Once again Zachary Lynch flinched when he accidentally caught a glimpse of me, and once again he made sure to keep his eyes averted afterward. Anyone else, I would’ve been offended, but by now I was used to it.
The suit he wore was several sizes too big, and he looked so damn uncomfortable in it. His tie was also knotted improperly—kind of the way you’d tie a shoelace—and although I could tell he hated doing so, he stood still so I could tie him a Windsor knot. While we drove I tried making small talk, asking him if he caught any of the Yankees-Sox series. He seemed distracted and was mostly just squirming in his seat. He said something under his breath about not having any interest in sports, and that he watched little TV.
“I’m sorry that FBI agent bothered you,” I said.
“There’s nothing in my subconscious that hypnosis could unlock,” he said under his breath, his discomfort palpable. “I’m not subjecting myself to it.”
“I know. I talked with Dr. Brennan. I believe him, I believe you. Still, it would get them off your back. The FBI can be damned persistent. It might be worth just doing it. After all, what harm could it do?”
Lynch’s expression turned wooden as he stared straight ahead. “No,” he insisted. “Under no circumstances.”
My lack of sleep must’ve left me more slow-witted than I had imagined, because it hit me then why Lynch was being so antsy and it wasn’t because of the FBI descending upon him like I had first assumed. I’m sure that was part of it, but there was something else eating at him, and I couldn’t help smiling as I realized what it was. Lynch seemed to sense this. He glanced in my direction but hurriedly looked away, his skin color paling to an even unhealthier shade.
I said, “I promised to tell you about your friend from Strombolli’s.”
“Lisa,” he whispered softly.
“She was worried about you Wednesday when you didn’t show up. You like her, don’t you?”
It was barely noticeable, but I caught him nodding.
“I think the feeling’s mutual,” I said. “She hinted as much. You should ask her out.”
A bare trace of a smile cracked his face, and then just as quickly it was gone.
“That would be hilarious,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Asking her on a date with me being the way I am.”
I could tell he was mulling it over, though. I couldn’t help myself and I asked him what he saw when he looked at her. He didn’t answer me, not directly anyway, but that crack of a smile came back, and this time it lasted for several seconds.
We drove in silence after that. He was more relaxed, though, most of his uneasiness from before gone. After we crossed into Jersey I asked him about his life before the convenience store robbery in Harlem when he was a medical student at Columbia. He told me how being a doctor was all he wanted growing up but the way he was left after being shot made it impossible to continue at school. Since he couldn’t be around people anymore, at least most people, he taught himself computer programming and was able to get short-term assignments where he wouldn’t have to leave his apartment. The only time he ventured outside was during his weekly excursions to Strombolli’s. Telling me all that exhausted him, but also seemed to be a good release for him. I had the idea that this was the longest personal conversation he’d had with someone in person since that night in Harlem six years ago.
The funeral service was being held at the grave site, and I arrived there twenty minutes before the service was scheduled to start. Around forty chairs had been set up for the bereaved. Lynch and I left the car and walked until we reached a spot far enough to the side of the chairs that we’d be able to see people clearly but still remain mostly unobtrusive. Rachel Laurent sat stoically in the front row flanked by an older man in his sixties who I assumed was her uncle and a young woman her age who was probably a close friend. A few other people were scattered about, some the victim’s age, some Rachel’s. Rachel sensed I was standing there and turned to look at me before facing front again. Zachary Lynch’s eyes held steady on her, his features relaxed.
“She’s drowning,” he said under his breath, a soft sigh escaping from him.
“What?”
He looked startled for a moment, as if he hadn’t expected me to hear him. “In her sorrow,” he explained. “She’s drowning in it.”
I wanted to ask him how the fuck he could see something like that when everything was supposed to be clouded by hallucinations, but I bit my tongue. More people arrived as we waited for the service to start. Lynch sucked in his breath as he looked at each newcomer. He flinched at the sight of a few of them, though most generated little reaction. With all he shook his head in a short, jerky motion to indicate they weren’t the killer.
The service started on time, and more people showed up as it went on. About two thirds of the seats ended up being taken. Rachel almost made it through with her stoic front intact, but near the end she lost it and wept uncontrollably. Some moisture showed in Lynch’s eyes as he watched her, and he clenched his teeth to keep a stiff upper lip himself. I stood as I always did at these funerals: impassive, business-like, but wanting more than ever to catch the piece of human waste responsible.
After the service ended and people began to disperse, I signaled Lynch to walk with me so it looked as though we were attending one of the other grave sites.
“If our guy shows up over there, you’ll be able to see him, right?”
“Yes, I think so, but I don’t understand,” Lynch said. “The funeral is over. Why are we still here?”
“Sometimes these psychos like to show up afterward. Just keep your eyes peeled.”
