The Alienist

CHAPTER 27

As it turned out, the greatest difficulty with our trip to the morgue early Monday morning did not result from a confrontation with any member of that institution’s staff. They were all quite new on the job (having recently replaced a group who’d been fired for selling bodies to anatomists at $150 a head) and too unsure of their authority to go up against Roosevelt. No, our problem was simply getting into the building, for by the time we arrived, another angry mob of Lower East Side residents had formed to demand an explanation as to why their children were still being slaughtered without so much as one suspect being taken into custody. The general air among this crowd was not only angrier than that of the group that’d assembled at Castle Garden, it was also far more indignant. Absent was any mention of Ernst Lohmann’s profession or living arrangements (he turned out to have no family that we could ever locate); the youth was pictured as an abandoned innocent left to the mercy of a police department, a city government, and an upper class that did not care how he lived—or, if he died, who was responsible. This much more systematic, not to mention political, representation of Lohmann’s plight—and that of the immigrant communities generally—may have been due to the fact that there were a good number of Germans in the crowd; but I suspected that it had far more to do with the ongoing influence of Paul Kelly, although I did not see either him or his brougham anywhere near the morgue as we moved through the crowd around it.

We entered the dreary red-brick building through a black iron door in the back, Sara, the Isaacsons, and I crowding around Laszlo so that no one could see his face. Roosevelt met us just inside the doorway and, after brushing off a pair of attendants who wanted to know our business, led us directly to an examination room. The stench of formaldehyde and decay in this sickening chamber was so strong that it seemed to be pulling the yellowing paint off the walls. There were tables bearing draped bodies shoved into each corner, and aging, chipped specimen jars full of various pieces of human bodies sat gruesomely on a series of sagging shelves. A large electrical lamp was suspended from the center of the ceiling, and under it was a dented and rusted operating table, which at some point in the distant past must have looked like those Laszlo kept in the basement theater of his Institute. Atop the table was a body covered by a dirty, wet sheet.

Lucius and Kreizler went immediately to the table, and Lucius tore the sheet away—wanting, it seemed to me, to face as quickly as possible the boy for whose death he felt such heavy responsibility. Marcus followed behind them, but Sara and I remained by the door, not wanting to approach the body if we could avoid it. Kreizler produced his little notebook and then the usual recitation began, Lucius listing the injuries that the boy had suffered in a voice that was monotonous yet, paradoxically, passionate:

“Severing of the complete genitalia at their base…Severing of the right hand just above the wrist joint—both the ulna and radius cleanly cut…Lateral lacerations of the abdominal cavity, with attendant damage to the small intestine…Massive damage to the entire arterial system within the thorax, and apparent removal of the heart…Removal of the left eye, attendant damage to the malar bone and supraorbital ridge on that side…Removal of those sections of the scalp covering the occipital and parietal bones of the skull…”

It was a grim roster, all right, and I tried not to listen; but one of the latter items caught my notice. “Excuse me, Lucius,” I interrupted, “but did you say removal of the left eye?”

“Yes,” came his quick reply.

“The left eye only?”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered. “The right eye is still intact.”

Marcus looked excited. “He must’ve been interrupted.”

“It does seem the most plausible explanation,” Kreizler replied. “Probably he detected the guard’s approach.” Laszlo then pointed at the center of the body. “This business with the heart is new, Detective Sergeant.”

Marcus rushed over to the door. “Commissioner Roosevelt,” he said, “can you give us another forty-five minutes in here?”

Roosevelt checked his watch. “It would be close. The new warden and his staff usually come in at eight. Why, Isaacson?”

“I need some of my equipment—for an experiment.”

“Experiment? Just what sort of an experiment?” For Theodore, distinguished naturalist that he was, the word “experiment” held almost as much power as “action.”

“There are some experts,” Marcus explained, “who think that, at the moment of death, the human eye permanently records the last image it sees. It’s thought that the image can be photographed, using the eye itself as a sort of lens. I’d like to give it a try.”

Theodore considered the proposition for a moment. “You think the boy may have died looking at his murderer?”

“There’s a chance.”

“And will the next examiner be able to tell you’ve made the attempt?”

“No, sir.”

“Mmm. Quite an idea. All right.” Theodore nodded once definitively. “Fetch your equipment. But I warn you, Detective Sergeant—we are going to be out of here by seven forty-five.”

Marcus bolted off toward the rear door of the building. After his exit Lucius and Kreizler continued to prod and pick at the body, and I eventually sank to the floor, exhausted and disheartened past the point where my legs could support me. Looking up at Sara and hoping to find some sympathy in her face, I saw instead that she was staring at the end of the examination table.

“Doctor,” she finally said quietly, “what’s the matter with his foot?”

