The Alienist - Caleb Carr [169]
We then went over the rest of the cases I’d culled, though for various reasons we eventually ruled them all out. After that, we dove into the stack of names that Kreizler had gathered at St. Elizabeth’s, and succeeded in eliminating all but a few of them over the next several hours. Finally, at well past one o’clock in the morning, I retired to my room and poured out a healthy whiskey and soda, which I only managed to get halfway through before I fell asleep in my clothes.
Thursday morning found me back at my desk at the Interior Department, lost in more stories of unsolved deaths on the frontier. Along toward noon Hobart returned from his brief trip to the War Department, where he’d discovered a disappointing fact: The cavalry sergeant who’d figured in the story about the murdered grandfather had been forty-five years old at the time of the incident. That made him fifty-two in 1896: too old to fit the portrait we’d painted of our killer. Still, it seemed worthwhile to make a note of the man’s name and last known whereabouts (he’d opened a dry goods store in Cincinnati after retiring from the army), just in case the age portion of our hypothesis turned out to be wrong.
“Sorry I couldn’t have brought better news,” Hobart said, as I jotted down the particulars. “Any interest in lunch?”
“Plenty,” I answered. “Pick me up in an hour, I should make it through the 1892 cases by then.”
“Fine.” He started to move away from the desk, then touched his jacket pocket and seemed to remember something. “Oh, John. I meant to ask you—this search of yours is definitely confined to the frontier states and territories, is that right?” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket.
“That’s right. Why?”
“Nothing. Just an odd story. I found it after you left last night.” He tossed the piece of paper on my desk. “But it won’t work—happened in New York State. Chops?”
I picked up the paper and began reading it. “What?”
“For lunch. Chops? There’s a splendid new place on the Hill. Good beer, too.”
“Fine.”
Hobart sped away to catch a pretty young archivist who’d just passed my desk. From the direction of a nearby staircase I heard the woman squeal, and then there was a slapping sound and a little yelp of pain from Hobart. Chuckling quietly at the fellow’s hopelessness, I leaned back in my chair to study the document he’d left me.
It related the curious story of a minister named Victor Dury and his wife, who in 1880 had been found murdered in their very modest home outside New Paltz, New York. The bodies had been what the document called “most foully and savagely torn to bits.” Reverend Dury had formerly been a missionary in South Dakota, where he’d apparently made enemies among the Indian tribes; in fact, the constabulary in New Paltz had decided that the murders were an act of revenge on the part of several embittered Indians who’d been sent east by their chief for that very purpose. This bit of “detective” work had been the result of a note from the assassins found on the scene that explained the killings and stated that the dead couple’s teenaged son was being taken back to live among the Indians as one of their own. It was quite a grim little tale, one that would have been of obvious use to us had its setting been further west. I put the paper aside, but in a few minutes picked it up again, wondering if there wasn’t at least a chance that we were wrong about our killer’s geographic background. Finally deciding to discuss the matter with Kreizler, I tucked the document away in my pocket.
The rest of the day offered only two cases that held out any hope of advancing our investigation. The first involved a group of children and their teacher who’d been slaughtered during their studies in an isolated schoolhouse; and the second, yet another prairie family who’d been massacred after a treaty violation. Realizing that the two accounts were meager reward for a long day’s work, I set my sights on the Willard Hotel, hoping that