Diary of a Serial Killer

by Ed Gaffney

  A very long silence.

  Zack rubbed his forehead as if he had suddenly gotten a headache. “I knew I remembered you from somewhere. You’re Malcolm Ayers’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” Stephanie clearly didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

  “I saw you that time you were on TV.” Zack looked like he was just about to go crazy. Here was a woman he was very attracted to, who really needed his help, and he wasn’t going to be able to do a thing for her.

  Stephanie blushed slightly. If Zack weren’t already lying on a platter with an apple in his mouth and a spring of parsley on his head, the blush would really have finished him off. “I can’t believe you saw that. I am so embarrassed,” she said, with a shy smile. “Did you ever do something and then immediately wish that time travel existed?”

  “I’m a single dad,” Zack replied. “So twice, maybe three times per day.” Then he took a deep breath. “Your father has been accused of what? These latest killings in Springfield?”

  Steph straightened up in her seat, and all signs of flirting disappeared. That was too bad.

  “Yes. I mean, at least one. I mean two. They say that when they searched my father’s home they found the gun that was used to kill two people. And they also found a Taser. And then there was that finger—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there,” Terry said. “Because we need to talk about something that, well, I’m pretty sure is going to make us all very unhappy.”

  Stephanie looked bewildered. Why not? This was the world of criminal law.

  “Right now, Terry and I represent Alan Lombardo. Do you know who he is?”

  “Sure. The Springfield Shooter. Why does he need a lawyer?”

  “Good question,” Terry replied. “We were assigned to represent him by the court. He’s trying to get out of jail. He’s claiming that he’s innocent.”

  “But the police found all that evidence…Oh my God. He’s saying exactly what I’m saying. That somebody planted that evidence against him?”

  “Well, he’s never exactly said that.” Zack looked like a kid who just learned he wasn’t going to the circus. “But now that another person has been accused of a similar crime, under similar circumstances, it’s something we really must look into.”

  “But why is this going to make us all unhappy? Are cases like this something that you don’t like to handle?”

  “Oh yeah,” Terry said. “I was just telling Zack the other day how boring serial killer cases are.”

  “No,” Zack jumped in. From the look on her face, Steph didn’t get the joke. “Terry’s kidding. The problem isn’t that we don’t like these kinds of cases. It’s that since we already represent Alan Lombardo, and your father’s situation is potentially connected, we can’t take them both. Because there might be a conflict of interest.”

  From the look on Steph’s face, she had not reviewed the most recent edition of the Massachusetts Canon of Ethics. “Think of it this way,” Terry said. “Suppose that we decided to be your lawyers, and then we found out—now I know this didn’t happen, this is just a hypothetical—but suppose we found out that your father not only was guilty of these recent murders, but he was also the original Springfield Shooter.”

  Before he could go on, Zack interrupted. Probably because Stephanie looked like she was going to burst into tears.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “We know your father didn’t kill anyone. Let’s say we learned something else. Like Alan Lombardo, in an effort to convince everyone that he wasn’t the Springfield Shooter, hired somebody to commit these new murders just like he used to. And then the killer framed your father. If we found that out, we’d need to report it, right? So we could get your father out of trouble. But we couldn’t, because we represent Alan Lombardo, and we’re not allowed to do things to get our clients into trouble.”

  “Generally, we’re trying to get them out of trouble,” Terry offered helpfully. But it seemed like Stephanie had decided by now that Zack was the one she was going to focus on. That was understandable. She probably preferred talking to people who weren’t tossing around those suppose-your-father-was-the-worst-serial-killer-in-history hypotheticals.

  “Can I ask you a quick question?” Zack asked. “I’m wondering why you showed us that letter. Do you think that has anything to do with all of this?”

  “I don’t know,” Stephanie said. “But you remember the people on that television interview?”

  Zack nodded. “Yeah. Your father, Leif Samuelson, and that other author. The one who wrote Diary of a Serial Killer. I can’t remember his name.”

