The Alienist (26 page)

“Ask yourself a more basic question,” Laszlo answered. “What is the strongest force behind imagination? Normal imagination, but also and particularly the morbid?”

Sara had no trouble with that: “Fear.”

“Fear of what you see,” Laszlo pressed, “or of what you hear?”

“Both,” Sara answered. “But mostly what you hear—‘nothing is as terrible in reality,’ et cetera.”

“Isn’t reading a form of hearing?” Marcus asked.

“Yes, but even well-to-do children don’t learn to read until many years into childhood,” Kreizler answered. “I offer this only as a theory, but suppose the cannibalism story was then what it is now—a tale designed to terrify. Only now, rather than the terrorized party, our man is the terrorizer. As we’ve constructed him thus far, wouldn’t he find that immensely satisfying, even amusing?”

“But who told it to him?” Lucius asked.

Kreizler shrugged. “Who generally terrifies children with stories?”

“Adults who want them to behave,” I answered quickly. “My father had a story about the Japanese emperor’s torture chamber that had me up for nights, picturing every detail—”

“Excellent, Moore! My very point.”

“But what about—” Lucius’s words became a bit halting. “What about the—I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I still don’t know how to discuss certain things with a lady present.”

“Then pretend one isn’t,” Sara said, a bit impatiently.

“Well,” Lucius went on, no more comfortably, “what about the focus on the—buttocks?”

“Ah, yes,” Kreizler answered. “Part of the original story, do we think? Or a twist of our man’s invention?”

“Uhhh—” I droned, having thought of something but, like Lucius, unsure of how to phrase it in front of a woman. “The, uh—the—references, not only to dirt, but to—fecal matter—”

“The word he uses is
‘shit,’
” Sara said bluntly, and everyone in the room, including Kreizler, seemed to spring a few inches off the floor for a second or two. “Honestly, gentlemen,” Sara commented with some disdain. “If I’d known you were all so modest I’d have stuck to secretarial work.”

“Who’s modest?” I demanded—not one of my stronger retorts.

Sara frowned at me. “
You,
John Schuyler Moore. I happen to know that you have, on occasion, paid members of the female sex to spend intimate moments with you—I suppose
they
were strangers to that kind of language?”

“No,” I protested, aware that my face was a bright red beacon. “But they weren’t—weren’t—”

“Weren’t?” Sara asked sternly.

“Weren’t—well, ladies!”

At that Sara stood up, put one hand to a hip, and with the other produced her derringer from some nether region of her dress. “I would like to warn you all right now,” she said tightly, “that the next man who uses the word ‘lady,’ in that context and in my presence, will be
shitting
from a new and artificially manufactured hole in his gut.” She put the gun away and sat back down.

The room was as quiet as the grave for half a minute, and then Kreizler spoke softly: “I believe you were discussing the references to shit, Moore?”

I gave Sara a rather injured and indignant glance—which she thoroughly ignored, the wretch—and then resumed my thought: “They seem connected—all the scatological references and the preoccupation with that part of the anato—” I could feel Sara’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. “And the preoccupation with the
ass,
” I finished, as defiantly as I could manage.

“Indeed they do,” Kreizler said. “Connected metaphorically as well as anatomically. It’s puzzling—and there’s not a great deal of literature on such subjects. Meyer has speculated on the possible causes and implications of nocturnal urinary incontinence, and anyone who works with children finds the occasional subject who is abnormally fixated on feces. Most alienists and psychologists, however, consider this a form of mysophobia—the morbid fear of dirt and contamination, which our man certainly seems to have.” Kreizler chalked the word
MYSOPHOBIA
up in the center of the board, but then stood away from it, looking dissatisfied. “There seems, however, more to it than just that…”

“Doctor,” Sara said, “I’ve got to urge you again to broaden your concepts of the mother and father in this case. I know your experience with children past a certain age is as extensive as anyone’s, but have you ever been closely involved with the care of an infant?”

“Only as a physician,” Kreizler answered. “And then rarely. Why, Sara?”

“It’s not a time of childhood that men figure greatly in, as a rule. Do any of you know men who have played a large part in raising children younger than, say, three or four?” We all shook our heads. I suspect that even if one of us
had
known such a man he would have denied it, just to keep the derringer out of sight. Sara turned back to Laszlo. “And when you find children with an abnormal fixation on defecation, Doctor, what form does it generally take?”

