The Alienist - Caleb Carr [116]
“It’s a damned good thought,” Marcus judged, with an enthusiastic knock of his pencil against his desk.
“It might tie a lot of things together,” Sara agreed.
Kreizler finally began to react: a slow nod. “It might, indeed,” he said, as he scrawled INCOGNITO PRIEST? in the center of the board. “The traits of background and character that we have described could fit a man of the cloth as well as any other—and the fact of his being a priest offers an attractive alternative to a religious mania. These could be personal conflicts playing out according to a schedule that happens to be natural, even convenient, for him. A more vigorous investigation of those other two priests will doubtless shed further light on the subject.” Kreizler turned. “And that—”
“I know, I know,” I said, holding up a hand. “The detective sergeants and myself.”
“How splendid to be correctly anticipated,” Kreizler answered with a chuckle.
As Marcus and I briefly discussed our growing investigative chores for the next few days, Lucius glanced over the note again. “The next line,” he announced, “seems to get back to the notion of sadism. He decides to wait, and to see the boy several times before the murder—again, he’s toying with him, while all the time he knows what he’s going to do. It’s the sporting, sadistic hunter.”
“Yes, I fear there’s nothing new in that sentence—not until we reach the end.” Kreizler tapped his chalk on the board. “‘That place’—the only expression, other than ‘lies,’ which receives the upper case.”
“Hatred again,” Sara said. “Of Paresis Hall specifically, or of the general type of behavior practiced there?”
“Maybe both,” Marcus said. “After all, Paresis Hall caters to a very specific clientele—men who want boys who dress up like women.”
Kreizler kept tapping at the box marked THE MOLDING VIOLENCE AND/OR MOLESTATION. “We have returned to the core of the matter. This is not a man who hates all children, nor a man who hates all homosexuals—nor, for that matter, a man who hates all boy-whores who dress up like women. This is a man of very particular tastes.”
“But you still do consider him homosexual, don’t you, Doctor?” Sara asked.
“Only in the sense that the London Ripper could be called heterosexual,” Kreizler answered, “because his victims happened to be women. The issue is almost irrelevant—this note proves as much. He may be homosexual, and he may be a pedophile, but sadism is the predominant perversion, and violence seems far more characteristic of his intimate contacts than do sexual or amorous feelings. He may not even be able to distinguish between violence and sex. Certainly, any sense of arousal seems to translate quickly into violence. And that, I am sure, is a pattern that was established during these initial molding experiences. The antagonists in those episodes were without question male—that fact comes into play far more than any true homosexual orientation, when he’s selecting his victims.”
“Was it a man that committed those early acts, then?” Lucius asked. “Or maybe another boy?”
Kreizler shrugged. “A difficult question. But we know this—certain boys inspire in the killer a rage so deep he’s constructed his entire existence around its expression. Which boys? As Moore has pointed out, those who are—either in the killer’s eyes or in fact—deceitful, as well as insolent.”
Sara indicated the note with a nod of her head. “‘Saucy.’”
“Yes,” Kreizler answered. “We have been correct in that assumption. We have further postulated that he chooses violence as a form for expressing that rage because he learned to do so in some sort of domestic setting, quite probably from a violent father whose actions went unacknowledged and unpunished. What was the cause of that original violence, insofar as our killer understood it? We have speculated on that, too.”
“Wait,” Sara said, in a moment of realization. She looked up at Kreizler. “We’ve come full circle, haven’t we, Doctor?”
“We have indeed,” Kreizler replied, drawing a line from one side of the chalkboard