The Alienist - Caleb Carr [196]
When I reached the morgue I found Laszlo outside the large iron door in the back that we’d used to enter the building when we’d examined Ernst Lohmann’s body. He was leaning against the building, his eyes as wide, vacant, and black as the gaping holes our killer had left in the heads of his victims. Rain was cascading down off a gutter on the edge of the roof above and drenching him, and I tried to pull him away from it. But his body was stiff and intractable.
“Laszlo,” I said quietly. “Come on. Get in the cab.” I tugged at him a few more times without achieving anything, and then he finally spoke, in a hoarse monotone:
“I will not leave her.”
I nodded. “All right. Then let’s just stand in the doorway here, you’re getting soaked.”
His eyes alone moved as he glanced at his clothes; then he nodded once, and stumbled with me into the minimal shelter of the doorway. We stood there for quite some time until, finally, he spoke in the same lifeless voice:
“Did you know—my father—”
I looked at him, my own heart ready to burst at the pain that was in his face, and then nodded. “Yes. I knew him, Laszlo.”
Kreizler shook his head in a stiff jerk. “No. Do you know what my—father always said to me, when I was—a boy?”
“No. What?”
“That—” The voice was still scraping terribly, as if it were a labor to produce it, but the words began to come faster: “That I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. That I thought I knew how people should behave, that I thought I was a better person than he was. But one day—one day, he said, I would know that I wasn’t. Until then, I’d be nothing more than an—impostor…”
Once again, I couldn’t find a way to tell Laszlo how fully I understood, in light of Sara’s discovery, what he was saying; so I simply put a hand to his uninjured shoulder as he began to straighten his clothes absentmindedly. “I have—made arrangements. The mortician will be here soon. Then I’ve got to get home. Stevie and Cyrus…”
“Sara’s looking after them.”
His voice became suddenly strong, even somewhat violent: “I’ve got to look after them, John!” He shook a fist before him. “I’ve got to. I brought these people into my house. I was responsible for their safety. Look at them now—look! Two near dead, and one—one…” He gasped and looked at the iron door, as if he could see right through it to the rusted metal table on which now lay the girl who had embodied his hope of a new life.
Gripping him tighter, I said, “Theodore’s out looking—”
“I’m no longer interested in what the commissioner of police is doing,” Kreizler answered, quickly and sharply. “Nor in the activities of anyone else in that department.” He paused, and then, wincing as he moved his right arm, took my hand from his shoulder and looked away from me. “It’s over, John. This wretched, bloody business, this…investigation. Over.”
I was at something of a loss for words. He seemed perfectly serious. “Kreizler,” I finally said, “give yourself a couple of days before you—”
“Before I what?” he answered quickly. “Before I get one of you killed, too?”
“You’re not responsible for—”
“Don’t tell me I’m not responsible for it!” he raged. “Who, then, if not me? It’s my own vanity, just as Comstock said. I’ve been in a blind fury, trying to prove my precious points, oblivious of any danger it might pose. And what have they wanted? Comstock? Connor? Byrnes, those men on the train? They’ve wanted to stop me. But I thought that what I was doing was too important for me to take any note—I thought I knew better! We’ve been hunting a killer, John, but the killer isn’t the real danger—I am!” He hissed suddenly and clenched his teeth. “Well, I’ve seen enough. If I’m the danger then I shall remove myself. Let this man keep killing. It’s what they want. He’s a part of their order, their precious social order—without such creatures they’ve no scapegoats for their own wretched