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By Root 1678 0

work finding surfaces that might be smooth and hard enough to “hold” such prints: door handles, windows, even an apparently new ceramic chimney that ran along the side of the decagonal tower just a few feet from where the body lay. This last site was the one that bore fruit, primarily because, Marcus told us, the watchman had rather lazily allowed the fire downstairs to go out hours earlier. By a particularly clean section of the glazed ceramic, at about the point where a man of the height Marcus and Lucius had posited for our killer would have rested his hand were he leaning against the chimney for support, Marcus put his face close and grew agitated. He told Theodore and me to hold up a small tarpaulin that would block the wind that blew in off the harbor. Then he spread the carbon powder on the chimney with a delicate camel’s hair brush and produced, one can only say magically, a set of smudgelike prints. Their position was exactly consistent with the hypothetical lean of the killer.

Taking the photograph of Sofia Zweig’s bloodstained thumb from his coat pocket, Marcus held it up against the chimney. Laszlo moved close and watched the whole process carefully. Marcus’s dark eyes went very wide as he studied the prints, and they were positively afire when he turned to Kreizler and said, in a notably controlled voice, “It looks like a match.” At that, he and Kreizler went for the big camera, while Theodore and I continued to hold the tarp. Marcus took several close shots of the prints, the burst of the flash powder illuminating the whole roof area but quickly dissipating in the blackness out over the harbor.

Next Marcus had us inspect the ledges of the roof for, as he put it, “Any signs of disturbance or activity—even the smallest chips, cracks, or holes in its masonry.” Now, a building that faces New York harbor is going to have a lot of chips, cracks, and holes in its masonry; but we dutifully set about the task, Roosevelt, Kreizler, and myself each shouting when we located something that seemed to conform to our vague instructions. Marcus, whose attention was focused on a sturdy railing that surmounted the front of the roof, ran over to inspect each of these finds. Most of the sightings proved false; but on the very back of the roof, in the darkest, most hidden corner of the structure, Roosevelt found some marks that Marcus evidently thought bore immense potential.

His next request was rather odd: having taken a rope and tied one end around his waist, he wrapped the bulk of the coil around a section of the roof’s front railing and then handed it to Roosevelt and me. We were instructed to let the rope out as Marcus descended along the rear wall of the fort. When we asked the purpose behind this, Marcus only said that he was working on a theory about the killer’s method of reaching apparently inaccessible spots. So great was the detective sergeant’s fixation on his work, along with our own desire not to distract him, that we asked for no further explanation.

As we lowered him down the wall, Marcus occasionally made noises of discovery and satisfaction, then told us to lower him further. Roosevelt and I would then grunt and struggle again with the rope. In the midst of all this, I took the opportunity to acquaint Kreizler (who, with his bad arm, had elected not to assist us) with the thoughts concerning the occupation and habits of our killer that had occurred to me on the way downtown. His reaction was thoughtful, though mixed:

“You may have something with the notion of his being a regular customer at the houses where these boys work, Moore. But as for the man’s being a transient of some kind…” Laszlo strolled over to watch Lucius Isaacson work. “Consider what he’s done—deposited six bodies, six that we know of, in increasingly public places.”

“It does,” Theodore said with a small roar as we let out more rope, “suggest a man familiar with the city.”

“Intimately familiar,” Lucius threw in, having heard our comments. “There’s no sense of haste about these injuries. The cuts aren’t jagged or ripped. So he probably wasn