Sarah, Laszlo, John, and the Issacsons split up to follow leads out of the city and across the country by boat, horse, and rail.
The mystery evolves:
- John and Laszlo take a train to Washington; John looks through archives on Native American attacks while Laszlo meets with the hospital staff
- Upon comparing notes they arrive at new name, Beecham, and an account of the murder of the Drury family in upstate New York
- John continues to be followed by a dark man; is it the killer or O’Connor’s man the Swede?
- The Issacsons visit Beecham’s commanding officer stationed in North Dakota; he described Beecham’s actions as religious man that took pleasure in bizarrely stabbing a Chicago rioter
- Sarah visits the ruined Drury house in upstate New York; she finds a box marked “Purity” containing bones
- At the new Drury farm Laszlo and John learn that Jacob Drury was abused as a child and that his mother told him he was “the bastard son of a red ‘Injun'”
- George Beecham, who befriended Jacob Drury, spent time in the mountains until his death around the same time the Drury family was murdered
- A mysterious shooter murders the carriage driver sends Laszlo and John tumbling off a bridge and stranded in the woods
Other takeaways:
- Laszlo’s insensitive remarks to John about his former fiancé actually stem from his curiosity of falling in love with increasingly happy Mary
- Indians” were blamed for all kinds of violence perhaps leading to the sentiment of displacing them
- The settling of the American West was fraught with violence as noted by the Issacsons wondering they would see buffalo or Native Americans if “they haven’t all been killed”
- As much as the “The Alienist” has shown urban social hierarchies and prejudices now this episode adds the perceptions of rural communities to the inequality equation
- John has growing feelings for Sarah; Lucius Issacson forces his brother, Marcus, to admit he is in love
- An increasingly unstable O’Connor enters Laszlo’s house ultimately killing Mary
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