We stood fifty yards from Gail Laurent’s grave, hidden mostly from sight by an elm tree. I watched as the workers filled in the grave. No stragglers came by. Once the workers were done and gone, the cemetery was empty. We moved a few times over the course of an hour, but nobody showed up other than a man in his fifties walking an overstuffed English bulldog. Lynch shook his head as the man passed us, just as he had earlier with everyone else. I checked my watch. It wasn’t worth spending any more time there. Our killer wasn’t showing up. I told Lynch we would be heading back. As we drove out of the cemetery I asked him if he had eaten anything yet that day.
“Not since breakfast.”
“Let’s get you something then.”
“That’s okay,” he said, his eyes squinting badly against the late afternoon sun. “This took a lot out of me. Please, I’d like to just go home.”
I gave him a quick look and figured the real issue was he wasn’t up to being around any more people. At the first fast food drive-thru place we came to, I pulled in and asked him what he wanted. He admitted he wouldn’t mind having a cheeseburger and fries. I ordered him two of both, as well as a chocolate shake, and the same for myself. While he nibbled on a French fry he told me this was the first time he’d had any fast food since the incident six years ago.
“I used to live on this stuff when I was at Columbia,” he told me, his lips twisting crookedly into what must’ve been a sheepish smile. “You’d think us med students would know better.”
“There are some fast food joints closer to your apartment than Strombolli’s. Why not go to one of those for a change of pace?”
He shuddered at the idea of it. “Too many people in them,” he said. “Besides, going to Strombolli’s once a week is about all the excitement I can take.”
His crooked off-balance smile flashed for a moment to indicate that it was a joke. We ate in silence, and after we were done and I was driving us back to New York, he fell into a deep sleep. He was breathing so shallowly that I studied him for a moment to convince myself that he really was just sleeping and hadn’t passed out or dropped dead on me. Once I convinced myself of that, I turned on WCBS and listened to some of the pregame talk for the upcoming Yankees game. The general consensus was that Boston was toast and this was going to be a four-game sweep. It sure seemed that way with El Duque taking the mound. I couldn’t think of a single time when the Red Sox had been able to beat him. El Duque always seemed to have their number and find ways to keep them off balance.
When I arrived back at Lynch’s apartment building, he was still out of it, his head bent so that his chin rested against his chest. I shook him gently at first, then a little more roughly until his eyes fluttered open. He was disoriented and clearly had no recollection of where he was, and as he pulled himself forward and turned to face me, he shuddered and his skin blanched a sickly white. For a moment I thought he was going to scream. He didn’t scream, though. Instead, he blinked wildly and jerked his head away, rubbing a hand across his mouth. His eyes locked onto the front entranceway of his apartment building. I had a strong impulse to grab his head and force him to look at me until he was willing to tell me what it was he saw.
“Detective Green,” he forced out in a breathless voice. “I’m sorry, I must’ve dozed off.”
“No need to apologize for that,” I said, my voice sounding stiff and unnatural to me. “I appreciate your help today.”
“Anything I can do.” His crooked smile showed briefly. “Short of hypnosis, that is.”
I watched as he left the car and walked with an awkward gait to his building, all the while keeping his eyes shielded so he wouldn’t accidentally look at anyone walking by. Once he was inside and out of sight, I headed to Toscone’s to pick up a sausage, pepper, and onion hero. I still had time to visit Rich before meeting Bambi back at the apartment at seven as promised. Traffic was light to Toscone’s, and then afterward to St. Vincent’s. Mary was keeping Rich company, and when she saw me she announced that she was going to stretch her legs for a bit so that the two of us could talk shop in private. Rich looked as shriveled as he had this morning—at least the parts of him that weren’t encased in plaster—and had that same off look in his eyes, but he was more alert and, as he spotted the paper sack in my hand, started sniffing in the air.
“Toscone’s,” he said with a thin smile.
I handed him the sausage sandwich. He started on it but it seemed a joyless activity, and after only a few bites he put it down.
“My stomach must’ve shrunk since coming here,” he said, a dejected frown creasing his face.
“Hospital food will do that to you.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” he said. As he lay on his hospital bed, he seemed to shrink into it, looking so much smaller than anyone his size had any right to look. Maybe it was an optical illusion caused by the white plaster cast blending in with the hospital sheets, but whatever it was, I couldn’t shake this sense of him being diminished. His eyes slid toward me, a glimmer showing in them. “You know the key to solving these murders?” he said. “Figure out why your perp chose that address on the Upper West Side to dump that body. Let’s say he killed this guy somewhere between Wall Street and the Village, why’d he cart that body all the way up to the Upper West Side?”
“Yeah, well, I agree with you, but Hennison doesn’t think it’s all that important. He’s assuming our perp spent time scouting for locations.”
“Fuck that,” Rich said, more light flickering in his eyes as he showed a tight bare-fanged smile, and for the first time looking more like his old self. “There are a lot of places you can dump a body that’d be safer than some high-end luxury building uptown, and I don’t care if it was four in the morning. Your perp was putting himself at risk doing that. There has to be a connection to that building, some type of message your perp was trying to send.”
