The Alienist

acknowledgment in natives of this city.

Our hansom released us at Bowling Green, and we crossed over to enter Battery Park. Kreizler’s calash stood at the curb on Battery Place, with Stevie Taggert aboard and huddled in a large blanket.

“Stevie,” I said. “Keeping an eye out for the precinct boys?”

He nodded and shivered. “And staying away from that,” he said, nodding toward the interior of the park. “It’s a awful business, Mr. Moore.”

Inside the park, a very few arc lights directed us along a straight path toward the prodigious stone walls of Castle Garden. Formerly a heavily armed fort called Castle Clinton, the structure had been built to guard New York during the War of 1812, after which it was turned over to the city and converted into a covered pavilion that saw years of use as an opera house. In 1855 it was transformed again, into New York’s immigration station; and before Ellis Island usurped that role in 1892, no fewer than seven million transplanted souls had passed through the old stone fort in Battery Park. City officials had recently been casting around for some new use to make of the thing, and had decided on housing the New York Aquarium inside its round walls. That remodeling was now under way, and the telltale signs of construction greeted Sara and me even before we could clearly make out the fort’s walls against the night sky.

Under those walls we found Marcus Isaacson and Cyrus Montrose standing over a man who wore a long greatcoat and had a wide-brimmed hat clutched tightly in his hands. There was a badge pinned to the man’s coat, but at the moment he looked anything but authoritative: He was seated on a pile of cut boards, holding his pale face over a bucket and breathing hard. Marcus was trying to ask him some questions, but the fellow was clearly in some kind of shock. We approached, and both Cyrus and Marcus nodded our way.

“The watchman?” I asked.

“Yes,” Marcus answered. His voice was energized but tightly controlled. “He found the body at about one o’clock, on the roof. Apparently he makes his rounds every hour or so.” Marcus leaned over the man. “Mr. Miller? I’m going back upstairs. Take your time, come back up when you’re ready. But under no circumstances are you to leave. All right?” The man looked up, his dark, grizzled features full of horror, and nodded blankly. Then he quickly bent over the bucket again, though he didn’t retch. Marcus turned to Cyrus. “Make sure he stays put, will you, Cyrus? We need a lot more answers than we’ve gotten.”

“All right, Detective Sergeant,” Cyrus answered, and then Marcus, Sara, and I went through the mammoth black gates of Castle Garden.

“The man’s a wreck,” Marcus said, jerking his head back toward the watchman. “All I’ve gotten out of him is a passionately sworn statement that at twelve-fifteen the body was not where it is now, and that these front doors were bolted. The rear doors were chained, I’ve checked them—no sign of tampering with the locks. I’m afraid it’s all very reminiscent of the Paresis Hall situation, John. No way in or out, but someone managed it all the same.”

The renovation of the interior walls of Castle Garden was only half-finished. On the floor space between all the lathing, plaster, and paint sat a series of huge glass water tanks, some under construction, some finished but unfilled, and some already housing their designated occupants: various species of exotic fish, whose wide eyes and skittish movements seemed all too appropriate, given what had occurred in their new home that night. Flashes of silver and brilliantly colored scales caught the light of a few dim worklamps that were on, increasing the eerie impression that the fish were a terrified audience searching for a way out of this place of death and back to those deep, dark regions where men and their brutal ways were unknown.

We climbed an old staircase in one wall of the fort, eventually emerging above the shell that had been built over the old ramparts to cover the formerly open central yard. A decagonal turret with two windows in each face stood at the center of the roof, which offered a commanding view of New York harbor and Bartholdi’s still-new statue of Lady Liberty out on Bedloe’s Island.

Near the edge of the roof closest to the waterfront were Roosevelt, Kreizler, and Lucius Isaacson. Next to them stood a large, boxy camera on a wooden tripod, and lying in front of the camera, bathed in the light of another worklamp, was the cause of our coming together. The blood was visible even from a distance.

