The Killing Kind

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Ben Epstein,” he answered, “and I am the atonement for where my son rests.”

The door closed gently behind him, its sound in the empty synagogue like a breath exhaled from the mouth of God.

Lester Bargus is alone behind the counter of the store on the day he dies, the same day on which I meet Yossi Epstein's father. Jim Gould, who works for Bargus part-time, is out back fieldstripping a pair of stolen H amp;K semiautomatics, so there is nobody in the rear storeroom, where a pair of TV screens show the interior of the store from two angles, one from a visible camera above the door, the other from a lens hidden inside the shell of a portable stereo kept on a shelf behind the register. Lester Bargus is a careful man, but not careful enough. His store is miked, but Lester Bargus doesn't know that. The only people who know are the ATF agents who have been monitoring Bargus's illegal gun operation for the best part of eleven days.

But on this particular day business is slow, and Bargus is idly feeding crickets to his pet mantid when the door opens. Even on the oddly angled black-and-white recordings made by the cameras, the new arrival seems strangely out of place. He is dressed in a black suit, shiny black shoes, and a thin black tie over a white shirt. On his head he wears a black hat, and a long black coat hangs to the middle of his calves. He is tall and well built. His age is hard to gauge; he could be anything from forty to seventy.

But it is only when the few clear images obtained by the cameras are frozen and enhanced that his strangeness becomes truly apparent. The skin is stretched taut on his face and he appears to be almost entirely without flesh, the striations of the tendons in his jaw and neck clearly visible through his skin, his cheekbones like shards of glass below dark eyes. He has no eyebrows. The ATF agents who later examine the tape suspect at first that he may simply be so fair that his hair does not show up, but when the images are enlarged they reveal only slightly roughened skin above his eyes, like old scar tissue.

His appearance obviously shocks Lester Bargus. On the tape, he can be seen taking a step back in surprise. He is wearing a white T-shirt with a Smith amp; Wesson logo on the back, and blue jeans with a lot of room around the crotch and the ass. Maybe he is hoping to grow into them.

“Help you?” His voice on the recording is cautious but hopeful. Especially on a slow day, a sale is a sale, even if it does come from a freak.

“I am looking for this man.” The accent makes it clear that English is only a second language, possibly even a third. He sounds European; not German, but Polish maybe, or Czech. Later, an expert will identify it as Hungarian, with Yiddish inflections to certain words. The man is a Jew, originally from Eastern Europe but with some time spent in the west of the continent, probably France.

He takes a photograph from his pocket and pushes it across the counter toward Lester Bargus. Lester doesn't even look at the photograph. All he says is: “I don't know him.”

“Look at it.” And his tone tells Lester Bargus that it doesn't matter what he does or does not say from now on, because nothing can save him from this man.

Lester reaches out and touches the photograph for the first time, but only to push it away. His head does not move. He still has not looked at the photograph, but while his left hand is in sight his right is moving to grasp the shotgun that rests on the shelf beneath the counter. He has almost reached it when the gun appears. Firearms will later identify it as a Jericho 941, made in Israel. Lester Bargus's right hand returns to the counter alongside his left, and both hands start to tremble in unison.

“For the last time, Mr. Bargus, look at the photograph.”

This time, Lester does look down. He spends some time staring at the photograph, weighing up his options. It's obvious that he knows the man in the picture and that the gunman is aware of this fact because the gunman wouldn't be there otherwise. On the tape, it's almost possible to hear Lester gulp.

“Where do I find this man?” During the whole encounter, the expression on the gunman's face has not altered. It is as if the skin is so tight across his skull that simply to talk requires a huge effort. The palpable menace of the man is obvious even from the black-and-white recording. Lester Bargus, forced to deal with him face-to-face, is terrified beyond belief. It is audible in his voice when he speaks what will be his second-to-last sentence on this earth.

“He'll kill me if I tell you,” says Bargus.

“I will kill you if you don't.”

Then Lester Bargus says his last words, and they reveal a prescience that I didn't think Lester would ever have. “You're going to kill me anyhow,” he says, and something in his voice tells the gunman that this is all he is ever going to get out of Lester.

“Yes,” says the gunman. “I am.”

The shots sound incredibly loud after the conversation that has just taken place, but also distorted and muted as the sound levels fail to cope with them. Lester Bargus jolts as the first bullet takes him in the chest, then keeps bucking and spasming as the rest of the shots tear into him, the static-ridden thunderclaps coming again and again until it seems that they will never end. There are ten shots, then there is a noise and a movement from the left of the picture as part of Jim Gould's body appears in the frame. Two more shots come and Gould falls across the counter as the gunman springs across it and darts into the rear of the store. By the time the ATF agents reach the scene, he is gone.

On the counter, now soaked with Lester Bargus's blood, the photograph remains. It is a picture of a group of demonstrators outside an abortion clinic in Mi

In the photograph, Mr. Pudd is smiling.

The man who killed Lester Bargus had flown into Logan Airport one day earlier and entered the country on a British passport, claiming to be a businessman interested in buying stuffed animals. The address he gave to immigration officials was later revealed to be the site of a recently demolished Chinese restaurant in Balham, south London.

The name on the passport was Clay Daemon.

He was the Golem.