The Alienist (33 page)

Important as all this no doubt was, I could not keep my mind from wandering, as Kreizler spoke, to thoughts of what had occurred on Bedloe’s Island that night. Beneath Bartholdi’s great statue—which symbolized freedom to so many but was now, in my mind, an ironic emblem of our killer’s slavery to a murderous obsession—another boy had met a terrible and undeserved end. I tried to stifle the vague but powerful image of a youth I’d never seen, bound and on his knees beneath Lady Liberty, trusting fully in the man who was about to wring his neck, and then feeling sudden, brief, all-consuming horror at the realization that he had given his trust unwisely and was going to pay the fullest possible price for his mistake. Then, in rapid succession, other pictures flashed across my mind: first the knife, that fearsome instrument created to meet the dangers of a world very unlike New York; then the long, slow, careful movements of that blade through flesh, and the sharp, mean chops at the limbs; the blood, no longer propelled by the heart, flowing out onto the grass and rocks in leisurely, thick streams; and the sickening grind and squeak of sharp steel against the ocular orbits of the skull…There was nothing that resembled justice or humanity in it. Whatever Ernst Lohmann’s way of making a living, whatever his error in trusting a stranger, the penalty was too severe, the price too abominably high.

When my attention returned to the ongoing conversation, I heard Kreizler hissing in frustrated urgency:

“Something—there’s got to be
something
new that we’ve learned tonight.”

Neither Marcus, Lucius, nor I spoke; but Stevie, who was glancing at each of us uncertainly, seemed to have something to say, and finally piped up with: “Well, there is one thing, Doctor.” Kreizler turned to him expectantly. “He’s losing his hair.”

And then I remembered the head that we’d thought belonged to Lucius but which had sat atop a body far too tall to be the detective sergeant’s. “That’s right,” I said. “We saw him—good Christ, Stevie, for that one moment we were
looking
at him!”

“Well?
Well?
” Kreizler demanded. “Surely you noticed something else.”

I looked to Stevie, who only shrugged. Tearing my own memory of that one instant apart like a demon, I sought a forgotten detail, one overlooked moment when I’d clearly seen…nothing. The back of a balding head. That was all that had been visible.

Kreizler sighed in great disappointment. “Balding, eh?” he said, as he scratched the word on the chalkboard. “Well, I suppose it’s more than we knew yesterday.”

“It doesn’t seem much,” Lucius said. “Measured against a boy’s life.”

A few minutes later Sara finally telephoned again. The body of Ernst Lohmann was on its way to the morgue at Bellevue. The guard who’d found it, naturally, had witnessed no part of the killing, but had heard a sound just before he spotted the dead boy that could have been a steam launch drawing away from the island. Roosevelt had told Sara that he needed some time to get rid of the police officers that were with him; he thought that if we were to meet him at Bellevue at six-thirty he could make sure that we would be allowed to examine the body without interference. That left just over an hour; I decided to go home, bathe, and change my clothes before joining the others at the morgue.

I arrived at Washington Square to find my grandmother, thankfully and remarkably, still asleep. Harriet was up and about, though, and she offered to draw my bath. As she scurried up the stairs, I remarked on my grandmother’s sound slumber.

“Yes, sir,” Harriet said. “Ever since the news came she’s been much easier in her mind.”

“The news?” I said, in tired confusion.

“Sure you’ve heard, sir? About that horrible Dr. Holmes—it was in all the papers yesterday. I believe we still have the
Times
in the nook, if you’d like me to—”

“No, no,” I said, stopping her as she came back down the stairs. “I’ll get it. If you’ll just draw the bath, Harriet, I’ll be your servant for a lifetime.”

“Hardly necessary, Mr. John,” she answered, going up again.

I found the previous day’s
Times
in the copper and glass nook next to my grandmother’s favorite chair. The story was blazoned across the front page:
HOLMES COOL TO THE END
. The infamous “torture doctor” had been dispatched on a Philadelphia gallows, after confessing without remorse to the murder of twenty-seven additional people, mostly women he’d romanced and robbed. The drop had fallen at 10:12
A.M
., and twenty minutes later he’d been pronounced dead. As added precautions—against what, the paper did not say—Holmes’s coffin had been filled with cement after he’d been laid in it, and then, when the box had been deposited in a ten-foot hole in an unnamed cemetery, another ton of cement had been poured in over it.