Laszlo turned, glanced at Sara, and then followed her gaze to the dead boy’s right foot, which was hanging out over the end of the table. It appeared swollen, and was set on the leg at an odd angle; but as this was nothing compared to the rest of the injuries to the body, it seemed scant wonder that Lucius had missed it.

Kreizler took hold of the foot and examined it carefully. “Talipes varus,” he eventually announced. “The boy was clubfooted.”

That caught my interest. “Clubfooted?”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered, letting the extremity drop again.

It was a measure, I suppose, of just how rigorously our minds had been trained in recent weeks that, exhausted as we might have been, we were still able to extrapolate an important set of implications from a fairly common physical deformity that had afflicted this latest victim. We began to discuss these implications at some length, continuing to do so as Marcus returned with his photographic equipment and got ready to take his experimental pictures. Subsequent questioning of those who had known the Lohmann boy at the Black and Tan bore our speculations out, and they are therefore worth mentioning.

Sara suggested that the killer might originally have been drawn to Lohmann because of a kind of identification with the boy’s physical plight. But if Lohmann had been resentful of any mention of his deformity—a strong possibility in a boy of his age and occupation—he would have reacted adversely to such charitable expressions. This reaction would, in turn, have sparked the killer’s usual rage with difficult young men. Kreizler agreed with all this and further explained that the betrayal inherent in Lohmann’s refusal of the killer’s empathy would have stirred a new and even deeper anger in our man. This could well account for the fact that the boy’s heart was missing: the killer had apparently meant to take his mutilations to a new extreme but had been interrupted by the guard. We all knew that this spelled trouble—we were not dealing with a man who would react well to having his intimate moments, sickening as they might be, cut short.

At this point in our discussion Marcus announced that he was ready to begin his experiment, at which Kreizler took a few steps back from the operating table to allow the several pieces of equipment Marcus had brought along to be moved next to the body. After requesting that the overhead electrical bulb be switched off, Marcus asked his brother to slowly lift Ernst Lohmann’s remaining eye out of its socket. When Lucius had complied, Marcus took a very small incandescent lamp and placed it behind the eye, onto which he focused his camera. After exposing two plates to this image, he then activated two small wires, whose ends were bared. He ran these wires into the nerves of the eye, activating the latter, and exposed several more plates. As a final step, he shut off the incandescent lamp and took two images of the unlit but still electrically activated eye. The whole thing seemed quite bizarre (indeed, I later learned that the French novelist Jules Verne had written of the procedure in one of his outlandish stories); but Marcus was quite hopeful, and as he turned the overhead lamp back on, he expressed his determination to return to his darkroom immediately.

We had packed all of Marcus’s equipment up and were nearly ready to depart when I caught sight of Kreizler staring at the Lohmann boy’s face, with far less detachment than he’d displayed during his examination of the body. Without myself looking at the mangled corpse, I stood by Laszlo and silently put a hand on his shoulder.

“A mirror image,” Kreizler mumbled. At first I thought he was referring to some part of Marcus’s procedure; but then I remembered the conversation we’d had weeks ago when we’d said that the condition of the victims’ bodies was in a real way a reflection of the psychic devastation that perpetually gnawed at our killer.

Roosevelt moved up beside me, his eyes also fixed on the body. “It’s an even worse sight, in this place,” he said quietly. “Clinical. Utterly dehumanized…”

“But why this?” Kreizler asked, of no one in particular. “Why just exactly this?” He held out a hand to the body, and I knew he was speaking of the mutilations.

“The devil himself only knows,” Theodore answered. “I’ve never seen anything like it, short of a red Indian.”

Laszlo and I both froze, and then spun silently on the man. Our stares must have been fairly intense, for Theodore looked momentarily unnerved. “And what’s gotten into you two?” he asked, a bit indignantly. “If I may make so bold?”

“Roosevelt,” Laszlo said evenly, taking a step forward. “Would you mind repeating what you just said?”

“I’ve been accused of many things when I speak,” Theodore answered, “but never mumbling. I believe I was clear.”

“Yes. Yes, you were.” The Isaacsons and Sara had drawn close, reading something big in the fire that had swept into Laszlo’s previously downcast features. “But what exactly did you mean?”

“I was simply thinking,” Roosevelt explained, still a little defensively, “of the only other violence like this that I’ve ever come across. It was when I was ranching, in the Dakota Badlands. I saw several bodies of white men who’d been killed by Indians, as a warning to other settlers. The corpses were cut up terribly, much like this one—in an effort, I suppose, to terrify the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Laszlo said, as much to himself as to Theodore. “That’s what you naturally would suppose. But was that, in fact, the purpose of it?” Kreizler began to pace around the operating table, rubbing his left arm slowly and nodding. “A model, he needs a model…It’s too consistent, too considered, too—structured. He’s modeling it after something…” Checking his silver watch, Laszlo turned back to Theodore. “Would you happen to know offhand, Roosevelt, what time the Museum of Natural History opens its doors?”

