The Alienist

CHAPTER 31

Sara was at the door of my grandmother’s house at nine-thirty the next morning, and though I’d gotten better than ten hours of sleep I still felt disoriented and thoroughly worn-out. A copy of the Times Sara had tucked under her arm informed me that it was May 26th, and the bright glare of the sun that assaulted me as I went out to Sara’s cab stated unarguably that spring was continuing its march toward summer; but I might as well have been on the planet Mars (which, I learned from a semiconscious reading of the front page of the paper, was the object of study for a newly formed group of eminent Boston astronomers, who believed that what they called the “red star of war” was “inhabited by human beings”). Sara got a few good laughs out of my slightly ridiculous condition during the first leg of our cab ride to Kreizler’s; but when I started to relate details of Laszlo’s and my unexpected trip to Pierpont Morgan’s, she became all seriousness.

We found Kreizler sitting in his calash on Seventeenth Street, with Stevie in the driver’s seat. I transferred my small bag from the cab to the carriage and then climbed aboard with Sara. Just as we pulled away I looked up to catch sight of Mary Palmer standing on the small balcony outside Kreizler’s parlor. She was watching us anxiously, and what looked from a distance like tearstains were glistening on her cheeks. Turning to Laszlo, I saw that he was also looking back at her; and when he turned forward again, a smile came into his face. It seemed an odd reaction to the girl’s distress, to say the least. I thought perhaps Sara had something to do with it all, but when I glanced at her I found that she was deliberately staring across the street and into Stuyvesant Park. Irritated by all these new hints of personal complexities among my friends, and incapable at that moment of making any sense of them, I did nothing more than lean back and let the spring sun bake my face as we clattered east.

Our ride to the Grand Central Depot had not been designed with relaxation in mind, however. On Eighteenth Street and Irving Place Stevie drew to a halt outside a tavern, and Kreizler, taking my bag as well as his own, told Sara and me to accompany him inside. We obeyed, myself with a few grumbles. Moments after we’d entered the dark, smoky place I looked outside to see two other men and a woman, their faces obscured by hats, getting into the calash and driving off with Stevie. Once they’d gotten out of sight Kreizler rushed back out onto the street and flagged down a cab, then waved Sara and me into it. This annoying little exercise, Laszlo explained as we headed uptown again, was designed to frustrate the agents he believed Inspector Byrnes had assigned to shadow us. It was a very clever provision, no doubt, but it only made me impatient to get on our train, where, I hoped, I’d be allowed to go back to sleep.

One more mystery stood between me and sweet repose, however. Sara accompanied us into Grand Central when we arrived, and then to the platform where the Washington train stood in steaming readiness. Kreizler kept peppering her with last-minute instructions about communications and whatnot, as well as with tips on how to handle Stevie while we were gone and what to do with Cyrus once he emerged from the hospital. Then the loud whistle on the train’s engine screamed and a conductor’s smaller pipe began to wail, signaling us to get on board. I turned away from my companions, expecting some slightly embarrassing farewell scene to take place; all Kreizler and Sara did, however, was shake hands collegially, after which Laszlo dashed past me onto the train. I stood there for a moment with my jaw hanging open, prompting a chuckle from Sara.

“Poor John,” she said, giving me a warm hug. “Still trying to sort things out. Don’t worry—it’ll all be clear, someday. And you mustn’t fret too much about your priest theory being wrong. You’ll have another idea soon.”

With that she shoved me into the train, just as it began to grunt and wheeze out of the station.

Kreizler had engaged a first-class compartment, and after we’d settled into it I immediately stretched out on one seat with my face toward the small window, determined to strangle any curiosity I had about the behavior of my friends with sleep. For his part, Laszlo pulled out a copy of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone that Lucius Isaacson had lent him and began very contentedly reading. Further annoyed, I rolled over, pulled my cap down over my face, and began deliberately snoring even before I’d fallen asleep.

I was unconscious for over two hours, and woke to see rich, green New Jersey pastures shooting by the window. Stretching fully, I noted that my evil mood of the morning had at last departed: I was hungry, but otherwise quite pleased with life. A small note from Kreizler on the seat opposite me stated that he had gone to the dining car to secure a table for lunch, and I quickly neatened my appearance and made for that destination, ready to break bread with a vengeance.

