And then there’s Mr. Moore. I have the luxury of writing these final words because, for the first time since opening this shop, I have an assistant: sportsman that he is, Mr. Moore has conceded the bet after reading the rest of my manuscript, though he was careful to tell me that whatever spirit the narrative may have has been “regrettably marred by an appalling lack of style.” Says him. Anyway, he’s out there now, apron and all, selling smokes to swells and, I think, enjoying the opportunity what it offers him to badger such people in the way what only a shopkeeper can: nothing’s ever pleased my old friend more than being given a chance to spit in the face of the upper crust from which he hails.

His return to the Times after the Hatch case wasn’t easy for him: he would’ve liked to’ve chronicled our recent exploits in the pages of the paper, but he knew that his editors wouldn’t touch the thing with a very long stick. So he decided to console himself by taking over coverage of the legal proceedings what followed “the mystery of the headless body.” It was Mr. Moore’s hope that he’d be able to inject some of the lessons we’d learned from pursuing Libby Hatch into that second story of intimate murder, though he really should’ve known better. The victim of the crime, the dismembered Mr. Guldensuppe, was soon forgotten by just about everybody, while his former lover, Mrs. Nack, and her most recent conquest and partner in crime, Martin Thorn, found themselves the subject of a full-blown public melodrama. Mrs. Nack quickly became, so far as the press, the public, and the district attorney’s office were concerned, a damsel in distress: she passed herself off as having been misled and corrupted by Thorn, when in fact she’d helped plan the killing and assisted in the job of dismembering the corpse. To top it all off, by giving the state everything it needed to send the unfortunate sap Thorn to the electrical chair at Sing Sing, Mrs. Nack managed to get the district attorney to ask the judge in the case to impose the lightest possible sentence on her, which he did: she got fifteen years at Auburn, which, with good behavior, could and did end up being only nine.

When the day came for Thorn to go to the chair, Mr. Moore went up to Sing Sing, determined to get some kind of statement from the doomed prisoner to the effect that society was still willing to let women get away with brutal outrages just because it was too disturbing to believe that they were capable of them. He buttonholed Thorn as the condemned man was being led into the death chamber, and asked him what he thought about Mrs. Nack’s light sentence.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Thorn answered, beaten down and resigned. “I don’t care much about it one way or the other.”

So ended Mr. Moore’s little crusade to bring to light some few of the truths we’d learned from Libby Hatch. The “savage” Thorn and the “deluded but redeemed” Mrs. Nack (as the D.A. labeled them) turned out to be, in fact, very ordinary people, while the “monsters” what everyone in town had originally thought were responsible for the crime-the grave robbers, mad anatomists, bloodthirsty ghouls, and the like-were just shadows, dreamed up to glorify policemen, sell newspapers, and scare unruly kids. True to the Doctor’s beliefs, the real monsters continued, then as now, to wander the streets unnoticed, going about their strange and desperate work with a fever what looks to the average citizen like nothing more than the ordinary effort required to get through an ordinary day.

As for me, I’ve done better than might’ve been expected, I suppose, given where I started out. Most of my old pals and associates ended up either in jail or dead on the streets, and while it’s hard to feel sorry that the likes of Ding Dong and Goo Goo Knox went that way, it seems sad that someone as good-hearted as Hickie the Hun should’ve spent most of his adult life walking the yard at Sing Sing. My own life’s pretty much been this shop; and while tobacco’s done all right by me in terms of money, it’s also left me-in an example of what the Doctor calls “horribly tragic irony”-with this wretched hack, a condition what will, very probably, keep eating away at my lungs until there’s nothing left to cough up. I get the feeling, sometimes, that the Doctor feels guilty about never getting me to give up the smokes; but I was a nicotine fiend long before I ever met the man, and, caring and patient as he always was, there were just some things about my early life what even his kindness and wisdom couldn’t undo. I don’t hold him responsible, of course, or love him any the less for it, and it makes me sad to think that my physical predicament only gives him one more reason to vex himself; but again, I guess it’s that very vexing, and the ability to keep working through it toward a better sort of life for our mostly miserable species, what makes him such a very unusual man.

There’ve been women in my life every now and again, but none who’ve filled me with the kind of dreams what I once shared with Kat in the Doctor’s kitchen. All of that died with her, I guess; and if it seems strange that such should’ve happened so early in my life, I can only say that it sometimes occurs to me that those of us what grew up on the streets did everything too early-too early, and too fast. Once a week I take the subway out to Calvary Cemetery and put flowers on Kat’s grave, and there’s times-more and more often, these days-when I find myself sitting and chatting with her, much the way we did on that morning when she downed the better part of a bottle of paregoric. Wherever she is, I suppose she knows that I’ll likely be joining her sometime fairly soon; and while I don’t like to think about leaving my friends, and especially the Doctor, behind, there’s a kind of a peculiar thrill in thinking that in the end I’ll find her again, all grown up and free of her cravings for burny and the high life. We might even, at long last, be able to make some kind of a peaceful, pleasant life together-the kind of life what she never knew during her short time on this world. A lot of people, I guess, might consider that a silly sort of dream; but if you came from the world what Kat and I did, it wouldn’t seem that way at all.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While researching the prequel to this book, The Alienist, it became apparent to me that, contrary to popular belief, women are just as prone to violent crime as are men. But their victims are most often children-frequently their own children-and this disturbing fact seems to discourage the kind of sensationalist reporting that usually characterizes cases involving violent men, especially male serial killers. I discussed this matter with Dr. David Abrahamsen, who had given me much assistance during the preparation of The Alienist, and he confirmed that women generally abuse or murder people with whom they have strong personal connections (unlike men, who often select strangers as the victims of their violent tendencies, since they are easier to objectify). Once again, I thank Dr. Abrahamsen for his assistance and encouragement, without which this project would have gone astray early on.

Anyone familiar with the phenomenon of female violence will see in the case of Libby Hatch elements of crimes from not only the last century but our own time, as well. This similarity is quite intentional, and could not have been achieved without the important work of analysts who have chronicled the stories of some of the more noteworthy contemporary female killers. Of these writers I must mention Joyce Eggington for her powerful study of Marybeth Tinning, Ann Rule for her incisive work on the Diane Downs case, Andrea Peyser for her reporting on and analysis of the Susan Smith murders, and my friend John Coston for his examination of Ellen Boehm. All are to be commended for their refusal to sociologically rationalize the acts of their subjects, and for their insistence (to paraphrase Rupert Picton) on treating them as violent individuals first and women second.