The Alienist - Caleb Carr [200]
“John,” Sara said, admonishing me good-humoredly. “That entire board is just speculation. But it works.” I set the chalk down and turned back around to find Sara absolutely beaming. “You see now, don’t you?” she said. “We’ve got to do it, John—we’ve got to keep going!”
And of course we did.
So began twenty of the most extraordinary and difficult days of my life. Knowing that the Isaacsons would not get back to New York any earlier than Wednesday night, Sara and I set ourselves the task of sharing, interpreting, and recording all the information we’d gathered during the previous week, in order to have it ready for the detective sergeants to quickly assimilate on their return. We spent most of the next few days together at Number 808, going over facts and—on a less obvious, unacknowledged level—reshaping the atmosphere and spirit of our headquarters so as to ensure that Kreizler’s would not become a crippling absence. All obvious signs and reminders of Laszlo’s presence were quietly put aside or removed, and we pushed his desk into a corner, so that the other four could be re-formed into a smaller (or rather, as I chose to view it, tighter) ring. Neither Sara nor I were particularly happy about doing any of this, but we tried not to be sad or maudlin, either. As always, focus was the key: so long as we kept our vision steadily fixed on the twin goals of preventing another murder and capturing our killer, we found we could get through even the most painful and disorienting moments of transition.
Not that we simply wiped Kreizler out of our minds; on the contrary, Sara and I spoke of him several times, in an effort to fully comprehend just what twists and turns his mind had taken after Mary’s death. Naturally, these conversations involved some discussion of Laszlo’s past; and thinking about the unfortunate reality of Kreizler’s upbringing as I talked with Sara dispelled the last of the anger I felt over Laszlo’s abandonment of the investigation, to the extent that on Tuesday morning I actually went, without telling Sara, back to Kreizler’s house.
I made the trip in part to see how Stevie and Cyrus were doing, but primarily to smooth over the bumps and cracks that had been left by Laszlo’s and my parting at Bellevue. Thankfully, I found that my old friend was also anxious to put things right in this regard, though he was still quite determined not to return to our investigation. He spoke of Mary’s death quietly, making it easy for me to appreciate how thoroughly his spirit had been savaged by the incident. But more than that, I think it was the shattering of his confidence that prevented him from coming back to the hunt. For only the second time in his life that I could recall (the first having occurred during the week before we visited Jesse Pomeroy), Laszlo seemed to truly doubt his own judgment. And while I didn’t agree with his self-indictment, I certainly couldn’t blame him. Every human being must find his own way to cope with such severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses. And so I finally shook Laszlo’s hand and accepted his determination to bow out of our work, even though it pained me deeply. We said goodbye, and I wondered again how we would ever get along without him; yet before I’d even gotten clear of his front yard, my thoughts had turned back to the case.
Sara’s trip to New Paltz, I learned during those three days before the Isaacsons returned, had confirmed many of our hypotheses concerning our killer’s childhood years. She’d been able to locate several of Japheth Dury’s contemporaries, and they acknowledged—rather ruefully, to give them their due—that the boy had suffered much mockery because of his violent facial spasms. Throughout his years at school (and as Marcus had speculated, the New Paltz school had taught the Palmer system of handwriting at that time), as well as on those special occasions when he accompanied his parents into town, Japheth would often be set on by gangs of children who made a great game out of