The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [30]
I felt all attention in the room settle on me—not the kind of position I’ve ever been comfortable with. But it seemed like I had to say something. “Well—I should wait for Cyrus, I guess, but—”
“But?” Marcus asked.
“But,” I answered, “for my money, it all hinges on tomorrow morning. How he takes leaving the Institute. And you’re right, Miss Howard—I don’t even know that it’s right to ask…”
She nodded and turned away, disappearing through the black stairway door; and in that somewhat uncertain state of mind, we all started the long, dark descent to Broadway.
CHAPTER 6
As we ate supper in amongst the iron trellises and overhanging greenery of the Café Lafayette’s outdoor terrace on Ninth Street and University Place, the Isaacsons told us what they believed they’d learned from their interview with Señora Linares. The theory put their talent for drawing unexpected conclusions from what seemed like a confused jumble of facts on ample display—and, as usual, kept the rest of us shaking our heads in amazement.
The blow that the señora’d taken across the back of the head, the detective sergeants said, presented us with two choices as to her attacker: either a good sap man, a specialist who’d had a lot of experience rendering people unconscious, or someone of much more limited strength who’d landed a lucky shot that didn’t do any really severe damage. There were real problems with the first idea: if the attack had been the work of an expert, he’d have to’ve been about the same height as the señora, given the angle and location of the hit, and he’d have to’ve put his sap away in favor of a much harder and more risky weapon, such as a piece of pipe. Even more important, though, was the fact that he’d risked being spotted in what was a very public and popular location—right outside the Metropolitan Museum—at an extremely risky time of day.
Given these considerations, the detective sergeants were prepared to dismiss the idea that the Linares baby had been taken by a professional kidnapper, whether someone working for hire or in business for himself. Such characters just wouldn’t take the risk of whacking somebody on the head with an unpadded piece of pipe, and they certainly liked to make their moves in more isolated spots than the Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. That left us with the notion of an amateur, one probably working without a plan—and it was very possible, maybe even likely, that said amateur was a woman. The fact that the señora herself had referred to her attacker as “him” didn’t count for anything: she’d admitted that she’d never gotten a look at the person, and, coming from an upper-class diplomatic family, she’d just assumed that no woman would be capable of such an act. But the blow itself was consistent with a woman of average strength who was about the señora’s size—and the description that she herself had given of the woman on the train matched these specifications.
What about that description, anyway? Mr. Moore wanted to know. What made the detective sergeants so ready to accept what she said? Wasn’t it an awfully detailed story for someone with one good eye who’d just caught a quick glimpse of her missing child—and was in a sudden state of shock as a result—to come up with? Not at all, Lucius answered; in fact, the señora’s description had lacked certain details that what he called “pathological liars” (which, I knew from the Doctor’s work, meant people who were so far gone that they actually believed the lies they told) would’ve included. For instance, she could say generally what kind of clothes the woman was wearing but not what color; she could give a vague idea of the woman’s size but nothing more; and she couldn’t even remember if the woman’d had a hat on. And there were other, more subtle reasons to think that she’d been telling the truth at just that point—“physiological reasons,” Lucius termed them.
Apparently,