The Alienist

Moore and Sara nervously discuss the case on their way to Castle Garden, a fortress located in Battery Park, on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, where the latest victim’s body has been found. Their carriage ride through the wealthy downtown area provides a stark contrast with their recent trip to the tenement district. Inside Battery Park, the “prodigious stone walls of Castle Garden” (139) present a mystery: how the killer is getting into and out of these inaccessible locations.

On the fortress rooftop they find Kreizler, Lucius, Roosevelt, and the mutilated body of a young boy who worked at the Golden Rule Pleasure Club, which serves the same clientele as Paresis Hall. Sara steadies herself for a moment and then assists Lucius with the postmortem. Marcus dusts for fingerprints and then tries to discover how the killer got onto the rooftop in the first place. Marcus ties a rope around his waist and begins descending one of the fortress’s walls. Kreizler speculates that the murdered boy knew and trusted his killer. Though Roosevelt chafes at the suggestion, Kreizler posits a possible military background for the killer. On the streets outside Battery Park, the team spots torch-wielding men and women who have “all the makings of a mob” (150).