A Killer's Essence

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I’m not here to talk to you,” I said.

  He looked up at me then. “What are you here for then?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  I didn’t bother answering him. While he was wearing a jail-issue jumpsuit and not the grayish-blue pinstripe suit I’d first seen him in, I recognized him. He was the same person Zachary Lynch nearly went catatonic over outside his apartment building.

  Throughout the day I kept playing over in my head the way Lynch reacted when he saw Gerard Fiske. That afternoon I went to the New York Public Library and searched through newspapers dating back to 1972. When I found what I was looking for I sat for a few minutes saying a silent prayer for the memory of a twelve-year-old from back then who had lived in our neighborhood, Chucky Wilson. Afterward, I headed back to Central, where I dug out an old police report, then searched through DOC records, infuriated by what I found.

  That night I watched over Zachary Lynch like I’d been doing every Wednesday, then drove to the studio apartment Mike had moved into after his separation from Marcy. We talked for a while, mostly about what had happened outside of that fish market when I was seven years old. Later, when I was alone in my living room, I forced myself to remember what it was I saw that day, and I wrote it down. I didn’t sleep much that night.

  Thursday, January 20, 2005

  I was up early the next day and by five o’clock was sitting impatiently in my recliner waiting for the sun to come up. At seven I called in sick, then went to a diner and killed more time. I waited until nine o’clock before heading to Zachary Lynch’s apartment. It had been almost two months since I last contacted him, and he seemed surprised to see me. It looked like I had woken him—he answered the door in a robe, his eyes squinting, a pillow-crease impression showing on his cheek. I told him I needed him to look at someone.

  “I really don’t have time this morning,” he started. “I have a contract that I need to finish today—”

  “This is important,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  He squinted his eyes shut against the light filtering in from the hallway. “Let me make a phone call,” he said.

  I followed him into his apartment. He called whoever it was he had a contract with and arranged for an extension. After he did that, he told me he’d take a quick shower and be ready in a few minutes. I opened the shades to let some light in and sat down. The living room had been cleaned up since I was last there. Books and papers had been put away, and the room aired out. It was more than that. A new sofa had been added, as well as a small but new dining room table, which even had a vase of flowers sitting on it. When Lynch came back wearing an old pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, with his long hair wet and hanging off his head like knotted string, I mentioned how he had redecorated. He gave an embarrassed smile and told me he’d picked up a few things online.

  Fortunately he didn’t ask me about my new suspect, so I didn’t have to lie to him. I stopped off at a bakery nearby and bought him a Danish and coffee for breakfast, then headed off to Staten Island. An hour later I pulled up to a housing project for the elderly on the northern end of Staten Island, off of Tompkins Avenue. Lynch looked confused when he realized where we were, but he didn’t say anything about it. I talked with the security guard working the front desk, showing him my badge and telling him I was there on official business, then led Lynch to a room on the second floor. When I found the room I was looking for, I knocked hard on the door and could see Lynch tensing while we waited.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry.”

  A fit of asthmatic coughing came from inside the room, then the sound of something being dragged along the floor. I felt the muscles along my jaw tightening as I stood there. The door opened enough to show a withered old man looking out. Zachary Lynch sucked in his breath at the sight of him and whispered to me that he wasn’t the shooter. I ignored him and stood frozen, staring straight ahead.

  The old man, with his hollowed cheeks and dead eyes, looked like he could’ve been the work of a taxidermist. He eyed me silently, grasping onto a walker for support, holding it tightly with two thickly veined and gnarled hands. An oxygen tank attached to the walker fed a thin tube into each of his nostrils. Even though his face was wasted and there was barely any flesh left on him, I recognized him. It had been thirty-two years, but I recognized him. Every few seconds his labored breathing reminded me that what was in front of me was still flesh and blood, no matter how dead his eyes looked. Eventually he recognized me also. He didn’t say anything, just pushed the door shut, but there was a glint in his eyes and a faint trace of a smile letting me know that he knew who I was. It was almost as if that smile were telling me about what could’ve been if only I had followed him into the back of his fish market all those years ago. There was no doubt in my mind that if he was capable of it he’d be looking for another young boy to chop up.

  “Why’d you bring me here?” Lynch asked.

  I couldn’t answer him, not then anyway. For a long moment I couldn’t do much of anything other than feel my hands clenching and unclenching. When I could, I turned and made my way quickly out of the housing project and back to my car. Lynch was out of breath as he ran to keep up with me.

  When we were in the car I asked Lynch what it was he saw when he looked at that man. My voice sounded foreign and strange to me, and my tone scared him. I could almost feel him shrinking from me. In a breathless whisper he told me that this person wasn’t the one who killed Gail Laurent, and what he saw didn’t matter.

  “Just tell me what you saw.”

  He wasn’t going to. I sat back, a wave of exhaustion hitting me. I described to Lynch the image I had forced myself to remember. I told him about that thin cobra-like body, the obscene hole where a nose was supposed to be, the enormous gaping jaw overflowing with jagged dagger-like teeth, the long blood-red talons where hands should’ve been. Zachary Lynch sat stunned hearing all that.

