Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“Nah,” I said, still staring at the horse’s hoof. “I’ll be okay. Just gotta finish up out here, that’s all.”

“Well… there isn’t any reason for the Doctor to know this part of the story. Doesn’t have anything to do with the case that I can tell.”

“Right.” I finally managed to give my friend another quick look. “Thanks, Cyrus.”

He just nodded, stood up, and left the carriage house slowly.

I stayed at my work for several more minutes, the caked mud in Frederick ’s shoe coming away quicker as it mixed with my silent tears.

It’s a peculiar thing, how you can go to bed one night convinced of a fact and wake up the next morning to find yourself faced with its opposite…

When I drifted off soon after sunset on that Sunday evening, I was dead certain that I would never see Kat again: even if my heart could have stood visiting her at the Dusters’ joint, things had so fallen out with Ding Dong during our jaunt to Bethune Street as to make even an attempt at such a visit worth my life. The realization that the door on my strange relationship with her seemed to have suddenly swung shut alternately angered and saddened me all through Sunday afternoon and evening. So black and blue did my mood become, in fact, that the Doctor-preoccupied as he was with the case-felt the need to visit me in my room and ask whether I was feeling all right. I didn’t tell him the true story, and he, of course, sensed that I was holding something back; but he didn’t press it, just told me to get some extra sleep and see how things looked in the morning.

I woke at just past 8:30 on Monday to find the Doctor and Cyrus getting ready to head up to the Museum of Natural History. Mrs. Leshko was, not for the first time, late, and Cyrus was seeing to the preparation of coffee, a task what he could accomplish with far happier results than could our Russian cook. The three of us sat in the kitchen and had big mugs of a fine South American brew, the Doctor trying to cheer me up by reading aloud the details of a lead story in the Times that concerned new developments in the “mystery of the headless body.” It seemed that the lower torso of the still unidentified corpse (wrapped in the same red oilcloth what Cyrus and I had seen at the Cunard pier) had washed up at the watery edge of the woods near Undercliff Avenue, all the way on the north side of Manhattan. The police-whose theory of a crazed anatomist or medical student had been dismissed even by the coroner they themselves had engaged, after the man had found about a dozen stab wounds and a couple of.32-caliber bullet holes in various parts of the body-had changed their theory, and were now trying to drum up panic and excitement by saying the body belonged to one of two lunatics who’d escaped from the State Asylum at King’s Park, Long Island, a couple of weeks earlier. This story, we all knew, was as likely to prove true as the first; but whatever the real identity of the unfortunate soul whose body’d been distributed all over town, the attention that the case continued to receive could only help us to go about our work more easily.

The Doctor and Cyrus headed off at a little before nine, and though a visit to the Museum of Natural History would ordinarily have been my sort of fare, the morning was a cool, gray one, and my spirits were such that I found the idea of staying home alone somewhat comforting. And, of course, it was advisable that someone stick around and try to determine what in the world had become of Mrs. Leshko. So I walked the pair of them out to the calash and saw them off, pausing to glance up at the misty sky before heading back to the house.

I’d just gotten the door open when a voice whispered to me:

“Stevie!”

It was coming from beyond some hedges on the east side of the Doctor’s small front yard. Carefully closing the front door again, I crept over to the hedge, looked up and over it, and found-

Kat. She was crouched down low and huddling by the side of the building next door, her clothes looking very wrinkled, her hair undone, and her face a picture of exhaustion. I couldn’t’ve been more surprised if she’d been a ghost or one of those mythical sirens, so resigned had I become during the last twelve hours to never seeing her again.

“Kat?” I said, keeping my own voice low. Then I rushed around the hedge to her. “What the hell’re you doing? How long you been here?”

“Since about four,” she said, glancing up and down the block, more so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye than because she was trying to locate anything. “I think.” Her eyes turned watery, she began to sniffle hard and painfully; and when she wiped at her nose with a filthy old handkerchief, it came away bloody.

“But why?”

She shrugged miserably. “Had to get out of there-he was like a maniac last night. In fact, I ain’t so sure he ain’t a maniac, sometimes…”

“Ding Dong?” I said, to which she nodded. My eyes fell to the ground. “It’s my fault, ain’t it…”

She shook her head quickly, the tears thickening in those blue eyes that still refused to look into mine. “That wasn’t it. Wasn’t most of it, anyway…” She finally sobbed once. “Stevie, he’s got three other regular girls- three ! And I’m the oldest ! He never told me that!”

I had no idea what to say; the information didn’t surprise me, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell her so. “So,” I tried, “did-did you two have an argument or something?”

“We had a fight , is what we had!” she said. “I told him I don’t play second fiddle to no twelve-year-old piece of trash-” She slammed her fist against the side of her forehead. “But now all my things are down there…”

I smiled a little. “All your things? Kat, you got two dresses, one coat, and a shawl-”

“And my papa’s old wallet!” she protested. “The one with my mother’s picture in it-that’s there, too!”

I gave her a straight look. “But that ain’t what’s makin’ this hard, right?” I touched her elbow, trying to get her to look at me. “He won’t give you any burny, will he?”

“Bastard!” she grunted, sobbing again. “He knows how much I need it now, he swore he’d never cut me off!” She finally glanced once into my eyes, real pathetically, then threw herself against me hard. “Stevie, I’m just about going out of my skull, I’m hurtin’ for it so bad.”

I put my arms around her shivering shoulders. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get inside-a little strong coffee’ll take some of the edge off of it.”

I got her up and half carried her to the front door of the Doctor’s house, where she paused once fearfully.

“They’re-all gone, right?” she said, looking up at the parlor windows. “I waited for ’em to go, I don’t want you gettin’ into no trouble-”

“They’re gone,” I said as reassuringly as I knew how. “But there wouldn’t be any trouble, anyway. The Doctor ain’t that way.”

She let out a doubtful little noise as we went inside.

I guided her to the kitchen and a mug of Cyrus’s coffee. Her eyes got wider as she began drinking it and taking the house in; and I’ll confess that, seeing the look in those eyes, my notion of bringing her to work for the Doctor resurfaced in my thoughts. So I took her on up to the parlor, to let her get the full effect of the place. Strengthened by the strong coffee, she began to move around more bravely and even smiled, amazed at all the wondrous and beautiful things the Doctor owned-and even more amazed that I lived in such a place.

“He must work you to the bone,” she said, opening the silver cigarette case on the marble mantel.