CHAPTER ONE
To understand me, you must first know this: to me, every man is predictable.
I don't mean that as a brag, or in a sexist sense. (Women hold no great mystery either, however much men pretend they do.) I merely state a fact. There are few people alive who can surprise me, and only one–now dead–who could ever do so routinely. To those with the gift of deductive insight, the most complex man is no more than a puzzle, a jigsaw jumble of habits, phobias, principles, and quirks. Even I, former detective that I am, can be deconstructed, though I lack the objective distance to do so myself. All people are predictable. It's a galling thought, but true.
Take you, for example. When I mentioned I was a former detective, one of two questions sprang to your mind: "Why a detective?" or "Why did you quit?" I know this because everyone I have ever mentioned my past career to has asked me one or both. I don't mind. In truth, I ask myself those questions, too. But in both cases, the answer is the same: it began with a murder.
In the former case, the victim was my mother, gunned down on my front lawn when I was nine. Yes, before you ask, I saw it happen. My father's shouting woke me, and I came down the stairs to find him drunk, waving a shotgun out the front door. I wish I could say it surprised me, but my father was more predictable than most. He was always drunk, often violent, and all but welded to his guns. It didn't take a great detective to predict he would one day go too far. When I saw the distant figure crumple and collapse on the grass, I felt no shock. Merely relief. It wasn't me.
Know this: I am not sentimental.
You may assume I became a detective in my mother's memory, to erase the past by saving others in her place. That is untrue. Though she gave birth to me, the woman on the lawn was a stranger, having fled my father when I was two. My father later claimed she came back that night for me, to take me away from him for good. It makes a certain sense, and I would certainly like to believe him. In truth? I'll never know. If I prove wrong–unlikely–and there is in fact an afterlife, I may seek her out and ask her. Though there's another I would have to seek out first.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
If she truly did come back to save me, she succeeded. Thanks to her death, I was at last freed of the belts and blows and cigarette burns my father called parenting, though not of the guilt that came from loving him. "How could you love such a man?" you will ask, and I don't have an answer. It simply is. But you may find it interesting that I continued to use my father's nickname for me long after my adoption, to the point that entire governments–the entire world–once knew me by that name alone. Not by the name my mother gave me, Lior, or even by my surname, Lawliet, but simply as L. My father's son. Nothing more.
It was also the circumstances of my mother's death that caught the eye of the media–and, in turn, of Quillish Wammy, the wealthy philanthropist, who saw me interviewed and was moved to take me in. I would like to say he became the father to me my own father had failed to be, but again: I am not sentimental. Mr. Wammy gave me food, four walls, and a future, but he was never truly warm, and it was never truly mine. In his eyes, he was my savior, and he expected my gratitude and obedience as he might expect an eastern sunrise. I was never his son, merely an exotic pet–albeit one capable of interesting tricks. It was he who first discovered what I could do, he who suggested I become a detective. Strange as it seems, I would never have thought of it on my own.
Don't get the wrong idea when I say "suggested," by the way. There was no choice involved. Mr. Wammy paid for my education, my equipment, and–I suspect–my publicity, his money opening doors where my freakish intelligence alone could not. Not once did he ask my opinion. Each time, he would tell me what he had done after the fact, assuming I would go along with whatever he decided. I always did. I may have the finest mind this world has yet produced–an observation, not a brag–but I, too, am predictable.
Know this: I am only human.
That said, he was kind to me, and the work was appealing. For the first time in my brief life, I had the stimulation I craved and the freedom (within limits) to choose my own course. I regret nothing of those years, nothing at all. I have never been prone to real happiness, but as a detective I was…content. For a time.
Until the second murder.
If my mother was a stranger, this murder's victim was even more so. His name was David Dern, and he was not much grieved for. His life's work was giving speeches on how the Jews were corrupting the nations of the world, a subject on which he had also written several controversial books. For all his notoriety, however, he was very much alone. After the heart attack that felled him, his body went undiscovered for three weeks.
I found it hard to empathize. My father hated Jews with the same bitter, open hate he gave to blacks, Latinos, gays, Muslims, the government, and his own son–who was, I should add, a Jew himself, though my father certainly never informed me. Only after my mother's ill-starred visit revealed her identity to me did I learn of my own heritage, and even then it became a mere footnote in my view of myself. Neither my father nor Mr. Wammy were Jewish, after all, and I have little personal use for faith. Nonetheless, I felt some kinship, distant as it was, with the Jewish people, and both my conscience and self-interest barred me from any sympathy for their—our—enemies.
But a murder was a murder, and Dern was not the first. For weeks, public antisemites had been dropping dead at unbelievable rates, including two Fortune 500 CEOs, a prominent Hollywood actor, a foreign head of state, and any number of self-published authors, Klan members, and low-level politicians. Though the deaths appeared natural, it didn't take a great detective to suspect foul play. By the time Dern's impatient landlord smelled rot and broke through his front door, the media had already proclaimed a new serial killer at work: the Golem. Who this Golem was, or even how he killed, no one could say. Like his namesake, he was the stuff of legend, a living myth–or, as I chose to see him, a challenge.
I had been torn over taking the case, but the photos of Dern's decomposed body convinced me. I couldn't walk away. Much as I loathed the Golem's victims, I didn't want their blood on my hands. I would find the Golem, expose him, and leave his fate to the courts.
Another case, another solution, another victory. Simple as that.
Know this: I am a fool.
GLOSSARY/CULTURAL NOTES:
On the title: Or Chadash (the ch is a gutteral sound, as in the Scottish word "loch") is a Hebrew prayer recited by observant Jews every morning, asking God to send a new light to shine on the Jewish people. The words or chadash literally mean "a new light."
On L being Jewish but not religious: Jews are an ethnoreligious group, not merely a religious one. Any child of a Jewish mother is considered Jewish, no matter what religion (or lack thereof) he or she practices. Several of the more modernized/liberal streams of Judaism now also accept children of Jewish fathers and Gentile mothers as Jews, provided those children are raised in the Jewish faith, but that's a recent–and controversial–development.
On L's name: Lior is pronounced lee-OR and means "I have light" in Hebrew. It's pretty unheard of as a name outside the Jewish community, which is probably why L's father refuses to use it.
On Light's name: Yair is pronounced yah-EER and means "he will make light" in Hebrew. In the Tanakh (the Jewish bible), Yair was the name of one of the leaders who "judged Israel" and led the people into battle. Agami is a Jewish surname, found most often in families from Israel.
The Golem: According to Jewish folklore, back in the 16th century, Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague used his mystical knowledge of Creation to create a nigh-indestructible humanoid servant (called a golem) out of clay, whose job was to defend the Jewish ghetto against antisemitic attacks. Eventually, the golem became uncontrollable, and Rabbi Loew was forced to deactivate it by erasing a single Hebrew letter from its forehead (changing the word emet, meaning "truth," to meit, meaning "dead"). Afterwards, the clay remains of the golem were stored in the attic of the Altneuschul (Old New Synagogue) in Prague, where according to legend they remain to this day.