  “Russell Crane,” Steph supplied. “He’s the one who’s sending me flowers and trying to take me to premieres of his movie, and sending the press to interview me—”

  “Wait a minute,” Terry interjected. “Are you saying that the same guy who pretty much told the world that your father was the Springfield Shooter is sending you love notes?”

  “I guess you could put it that way. He’s a real creep, and it is so disgusting that he thinks I’ll ever go out with him, I can’t help wondering if he has anything to do with this.”

  “You think he might have killed these people?” Zack looked like he was on full alert.

  “I don’t have any proof, of course,” Stephanie replied. “But he gives me such an evil feeling, and I can’t believe that he keeps calling me.” She folded up the letter from Crane and put it in her bag. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “We’ll talk to the police,” Zack said. He knew that unless someone had a hell of a lot more than an evil feeling, the police would never think of Russell Crane as a serious suspect. Especially when they had someone in custody who was in possession of one of the murder weapons. But he couldn’t just let Stephanie sit there like that. “Maybe they’ll turn something up.”

  She nodded, and rose. “Well, I’m sorry that this didn’t work out.”

  Zack and Terry stood, too, and they both shook hands with the woman. She was obviously disappointed, and looked a little lost, as well.

  “Would you like us to send you a list of lawyers that we recommend when we can’t take a case?” Zack asked. He was dying.

  Stephanie smiled, but her heart was obviously not in it. “That would be nice.”

  And just then, the phone rang. Terry picked it up.

  It was the prison superintendent, reporting that two hours ago, their client, Alan Lombardo, had just attempted suicide.

  TWENTY-SIX

  September 19

  Vera got herself another cup of coffee, returned to the mountains of notes that were piled on her desk, and got back to work.

  Which, right now, consisted mainly of trying to convince herself that they really had caught the Eternally Yours serial killer.

  Because Vera had never felt as unsure of a charge as she did about the multiple-murder rap Malcolm Ayers was facing.

  Of course, she was only a cop. Her job was simply to supply whatever evidence she found to the district attorney’s office, and let them take it from there. But she deeply believed that her investigation was being manipulated so that she was only getting the evidence that the real killer wanted her to get.

  If Malcolm Ayers was a serial killer, she was going to need a long vacation, and a new attitude toward her instincts. Because they had never kicked in stronger than during her interrogation of the man. He was being set up. She just knew it.

  But Vera couldn’t ignore the facts. Ayers had possession of the murder weapon for the first two killings. His fingerprints were all over it, and he had no corroboration that the weapon was mailed to him by someone else. He also had a Taser, he knew Shakespeare, and he had no alibi for any of the murders.

  And any holes in the case against Ayers could be explained. Just because they’d gotten lucky and found him with one of the murder weapons, didn’t mean that he didn’t have the others hidden somewhere. Many serial killers had secret “lairs” where they stashed weapons, victims, and
“trophies” of victims, like the fingers this sicko had taken.

  True, the lab had confirmed that Ayers’s computer printer was not the one used to generate the notes that the killer left. But that might mean only that he went to an Internet café or some office-supply store to print out his twisted correspondence.

  It was a little more disturbing that Ayers’s computer showed no sign of any file that remotely resembled the correspondence or diary entries the killer had sent. It was a pretty good bet that this loser took a lot of pride in his manipulative games. Surely he would keep a record of the way he made the cops run around, chasing their tails.

  But if Ayers wasn’t the Eternally Yours killer, how did that evidence get into Ayers’s house? If it was planted, was it possible that the evidence against Alan Lombardo was planted, too? And if Lombardo was innocent, was the Eternally Yours killer the same person as the Springfield Shooter?

  Vera had no reason to doubt that Alan Lombardo was guilty, but the case against him had been initiated in exactly the same way as the case against Ayers. An anonymous tip, leading to a search warrant, leading to a house full of evidence, which the owner denied knowing about.

