The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [179]
I nodded quickly. “It went good—I think Mr. Picton was surprised by how good. The Doctor had the kid holding his hand inside of five minutes.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Moore noised uncertainly as he smoked. “Holding hands isn’t talking, though—any sign her condition is psychological, rather than physical?”
“Well, she does make some little grunting noises,” I answered. “And she can laugh, or something close to it.”
Marcus looked encouraged by that fact. “But that’s conclusive—at least, I think it is.” He turned to his brother, who was still resting on the ground. “What about it, Lucius?”
“Well,” Lucius answered slowly, as he sat up, “grunts and laughter argue against physical trauma or some other pathology making her incapable of talking. Assuming, that is, that the bullet didn’t hit any of the throat organs associated with speech. There definitely wasn’t any brain damage, according to Dr. Lawrence’s report, and that would be the usual physical cause of the kind of muteness they were talking about at the time.”
“So if it’s not physical pathology or trauma,” Marcus said, “then it’s psychological.”
“And if it’s psychological,” Mr. Moore chimed in, “there’s a good chance Kreizler can break through.”
Nodding and then glancing up the hill, Marcus took a drag off his stick. “Let’s have another look at those pieces of the wagon,” he said, as he started back up.
Mr. Moore, Lucius, and I trailed behind him. “What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked.
“A bullet,” Marcus answered, his city shoes slipping a bit on the many years’ worth of dead and decaying leaves what coated the hillside.“Or, if we get very lucky, bul-lets. You see, Stevie, Dr. Lawrence’s report mentions only the point of entry for the two shots that killed Thomas and Matthew Hatch. They were dead when he arrived at the house, so he didn’t think to go into any more detail. He did trace the path of the bullet that struck Clara a little more carefully, since she was still alive. It had been traveling at an upward angle, but may still have embedded somewhere in the wagon—probably the underside of the seat.”
“But,” I said, scrambling to keep up, “can’t we just ask Dr. Lawrence about the bullets what killed the boys?”
“We did,” Mr. Moore answered, “on our way out here. But Lawrence has been coroner since ’84—seen a lot of dead bodies in those years. And like Marcus says, his attention in this case was pretty well focused on the little girl. He really can’t say whether there were exit wounds in the boys’ backs.”
“Which leaves us with two options,” Marcus continued, “one just tedious, the other next to impossible. We can either tear the appropriate parts of the wagon into tiny pieces to see if a bullet lodged in the wood somewhere, or…”
“Or?”
Marcus sighed. “Or we try to get a court order allowing us to exhume Thomas and Matthew.”
“The problem there being,” Mr. Moore added, “that any judge is going to want to consult with the mother before ordering an exhumation.” He looked at me and smiled. “Care to post some odds on what Libby Hatch’s reaction to that kind of request would be, Stevie?”
I just shook my head. “Wouldn’t be worth the trouble of figuring them.”
Leaning against one big tree in the front yard was a four-by-three-foot slab of ash wood along with an old, moth-eaten driver’s seat. The bunch of us collected around the things and stared at them.
“But I still don’t understand,” Mr. Moore said. “If Libby was the one who shot the kids, wouldn’t she have made some effort to get rid of the wagon, and any stray bullets along with it?”
“Ballistics is an infant science, John, even among experts,” Marcus answered. “Also, Dr. Lawrence admits that he never examined the boys for exit wounds, since they were already dead—so he never would’ve mentioned such wounds while