A Killer's Essence

by Dave Zeltserman

  “Detective Green, I’m good at what I do. From Detective Hennison’s asinine theory, and your reaction to it, you two obviously had a bet on how I would respond.”

  “Fifty bucks,” I told her.

  “That’s all?” she said, disappointed. “Too bad. It would’ve been nice if it had cost him more money.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. The guy’s a notorious welcher. I’ll probably never see a dime of that fifty. You don’t like him much?”

  “No strong feelings either way, although I don’t appreciate the way I’ve caught him leering at me, or his dismissive attitude toward what I do.” She hesitated, then asked, “Did you ask Mr. Lynch again about hypnosis?”

  “Yeah, I asked him. He’s not going to do it, and I’d like to request that the FBI not bring it up with him again. He’s willing to help us out in ways he’s more comfortable with, and I’m afraid if we badger him anymore about hypnosis that will change quickly.”

  She frowned at my statement. “I don’t see how that type of request could be considered badgering.”

  “To him it is.”

  I finished stirring a fourth and final packet of sugar into the coffee and started back to my desk. Jill followed me, still frowning.

  “I know if we could tap into his unconscious mind …” she started, but she let it drop. Instead she told me she’d leave Lynch alone for now. “Although I’m not sure how many more chances we’re going to have to catch this killer,” she said. “Once he finishes his story, that’s it. I doubt we’d hear from him again.”

  “So what’s the story this guy is so intent on telling us?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “And I doubt it would make much sense even if I did. But in his mind, getting it out is all that matters. You have to remember, we’re dealing with a full-blown narcissist. This is someone who is so caught up in his own grandiose view of himself that he believes anything concocted in his fevered mind would be considered brilliant by the rest of the world.”

  I nodded noncommittally and went back to my list of knife purchases. Jill left only to return minutes later to hand me fifty dollars, a big grin stretched across her face.

  “I shamed him into paying up,” she explained.

  “Truly incredible,” I said. “And who said you can’t squeeze blood from a stone?”

  I could tell there was something else on her mind, but she left without mentioning what it was. Later that afternoon I received photos of the dogs that were killed. The person I had spoken with was right. In the condition they were left there was nothing I’d be able to with the photos. We wouldn’t be able to put them on the news, and an owner wouldn’t be able to recognize a missing pet from them. The medical examiner’s office called shortly afterward to make sure I’d gotten them, and also to let me know that according to the veterinarian who looked at the dogs, they appeared to be a boxer, a Doberman shepherd, and a mongrel with some Rottweiler and Staffordshire terrier in it. I took all this to Hennison. He stared blankly at the photos and made a face at my suggestion to have someone call local shelters to see if anyone had adopted the breeds of dogs that were killed.

  “A waste of time,” he said. “Our perp picked those dogs up off the street.”

  “Then see who’s reporting missing pets. At least we’d know what neighborhoods he was in.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He turned away from me and wrinkled his nose as if he were smelling some bad cheese. “By the way, real classy move sending that FBI broad to collect your money for you.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I didn’t ask her to do squat. She figured out the bet and collected payment from you all on her own. She’s pretty damn good, isn’t she? I’m beginning to think there might be something to her theory about what’s driving our perp. You talk to Phillips yet about playing up this dog story to the press?”

  Hennison nodded. “He wants the story kept quiet,” he said.

  The rest of the day I continued to focus on the list of knife purchases, and was able to eliminate half the names on it. The other half, either the alibis were too vague to be corroborated or I wasn’t able to track the person down. When my shift was over at five, I left. While I was sure Phillips and Hennison would’ve liked everyone to put in overtime until we made more headway, I wasn’t going to, at least not that day.

  On the way home I used a good chunk of the fifty dollars I’d gotten from Hennison to get takeout from one of Bambi’s favorite Indian restaurants. Later, when I called Cheryl, several inches of frost came over the line, but she didn’t hang up on me and I heard her in the background asking Stevie if he was willing to talk to me. I thought there was a chance he would after his Red Sox pulled off a minor miracle the night before and had already taken an early two-to-one lead in game five, but he refused. Emma did get on the phone for about thirty seconds to tell me how mad she was at me. At least that was something.

  After dinner I asked Bambi if she wanted to go to a nightclub in the neighborhood. She seemed surprised by my suggestion and asked me if I was feeling up to it after what happened with Rich, because if I wasn’t it would be totally understandable.

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re sure you’d rather not stay home and watch the game?”

  I told her I’d rather go out, then waited three quarters of an hour while she dolled herself up and put on a new outfit. For the last few days I’d been trying to figure out how I was going to pay Earl what I owed him. Earlier today I had made a decision and called Joel Cohen, and we had arranged to meet at his club that night.

  Chapter 17

  Bambi turned heads when she walked into the club wearing her stiletto heels, sheer black nylons, and a black leather miniskirt that barely covered her panties. It was only in the forties out, so she compensated by wearing a black calfskin jacket, but she had damn nice legs and she made sure everyone knew it.

