The Alienist

the bottom of a commode.

In this place lived the being who had once been Japheth Dury and was now the murderer John Beecham; and within this spare little hole there had to be clues, difficult as they might be to see. Without speaking, I indicated the far end of the flat to the Isaacsons; they each nodded, then proceeded past the partition and into that area. Sara and I took a few tentative steps toward the old desk, while our guide remained alertly at the front door.

Our entire search could not have taken more than five minutes, so small and sparsely furnished was the place. The old desk had three drawers that Sara began to check in the near-darkness, putting her hands in each to make sure she missed nothing. Above the desk, tacked to the crumbling wall, was some sort of a map. Leaning over to study it, I noticed a peculiar feeling under my hands: picking them up, I discovered that the top of the desk had been deeply carved into a monotonous series of unembellished grooves. Putting my hands back down I looked at the map again: I was able to recognize the outline of Manhattan, but the marks that had been drawn over that outline were strange to me: a series of straight, intersecting lines with arcane numbers and symbols scribbled in at various points. I was about to put my head closer when I heard Sara say:

“Here. John.”

Looking down I saw her remove a small wooden box from the bottom drawer. She placed it on the grooved desktop rather fearfully, then stood away.

Affixed to the lid of the box was an old daguerreotype, very similar in style and composition to the Civil War work of the eminent photographer Mathew Brady. Based on the picture’s aged and battered condition I judged it to be of about the same vintage as Brady’s work. The image displayed was that of a dead white man: scalped, eviscerated, and emasculated, with arrows protruding from his arms and legs. His eyes were missing. There were no identifying marks on the picture, but it was obviously one of the Reverend Victor Dury’s creations.

The box on which the daguerreotype was mounted was closed tightly, but there seemed to be an aroma emanating from it—the same sort of aroma that’d been present in Beecham’s room at Mrs. Piedmont’s: rotting animal flesh. My heart sank as I laid hold of the thing, although before I could open it I heard Marcus’s voice:

“Oh, no. God, how…”

Then there were bustling sounds, and Marcus stumbled out to where Sara and I were standing. Even in the lamplight I could see that he was pale—a surprising condition, given that I’d watched the man calmly photograph scenes that would’ve turned most people’s stomachs. In a few seconds Lucius followed him in, bearing something in his arms.

“John!” Lucius called in quiet urgency. “John, it—it’s evidence! Good lord, I think we’ve got a straight murder investigation now!”

“Aw, shit,” said our man at the door. “Then youse is cops?”

Without answering I struck a match and held it high as I approached Lucius. Just as I focused in on the object in his arms, Sara let out a short cry and then clamped a hand over her mouth, spinning away.

Lucius was holding an enormous glass jar. Inside it, preserved in a substance that I could only suppose to be formaldehyde, were human eyes. Some still trailed their ganglia of optic nerves, and some were smoothly round; some were fresh, others milky and obviously aged; some were blue in color, some were brown, and others were hazel, gray, and green. But it was not the discovery or condition of the eyes, I now understood, that had stunned Marcus—it was their number. For these were not the ten eyes of our five murdered boys, nor even the fourteen eyes of the boys plus the Zweig children; these were the dozens—the dozens—of eyes of more than a score of victims. And all of them were gaping through the curved glass in what seemed silent accusation, pathetically begging to know what had taken us so very long…

In a moment my own eyes wandered back to the small box that Sara had found, which I now opened slowly. The stench of decay that wafted up was not so strong as I expected, allowing me to study the receptacle’s strange contents without difficulty. But I could make no sense of what I saw: A small, red-black piece of what looked like desiccated rubber.

“Lucius?” I said softly, holding it out toward him.

Setting the large jar down on the desk, Lucius took the box over by the front door and held it under the kerosene lamp. Our guide looked over his shoulder as the detective sergeant studied the contents.

“Shit?” the man with the nightstick said. “Sure enough smells like shit.”

“No,” Lucius answered evenly, eyes ever on the box. “It is, I believe, the preserved remnants of a human heart.”

That was enough to give even a Five Points thug pause, and our guide turned away and into the hall with a look of utter consternation on his face. “Who da hell are you people?” he breathed.

I kept my eyes on Lucius. “A heart? Is it the Lohmann boy’s?”

He shook his head. “Too old. This has been in here for a very long time. It looks as though it may even have been coated with something, a varnish of some kind.”

I turned to Sara, who was taking deep breaths and standing with her arms wrapped around her midsection. Touching her shoulder I said, “All right?”

She nodded once quickly. “Yes. Fine.”

My eyes went to Marcus. “You?”

“I think so. Will be, at any rate.”

“Lucius—” I waved the shorter Isaacson over. “Someone’s got to check that stove. Can you manage it?”

Lucius bobbed his head certainly: though he’d been apprehensive on the street, he was all business in this situation. “Let me borrow a match.” I gave him the little box from my pocket.

The rest of us listened as he went to the grimy black chunk of iron that stood against the partition. A few pieces of firewood were in a bin next to the thing, and a greasy roasting pan sat on top of it. Someone had apparently been cooking. Lucius struck a match, took a preparatory but calm breath, then pulled the door of the oven cavity open. I closed my eyes as he held the match inside; in another fifteen seconds, I heard the thing bang closed again.

“Nothing,” Lucius announced. “Grease, a charred potato—nothing else.”

I let out a lot of air and tapped Marcus’s shoulder. “What do you make out of this?” I said, pointing to the map of Manhattan on the wall.

Marcus studied it carefully. “Manhattan,” he said quickly. Then, after a few more seconds: “Looks like a surveyor’s map of some kind.” He poked at the spots where the map had been tacked to the wall, then pulled the tacks out. “Plaster hasn’t discolored. It was put up fairly recently, I’d say.”

Lucius rejoined us, and then we all stood in a tight circle away from the box and the jar that sat on the desk.

“That’s all that was in the back?” I asked the Isaacsons.

“That’s all,” Marcus said. “No clothes, nothing. If you ask me, he’s gone.”

“Gone?” Sara echoed.

Marcus nodded in disappointment. “Could be he knew we were closing in. But it certainly doesn’t look like he’s coming back.”

“But why would he leave,” Sara asked, “without taking all that—evidence?”

Marcus shook his head. “Maybe he doesn’t think it is evidence. Or maybe he was in a hurry. Or maybe…”

“Or maybe,” I said, voicing what we all were thinking, “he wanted us to find it.”

As we stood absorbing that idea, I noticed our guide straining to get a look at the jar on the desk, and moved to block his view with my body. Then Lucius spoke up: “That may be true, but we’ve still got to watch this place, in case he does come back. We should tell the commissioner to send other men down—because, like I say, we can treat this as a straight murder investigation now.”

“Do you think there’s enough evidence to make a charge stick?” Sara asked softly. “I know this sounds awful, but those aren’t necessarily the eyes of our victims.”

“No,” Lucius answered. “But unless he’s got one hell of an explanation for whose they are, I think any jury in the city will convict—especially if we fill in the background with what we know.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Sara and I will get up to Mulberry Street and tell Roosevelt to assign men to watch this building day and night. Lucius, you and Marcus will have to stay here until that relief comes. What have you got for weapons?” Marcus just shook his head, but Lucius produced the same service revolver that I’d seen him with at