Rich stopped himself. His head tilted slightly to the side as he gave me a slow look, his eyes narrowing. “What the fuck difference does it make what Hennison thinks?” he asked.
“Phillips made him lead for these murders.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope.”
Rich sunk deeper into his bed as he digested that. Finally he shrugged and told me it was just as well. “You don’t need the headache,” he said. “This is going to get a lot worse. Fucking Phillips, though.”
I nodded. It was getting late, and if I wanted to keep my promise to Bambi I had to get going. I lied to Rich and told him he was looking better, and I think I was able to do it with mostly a straight face. He gave me a look as though I was full of shit and told me that I wasn’t looking so hot myself.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Go home and get some sleep. Christ, no wonder I lost my appetite looking at you and your bloodshot eyes. I’ve seen bullet wounds more appealing. And don’t worry, if I come up with any more ideas how to crack this case, you’ll be the first guy I call, not Hennison.”
I had to smile at seeing more of my old partner breaking through. I told him if I saw Mary, I’d send her back up. He told me not to bother, that he could use a break from her also. I gave him a short wave so long and headed out.
With Yankee fans hunkering down for what should be the last game of a four-game sweep, traffic back to Brooklyn was lighter than usual for a Sunday evening. I got back to the apartment ten minutes earlier than promised. Bambi had her suitcases put away and the boxes that had been stacked up earlier were gone. She also had the dining room table set with my parents’ old lace tablecloth and silver candleholders with long white candles burning in both. When Bambi heard me, she came out of the kitchen wearing an apron over her clothes and a tenuous smile across her face. In the year or so that we’d been living together this was the first time she’d gone to this kind of effort to make us dinner. It made me reconsider her earlier claim that she had spent the two days with her friend Angela and not shacked up with some guy where it ended fast and disastrously, but again I decided if that was case it didn’t matter.
“I’m making leg of lamb,” Bambi announced. Her smile had turned more tentative as she watched for my reaction. “Dinner should be ready in twenty minutes.”
“It smells great,” I said. “But I was planning on taking you to Lucia’s so we could celebrate properly us being back together.”
She hesitated as she thought about that. Lucia’s was her favorite restaurant. Somewhat reluctantly she told me it would be a waste to throw dinner away. I didn’t argue with her. The exhaustion from the last three days finally caught up to me, and it hit me hard.
“We’ll do it later this week,” I said.
Her eyes lowered as she nodded, but she mostly did a good job of hiding her disappointment. She came over to me, and we embraced and kissed, and again I didn’t argue with her when she suggested that I sit in my recliner and that she would bring me a drink. While I waited I must’ve dozed off because next thing I knew she was shaking me awake. I felt drugged as I forced my eyes open. She handed me a glass filled with ice and a brownish-orange liquid.
“I thought I’d make the tequila sunrises that I was going to make last night,” she said.
She went back to the kitchen, and I sipped my drink while trying to keep my eyes from closing. Somehow I managed to, and a few minutes later I heard the clatter of dishes as Bambi set the table and brought food out. Bless her, she had carved the leg of lamb. I don’t think I would’ve had the strength to. Along with the lamb, she made roasted potatoes and string beans, and had bought some red wine. Normally I’m not a wine drinker and would grab a beer instead, but this time I didn’t make a fuss. The food was pretty good, which surprised me. When I didn’t cook we usually either ate out, had takeout, or microwaved. I had no idea Bambi had it in her.
We didn’t talk much during dinner. I guess neither of us wanted to risk what felt like a fragile peace. I was going to have to tell her about the three thousand dollars I was in debt for, but now was not the time. After we were done, Bambi made coffee and brought out a plate of tiramisu she had prepared herself. I was surprised at how good the dessert was—she had never let on before that she could cook anything much more than hamburgers and hot dogs. While we were slowly eating it and drinking the coffee, Bambi commented how I was probably going to want to watch the game. I shook my head, and suggested instead that when we were done we clean up the dishes and go straight to bed. When I said that the tentativeness in her smile disappeared, and for the first time that night the real thing showed through.
Bambi had one more surprise for me. She insisted that I relax while she took care of the dishes. I didn’t fight her on that either, and while it was a struggle, I managed to keep my eyes from closing while I waited for her. Later, when we went to bed, I stayed awake until we were done, and then I was out like a light.
I woke up in the dark feeling an uneasiness inside. Squinting at the alarm clock I saw it was one twenty-two in the morning. Bambi was on her stomach sound asleep. I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to the living room. I turned on the TV to see that David Ortiz for the Red Sox had just hit a two-run homerun in the twelfth inning to win the game for Boston. I sat down and watched them recap more of the game. Mariano Rivera had given up the tying run in the ninth thanks to a walk, a stolen base, and a single. After a while I turned the set off and joined Bambi back in bed.