My grandmother still had not stirred when I left the house again for Bellevue; in fact, I later learned from Harriet that she slept until well past ten.

CHAPTER 27

A
s it turned out, the greatest difficulty with our trip to the morgue early Monday morning did not result from a confrontation with any member of that institution’s staff. They were all quite new on the job (having recently replaced a group who’d been fired for selling bodies to anatomists at $150 a head) and too unsure of their authority to go up against Roosevelt. No, our problem was simply getting into the building, for by the time we arrived, another angry mob of Lower East Side residents had formed to demand an explanation as to why their children were still being slaughtered without so much as one suspect being taken into custody. The general air among this crowd was not only angrier than that of the group that’d assembled at Castle Garden, it was also far more indignant. Absent was any mention of Ernst Lohmann’s profession or living arrangements (he turned out to have no family that we could ever locate); the youth was pictured as an abandoned innocent left to the mercy of a police department, a city government, and an upper class that did not care how he lived—or, if he died, who was responsible. This much more systematic, not to mention political, representation of Lohmann’s plight—and that of the immigrant communities generally—may have been due to the fact that there were a good number of Germans in the crowd; but I suspected that it had far more to do with the ongoing influence of Paul Kelly, although I did not see either him or his brougham anywhere near the morgue as we moved through the crowd around it.

We entered the dreary red-brick building through a black iron door in the back, Sara, the Isaacsons, and I crowding around Laszlo so that no one could see his face. Roosevelt met us just inside the doorway and, after brushing off a pair of attendants who wanted to know our business, led us directly to an examination room. The stench of formaldehyde and decay in this sickening chamber was so strong that it seemed to be pulling the yellowing paint off the walls. There were tables bearing draped bodies shoved into each corner, and aging, chipped specimen jars full of various pieces of human bodies sat gruesomely on a series of sagging shelves. A large electrical lamp was suspended from the center of the ceiling, and under it was a dented and rusted operating table, which at some point in the distant past must have looked like those Laszlo kept in the basement theater of his Institute. Atop the table was a body covered by a dirty, wet sheet.

Lucius and Kreizler went immediately to the table, and Lucius tore the sheet away—wanting, it seemed to me, to face as quickly as possible the boy for whose death he felt such heavy responsibility. Marcus followed behind them, but Sara and I remained by the door, not wanting to approach the body if we could avoid it. Kreizler produced his little notebook and then the usual recitation began, Lucius listing the injuries that the boy had suffered in a voice that was monotonous yet, paradoxically, passionate:

“Severing of the complete genitalia at their base…Severing of the right hand just above the wrist joint—both the ulna and radius cleanly cut…Lateral lacerations of the abdominal cavity, with attendant damage to the small intestine…Massive damage to the entire arterial system within the thorax, and apparent removal of the heart…Removal of the left eye, attendant damage to the malar bone and supraorbital ridge on that side…Removal of those sections of the scalp covering the occipital and parietal bones of the skull…”

It was a grim roster, all right, and I tried not to listen; but one of the latter items caught my notice. “Excuse me, Lucius,” I interrupted, “but did you say removal of the left eye?”

“Yes,” came his quick reply.

“The left eye
only
?”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered. “The right eye is still intact.”

Marcus looked excited. “He must’ve been interrupted.”

“It does seem the most plausible explanation,” Kreizler replied. “Probably he detected the guard’s approach.” Laszlo then pointed at the center of the body. “This business with the heart is new, Detective Sergeant.”

Marcus rushed over to the door. “Commissioner Roosevelt,” he said, “can you give us another forty-five minutes in here?”

Roosevelt checked his watch. “It would be close. The new warden and his staff usually come in at eight. Why, Isaacson?”

“I need some of my equipment—for an experiment.”

“Experiment? Just what sort of an experiment?” For Theodore, distinguished naturalist that he was, the word “experiment” held almost as much power as “action.”

“There are some experts,” Marcus explained, “who think that, at the moment of death, the human eye permanently records the last image it sees. It’s thought that the image can be photographed, using the eye itself as a sort of lens. I’d like to give it a try.”