“I should hope I would,” Theodore answered proudly, “as my father was a founder and I myself am quite involved in—”

“What time, Roosevelt?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Kreizler nodded. “Excellent. Moore, you’ll come with me. As for the rest of you—Marcus, get to your darkroom and let’s see if this experiment of yours has produced anything. Sara, you and Lucius go back to Number 808 and get in touch with the War Department in Washington. Find out if they keep any records of soldiers dismissed for mental illness. Tell them we are only interested in soldiers who have served in the Army of the West. If you can’t get a telephone line through, send a cable.”

“I know a few people at War,” Roosevelt added. “If it would be any help.”

“It would indeed,” Laszlo answered. “Sara, take the names. Go, go, on your way, all of you!” As Sara and the Isaacsons left, taking with them Marcus’s equipment, Kreizler came back to Roosevelt and me. “You’ve realized what we’re looking for, Moore?”

“Yes,” I said. “But why the museum, exactly?”

“An old friend of mine. Franz Boas. If mutilations such as these do have some kind of cultural significance among Indian tribes, he’ll be able to tell us. And should such prove the case, Roosevelt, resounding congratulations will be due you.” Kreizler laid the dirty old sheet back over Ernst Lohmann’s body. “Unfortunately, I let Stevie take the calash home, which means we’ll have to get a cab. Can we drop you anywhere, Roosevelt?”

“No,” Theodore answered, “I’d better stay and cover our tracks. There may be a lot of questions, considering that crowd. But I wish you good hunting, gentlemen!”

The number of disgruntled people outside the morgue had only grown during the time we’d spent examining the Lohmann boy’s remains. Sara and the Isaacsons had apparently gotten through the throng without incident, for we saw no sign of them. Kreizler and I were not so lucky, however. We’d only made it halfway to the main gate of the hospital grounds, with the crowd suspiciously scrutinizing us every step of the way, when our path was blocked by a thickset, square-headed man who carried an old ax handle. The man fixed a cold stare of recognition on Kreizler, and when I turned I saw that Laszlo seemed to know him as well.

“Ah!” the man exclaimed, from deep in the pit of his considerable belly. “So they’ve brought in the famous Herr Doctor Kreizler!” The accent indicated a lower-class German.

“Herr Höpner,” Laszlo answered, in a firm but wary tone that indicated the man might know how to use the ax handle he was carrying. “I’m afraid my colleague and I have urgent business elsewhere. Kindly stand aside.”

“And what, then, of the Lohmann boy, Herr Doctor?” The man Höpner did not move. “Have you something to do with this matter?” A few of the people standing near him muttered echoes to the demand.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Höpner,” Kreizler answered coolly. “Please move.”

“No idea, eh?” Höpner began to slap the piece of wood against one palm. “I must doubt that. Do you know the good doctor, meine Freunden?” he said to the crowd. “He is the famous alienist who destroys families—who steals children from their homes!” Professions of shock sprang from all sides. “I demand to know what part you have in this matter, Herr Doctor! Did you snatch the Lohmann boy from his parents, just as you snatched my daughter from me?”

“I’ve told you once,” Laszlo said, his teeth starting to grind. “I know nothing about any Lohmann boy. And as for your daughter, Herr Höpner, she asked to be removed from your home, because you could not refrain from beating her with a stick—a stick not unlike the one you now hold.”

The crowd drew breath as one, and Höpner’s eyes went wide. “What a man does in his own home with his own family is his own business!” he protested.

“Your daughter felt differently about that,” Kreizler said. “Now, for the last time—raus mit dir!”

It was a command to move, such as one might give to a servant or some other underling. Höpner looked like he’d been spat on. Raising the ax handle he made a move toward Kreizler, but suddenly stopped when one hell of a commotion rose from somewhere behind Kreizler and me. Turning to look over the crowd, I could see a horse’s head and the roof of a carriage plowing our way. And along with them I spied a face that I knew: Eat-’Em-Up Jack McManus. He was hanging on to the side of the vehicle, swinging the gargantuan right arm that had made him a formidable force in the prize ring for nearly a decade before he’d quit the fight game to work as a bouncer—for Paul Kelly.

Kelly’s elegant black brougham, brass lanterns shining on either side, made its way to where we were standing. The small, sinewy man in the driver’s seat cracked his whip in general warning, and the crowd, knowing who was inside the carriage, moved aside and said nothing. Jack McManus jumped down once the wheels had stopped rolling, then looked at the crowd threateningly and straightened his miner’s cap. Finally he opened the door of the brougham.

“I suggest you get in, gentlemen!” said an amused voice from within the carriage. Kelly’s handsome face soon appeared at the door. “You know how mobs can be.”