The Alienist - Caleb Carr [176]
It was fortunate indeed, therefore, that when we returned to the Willard the clerk had a wire in hand for us. It had originated in Fort Yates, and must have been sent only moments after the Isaacsons got to that destination. Though brief, it was unhesitating in tone: THE LEAD IS SOLID. FOLLOW IT.
CHAPTER 33
* * *
The approach of dawn found us on a train and headed back to New York, where we planned to look in at Number 808 Broadway before going on to Newton, Massachusetts. It would have been impossible to do anything constructive in Washington—even sleep—once we’d had our inclination to pursue the Dury lead confirmed; the train ride north, on the other hand, would at least satisfy the craving for action and thereby allow us to rest easily for several hours. Such, at any rate, was my hope when we got on board; but I hadn’t been dozing in our darkened compartment for long when a feeling of deep uneasiness caused me to stir. Striking a match to try to determine if there was any rational basis for my fear, I saw Kreizler, sitting across from me, staring out the compartment window at the blackened landscape as it sped by.
“Laszlo,” I said quietly, studying his wide eyes by the orange light of the match. “What is it, what’s happened?”
The knuckle of his left forefinger was rubbing against his mouth. “The morbid imagination,” he mumbled.
I hissed suddenly as the match burned down to my fingers. Letting the flame fall to the floor and go out, I mumbled into the resurgent darkness. “What imagination? What are you talking about?”
“‘I myself have personally read this and know it to be true,’” he said, quoting our killer’s letter. “The cannibalism business. We’ve postulated a morbid, impressionable imagination as an explanation.”
“And?”
“The pictures, John,” Laszlo answered, and though I couldn’t see his face (or anything else in the compartment), his voice remained tense. “The photographs of massacred settlers. We’ve been assuming that our man must have been on the frontier at some point in his life, that only personal experience could have provided a model for his current abominations.”
“You’re saying Victor Dury’s pictures could’ve served that purpose?”
“Not for anyone. But for this man, given the impressionability created by a childhood of violence and fear. Remember what we said about the cannibalism—it was something he read, or perhaps heard, probably as a child. A frightening story that left a lasting impression. Wouldn’t photographs produce a far more extreme result, in a person characterized by such an obsessive and morbid imagination?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. You’re thinking about the missing brother?”
“Yes. Japheth Dury.”
“But why would anyone show such things to a child?”
Kreizler answered in a distracted tone: “‘Dirtier than a Red Injun…’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m not certain, John. Perhaps he stumbled on them. Or perhaps they were used as a disciplinary tool. More answers to be found in Newton, I hope.”
I thought the matter over for a moment, then felt my head bobbing back down toward the seat that I was lying on. “Well,” I finally said, giving in to the bob, “if you don’t get some rest you won’t be fit to talk to anyone, in Newton or anywhere else.”
“I know,” Kreizler answered. Then I could hear him shifting on his seat. “But the thought struck me…”
The next thing I knew we were in the Grand Central Depot, being rudely awakened by the slams of compartment doors and the bumps of bags against the wall of our compartment. Looking none the better for our eventful night, Kreizler and I stumbled off the train and out of the station into an overcast,