  “How?” he asked.

  “When I was seven years old, he tried to lure me and my brother into the back of a fish market with the promise of five dollars,” I said. “For a split second I saw him the way I just described him.”

  “If you hadn’t seen him like that …” Lynch muttered, shaking his head. “If you had gone with him …”

  “I know what would’ve happened. He was later found chopping up the body of another boy he was able to lure back there.” I swallowed hard and rubbed my hand across my jaw. “He was in Attica until recently. The DOC released him two months ago because he’s dying of emphysema, although not soon enough if you ask me.”

  Lynch started crying. It was mostly a noiseless sob, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. I could see him struggling hard to stop it.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “This is embarrassing. But you have to understand. For six years I’ve been living with this nagging fear that maybe I am insane, that what I’m seeing really are just hallucinations and not what I think they are. But you seeing what you did—even if it was only for a split second—proves otherwise.”

  “What is it you see?” I asked.

  “I’ll … I’ll tell you, but first, how’d you figure this out?”

  “You must’ve seen the news stories about Gerard Fiske? The guy found in Tribeca with those children locked up in dog cages?”

  Lynch nodded slowly.

  “He’s the same guy you saw that time with me when you nearly went catatonic. It was that first time I was taking you to the precinct, when we were walking to my car.”

  A heaviness came over his face as he remembered Fiske.

  “You saw something that day,” I said. “Just like I saw something outside that fish market when I was seven. So what is that we saw?” My voice caught in my throat, and I had to clear it before I could ask, “Are they some sort of monsters?”

  “Monstrous, but not monsters,” he said softly. An offkilter smile twisted his lips. “Detective Green, I guess you can say I
see people the way they really are. Not how they are physically, but spiritually. Their essence. Their true selves. This is what I’ve been living with ever since being brought back from the dead, and it’s not much fun.”

  We both sat quietly. I expected something like that, so what he told me wasn’t a surprise, but still, I had to sit and digest it.

  “What is it you see when you look at me?” I asked.

  “Detective, it’s not important—”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “I’m the guy with holes instead of eyes, remember? What the fuck do you see?”

  “What difference does it make? You’re not a monster, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Yeah, all I do is make you flinch and nearly swallow your tongue every time you see me.”

  “Come on, detective,” he said, trying to joke it off. “I haven’t done that in ages.”

  “I need to know. Zachary, as a friend, just tell me what it is.”

  He sucked in a lungful of air and blew it out an explosive breath. “You really need me to tell you what you already know?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I need you to.”

  His mouth weakened as he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You’re not a monster, Detective Green. You’re not spiritually ugly or deformed. But what I see is so much swirling confusion and rage inside you that it’s hard to take. At least it used to be, but I guess I’ve gotten used to you.”

  He was trying hard to smile. “That’s ridiculous,” I said, “I’m a calm person. I almost never express rage.” But I knew he was right. He only told me what I already knew, what I found myself fighting against almost every waking minute, at least since Cheryl dropped her bombshell on me more than two years ago.

  He touched me lightly on the shoulder and forced himself to look at me as he maintained his smile. “People can grow spiritually,” he said. “Not the completely broken ones, not people like that man in there or Gerard Fiske or the one who I saw shoot that woman, but the rest of us can.”

  “Of course what you’re telling me is a load of horseshit,” I said.

  “Of course. Just ask my neurologist.”

  I nodded, my jaw clenched shut. I put the car in drive. Neither of us said a word to each other while I drove us back to Manhattan. It wasn’t until I parked in front of Zachary Lynch’s apartment building that I told him that what he had was a gift.

  He laughed sourly at that. “Some gift. Please, show me to the exchange window so I can trade it for a pair of socks.”

  “No, it is. If we knew ahead of time about people like Gerard Fiske and could be watching them, maybe what we discovered the other day never would’ve happened.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said.

  “Sure it is. You knew when you saw him on the street that day what he was.”

  “Who would I have told?” he asked, his voice breaking into a soft whisper. “Who would’ve believed me?”

  “I would have.”

  He pulled awkwardly at his lower lip as he considered that, then smiling sadly asked, “And who would believe you?”

  It was a good question. I tried to think of some way of answering him, but drew a blank.

  “That’s the problem,” Lynch said. “Even if I pointed out these monsters to you, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And there are so many of them out there. You wouldn’t believe how many there are. Although not many like Gerard Fiske. Or that man you took me to see today.”

  “There’s got to be something …”

  “Sadly, detective, there isn’t. Even if there was, I wouldn’t want to do it. I don’t think it would be right for me to be the one to determine whether someone’s soul is monstrous enough to warrant investigation.”

  “But if you saw someone like Fiske again—”

  “I wouldn’t. I almost never look up at people on the street.”

  “But if you did …”

  “What would I do then? I wouldn’t be able to describe the person to you, at least not his physical appearance, and I don’t think describing his soul would help you much.”

  “I’ll buy you a digital camera. You can carry it around and take pictures of these people when you see them.”

  He blanched at the prospect of doing that. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I couldn’t make a promise like that. It’s so hard looking into people’s souls, harder than you’d imagine. It takes so much out of me.”