Theodore considered the proposition for a moment. “You think the boy may have died looking at his murderer?”

“There’s a chance.”

“And will the next examiner be able to tell you’ve made the attempt?”

“No, sir.”

“Mmm. Quite an idea. All right.” Theodore nodded once definitively. “Fetch your equipment. But I warn you, Detective Sergeant—we are going to be out of here by seven forty-five.”

Marcus bolted off toward the rear door of the building. After his exit Lucius and Kreizler continued to prod and pick at the body, and I eventually sank to the floor, exhausted and disheartened past the point where my legs could support me. Looking up at Sara and hoping to find some sympathy in her face, I saw instead that she was staring at the end of the examination table.

“Doctor,” she finally said quietly, “what’s the matter with his foot?”

Laszlo turned, glanced at Sara, and then followed her gaze to the dead boy’s right foot, which was hanging out over the end of the table. It appeared swollen, and was set on the leg at an odd angle; but as this was nothing compared to the rest of the injuries to the body, it seemed scant wonder that Lucius had missed it.

Kreizler took hold of the foot and examined it carefully.
“Talipes varus,”
he eventually announced. “The boy was clubfooted.”

That caught my interest. “Clubfooted?”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered, letting the extremity drop again.

It was a measure, I suppose, of just how rigorously our minds had been trained in recent weeks that, exhausted as we might have been, we were still able to extrapolate an important set of implications from a fairly common physical deformity that had afflicted this latest victim. We began to discuss these implications at some length, continuing to do so as Marcus returned with his photographic equipment and got ready to take his experimental pictures. Subsequent questioning of those who had known the Lohmann boy at the Black and Tan bore our speculations out, and they are therefore worth mentioning.

Sara suggested that the killer might originally have been drawn to Lohmann because of a kind of identification with the boy’s physical plight. But if Lohmann had been resentful of any mention of his deformity—a strong possibility in a boy of his age and occupation—he would have reacted adversely to such charitable expressions. This reaction would, in turn, have sparked the killer’s usual rage with difficult young men. Kreizler agreed with all this and further explained that the betrayal inherent in Lohmann’s refusal of the killer’s empathy would have stirred a new and even deeper anger in our man. This could well account for the fact that the boy’s heart was missing: the killer had apparently meant to take his mutilations to a new extreme but had been interrupted by the guard. We all knew that this spelled trouble—we were not dealing with a man who would react well to having his intimate moments, sickening as they might be, cut short.

At this point in our discussion Marcus announced that he was ready to begin his experiment, at which Kreizler took a few steps back from the operating table to allow the several pieces of equipment Marcus had brought along to be moved next to the body. After requesting that the overhead electrical bulb be switched off, Marcus asked his brother to slowly lift Ernst Lohmann’s remaining eye out of its socket. When Lucius had complied, Marcus took a very small incandescent lamp and placed it behind the eye, onto which he focused his camera. After exposing two plates to this image, he then activated two small wires, whose ends were bared. He ran these wires into the nerves of the eye, activating the latter, and exposed several more plates. As a final step, he shut off the incandescent lamp and took two images of the unlit but still electrically activated eye. The whole thing seemed quite bizarre (indeed, I later learned that the French novelist Jules Verne had written of the procedure in one of his outlandish stories); but Marcus was quite hopeful, and as he turned the overhead lamp back on, he expressed his determination to return to his darkroom immediately.

We had packed all of Marcus’s equipment up and were nearly ready to depart when I caught sight of Kreizler staring at the Lohmann boy’s face, with far less detachment than he’d displayed during his examination of the body. Without myself looking at the mangled corpse, I stood by Laszlo and silently put a hand on his shoulder.

“A mirror image,” Kreizler mumbled. At first I thought he was referring to some part of Marcus’s procedure; but then I remembered the conversation we’d had weeks ago when we’d said that the condition of the victims’ bodies was in a real way a reflection of the psychic devastation that perpetually gnawed at our killer.

Roosevelt moved up beside me, his eyes also fixed on the body. “It’s an even worse sight, in this place,” he said quietly. “Clinical. Utterly dehumanized…”

“But why this?” Kreizler asked, of no one in particular. “Why just exactly
this
?” He held out a hand to the body, and I knew he was speaking of the mutilations.

