The Alienist - Caleb Carr [29]
And there it was—the statement that both Roosevelt and I had been dreading. I’d been a police reporter for quite a while, ever since my unceremonious removal from the Washington beat as a result of my previously mentioned defense of Roosevelt during his battle with the patronage system in the Civil Service. I’d even covered some celebrated murder cases abroad. I therefore knew that murderers like the one Kreizler was describing did exist; but that never made it any easier to hear that one was on the loose. And for Roosevelt—who, though a born fighter, understood few of the intimate details of criminal behavior—it was an even harder notion to swallow.
“But…three years!” Theodore said, aghast. “Surely, Kreizler, if such a man did exist he could not have eluded the law for so long!”
“It’s no great job to elude that which is not pursuing,” Kreizler answered. “And even if the police had taken an interest, they would have been helpless. Because they could not have begun to understand what motivates the murderer.”
“Do you?” Roosevelt’s words were almost hopeful.
“Not completely. I have the first few pieces—and we must find the rest. For it is only when we truly understand what drives him that we will have even a prayer of solving this case.”
“But what could drive a man to such things?” Roosevelt said in uncomfortable confusion. “After all, the Santorelli boy had no money. We’re investigating the family, but they all appear to have been in their home throughout the night. Unless it was a personal quarrel with someone else, then…”
“I doubt there was any quarrel involved,” Laszlo replied. “In fact, the boy may never have seen his murderer before last night.”
“You’re suggesting that whoever it is kills children he doesn’t even know?”
“Possibly. It is not knowing them that is important to him—it is what they represent.”
“And that is?” I asked.
“That—is what we must determine.”
Roosevelt continued to test carefully: “Do you have any evidence to support such a theory?”
“None, of the kind that you mean. I have only a lifetime of studying similar characters. And the intuition it has given me.”
“But…” As Roosevelt stood to take his turn pacing the floor, Kreizler grew more relaxed, the hard part of his work done. Theodore pounded one fist into an open hand insistently. “Listen, Kreizler, it’s true that I grew up, as we all did, in a privileged household. But I have made it my business since taking this job to acquaint myself with the underworld of this city, and I have seen many things. No one needs to tell me that depravity and inhumanity have taken on dimensions in New York unheard of anywhere in the world. But what unnameable nightmare, even here, could drive a man to this?”
“Do not,” Kreizler answered slowly, trying very hard to be clear, “look for causes in this city. Nor in recent circumstances, nor in recent events. The creature you seek was created long ago. Perhaps in his infancy—certainly in childhood. And not necessarily here.”
Theodore was momentarily unable to answer, his face an open display of conflicting feelings. The conversation disturbed him deeply, in the same way that similar discussions had disturbed him ever since the first time he met Kreizler. Yet he had known the talk would come to this; known it, even counted on it, I began to see, since the moment he asked me to bring Laszlo to his office. For there was satisfaction in his aspect, too, the realization that what seemed a forbidding, unchartable ocean to every detective in his department was, to the experienced Kreizler, full of currents and courses. Laszlo’s theories clearly offered a way of solving what Theodore had been assured was an unsolvable mystery, and thus extending justice to one (or, as it now seemed, more than one) whose death would never have been explored by anyone else in the Police Department. None of which explained why I was there.
“John,” Theodore said abruptly, without looking at me. “Kelly and Ellison have been here.”
“I know. Sara and I ran into them in the staircase.”
“What?” Theodore fixed the pince-nez