The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [269]
As for me, I found that nightfall brought more worries about Kat. Ana Linares was still on my mind, too, as she was on everybody else’s; but the thought of what would happen if Libby got off, went back to New York, and found Kat trying to protect the baby tugged at my heart and my stomach in a way what I found I just couldn’t control. After dinner I went for a long walk, and when I came back I just sat out on the front porch of the house, still trying to think my way out of what I was feeling by telling myself that Kat should’ve already left New York, that she only had herself to blame for her new predicament. But it didn’t really work. The more I considered the problem, the more it brought me to a state of mind what was typical, when it came to my dealings with Kat: a kind of frustrated sadness, and underneath it a sense that somehow I was to blame for at least part of the situation.
Wrapped up in such cogitations and emotions, I barely noticed the sound of the screen door opening behind me. I knew it was the Doctor: he’d been able to read my worried face at dinner, and it would’ve been like him to want to make sure I was all right. I didn’t feel much like talking—as usual, the subject of Kat only made me feel stupid when I discussed it with other people—and so I was grateful when he just sat beside me and didn’t say a thing. We listened to the crickets for a time, and traded a few short comments about a swarm of fireflies what were giving a good imitation of the starry sky above us out on Mr. Picton’s front lawn. Other than that, though, we stayed wrapped up in our separate worries.
It was plain what the Doctor was thinking: the moment when Clara Hatch’d run past him and out the door of the courtroom had been a terrible one, and’d caused him to wonder whether he’d done right by the little girl, or if he hadn’t, in fact, been, using her for his own purposes instead of helping her. There wasn’t anything I could tell him—I honestly didn’t know how I felt about it. Maybe silence and forgetting would’ve been better, part of me thought, for somebody like Clara Hatch; maybe facing the devils of your past, especially at such a young age, was just a painful waste; maybe the key to life, despite everything the Doctor believed and’d spent his life working on, was to just put the ugliness what you encounter—what every person encounters—behind you, and get on with things. Maybe memory was just a wicked curse, and the kind of mind what could wipe out painful recollections a blessing. Maybe …
We were still sitting there on the porch when Mr. Moore and Marcus came wandering up. Catching sight of them, the Doctor stood and called out, “Did you see White?”
Mr. Moore nodded, holding up a small envelope. “We saw him.” They reached the steps, and Mr. Moore handed the envelope to the Doctor. “He didn’t have much to say, though.”
“There’s more,” Marcus added, as the rest of our group, drawn by the returning men’s voices, came out onto the porch. “Several other guests arrived at the Grand Union today—courtesy of Mr. Vanderbilt.”
“Defense witnesses?” Miss Howard asked.
Marcus nodded, then looked to his brother. “They’re bringing in Hamilton, Lucius.”
The younger Isaacson’s eyes went wide. “Hamilton? You’re joking!”
Marcus shook his head as Mr. Picton asked, “And who is ‘Hamilton’?”
“Doctor Albert Hamilton, of Auburn, New York,” Marcus said. “Though there’s no proof that he actually has a doctorate of any kind. He used to sell patent medicine. Now he passes himself off as an expert in everything from ballistics to toxicology to anatomy. A complete charlatan—but he’s made quite a name for himself as a legal expert, and he’s fooled