The Alienist - Caleb Carr [162]
It was Byrnes again, back in the room without our having heard his approach. The man really was unnerving. “The great unwashed,” he went on, taking a cigar from a case on Morgan’s desk, “will be made to understand that these things happen. It’s no one’s fault. Boys engage in criminal conduct. Boys die. Who kills them? Why? Impossible to determine. And there’s no need to. Instead, you fix the public’s attention on the more basic lesson—” Byrnes struck a match on his shoe and lit his cigar, the tip of which flamed high. “Obey the law in the first place and none of the rest occurs.”
“But damn it, Byrnes,” I said, “we can solve it, if you’ll just get out of the way. Why, just last night I myself—”
Kreizler stopped me by grabbing my wrist tightly. Byrnes slowly came over to my chair, leaned down, and let me have a big dose of cigar smoke. “Last night you what, Moore?”
It was impossible not to remember at such a moment that you were dealing with a man who’d personally beaten dozens of suspected and de facto criminals senseless, a style of interrogation that had become known throughout New York and the rest of the country by the name Byrnes himself had given it: “the third degree.” All the same, I attempted defiance. “Don’t try that strong-arm stuff with me, Byrnes. You’ve got no authority anymore. You haven’t even got your thugs to back you up.”
I glimpsed teeth behind the mustache. “You’d like me to call Connor in?” I said nothing, and Byrnes chuckled. “You always had a big mouth, Moore. Reporters. But let’s play it your way. Tell Mr. Morgan here how you’ll solve the case. Your principles of detection. Explain them.”
I turned to Morgan. “Well, it won’t make sense to men like Inspector Byrnes, sir, and it may not to you, but—we’ve adopted what you might call a reverse investigative procedure.”
Byrnes laughed out loud. “What you might call ass-backwards!”
Realizing my mistake, I went for another approach: “That is, we start with the prominent features of the killings themselves, as well as the personality traits of the victims, and from those we determine what kind of a man might be at work. Then, using evidence that would otherwise have seemed meaningless, we begin to close in.”
I knew I was on shaky ground, and was relieved to hear Kreizler chime in at this point:
“There is some precedent, Mr. Morgan. Similar efforts, though far more rudimentary, were made during the Ripper murders in London eight years ago. And the French police are currently seeking a Ripper of their own—they’ve used some techniques that are not unlike ours.”
“The London Ripper,” Byrnes called out, “was not apprehended without my hearing about it, was he, Doctor?”
Kreizler frowned. “No.”
“And the French police, using their anthropo-hodge-podge—have they made any progress in their case?”
Laszlo’s scowl deepened. “Very little.”
Byrnes finally did us the decency of looking up from his book. “Quite a pair of examples, gentlemen.”
There was a moment of silence, during which I felt our cause to be weakening. Putting new determination into my words, I said, “The fact remains—”
“The fact remains,” Byrnes interrupted, coming back over to us but speaking to Morgan, “that this is an intellectual exercise which offers no hope of solving the case. All these people are doing is giving every person they interview the idea that a solution is possible. As I say, that’s not just useless, it’s dangerous. The only thing the immigrants ought to be told is that they and their children had better obey the laws of this city. If they don’t, nobody else can be held responsible for what happens. Maybe they’ll find that point hard to swallow. But this idiot Strong and his cowboy police commissioner will be out before long. And then we’ll be able to bring back the old force-feeding techniques. Quickly.”
Morgan nodded slowly, then glanced from Byrnes to Kreizler. “You’ve made your point, Inspector. I wonder if now you’ll excuse us?”
In contrast to Comstock and the churchmen, Byrnes seemed almost amused by Morgan’s curt dismissal: as he left the library