The Alienist by Caleb Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

he find himself sexually drawn to young boys? Why had he shot the girl and not stabbed her? Wolff was at first bewildered by all this, and appealed to the attendant, Fuller, asking whether or not he must answer. Fuller, with somewhat lascivious glee, made it plain that he must, and Wolff complied, for a time. But after half an hour of it he staggered to his feet, rattled his manacles, and swore that no man could force him to participate in such an obscene inquisition. He declared defiantly that he would rather face the hangman; at which point Kreizler stood and stared straight into Wolff’s eyes.
    “I fear that in New York State, the electrical chair is increasingly usurping the gallows, Mr. Wolff,” he said evenly. “Although I suspect that, based on your answers to my questions, you will find that out for yourself. God have mercy on you, sir.”
    As Kreizler strode toward the door, Fuller quickly pulled it open. I took a last look at Wolff before following Laszlo out: the man’s aspect had suddenly shifted from indignant to deeply fearful, but he was too weak now to do more than mumble pathetic protests as to what he was certain was his insanity and then fall back onto his cot.
    Kreizler and I walked back down the Pavilion’s main corridor as Fuller rebolted the door to Wolff’s cell. The quiet pleas of the other patients began again, but we were soon through them. Once we were out and in the vestibule, the shouts and howls behind us gained in volume once more.
    “I believe we can dismiss him, Moore,” Kreizler said, quietly and wearily, as he pulled on a pair of gloves that Cyrus handed him. “Drugged though he may be, Wolff has revealed himself—violent, certainly, and resentful of children. A drunkard, as well. But he is not mad, nor do I think he is connected to our current business.”
    “Ah,” I said, seizing the opportunity, “now, about that—”
    “They’ll
want
him to be mad, of course,” Laszlo mused, not hearing me. “The doctors here, the newspapers, the judges, they’d like to think that only a madman would shoot a five-year-old girl in the head. It creates certain…
difficulties,
if we are forced to accept that our society can produce sane men who commit such acts.” He sighed once and took an umbrella from Cyrus. “Yes, that will be a long day or two in court, I should think…”
    We exited the Pavilion, myself seeking refuge with Kreizler under his umbrella, and then climbed into the now-covered calash. I knew what was coming: a monologue that was a kind of catharsis for Kreizler, a restatement of some of his most basic professional principles, designed to relieve the enormous responsibility of helping send a man to his death. Kreizler was a confirmed opponent of the practice of executing criminals, even vicious murderers such as Wolff; but he did not allow this opposition to affect his judgment or his definition of true insanity, which was, by comparison with that of many of his colleagues, relatively narrow. As Cyrus jumped into the driver’s seat of the calash and the carriage pulled away from Bellevue, Kreizler’s diatribe began to cover subjects I’d heard him discuss many times before: how a broad definition of insanity might make society as a whole feel better but did nothing for mental science, and only lessened the chance that the truly mentally diseased would receive proper care and treatment. It was an insistent sort of speech—Kreizler seemed to be trying to push the image of Wolff in the electrical chair further and further away—and as it wound on, I realized that there was no hope of my gaining any hard information concerning just what in hell was going on and why I’d been called into whatever it was.
    Glancing about at the passing buildings in some frustration, I let my eyes come to rest on Cyrus, momentarily thinking that, since he had to listen to this sort of thing more than anyone, I might get some sympathy out of the man. I should have known better. Like