convention. Conventions are where people who are ostensibly interested in the same topic come together to learn about and discuss it with the other people at the meeting. Ideally, they are intellectually stimulating events filled with insights that improve the attendees’ pursuit of the topic and that swell with bonhomie between colleagues and friends.
A few stories into Murder Most Conventional, however, and the true nature of conventions is seen: they are cauldrons of steaming schemes, huddles of hatred, and bursts of bad behavior sufficient to make any Machiavellian devotee cheer with pride. Frankly, I’m surprised more people aren’t offed at conventions, given the close quarters and large bar tabs. Kudos to the authors in Murder Most Conventional for exorcising their demons in the socially acceptable and publicly enjoyable mode of fiction.
1 I put criminal in quotes this one time to suggest that not all crimes are such; going back in time (violating physical laws) to kill Hitler (violating human laws) should not result in any punishment a reasonable person could think of. All criminals feel justified in their actions, however; otherwise, why do it?
2 “Narrative is a sequencing of something for somebody.” R. Scholes, Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative.
3 Elsewhere, I call this proxy data, a term borrowed for forensic science from paleoclimatologists when they talk about ancient weather. The rainfall in the Mesozoic Era cannot be seen today but it can be estimated by its proxies, the plants, animals, and geological materials left behind and fossilized. A detective or a forensic scientist would call the proxy data of a crime “evidence.”
4 A great start is Heuer’s book, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, available for free at the CIA website: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf .
5 For those so inclined, this is an example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law states that the disorder (or entropy, in technical terms) of a system will increase over time. Things break, stuff rots, time always wins. An egg that is intact has a lower entropy than a broken one; the entropy will inevitably increase whether the egg is dropped or is allowed to spoil and decay. Nature is filled with—run by—irreversible physical processes and the Second Law is central to a universal infrastructure with an obvious asymmetry between past and future events.
6 This is referred to as the past being overdetermined; the future, by contrast, is underdetermined, which is why it can be difficult to predict things.
1 I put criminal in quotes this one time to suggest that not all crimes are such; going back in time (violating physical laws) to kill Hitler (violating human laws) should not result in any punishment a reasonable person could think of. All criminals feel justified in their actions, however; otherwise, why do it?
2“Narrative is a sequencing of something for somebody.” R. Scholes, Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative.
3
3 Elsewhere, I call this proxy data, a term borrowed for forensic science from paleoclimatologists when they talk about ancient weather. The rainfall in the Mesozoic Era cannot be seen today but it can be estimated by its proxies, the plants, animals, and geological materials left behind and fossilized. A detective or a forensic scientist would call the proxy data of a crime “evidence.”
4A great start is Heuer’s book, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, available for free at the CIA website: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf .
5For those so inclined, this is an example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law states that the disorder (or entropy, in technical terms) of a system will increase over time. Things break, stuff rots, time always wins. An egg that is intact has a lower entropy than a broken one; the entropy will inevitably increase whether the egg is dropped or is allowed to spoil and decay. Nature is filled with—run by—irreversible physical processes and the Second Law is central to a universal infrastructure with an obvious asymmetry between past and future events.
6This is referred to as the past being overdetermined; the future, by contrast, is underdetermined, which is why it can be difficult to predict things.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT is a best-selling science fiction writer who saw the light and began writing mysteries about a decade ago. Since then, he’s published about a dozen mystery short stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and other places, one of which (“Horse Pit”) won a Black Orchid Novella Award. He doesn’t write much these days; his day job running Wildside Press keeps him busy.
RHYS BOWEN is The New York Times best-selling author of two historical mystery series: the Molly Murphy mysteries, set in early 1900s New York, and the lighter Royal Spyness novels, featuring an impoverished minor royal in 1930s England. Rhys’s books have been nominated for every major mystery award, and she has won thirteen to date, including three Agathas. Rhys was born and raised in England but now divides her time between California and Arizona. rhysbowen.com
NANCY BREWKA-CLARK began her writing career as features editor for a daily newspaper chain on Boston’s North Shore. Her poems, short stories, and nonfiction have been published by Adams Media, Three Rivers Press, the University of Iowa Press, Level Best Books, Conari/Red Wheel, the International Thomas Merton Society’s Poetry of the Sacred, and The Boston Globe, among others. Her plays and monologues have been published by Smith and Kraus and produced by YouthPLAYS of Los Angeles and NYC Playwrights. She’s a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and Sisters in Crime.
www.nancybrewkaclark.com
M EVONNE DOBSON’s young-adult crime fiction, Chaos Theory, was published by Poisoned Pencil, an imprint of Poisoned Pen Press, in 2015. Her flash fiction has placed twice at Writers’ Police Academy, and a short story entitled “Politics of Chaos” was included in the Sisters in Crime–Desert Sleuths Chapter’s 2015 anthology. That short story and companion teacher guides are available for free download from Amazon.com. Meg is a professional member of Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. www.MEvonneDobson.com
KATE FLORA’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, child abusers, and employers’ acts of discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. Her books include seven “strong woman” Thea Kozak mysteries. Her true crime book, Finding Amy, was an Edgar® finalist. Death Dealer was an Anthony and Agatha award finalist and won the Public Safety Writers Association 2015 nonfiction award. The gritty police procedurals in her Joe Burgess series have twice won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Kate has published sixteen crime stories. Her latest book is A Good Man with a Dog, co-written with a Maine game warden. www.kateflora.com
BARB GOFFMAN is an award-winning short story author. Her Don’t Get Mad, Get Even won the Silver Falchion Award for best collection of 2013. She won the 2013 Macavity Award for best short story, and she’s been nominated seventeen times for national crime-writing awards, including the Agatha (nine times—the most ever in the short story category), the Derringer, and the Anthony and Macavity awards (three times each). Her new story “Stepmonster” appears in Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning (Wildside Press, April 2016). Barb runs a freelance editing and proofreading service focusing on crime and general fiction. www.barbgoffman.com
MAX M. HOUCK, PH.D., FRSC, is Vice President, Forensic & Intelligence Services, LLC. St. Petersburg, FL. Dr. Max Houck is an internationally known expert in forensic science and management. For over 25 years, Dr. Houck’s career has spanned government, academia, and the private sector. He is an expert in anthropology, trace evidence, and management. Dr. Houck has worked hundreds of cases, including the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, the D. B. Cooper case, the Scott Peterson case, and ,the West Memphis Three. He is one of the most published forensic experts in the world. Among other awards and honors, Houck is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
KB INGLEE’s stories are informed by her work as an historical interpreter at a 1705 water-powered grist mill. To better understand the life of her characters, she has tended heritage sheep, hand sewn her own period clothing, and driven oxen. She lives in Delaware with far too many pets. kbinglee.weebly.com
ELEANOR CAWOOD JONES began writing in elementary school, using a Number Two pencil to craft short stories about the imaginary lives of her stuffed animals. While attending Virginia Tech, she got her first writing job as a reporter with the Kingsport Tennessee Times-News, and has never looked back. Eleanor lives in Northern Virginia and is a marketing director, freelance copywriter, avid reader, traveler, and remodeling-show addict who spends her spare time telling people how to pronounce Cawood (Kay’-wood). Her short story compilations include A Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tales of Murder and More and Death is Coming to Town: Four Murderous Holiday Tales.