  The guy working the door knew me, and he nodded to let me know that Joel was in his back office waiting. It was early, only eight o’clock. Business was lighter than usual with the game underway, but there was still a good crowd. La Toya Jackson’s “Just Wanna Dance” was playing over the loudspeakers, and the dance floor was already crowded with people grinding away. According to a sign out front, a local band would be coming on after ten, hopefully playing something other than disco. After setting Bambi up with a drink, I went back to talk to Joel.

  A few months ago some toughs from Brighton Beach started to put the muscle on Joel and his business. These were guys straight from Russia, one or two of them ex-KGB, others pure thugs. Usually they kept their extortion racket within the Russian community, but I guess because Joel’s grandparents came from St. Petersburg they felt he qualified. Or maybe this was just the first of many forays into expanding operations beyond their traditional base.

  Whichever it was, Joel let me know that he’d like to hire me for security, figuring that with a member of the NYPD hanging around the club these Russians would leave him alone. At the time I told him I couldn’t do it; his business was rumored to operate on the shadier side of the street, and if what I’d been hearing was true there was a chance I’d be bounced from the force if word leaked of me moonlighting for him. Joel left his offer open. When I called him today, he sounded desperate.

  I knocked on the door and was told to come in. Joel sat on a red leather sofa reading a music magazine, and on looking up at me, flashed a toothy smile. With his dark shades, gold chains, and top four buttons of his shirt left unbuttoned to show off his chest, he looked like he was stuck in the movie Saturday Night Fever. I’d known Joel my whole life. He had grown up in the neighborhood and was only a couple of years older than Mike. When he was younger, with his dark good looks and body as lean as a knife blade, he was always a killer with the girls. Now, having gained a few pounds, his body thicker and his hairline receding, those looks had been tarnished somewhat, but he still had the same charisma.

  “Stan, damn, it’s good to see you!” He got off t
he sofa so he could lean over and take my hand with both of his, his smile near blinding. “I can’t tell you how glad I was to hear from you today. What can I get you?”

  “Michelob’s fine.”

  He let go of my hand to call the bar. After that he signaled for us to both sit down.

  “Joel, if I’m working security for you, any criminal activity I see I’m going to bust. Stolen property, drug deals, any of that.”

  He kept his smile intact, but a shadow briefly fell over his eyes. “Stan, I don’t know what you’ve been hearing. I run a clean business, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, but I sure as fuck could use your help right now.”

  He pulled a roll of bills from his shirt pocket and held it up for me. “Three thousand dollars, as we talked about earlier,” he said. “But I need a commitment from you. I can’t have you leaving as soon as you earn this out.”

  There was a knock on the door. He covered the roll with his hand while a girl from the bar came in and handed me a Michelob. After she left, I asked him what type of commitment he needed.

  “Three months,” he said. “Ten to midnight each night during the weeks, five-hour shifts Saturday and Sunday nights. Who knows, you might grow to like the job and want to keep it going past then.”

  “Doubtful. I think I’d go nuts listening to disco for more than three months.”

  He laughed at that. “Stan, you take this job and I’ll play more rock during your shifts.”

  “I was serious before,” I told him. “If I see any illegal shit, I’ll be taking the jokers away in handcuffs, even if it’s you.”

  “Stan, my man, again, I wouldn’t expect anything else,” he said, only a slight strain showing to his smile.

  Three months. That was more than I wanted, but it was doable. It just meant three months of sleeping less and no overtime at work. Also, no driving up to Rhode Island, but maybe it would be for the best to let things cool down for a while. I nodded, and he handed me the three grand and we shook hands. Clapping me on the back, he told me he was glad to have me onboard. The plan was for me to start the next day. I told him about the wake I had Wednesday night, and his smile dimmed a bit, but he told me that would be fine and for me to come in afterward. We sat for a few minutes talking about the old neighborhood, and then I left him to find Bambi. I still had to tell her about the moonlighting job, and wasn’t sure how’d she take it.

  Bambi wasn’t at the table where I had left her, nor was she at the bar. After more searching I found her on the dance floor with a stud closer to her age than I was. She spotted me and waved me over to join her. With the way my knees and back were feeling, I’d rather have just let her dance a while longer with the kid she was with, but I finished off my Michelob and went out there to join her.

  We danced long enough for both of us to get hot and sweaty, all the while my knees barking up a storm. Christ, I was getting old. When we were back at our table, the waitress brought over fresh drinks and told me they were on the house. Bambi’s eyes narrowed as she watched me, but she didn’t say anything until the waitress was out of earshot.

  “Why are the drinks on the house?” she asked. “’Cause you’re a cop?”

  I told her about the moonlighting job I was taking, the hours involved and the extra money I’d be making. During it all her face was inscrutable.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “The money sounds good,” she said. “I can hang out here while you’re working, and it’s only going to be three months. Sure, why not. It sounds fun.”

  Over the next hour I nursed a couple of beers while Bambi had a few more vodka martinis. When we left she was a little unsteady, swaying enough that she needed to hold onto my arm for support. After I got her in the car and was driving the six blocks back to my apartment, I noticed her eyes scrunched as if she were deep in thought.

  “Why’d you take this job all of a sudden?” she asked. “Not that I’m complaining, Stan. It sounds good and everything, but it’s not like you. So what’s the urgency?”

