Twice Dying

by Neil Mcmahon

  Monks superimposed the graphs onto each other, one at a time. There were minor variations, occasional jumps or lapses, slightly different numerical ratings, but the overall similarity was clear.

  On each sheet, Alison had jotted a brief history of the patient.

  Prokuta, Wayne. Heavy drug user, supporting this with robberies of increasing violence. Finally beat to death an elderly woman with her iron. Diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, dual problems of schiz-ophrenia and bipolarity. Admitted 7/9/88. Released 8/3/90, to parents’ home in Sacramento. Aged 27 at the time of release.

  Foote, Kenneth. A biker with a history of sudden savage assaults. Facing a second manslaughter charge and life in prison for stabbing a college student who sat on his Harley. Diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, with a chemical imbalance in the brain, correctable by medications. Admitted 10/12/90. Released 12/18/92, to an apartment in San Jose. Aged 38.

  Kurlin, Brad. History of childhood antisocial behavior triad. Terrorized his wealthy adoptive parents through his teens. Living in a San Francisco apartment they provided him, set a fire in a transient hotel that claimed six lives. Diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. Admitted 4/14/93. Released 2/21/95, to parents in Mill Valley. Aged 23.

  Schulte, Caymas. Known molester of several children, finally murdered nine-year-old boy. Intimately familiar with the Mendocino backwoods. Savage assault on a search party member who had tracked him there. Diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Admitted 11/6/94. Released 10/3/96, to mother’s home in Mendocino. Aged 34.

  At the bottom of each account, a final note: No longer reporting as required to outpatient clinics for medications. Present whereabouts unknown.

  Monks turned to the remaining papers: a dozen photocopied newspaper clippings, most of them chronicling an event from the late summer of 1984. A man named Merle Lutey had been shot dead by Roben Vandenard IV, the only son of a prominent San Francisco family. Lutey was a hired hand on the Vandenards’ estate in the wine country of Napa.

  The first, longer, articles noted that the family was marked by tragedy. A teenaged daughter, Katherine, had been murdered by a transient years earlier. Robert IV, known as Robby, had a history of mental illness, including paranoid delusions. A blurred photo showed a thin-faced man in handcuffs being led away by sheriffs. He looked to be in his twenties, but the photographer had caught something old and knowing in the eyes.

  Monks noted that the story went from front page headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle to a small paragraph in the back pages within a week. There were no later reports about the murder: no mention of the NGI ruling, or of Robby Vandenard’s admission to Jephson’s program.

  But Robby created another small stir when he went missing in late 1988. He was found the following spring, in the woods near the same Napa estate, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

  There was one final short clip, dated August 18, 1971, presumably printed as a curiosity item.

  PSYCHIATRIST SNAKEBIT

  Santa Rosa (AP)—

  Dr. Francis Jephson, a resident psychiatrist at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, was bitten by a rattlesnake while biking near Calistoga yesterday.

  Jephson was treated at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and released. The attending physician, Dr. Richard Merriman, said the hospital typically saw two or three cases of snakebite per year. They are rarely fatal except in unusual circumstances, but should be taken seriously and treated promptly, Merriman said.

  Monks put his elbows on the desk, closed his eyes, and pressed his fingertips against his temples. Francis Jephson, from Cambridge and Princeton: stellar beginnings that had slid down into compromise, and then, if Alison was right, ethics violations that might be criminal.

  A man who was snakebit.

  I’m talking about taking down a bad physician, outside the courtroom, Isn’t that what you do?

  In fact, it was.

  Then there was the other aspect, unspoken but close to the surface. That whatever lovers she might have encountered in the intervening years were gone. That she seemed willing to give it another try.

  As for him, it was not as if he had much to lose.

  The sound of a key turning in the door brought Monks up startled. Vernon Dickhaut stepped in, saw him, and retreated, mumbling, “Sorry, Doc.”

  “No, no, come on in,” Monks said.

  “I’m on shift again this afternoon,” Vernon said. “I thought maybe I’d catch a couple of hours sleep.”

  Monks remembered all too well the life of a resident, with hundred-plus-hour weeks at the hospital.

  “By all means. I was just leaving.” He stood, stuffing the papers into his daypack.

  Vernon hovered, looking sheepish. “Uh, last night. I realize that was out of line.”

  “You may regret some of the ones you do, Vernon,” Monks said kindly, “but believe me, you’ll regret all the ones you don’t.”

  In the lobby, Monks paused at a phone kiosk and spent a moment considering. The obvious person to bring in on this was Stover Larrabee, a private detective who did most of the investigative legwork for the malpractice insurance group, ASCLEP. Larrabee did not keep regular hours, and it was always a crap shoot as to when to reach him.

  The phone, an unlisted and very private home number, rang nine times before a sleepy and displeased woman picked up. Monks tried to remember the name of Larrabee’s last girlfriend, but could not—that was another gamble anyway.

  He introduced himself, and added, “Sorry to call so early.”

  The apology did not seem to impress her. There came a slapping sound, as of the phone hitting flesh, and her muttered words, “Something about a monk.”

  Larrabee’s tone was vaguely defensive. “I should have checked in with you, Carroll. I think we’ve got DeMers right where we want him.” The reference was to an ASCLEP case coming up tomorrow.

  “I didn’t call to criticize, Stover.”

  “It’s been tricky. You wouldn’t want to talk either, if you’d paid a hundred grand to beat somebody out of a kidney.”

  “A hundred grand? I might just look into retraining.”

  “Think it over. There’s going to be a vacancy real soon.”

  “I need some advice,” Monks said. “An unrelated matter.”

  “I’m a more caring person after morning.”

  “How about lunch? On me, of course.”