  “But not when you look into Lisa’s.”

  He pulled some more on his lower lip, shook his head. “No, not when I see hers,” he agreed. Flashing his crooked smile, he asked, “Would you like to see what her soul looks like?”

  I nodded, finding myself more curious about that than I would’ve imagined. “Yeah, I would,” I said.

  He seemed both genuinely pleased and nervous over the prospect of sharing that with me. I followed him into his apartment and waited while he brought up a drawing on his computer screen. The woman in it was amazingly beautiful, and almost physically the opposite of the Lisa Williams I’d seen at Strombolli’s. Tall, lean, with long, flowing golden hair. But I could see the resemblance with Lisa in the soft hazel eyes and the warm smile. While I looked at the drawing, Lynch stood next to me, anxiously watching for my reaction.

  “I haven’t really done her justice,” he said. “I’ve been working on the drawing for several years, but I’m not an artist and Lisa’s much more beautiful than that. But it gives you an idea of what she looks like. Her true essence, that is.”

  “I can see her in the drawing,” I said. “I can see her in the way you drew her eyes and smile, and you captured the same soft kindness she exudes.”

  “Really?” he asked, nearly beaming with pride, his eyes fixed on the drawing.

  “You have a date with her, don’t you?”

  A light pink mottled his cheeks, which was all the answer he gave me.

  “Come on, Zachary, I’m a detective. I can figure stuff like this out. You’ve cleaned up the place, bought some new furniture, and, my guess, also some new clothes. So when’s the big date?”

  I didn’t have to guess about the new clothing. The last few times I’d followed him to Strombolli’s he was dressed up in what looked like a new wardrobe, and looking damned uncomfortable in it

  Zachary’s blush deepened, and he told me she was going to be having dinner with him Friday night.

  “Tomorrow night, huh? You haven’t told her yet about what happened to you and what you see when you look at people?”

  He shook his head.

  I asked for a piece of paper, then wrote down my cell phone number. “If you want, you can have her call me after you talk to her. I’ll back you up and make sure she knows you’re not crazy. Or at least leave her thinking we’re both crazy.”

  He nodded silently and took the paper from me, relief washing over his long, thin face. Of course, that was why he invited me up to see his drawing of Lisa; he was hoping I’d make that offer. It must’ve been scaring the hell out of him, wondering how’d she react to something like that.

  “I’m also getting you a camera,” I told him. “Who knows, maybe you’ll see someone whose picture you should be taking.”

  “I can’t promise I’ll ever use it,” he said, “but I’ll try to bring it with me when I go outside.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be going broke over this. I’ll buy you a cheap one. Good luck tomorrow.” I moved to the door, pausing with my hand on the doorknob. “Zachary, can you tell me what you saw when you looked at the killer?”

  “Why? How can that help you?”

  “I don’t know. But knowing what this guy is really like can’t hurt. Maybe it will help me connect the dots somewhere else along the line.”

  A pained expression washed over his face, like he was suffering a bad stomachache. “Who will you be telling this to?”

  “No one. I’ll be keeping this to myself.”

  He closed his eyes, nodded. Thin lines creased his forehead as he concentrated to dre
dge up a memory from almost three months ago. “He was something out of a nightmare,” Lynch said. “The man was enormous, and when he leaned over that woman’s body his back arched like a feral animal’s. It made me think of a wolf. When he turned around and faced me, he was grotesque. It was like he had a snout instead of a nose, and when his jaw opened and unhinged it was massive. Those are the things that stuck most in my mind. I’m sorry, I can’t picture much more about him.”

  “But you’d know him if you saw him again?”

  Grim-faced, he nodded, his eyes still closed.

  “All right. Thanks, Zachary. I’ll be in touch.”

  I was halfway out the door when his voice stopped me.

  “Detective Green,” he said, his voice low, faltering, “you’re the only person I’ve ever told any of this to.”

  “I know,” I told him.

  I left then.

  Sunday, January 23, 2005

  Over the next several days I thought a lot about Zachary Lynch, about what it must be like seeing the things he did, seeing what people really were beneath the skin. I thought a lot also about his description of the killer, about how huge and grotesque the killer’s soul was, and how that seemed to add up with Jill Chandler’s profile of him being a full-blown narcissist.

  I never got a call from Lisa Williams. If Lynch followed through and told her his secret, she either believed him or thought he was completely nuts. In either case, she didn’t bother getting my take on it.

  That night I took Bambi to the West Village for dinner. Instead of sticking with beer, I ended up joining her with vodka martinis, and I probably had more than one too many. After dinner I dragged her to Tribeca with the excuse of meeting a new buddy of mine. Standing outside of Lynch’s apartment, Bambi was nearly falling over giggling. I had to lean against the door frame to keep myself upright, and I rapped my knuckles hard against his door, a big, dumb silly grin stretched across my face. Lynch asked who it was, and I yelled out for him to open the door. When he did, and he caught a glimpse of Bambi and me waiting for him, his face turned wooden, but I wasn’t able to catch any other reaction from him.