“Either an excessive urge or morbid reluctance. Generally.”

“Urge or reluctance to what?”

“To go to the toilet.”

“And how have they learned to go to the toilet?” Sara asked, keeping right after Kreizler.

“They’ve been taught.”

“By men, generally?”

Kreizler had to pause, at that. The line of questioning had seemed obscure at first, but now we could all see where Sara was going: if our killer’s rather obsessive concern with feces, buttocks, and the more generalized “dirt” (no subjects were, after all, mentioned more in the note) had been implanted in childhood, it was likely that contact with a woman or women—mother, nurse, governess, or what have you—had been involved in the process.

“I see,” Kreizler finally said. “I take it, then, that you have yourself observed the process, Sara?”

“Occasionally,” she replied. “And I’ve heard stories. A girl does. It’s always assumed that you’ll need the knowledge. The whole affair can be surprisingly difficult—embarrassing, frustrating, sometimes even violent. I wouldn’t bring it up, except that the references are so insistent. Doesn’t it suggest something out of the ordinary?”

Laszlo cocked his head. “Perhaps. I’m afraid I can’t consider such observations conclusive, however.”

“Won’t you at least consider the possibility that a woman—perhaps the mother, though not necessarily—has played a darker role than you’ve yet allowed?”

“I hope that I am not deaf to
any
possibilities,” Kreizler said, turning to the board but writing nothing. “However, I fear we have strayed too far into the realm of the barely plausible.”

Sara sat back, again disappointed at the result of her attempts to make Kreizler see another dimension in the imaginary tale of our killer. And I must confess, I was somewhat confused myself; after all, it had been Kreizler who had asked Sara to come up with such theories, knowing that none of us could. To dismiss her thoughts in such a manner seemed arbitrary at best, especially when those thoughts sounded (to the semitrained ear, at any rate) as well reasoned as his own hypotheses.

“The resentment of immigrants is repeated in the third paragraph,” Kreizler said, plowing on. “And then there is the reference to a ‘Red Injun.’ Other than another attempt to make us think him an ignoramus, what do we make of it?”

“The whole phrase seems important,” Lucius answered. “‘Dirtier than a Red Injun.’ He was looking for a superlative, and that’s what he came up with.”

Marcus pondered the question: “If we assume that the immigrant resentment is family-based, then he himself isn’t an Indian. But he must’ve had some kind of contact with them.”

“Why?” Kreizler asked. “Race hatred doesn’t require familiarity.”

“No, but the two usually do accompany each other,” Marcus insisted. “And look at the phrase itself—it’s fairly casual, as if he naturally associates filth with Indians and assumes everyone else does, too.”

I nodded, seeing his point. “That’d be out west. You don’t usually hear that kind of talk in the East—it’s not that we’re more enlightened, by any means, but too few people share the point of reference. What I mean is, if he’d said ‘dirtier than a nigger,’ you might guess the South, right?”

“Or Mulberry Street,” Lucius suggested quietly.

“True,” I acknowledged. “I’m not saying the attitude’s confined. After all, this could just be somebody who’s read too many Wild West stories—”

“Or someone with excessive imagination,” Sara added.

“But,” I went on, “it might work as a general indication.”

“Well, it’s the obvious implication,” Kreizler sighed, piquing me a bit. “But someone somewhere said that we must never overlook the obvious. What about it, Marcus—does the idea of a frontier upbringing appeal?”

Marcus thought it over. “It has attractions. First of all, it explains the knife, which is a frontier weapon. It also gives us the hunting, recreational and otherwise, without the need for a wealthy background. And while there’s plenty of terrain for mountaineering in the west, it’s concentrated in specific areas, which might help. There are whole communities of German and Swiss immigrants out there, too.”

“Then we shall mark it as a favored possibility,” Kreizler said, doing so on the board, “though we can go no farther for the time being. That takes us to the next paragraph, at which point our man finally gets down to specifics.” Kreizler picked up the note again, and then began to rub the back of his neck slowly. “On February eighteenth he spots the Santorelli boy. Having spent more time than I’d care to admit going over calendars and almanacs, I can tell you right away that February eighteenth was Ash Wednesday this year.”

