The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [168]
“Afternoon, Henry,” he said.
“Afternoon, Mr. Picton,” the man answered, without looking up.
“Did Aggie bring those files from the clerk’s office?” Mr. Picton asked, leading us to the stairs.
“Yeah,” the man answered. “She said it looks like you’re gonna try to go after that nigger ag—” The man stopped suddenly when he looked up and saw Cyrus standing near Mr. Picton; his small eyes grew as big as they could, and he rubbed the top of his narrow head in confusion. “That—uh—that fellow who shot Mrs. Hatch’s kids. She said it—looks like you’re gonna go after him again.”
Mr. Picton brought himself to a stop at the bottom of the marble staircase. It looked like he might get hot for a second, but then he just stopped, sighed, and said, “Henry?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Picton?” the guard answered.
“Mr. Montrose, here, is going to be working with me for a bit.”
“That so, Mr. Picton?”
“Yes. So, Henry—find another word. I doubt that you’d appreciate my coming in here every day and saying, ‘Good morning, Henry, you pinheaded shanty trash’!”
The guard’s face sagged like a kicked dog’s. “No, sir. I would not.”
“I didn’t think so,” Mr. Picton said, turning and continuing to lead the way upstairs. Once we were on the second floor, he turned to Cyrus.
“I am sorry, Mr. Montrose,” he said.
“It’s nothing unusual, sir,” Cyrus answered.
“Yes, and not very helpful to our cause, in its commonness,” Mr. Picton said with another deep sigh. “Such a quaint-looking little town, too, isn’t it?”
The hallway on the second floor was less grand than the big entry way downstairs, but just as pleasant to look at. There was a series of polished oak doors leading back toward an entrance to the gallery of the main courtroom. We grabbed a quick look inside this last chamber, as court was not in session that day; and though it had less frills than most of the courtrooms in New York I’d frequented, it was still handsome, with fruitwood pews for the spectators on the main floor and in the gallery, and a high judge’s bench made out of the same fine material. Looking down at the room, I began to realize that this might actually be the place where we would bring the golden-eyed woman with many names to some kind of justice for murdering God-only-knew how many children; and as my nerves started to flutter with this thought, I began to understand why Mr. Picton had wondered if we were really ready for all the things that might happen during what was sure to be a controversial and probably very unpopular trial.
Mr. Picton’s office was located across and down the hall from the gallery doorway, around a corner from the district attorney’s much grander suite. As only an assistant D.A., he had just two rooms, one a small space for a secretary (though he preferred to work without one), the other, beyond a thick oak door, a larger office that looked out over the railroad tracks and the train depot what lay down the hill. The office had a big rolltop desk and the usual endless quantity of law books and files that could be found in any lawyer’s office, all of them scattered around in what seemed a very disorganized way. But as soon as we were inside, Mr. Picton began to retrieve things in a fashion what showed that the clutter made perfect sense to him.
“Just clear a space for yourselves wherever you can,” he said to the rest of us. “I fear that I’m too ardent a disciple of the philosophy that an orderly office indicates a disorderly mind. And vice versa.”
“Amen to that,” Mr. Moore said, quickly dumping some books off of a big leather chair, then sinking down into it before anyone else had a chance.
As he continued to go through some files on his desk with fast motions