  Of course, if the Springfield Shooter was the same person as the Eternally Yours killer, it would explain the “Welcome to my world” notes, and the similarities in location, M.O., and weapons used by the murderer. But there was certainly no available explanation for why a serial killer would take a twenty-year break between attacks, and then alter his pattern by starting to use a Taser.

  Still, the connections between the Springfield Shooter and the Eternally Yours killer were troubling. For one thing, Vera had never discovered an explanation for how the Eternally Yours killer knew about “Welcome to my world.”

  One of the first things she did in the Corey Chatham murder investigation was look into the possibility that the new killer was a copycat. But when Vera learned that “Welcome to my world” was not publicly known as the Springfield Shooter’s trademark phrase, she compiled a list of people who knew about it.

  She was part of the way through the list when the case exploded with the next murder, the letter, the diary entries, and the clues, and so Lieutenant Carasquillo had some of the others in the squad help go through the people connected to the Springfield Shooter investigation.

  Vera dug down into the pile of reports and notes stacked at the far right corner of her desk, and found the list.

  The other officers had followed Vera’s method: contact the potential suspect, establish an alibi, and make note of it to the right of the suspect’s name. Then initial and date the entry, and move to the next potential suspect.

  Vera scanned the column of alibis. Many of the people on the list had died, or had retired and moved out of the area, or even the state.

  She turned to the second page, and continued to check the list. Many had new jobs. One had been arrested, and was now in jail himself.

  All had alibis.

  She flipped to the last page of the list. Another deceased person, a new resident of Florida, and then, a unique entry in the alibi column.

  Because it wasn’t an alibi. It was, instead, a note which merely read, Currently working on this investigation.

  Vera looked to the left side of the page, and then read the name of the only person on the list of people who had worked on the original Springfield Shooter case—the only person who knew that the Springfield Shooter used the phrase “Welcome to my world” in his communications—that had not been checked for an alibi in connection with the murder of Corey Chatham.

  The name was Ellis Yates.

  As they entered the room where Alan Lombardo was waiting for them, Zack wondered how they were going to play this. In over ten years of criminal defense, he had never had a client attempt suicide.

  Zack and Terry took seats across the table from the inmate, and Terry said, “Alan, what the hell were you doing trying to kill yourself? That hearing you wanted us to get is scheduled in less than a week.”

  Guess they were going to play it blunt.

  Lombardo had never looked worse. Their client sat slumped in his chair, eyes bloodshot, expression slack. His facial tic was still there, but it seemed to be far less frequent, and far less severe. In fact, Alan seemed extremely subdued.

  Not exactly a surprise, since less than a day ago he’d been depressed enough to try to off himself.

  “Did you know that George Heinrich died?” he said. “George Heinrich was a very good man.”

  The prison staff had informed Zack and Terry that aside from being watched round-the-clock to ensure that he didn’t make another suicide attempt, Alan was on some pretty heavy medication, which might make it hard for him to concentrate.

  “We’re here to talk about you, Alan,” Terry said. “Not George Heinrich. I’m not sure you understand, but there have been some pretty significant developments in your case.”

  Alan’s trademark twitching increased slightly. “Developments? What developments?”

  Zack slid a copy of a newspaper article across the table to the inmate. “There’s been an arrest in the recent Eternally Yours murder investigation.”

  Alan glanced down at the newspaper, tapped his right leg three times, and then leaned forward to read it. When he was done, he looked up. “I’m sorry. They’ve been giving me this new drug…What does this have to do with my case?”

  “Well, we can’t go into too many details,” Terry said, “but we know at least one person in the police department believes that this guy, Ayers, might be getting set up.” Zack wasn’t sure that Alan was getting all of this, but he had a right to know. “And we have some other information, which, unfortunately, we have to keep confidential, which makes us believe that you might have been set up, too.”

  “Why do you have to keep it confidential?”