Lucius’s attention was fixed on the body, but Kreizler and Roosevelt were facing away and talking very heatedly. When Kreizler saw us emerge from the staircase he came directly over, Roosevelt following behind and shaking his head. Marcus moved to the camera as Laszlo addressed Sara and me.

“Based on the condition of the body,” Kreizler said, “there would seem to be little doubt. It’s our man’s work.”

“A roundsman from the Twenty-seventh Precinct was first on the scene,” Theodore added. “He says he can remember seeing the boy regularly at the Golden Rule, though he doesn’t recall any name.” (The Golden Rule Pleasure Club was a disorderly house on West Fourth Street that specialized in boy-whores.)

Kreizler put his hands on Sara’s shoulders. “It’s not an easy sight, Sara.”

She nodded. “I didn’t expect it to be.”

Laszlo studied her reactions carefully. “I’d like you to assist the detective sergeant with his postmortem—he’s aware of your training as a nurse. It won’t be long before the precinct investigators arrive, and there’s much for each of us to do before then.”

Sara nodded again, breathed once deeply, and moved toward Lucius and the body. Kreizler began to speak to me, but I put him off for a moment and trailed a few steps behind Sara as she moved toward the glowing hemisphere of electric light in the corner of the rooftop.

The body was that of an olive-skinned boy, with delicate Semitic features and thick black hair on the right side of his head. On the left side, a large section of scalp had been torn away, revealing the slick surface of the skull. Other than that, the mutilations seemed to be identical to those that had marked Giorgio Santorelli (except that the injuries to the buttocks had not been repeated): the eyes were missing, the genitals had been cut off and stuffed in the mouth, the torso was crisscrossed by deep lacerations, the wrists were bound, and the right hand had been severed and apparently removed from the scene. As Kreizler had said, there seemed little doubt about who was responsible. It was all as distinctive as a signature. That same terrible sense of pathos that I’d felt on the Williamsburg Bridge anchor—prompted not only by the age of the victim but as well by the cruel way in which the body was trussed and pushed to the ground—returned to steal my breath and rattle what seemed every bone in my body.

I watched Sara carefully without moving closer, ready to assist if she should be overcome, but not wishing her to think that I expected her to be. Her eyes, as they took in the sight, went wide and her head shook, quickly and quite visibly. She clasped her hands together tightly, took another deep breath, and then stood by Lucius.

“Detective Sergeant?” she said. “Dr. Kreizler says I’m to assist you.”

Lucius looked up, impressed at Sara’s composure, and then wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Yes. Thank you, Miss Howard. We’ll begin with the injury to the scalp…”

I headed back to Kreizler and Roosevelt. “That’s one gutsy girl,” I said with a shake of my head, but neither of them acknowledged the remark.

Kreizler slapped a newspaper on my chest and spoke bitterly. “Your friend Steffens has written quite an article for the morning edition of the Post, John. How, how could anyone be so stupid?”

“There’s no excuse,” Roosevelt said glumly. “I can only think that Steffens considered the story fair game, so long as he didn’t reveal your involvement in the case, Doctor. But I’ll have him in my office first thing this morning and, by thunder, I’ll make the situation clear to him!”

Prominently displayed on the Post’s front page was an article announcing that the Zweig killings and the Santorelli murder were now believed by “high police officials” to be the work of the same man. The article made less out of the apparently unusual nature of the killer than out of the fact that the link to the Zweigs demonstrated that the “ghoulish fiend” was not drawn exclusively to child prostitutes: It was now clear, Steffens declared in his best rabble-rousing style, that “no children are safe.” There were other sensational details, as well: Santorelli, it was stated, had been “assaulted” before his death (in fact, Kreizler had found no evidence of sexual violation), and in some quarters of the city the murders were being talked of as the work of a supernatural creature—though “the infamous Ellison and his cohorts” made “far more promising suspects.”

I folded the paper and tapped it slowly against my leg. “This is very bad.”

“Bad,” Kreizler said, controlling his anger, “but done. And we must try to undo it. Moore, is there any chance that you can persuade your editors to run a piece in the Times denouncing all this as speculation?”