The rest of our trip was first-rate. The farmlands of the Northeast are never more picturesque than in late May, and they formed a splendid backdrop for one of the better meals I’ve ever had on a train. Kreizler’s spirits were still quite high, and for once he proved willing to discuss subjects other than the case. We talked of the upcoming national political conventions (the Republicans were set to gather in St. Louis in June, and the Democrats would follow suit in Chicago later in the summer), and then about a piece in the Times that stated that there had been a riot in Harvard Square following a victory posted by our alma mater’s baseball team over Princeton. During dessert Kreizler nearly choked to death when he came across a report that Henry Abbey and Maurice Grau, managers of the Metropolitan Opera, had announced the failure of their company and debts of some $400,000. Laszlo’s composure was partially restored by the additional news that a group of “private backers” (undoubtedly headed by our host of the previous evening) were organizing to put the company back on a solid footing. The first step in this process was to be a high-priced benefit performance of Don Giovanni on June 21st. Kreizler and I determined that this was an event we must attend, no matter what state our investigation might be in at the time.

We arrived in Washington’s handsome Union Station late in the afternoon, and by dinnertime we were ensconced in a pair of very comfortable rooms at that imposing Victorian edifice on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street known as the Willard Hotel. All around us and quite visible from our fourth-story windows were the houses of our nation’s government. In a very few minutes I could have strolled over to the White House and asked Grover Cleveland how it would feel to relinquish that residence twice in one lifetime. I had not seen the capital since the simultaneous terminations of my career as a political reporter and my engagement to Julia Pratt; and it was only as I stood in my room at the Willard and stared at the beautiful panorama of Washington on a spring evening that I fully recognized how very far away from that former life I had grown. It was a melancholic sort of realization, and not to my liking; to counteract it, I quickly sought out a telephone and put in a call to Hobart Weaver, the old carousing partner of mine who was now a fairly high-level functionary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I found him still at his desk, and we made plans to meet that evening in the hotel dining room.

Kreizler joined us. Hobart was a portly, addle-brained, bespectacled fellow, who loved nothing more than free food and drink. By providing both commodities in abundance I was able to ensure that he would be not only discreet but uninquisitive about what Laszlo and I were up to. He informed us that the Bureau did, in fact, keep records of murders that were either known or presumed to have been committed by Indians. We told him that we were interested only in unsolved cases, though when he asked what parts of the country we were concerned with Kreizler could only reply, “Frontier regions during the last fifteen years.” Covering such a broad spectrum would, Hobart assured us, involve a lot of sifting through records, a task that he and I would have to undertake surreptitiously: Hobart’s boss, Interior Secretary Michael Hoke Smith, shared President Cleveland’s dislike of reporters, especially prying reporters. But as Hobart packed steadily more fowl and wine into his short round body, he became ever more convinced that we could do the job (although he remained completely oblivious of our purpose); and just to fully crystallize his resolve, I took him after dinner to a saloon that I knew of in the southeast section of the city where the entertainment was of what might be called the immodest variety.

Kreizler and I breakfasted together early the next morning. It was our hope that, making hard stages, the Isaacsons would be in Deadwood, South Dakota, by Thursday evening. They had been instructed to check the Western Union Telegraph office in that town for communications from us as soon as they arrived, and Kreizler sent the first such cable just after Wednesday morning’s breakfast. In it he told the brothers that, for reasons that would be explained later, priesthood had been eliminated as a likely profession for our quarry. New possibilities would be forwarded as soon as we had formulated them. Then it was off to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for Laszlo, while I took a cheerful stroll up to F Street and over to the Patent Office building, which housed most of the staff and records of the Interior Department.

The enormous Greek Revival Patent Office had been completed in 1867 and was of a general layout that was fast becoming the rule for official buildings in the capital: rectangular, hollow, and as monotonous on the inside as it was without. All of the two blocks between Seventh and Ninth streets were taken up by the thing, and it was no small job, once I’d gotten inside, to find Hobart’s office. This vastness ultimately proved a blessing, however, for my presence provoked no comment: there were hundreds of federal employees wandering the hallways of the building’s four wings, most of them ignorant of one another’s identities and functions. Hobart, none the worse for the previous evening’s activities, had already located a small desk for my use in a corner of one basement records room and had also laid hands on the first batch of files that I would have to investigate: reports from various frontier forts and administrative centers going back to 1881 and relating to violent incidents between settlers and the various Sioux tribes.

