The Alienist - Caleb Carr [27]
“Who would?”
But Laszlo didn’t seem to hear me. “Do either of you remember,” he continued, in the same distant tone, “an interesting case of some three years ago, also involving murdered children? Roosevelt, I’m afraid it was at the height of your struggles in Washington, so you may not have heard. And Moore, I believe you were at the time involved in a rather heated battle with The Washington Post, which wanted Roosevelt’s head on a platter.”
“The Post,” I sighed in disgust. “The Post was in the muck up to its eyes with every illegal government appointee—”
“Yes, yes,” Kreizler answered, holding up the weakened left arm to head me off. “There is no question that yours was the honorable position. The loyal one, too, although your editors seemed to be less enthusiastic in their support.”
“They came ’round in the end,” I said, puffing up the chest a bit. “Not that it saved my job,” I added, slacking again.
“Now, now. No self-recrimination, Moore. But as I was saying, three years ago a water tower above a large tenement on Suffolk Street just north of Delancey was struck by lightning. The tower was the highest structure in the neighborhood, and the event was perfectly explicable, if slightly unusual. When the building’s residents and the fire department reached the roof, however, some were inclined to view it as a providential event—for the tower contained the bodies of a pair of children. A brother and sister. Their throats had been cut. It so happened that I knew the family. They were Jews from Austria. The children were quite beautiful—delicate features, enormous brown eyes—and also quite troublesome. An embarrassment to the family. They stole, lied, attacked other children—uncontrollable. In fact, there was very little remorse in the neighborhood over their deaths. The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition when they were found. The boy’s had falled off an interior platform on which they were originally placed, and into the water. It was badly bloated. The girl’s was somewhat more intact for having stayed dry, but any clues that might have been gathered from it were destroyed by another incompetent coroner. I never saw anything more than the official reports, but I did note one curious detail from those.” He pointed with his left hand to his face. “The eyes were gone.”
A quiver went through me as I remembered not only the Santorelli boy but the two other murders that Roosevelt had told me of the night before. Glancing at Roosevelt, I saw that he had made the same connection: while his body was quite still, his eyes were wide with apprehension. But we both tried to battle the feeling off, Roosevelt declaring, “That’s not uncommon. Particularly if the bodies were exposed for a long period of time. And if the throats were cut, there would have been plenty of blood to attract scavengers.”
“Perhaps,” Kreizler said with a judicious nod as he continued pacing. “But the water tower was enclosed, with the exact purpose of keeping scavengers and vermin out.”
“I see.” Theodore puzzled with it. “Were those facts reported?”
“They were,” Kreizler answered. “In the World, I believe.”
“But,” I protested, “the water tower or building doesn’t exist that can keep certain animals out. Rats, for instance.”
“True, John,” Kreizler said. “And in the absence of any further details, I was forced to accept that explanation. Why even New York City rats, on discovering a pair of bodies, should so carefully gnaw out only the eyes was a disturbing mystery that I tried to ignore and which remained unaddressed. Until last night.” Kreizler took to pacing the floor again. “As soon as I saw the condition of the Santorelli boy, I made an examination of the ocular orbits of the skull. Working by torchlight was hardly ideal, but I found what I was looking for. On the malar bone as well as the supraorbital ridge were a series of narrow grooves, and on the greater wing of the sphenoid—at the base of the cavities—several small indentations. All