Free Ripper by Stefan Petrucha Page A

I’ll bite your fingers off. Even the best mind can tumble into an abyss when its expectations are thwarted.”
    “A what? Abyss?” Carver said.
    Hawking rapped the table. “Abyss. I’ll make it simple. True story. A woman was sitting in a theater enjoying a play when suddenly, a fire truck drove across stage. It was part of the play, but because she didn’t expect it, she screamed. Thing is, once she started screaming, she couldn’t stop. They dragged her from the theater and brought her here, where she was deemed incurably mad. Any idiot would know she wasn’t, but they had no idiots on staff, only doctors, alienists. That was two years ago. It was only last week I secured her release.”
    “But… why
was
she screaming that much if she wasn’t mad?”
    “She thought she knew the world, and in her way of thinking, real fire trucks
don’t
appear in plays. She couldn’t handle living in a world where they could. That was her abyss. You’ll have yours one day, I’m sure. But for now, time to clean. Your belongings will be here this afternoon.”
    Carver didn’t completely understand, but the lesson was over. For the next several hours, he worked, piling books and papers in the shelves on one wall, models along another, instruments at a third, and so on. Grateful the room had walls to spare, he even secured a space for himself, sectioning it off with what at first looked like a tabletop, but turned out to be a room divider.
    After a break to retrieve lunch, he returned to find two attendantsassembling a mattress frame. Carver’s belongings had also arrived. To his surprise, Hawking was leafing through his small collection of detective novels.
    “Allan Quatermain, Nick Neverseen, and Holmes, Holmes, Holmes,” Hawking said. “Fan of Doyle?”
    Carver nodded. “I’ll say.”
    “Ever been able to solve one of his cases based on the information in the story?”
    “No, but Holmes is the genius.”
    “
Doyle’s
the genius. It’s a cheap trick. The reader never has all the information, so Holmes can make up the answers at the last minute. You’d be better served reading another Holmes, H. H. Holmes, the multi-murderer. He was nabbed last year by a Pinkerton, Frank P. Geyer. Now his confession is being serialized in the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
How’s that for a fire truck crossing the stage?”
    Carver knew about that killer, despite Miss Petty’s efforts to keep him from the stories. Holmes had been accused of over twenty murders, many committed during the Chicago World’s Fair. He’d lured his victims to what the papers called a “murder castle.” The thought that he’d be writing articles repulsed Carver as much as it fascinated him.
    “Do you think he’ll tell the truth? Confess?”
    “No, but a bit of the liar always slips into the lie. It will be a good way to get into his head, the method used by
my
favorite fictional detective.”
    Carver was surprised to hear Hawking
liked
anything, but the hunched man put down Sherlock Holmes and searched among his shelves. Finding a slender volume, he tossed it to Carver.
    The title was
The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
    “C. Auguste Dupin, by Edgar Allan Poe—inventor of the detective story. Dupin used
ratiocination,
combining logic with imagination to become so familiar with the criminal that the detective, in a way,
becomes
him. Think you can do that, boy? Become mad to find the mad? A thief to catch a thief? And worse?”
    Carver thought about it. Did he mean
really
steal? What did he mean by
worse
?
Kill
to catch a killer?
    Hawking regarded him as if he could read his thoughts from the furrows on his brow. “I’ve had enough of watching you try to think for one day. I’ve patients to visit. Lie in your new bed, read that book. Tomorrow bright and early you’ll return to your beloved New Pinkertons and start searching for your father. We’ll soon see what you’re willing to do.”

17
    THE MORNING wind along the East River had an icy bite, but at