“The devil himself only knows,” Theodore answered. “I’ve never seen anything like it, short of a red Indian.”

Laszlo and I both froze, and then spun silently on the man. Our stares must have been fairly intense, for Theodore looked momentarily unnerved. “And what’s gotten into you two?” he asked, a bit indignantly. “If I may make so bold?”

“Roosevelt,” Laszlo said evenly, taking a step forward. “Would you mind repeating what you just said?”

“I’ve been accused of many things when I speak,” Theodore answered, “but never mumbling. I believe I was clear.”

“Yes. Yes, you were.” The Isaacsons and Sara had drawn close, reading something big in the fire that had swept into Laszlo’s previously downcast features. “But what exactly did you mean?”

“I was simply thinking,” Roosevelt explained, still a little defensively, “of the only other violence like this that I’ve ever come across. It was when I was ranching, in the Dakota Badlands. I saw several bodies of white men who’d been killed by Indians, as a warning to other settlers. The corpses were cut up terribly, much like this one—in an effort, I suppose, to terrify the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Laszlo said, as much to himself as to Theodore. “That’s what you naturally would suppose. But was that, in fact, the purpose of it?” Kreizler began to pace around the operating table, rubbing his left arm slowly and nodding. “A model, he needs a model…It’s too consistent, too considered, too—structured. He’s modeling it after something…” Checking his silver watch, Laszlo turned back to Theodore. “Would you happen to know offhand, Roosevelt, what time the Museum of Natural History opens its doors?”

“I should hope I would,” Theodore answered proudly, “as my father was a founder and I myself am quite involved in—”

“What
time,
Roosevelt?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Kreizler nodded. “Excellent. Moore, you’ll come with me. As for the rest of you—Marcus, get to your darkroom and let’s see if this experiment of yours has produced anything. Sara, you and Lucius go back to Number 808 and get in touch with the War Department in Washington. Find out if they keep any records of soldiers dismissed for mental illness. Tell them we are only interested in soldiers who have served in the Army of the West. If you can’t get a telephone line through, send a cable.”

“I know a few people at War,” Roosevelt added. “If it would be any help.”

“It would indeed,” Laszlo answered. “Sara, take the names. Go, go, on your way, all of you!” As Sara and the Isaacsons left, taking with them Marcus’s equipment, Kreizler came back to Roosevelt and me. “You’ve realized what we’re looking for, Moore?”

“Yes,” I said. “But why the museum, exactly?”

“An old friend of mine. Franz Boas. If mutilations such as these do have some kind of cultural significance among Indian tribes, he’ll be able to tell us. And should such prove the case, Roosevelt, resounding congratulations will be due you.” Kreizler laid the dirty old sheet back over Ernst Lohmann’s body. “Unfortunately, I let Stevie take the calash home, which means we’ll have to get a cab. Can we drop you anywhere, Roosevelt?”

“No,” Theodore answered, “I’d better stay and cover our tracks. There may be a lot of questions, considering that crowd. But I wish you good hunting, gentlemen!”

The number of disgruntled people outside the morgue had only grown during the time we’d spent examining the Lohmann boy’s remains. Sara and the Isaacsons had apparently gotten through the throng without incident, for we saw no sign of them. Kreizler and I were not so lucky, however. We’d only made it halfway to the main gate of the hospital grounds, with the crowd suspiciously scrutinizing us every step of the way, when our path was blocked by a thickset, square-headed man who carried an old ax handle. The man fixed a cold stare of recognition on Kreizler, and when I turned I saw that Laszlo seemed to know him as well.

“Ah!” the man exclaimed, from deep in the pit of his considerable belly. “So they’ve brought in the famous Herr Doctor Kreizler!” The accent indicated a lower-class German.

“Herr Höpner,” Laszlo answered, in a firm but wary tone that indicated the man might know how to use the ax handle he was carrying. “I’m afraid my colleague and I have urgent business elsewhere. Kindly stand aside.”

“And what, then, of the Lohmann boy, Herr Doctor?” The man Höpner did not move. “Have you something to do with this matter?” A few of the people standing near him muttered echoes to the demand.