During the next two days I saw very little of Washington, outside of my little corner of that dusty records room. As will happen during extended periods of windowless research, reality soon began to lose its hold on my mind and the horrifying descriptions I pored over, of massacres, murders, and reprisals, took on a vividness that they would not have had if I’d been reading them, say, in one of the city’s parks. Inevitably, I became distracted by tales that I knew held no promise for us—accounts of murders that had long since been solved, or whose salient characteristics were nothing like those of our case—but which were so morbidly fascinating on their own merits that I had to see how they turned out. There were some admittedly terrible yet nonetheless predictable accounts involving men, women, and children who had carved out a hard, lonely life in the wilderness only to be murdered in cold blood by the native inhabitants of the land. These killings were generally in retaliation for broken treaties and other legal arrangements, the negotiation and violation of which had been none of the settlers’ doing. Such tales were, however, thankfully few. Most of the accounts were of acts of vengeance on the part of the Sioux which, while severe, seemed at least understandable when measured against the abominable treachery of the white soldiers, Indian agents (the Bureau of Indian Affairs was the most corrupt agency in a notoriously corrupt department), and traders in firearms and whiskey against whom they were committed. Reading the stories brought back to me vividly the concern with which Franz Boas and Clark Wissler had approached our investigation: the average white citizen of the United States, deeply distrustful of the Indian tribes, was also utterly ignorant of such records as I was exploring, and thus of the true state of white-Indian affairs. Most would have required no more than the suggestion of a link between any Indian group and the sort of behavior that our killer had exhibited to have their uninformed opinions confirmed.

Late Wednesday, after the conclusion of my first long day in the Interior basement, Kreizler and I met to compare notes in his room at the Willard. The superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s had proved as troublesome in person as he had been over the telephone wire, and Kreizler had been forced to resort to Roosevelt—who, in turn, had asked a friend of his in the attorney general’s office to place a call to the man—in order to gain access to the hospital records. The process had taken up most of Kreizler’s day, and while he’d had time to amass a list of names of soldiers who’d served with the Army of the West and subsequently been sent to St. Elizabeth’s because of questionable mental stability, his overall mood when we met was one of severe disappointment: for while the man who’d been the subject of the original letter we’d received from St. Elizabeth’s had indeed been a soldier, he’d apparently also been born and raised in the East, and never served anywhere west of Chicago.

“No roving bands of marauding Indians in Chicago anymore, I suppose?” I asked as Laszlo stared at a sheet detailing particulars of the man’s background and service.

“No,” Kreizler answered quietly. “It’s a true pity. There are many other details that would recommend the fellow.”

“Best not to dwell on them,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of other candidates. So far Hobart and I have picked out four cases of mutilative murders in the Dakotas and Wyoming—all committed when both Sioux groups and army units were close by.”

Kreizler put aside his piece of paper with great effort and looked up. “Did any involve children?”

“Two of the four,” I answered. “In the first, two girls were killed with their parents, and in the second an orphaned girl and boy died with their grandfather, who was their guardian. The problem is that in both cases only the adult males were mutilated.”

“Were any theories formulated?”

“Both were assumed to have been reprisal raids by war parties. But there’s an interesting detail in the case involving the grandfather. It happened in the late fall of ’89 near Fort Keough, during the period when the last great reservation was broken up. There were a lot of disgruntled Sioux around, mostly followers of Sitting Bull and another chief called”—I scanned my notes quickly with one finger—“Red Cloud. Anyway, a small cavalry detail stumbled onto the murdered family, and the lieutenant in command initially laid the crime off to some of Red Cloud’s more bellicose subordinates. But one of the older soldiers in the company said that Red Cloud’s band hadn’t launched any murder raids lately, and that the dead grandfather’d had a history of run-ins with Bureau agents and army men at another fort—Robinson, I think it was. Apparently the man had accused a cavalry sergeant at Robinson of trying to sexually assault his grandson. As it turned out, the sergeant’s unit was in the Fort Keough area when the family was killed.”

Kreizler hadn’t been paying much attention up to that point, but these last facts brought him around. “Do we know the soldier’s name?”

“Wasn’t included in the file. Hobart’s going to do a little digging at the War Department tomorrow.”

“Good. But make sure you cable the information we have now to the detective sergeants in the morning. The details can follow.”

We then went over the rest of the cases I’d culled, though for various reasons we eventually ruled them all out. After that, we dove into the stack of names that Kreizler had gathered at St. Elizabeth’s, and succeeded in eliminating all but a few of them over the next several hours. Finally, at well past one o’clock in the morning, I retired to my room and poured out a healthy whiskey and soda, which I only managed to get halfway through before I fell asleep in my clothes.