“He mentions ashes on the face,” Lucius added. “That would mean that the boy went to church.”

“The Santorellis are Catholic,” Marcus added. “There aren’t many churches near Paresis Hall, Catholic or otherwise, but we could try checking a broader area. It’s possible someone will remember seeing Giorgio. He would have been fairly distinctive, especially in a church setting.”

“And it’s always possible that the killer got his first glimpse of him near the church,” I said. “Or even in it. If we get lucky, someone may have witnessed the meeting.”

“You two seem to have planned your weekend quite thoroughly,” Kreizler answered, at which Marcus and I, realizing that we’d proposed long days of footwork, frowned at each other. “Although,” Laszlo went on, “the use of the word ‘parading’ makes me doubt that they met very near a house of worship—particularly one in which Giorgio had just attended services.”

“It does suggest that the boy was hawking his wares,” I said.

“It suggests many things.” Laszlo thought for a moment, sounding the word: “‘Parading…’ It might fit with your idea that the man suffers from a disability or deformity of some kind, Moore. There’s a trace of envy in the word, as if he himself is excluded from such behavior.”

“I don’t quite see that,” Sara answered. “It sounds more—disdainful, to me. That could simply be due to Giorgio’s occupation, of course, but I don’t think so. There’s no pity or sympathy in the tone, only harshness. And a certain sense of familiarity, as with the lying.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s that lecturing tone you’d get from a schoolmaster who knows just what you’re up to because he was a boy once himself.”

“Then you’re saying he disdains an open display of sexual behavior, not because he was prevented from engaging in such activities himself, but precisely because he
did
engage in them?” Laszlo cocked his head and puzzled with the notion. “Perhaps. But wouldn’t the adults in his life have stifled such antics? And doesn’t that lead us back to the idea of envy, even if there’s no physical deformity?”

“But the issue must still have caused a scene, at least once,” Sara volleyed, “in order for such restrictions to have been laid down.”

Laszlo paused and then nodded. “Yes. Yes, you have a point, Sara.” That brought a small but satisfied smile to her face. “And then,” Kreizler continued, “whether he defied or submitted to the ban, the seed of future difficulty would have been planted. Good.” Kreizler made a few quick scribbles to this effect on the left-hand side of the board. “On, then, to the ashes and paint.”

“He puts the two together very easily,” Lucius said, “whereas, to the average observer, there’d appear to be some inconsistency—I’ll bet the priest at the service thought so.”

“It’s as if the one isn’t any better than the other,” Marcus added. “The tone remains pretty deprecating.”

“And that presents a problem.” Kreizler went to his desk and fetched a bound calendar, one that bore a cross on its cover. “On February eighteenth he saw Giorgio Santorelli for the first time, and I very much doubt that the encounter was accidental. The specificity suggests that he was out looking for just that type of boy on that day in particular. We have to assume, therefore, that the fact of its being Ash Wednesday is significant. In addition, the ashes, in tandem with the paint, seem to have heightened his reaction, which was essentially one of anger. That might suggest that he resented a boy-whore’s presuming to participate in a Christian rite—yet as the detective sergeants have noted, there is no sense of reverence for that rite in his language. Quite the contrary. I have not, to this point, believed that we are dealing with a man who suffers from a religious mania. The evangelical and messianic qualities that tend to mark such pathologies are not displayed, even in this note. And though my conviction in this regard has, admittedly, been a bit weakened by the schedule of the killings, the indications remain contradictory.” Kreizler studied the calendar hard. “If there were only some significance to the day Giorgio was killed…”

We knew what he was referring to. Laszlo’s recent investigation of the timings of the murders had revealed that all save one could be tied to the Christian calendar: January 1st marked the circumcision of Jesus and the Feast of Fools; February 2nd was the Purification of the Virgin Mary, or Candlemas Day; and Ali ibn-Ghazi had died on Good Friday. There had been holy days when no murders had taken place, of course—Epiphany, for instance, had passed without incident, as had the Five Wounds of Christ on February 20th. But if March 3rd, the date of the Santorelli killing, had possessed a Christian connotation, we could have been relatively certain that some kind of religious element was involved in our man’s timing. No such connotation existed, however.