  “I owe a guy three grand, and the guy who owns the club was willing to give me the money as an advance.”

  “Why do you owe three thousand dollars?”

  “Because of my kids. Let’s leave it at that.”

  She stared off into the distance for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Fair enough,” she said.

  After we got back to the apartment I started brewing some coffee, then turned on the TV to catch the final score of the game. The game had started a little after five, and it was now a quarter to eleven, and I was surprised to see it was still going on. It was the bottom of the fourteenth with Johnny Damon of the Red Sox on first and Manny Ramirez at the plate. Loaiza was pitching, which made me wonder if something had happened to “Mr. Automatic,” Mariano Rivera. I watched as Ramirez walked on a full count, sending Damon to second and David Ortiz to the plate. After a long at bat where he fouled off several tough pitches, Ortiz singled to drive in the winning run. Game over. Yankees still led three games to two, and the series was coming back to the Bronx, but this gave Boston some life. I watched for a few minutes while they recapped the game and saw that Rivera had given up a sac fly in the eighth to tie up the score, making two straight blown saves.

  I turned off the set. It didn’t matter. Once the Yankees were back home they’d find a way to win, Boston would find a way to choke like they always did, and the universe would be back to normal. Boston beating the Yankees in a championship series in the house that Ruth built? Hell hadn’t frozen over yet, at least not that I knew of. And Stevie would have these last two games to look back fondly at, so fine, let Boston win a couple.

  Bambi came out of the bedroom wearing a negligee. The night’s drinking showed in the paleness of her complexion. She stumbled before regaining her balance, then asked if I was coming to bed. I told her I’d join her soon, that I had something I needed to do first. She pouted and warned me not to take too long. After she stumbled back into the bedroom, I sat at the dining room table and wrote long letters to Stevie and Emma. Then I prepared packages for both of them.

  When I was a kid I used to collect paperbacks. I never spent more than five dollars on any of them—which back then was still a lot of money, especially for a thirteen-year-old working off the books delivering groceries for tips. Sometimes I’d spend months scouring the used bookstores before I’d find what I was looking for. I included in my package to Stevie all of my Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian books, as well as my favorite Ray Bradbury paperbacks. I had no idea what books would be appropriate for a seven-year-old girl, so earlier that day during my lunch break I’d stopped off at a bookstore and gotten suggestions from a salesgirl who claimed she had bought the same books for a niece, and I included those in my package to Emma. When I was done putting the packages together and had them addressed and ready for shipping, I went into the bedroom to join Bambi. She was on her back snoring away. I decided it would be best to just let her sleep.

  Tuesday, October 19, 2004

  Not much happened the next day. If someone had been murdered on the edge of the Parkway, we still didn’t know who it was. A body hadn’t yet been found—at least none that matched the blood at the scene, and we were still waiting for the FBI results from CODIS, a database of DNA samples taken from previously convicted violent criminals and crime scenes. It was a long shot at best that we’d find a match from it, but you never know when you’re going to get lucky.

  We weren’t going to get anywhere with the photos the medical examiner’s office sent me of the dead dogs. The damage to them was just too severe for an owner to be able recognize them, and so far we’d come up empty-handed with the animal shelters we contacted. While we were on the look-out for missing pets, and had given the local reporters a story about several dead dogs being dumped off the Steinway Street overpass, none of the calls we received were a possible match. Most likely Hennison was right; the dogs were strays picked up off the street.

  That afternoon J
ill Chandler released her profile for the killer. She had him as a Caucasian male in his thirties, average height and weight, nondescript appearance, and college educated. His most distinguishing characteristic—at least for us—was his narcissistic personality disorder, but according to her there was little chance he was under psychiatric care or had been previously diagnosed. She also thought there was a high likelihood that he was single and still living with a parent, and employed in a job that he considered menial. While that was interesting, I didn’t see how it was going to help us.

  The FBI lab that the dogs were sent to was able to identify the prescription sleeping pills that were fed to them. The two FBI field agents assigned to the team, as well as Jill, were going to screen the roughly ten thousand New Yorkers who had prescriptions for that same sleeping pill, and try to come up with a manageable list of people for us to interview. Again, I didn’t see how this was going to help us. I had little doubt that our perp acquired everything he was using for these killings off the grid.

  I spent the morning working down the list of knife purchases, and when I was done with it I gave Zachary Lynch a call. I had eleven people whose alibis weren’t good enough, and my idea was to have them come down to the station en masse to give Lynch a look at them. I still wasn’t convinced about Lynch’s reliability, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. If he pointed someone out, I’d look closer at the guy and make sure his alibi was airtight before I gave up on him.

  When I told Lynch what I was planning he wasn’t too happy about making another trip to the precinct, and it took some tooth-pulling on my part before he agreed to it. I also told him that I was able to get the FBI to leave him alone, and I guess he felt he needed to show his appreciation for that. We set it up for one o’clock the following day, and then I got on the phone again with those eleven potential suspects. None of them were too happy being asked to come down to the station, but I left it as either agreeing to a voluntary trip and a short interview, or having a warrant issued with a much longer and less pleasant interrogation waiting for them.