Thursday morning found me back at my desk at the Interior Department, lost in more stories of unsolved deaths on the frontier. Along toward noon Hobart returned from his brief trip to the War Department, where he’d discovered a disappointing fact: The cavalry sergeant who’d figured in the story about the murdered grandfather had been forty-five years old at the time of the incident. That made him fifty-two in 1896: too old to fit the portrait we’d painted of our killer. Still, it seemed worthwhile to make a note of the man’s name and last known whereabouts (he’d opened a dry goods store in Cincinnati after retiring from the army), just in case the age portion of our hypothesis turned out to be wrong.

“Sorry I couldn’t have brought better news,” Hobart said, as I jotted down the particulars. “Any interest in lunch?”

“Plenty,” I answered. “Pick me up in an hour, I should make it through the 1892 cases by then.”

“Fine.” He started to move away from the desk, then touched his jacket pocket and seemed to remember something. “Oh, John. I meant to ask you—this search of yours is definitely confined to the frontier states and territories, is that right?” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket.

“That’s right. Why?”

“Nothing. Just an odd story. I found it after you left last night.” He tossed the piece of paper on my desk. “But it won’t work—happened in New York State. Chops?”

I picked up the paper and began reading it. “What?”

“For lunch. Chops? There’s a splendid new place on the Hill. Good beer, too.”

“Fine.”

Hobart sped away to catch a pretty young archivist who’d just passed my desk. From the direction of a nearby staircase I heard the woman squeal, and then there was a slapping sound and a little yelp of pain from Hobart. Chuckling quietly at the fellow’s hopelessness, I leaned back in my chair to study the document he’d left me.

It related the curious story of a minister named Victor Dury and his wife, who in 1880 had been found murdered in their very modest home outside New Paltz, New York. The bodies had been what the document called “most foully and savagely torn to bits.” Reverend Dury had formerly been a missionary in South Dakota, where he’d apparently made enemies among the Indian tribes; in fact, the constabulary in New Paltz had decided that the murders were an act of revenge on the part of several embittered Indians who’d been sent east by their chief for that very purpose. This bit of “detective” work had been the result of a note from the assassins found on the scene that explained the killings and stated that the dead couple’s teenaged son was being taken back to live among the Indians as one of their own. It was quite a grim little tale, one that would have been of obvious use to us had its setting been further west. I put the paper aside, but in a few minutes picked it up again, wondering if there wasn’t at least a chance that we were wrong about our killer’s geographic background. Finally deciding to discuss the matter with Kreizler, I tucked the document away in my pocket.

The rest of the day offered only two cases that held out any hope of advancing our investigation. The first involved a group of children and their teacher who’d been slaughtered during their studies in an isolated schoolhouse; and the second, yet another prairie family who’d been massacred after a treaty violation. Realizing that the two accounts were meager reward for a long day’s work, I set my sights on the Willard Hotel, hoping that Kreizler had had better luck during his second day of research. But Laszlo had discovered only a few additional names of soldiers who’d served in the Army of the West during the fifteen-year span we were investigating, then been institutionalized in the capital because of violent, unstable behavior, and finally suffered from some sort of facial disfigurement. Of these few, only one fell within the general age range that we were looking for (about thirty). As we sat down to dinner in the hotel dining room Kreizler handed me the case file on this man, and I offered him the document that told the tale of the Dury murders.

“Born and raised in Ohio,” was my first comment on Laszlo’s find. “He’d have to’ve spent a lot of time in New York after his discharge.”

“True,” Kreizler said, unfolding the paper I’d given him as he set to work halfheartedly on a bowl of crab bisque. “Which presents a problem—he didn’t leave St. Elizabeth’s until the spring of ’91.”

“A fast study,” I commented with a nod. “But it’s possible.”

“I’m also not encouraged by the disfigurement—a long scar across the right cheek and the lips.”

“What’s the matter with that? Sounds fairly revolting.”

“But it suggests a war injury, Moore, and that rules out childhood distress over the—”

Kreizler’s eyes suddenly went very wide and he set his spoon down slowly as he finished reading the document I’d given him. Looking slowly from it to me, he then spoke in a tone of suppressed excitement. “Where did you get this?”

“Hobart,” I answered simply, putting the file on the soldier from Ohio aside. “He found it last night. Why?”

His hands moving quickly, Kreizler snatched some more folded papers from his inside pocket. Quickly flattening them on the table, he then thrust the pile across to me. “Notice anything?”

It took one or two seconds, but I did. At the top of the first sheet of paper, which was yet another form from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, there was a space marked PLACE OF BIRTH.

In that space had been scribbled the words “New Paltz, New York.”