  Sometimes, the rules of ethics were a real pain in the butt. “We can’t answer that, either,” Zack said. “But I can tell you that it wouldn’t surprise me if people on the police force began to believe that you might be in here for crimes you didn’t commit.”

  Lombardo shook his head slowly, back and forth. “If all you came here for was to tell me not to kill myself, you shouldn’t have bothered. Psych services is already doing that about three times a day. I know you are both very good lawyers, but I don’t believe anything is ever going to change. When inmates bring up legal technicalities, the courts just say the evidence was too strong against them, and that’s that.”

  Alan was right, to a point. “But if we can show that there’s evidence that you were set up—”

  “I’m sorry,” the little man interrupted, with a flurry of blinking. “I can’t afford to get my hopes up. I’ve got to get used to the fact that this is it for me. It’s just—well, I think you might not know how hard it is to be the kind of person I am and to be in prison.”

  Prison was one of the places where you gave up almost all power over everything in your life. For a control freak like Alan Lombardo, one could only imagine what a hell his life had become. “It must be really hard,” Zack said.

  “Not just hard. Dangerous. It’s not like I have any friends in here, you know. How do you think somebody like me managed to survive in here for twenty years with all of my—” He was interrupted by a wave of blinking which washed over him for several seconds. “—Peculiarities?”

  Terry said, “You know, I’d wondered about that, but I decided not to ask.”

  Zack turned to Alan, and said merely, “I don’t know.”

  “From the first minute I was in prison, George Heinrich put out the word that if anyone bothered me, they were bothering him,” Alan explained. “It was as simple as that. A week after I was convicted, this guy named Rickets jumped me coming back from the law library. By the time the guards pulled him off of me, he’d cut my arm pretty good.” Alan pulled up his sleeve to reveal an ugly, crooked scar on his forearm. “I needed to go to health services for stitches, and before they had released me—it must hav
e been less than two hours—Rickets was brought in. He’d been beaten real bad. Whoever did it broke his nose and his jaw. I never saw him again.”

  It was easy to forget how violent prison was. Especially when you were dealing with a quiet little mouse like Alan Lombardo.

  “I never met a man who was so loyal to the people who worked for him as George Heinrich,” the inmate continued. “But now that he’s gone, I don’t know if my protection is going to hold up. You have no idea what it’s like, walking to chow, not knowing if today is the day somebody’s going to stab you in the kidneys with a shank. A few mornings ago, I just flipped out.”

  The medication Alan had taken appeared to be wearing off a bit. The blinking was a little more rapid, and the pace of his conversation had picked up.

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore,” he said. “So I tried to kill myself.” There was a pause, and then he said, “I’m really tired, so I think I’m going to go rest now.”

  And with that, the man known as the Springfield Shooter stood and asked the guard to take him back to the health services unit.

  Watching him go, Zack shook his head. No matter how bad things got, he couldn’t imagine ever committing suicide.

  Eight Seconds

  THE TIME HAD COME FOR ZACK TO COMMIT suicide.

  From the way the madman had shrieked out the oath that still reverberated in the terrified courtroom, it was clear that Zack had managed to really infuriate him by hitting him in the face with his shoe. That was hard to imagine, since the crazy man was already enraged enough to blindly shoot bullets into a crowd of innocent people. But it didn’t matter. The psycho still had enough time to aim and shoot at Justin again before Zack reached him.

  So Zack was going to have to make sure that instead, the gunman aimed and shot at him.

  In the blink of an eye, Zack instinctively shouted what he knew would be the best way to communicate with the gunman.

  Zack’s long experience representing criminal defendants had given him invaluable skills in establishing effective working relationships with violent people. He knew that such people were very sensitive to the way others thought of them. Long ago he’d realized that the key to establishing an effective dialogue was to reinforce the notion that despite any class or educational differences that might exist between Zack and the inmate, the bottom line was that the client and the attorney were both human beings, and both deserved respect. From the way that Zack treated all of the people he represented, they knew that he took what they had to say seriously, whether he agreed with it or not.