  “Club Trieste, Columbus near Broadway,” Larrabee said promptly.

  “Noon?”

  “Let’s make it one.”

  Monks said, “Do you know a private investigator named Stryker?”

  “Not offhand.” Larrabee sounded annoyed. “I thought I knew everybody working around here. Did you get a description?”

  “Maybe forty, tough-looking. He’s posing as a mental health licensing inspector.”

  “It sounds like the kind of phony name some swinging dick would dream up,” Larrabee said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Monks stopped in the locker room to wash and shave. For the first time in months, he paused to study his appearance. He had inherited his mother’s black Irish coloring, which his ex-wife had attributed to the long-ago pity of some lonely colleen for a shipwrecked armada sailor: hair dark and wiry, going grizzled but still mostly there; eyes green with the whites faintly muddy, staring out with an intensity that verged on anger. Face networked with old acne scars and lined with deepening creases like ravines splitting the earth. Arched nose that had thickened and teeth that needed work. Bushy, wild eyebrows that had earned him his mad monk nickname. He was reasonably conscientious about exercise, but had been letting it slide of late, and could feel the softening of his chest, the rounding of his shoulders. He vowed, without enthusiasm, to improve.

  His feelings were awry, and it took him a moment to identify the cause. It was not quite happiness, but something more or perhaps less, like a wary satisfaction at rejoining a battle after standing on the sidelines for years.

  Chapter 4

 
Monks drove into North Beach a few minutes before 1 P.M. and found a parking place on Kearney Street, an event so unusual he could only attribute it to an attentive parking angel, or perhaps the weather. On Columbus a hard steady wind blew in from the Pacific, and he walked against it with head down and hands in pockets. The topless joints like Big Al’s and the Condor were still going strong, but over the last twenty-odd years, the emphasis had gone to full nudity and then to live sex. He threaded his way through leering bouncers trying to hook him in, and continued on until he found Club Trieste. Standing on the sidewalk, he could hear the throb of music from inside. So this was Larrabee’s idea of lunch. Given the neighbor-hood, the advertisements were, he supposed, comparatively tasteful. He stepped inside.

  The room was dark except for a reddish-lit stage at the far end. He could feel the music’s baseline through his shoes. “Cover’s ten bucks,” a voice said.

  Monks blinked, trying to find its owner, whom he judged to be a not very friendly woman. “Pay or beat it,” she said, the tone harder still. He began to perceive her outline, standing in front of him; thin, shorter than his level of vision, dark-haired, and wearing a long black cocktail dress, a sort of waifish Morticia Addams look. This, he reasoned, would be the hostess. Behind her, a very large man in a dark shirt was starting to move toward him. Monks extracted a ten from his wallet, trying not to look rushed.

  “That buys you the first one,” she said. Visions of vodka flashed through his mind, but it was still too early.

  “Club soda. Rocks. Lemon. I’m supposed to meet a friend.”

  “Take your pick,” she said, and moved aside. The large man receded. Monks’s eyes were adjusting. The place was what he had heard described as a splash palace; black Naugahyde, red trim and chrome, music like noisy velour. A bar ran along one wall, with the rest of the room taken by tables. About half were occupied by one or more men. It could have been a Holiday Inn, except for the lighting, cocktail waitresses wearing only V-shaped thongs, and the stares fixed on the stage, where a pretty Asian girl was performing a routine that centered around a firepole, with occasional forays onto the runway. Monks gathered from what remained of her outfit, a G-string roughly the size of a locket, that she was near the end of her set.

  “She hasn’t quite got that kick down yet,” Larrabee said, at his elbow. Monks followed him to a table at the far end from the stage, an area uncrowded and comparatively quiet.

  Larrabee was a burly man with a roosterlike shock of dark hair. He was wearing a rumpled corduroy sport coat and a hand-painted silk tie that featured a pheasant bursting from cover. He had grown up in Flint, Michigan, his father a Tennessee mountain boy who had migrated north to work in the auto plants. This upbringing had resulted in a hybrid mode of speech—a flat Midwest accent, punctuated by hillbilly drawl and tempered by California usage—which had an unsettling way of not quite melding. He had spent twelve years on the SFPD before going private, and was good at getting people to tell things they did not want known. He was drinking Heineken from a bottle. He preferred Pabst in a can, but presumably it was not available here.

  Monks’s ten-dollar club soda arrived just as the dancer teased her way out of the G-string, revealing a pubis barbered to a small black arrowhead diving south. As the music ended, men tossed bills onto the stage, which she gathered up along with her costume before prancing into the wings.

  “Is that your friend?” Monks said.

  “She’s coming two, three down the line. You see anything you like, I could look into it. Some of them are owned.”

  “I’ll let it go for now.”

  A voice came over the sound system, more than slightly reminiscent of Wolfman Jack, introducing the next dancer: Lucinda. Monks realized there was a disc jockey in a booth at the stage’s far end. It was an oddly personal touch. He had assumed the music was all taped.

  Larrabee said, “I couldn’t find any other licensed investigator in the Bay Area named Stryker. He might be from out of town. He might be bullshit. What’s he after?”

  Monks told him.

  “Alison operates like she can’t be touched,” he finished. “Then something catches up with her, and she’s outraged. Maybe it’s the way she grew up.”

  “Anything like this happen before?”

  “I went with her once to buy back some photos she’d let a guy take of her. Nasty little situation.”

  Larrabee spent a moment pushing his beer back and forth between his forefingers, then drained it. He craned around to catch the waitress’s attention, making a circling motion over their drinks.

  “If she wants to reopen the Robby Vandenard case, she’s got a big job,” Larrabee said. “It was a long time ago. People forget, move, die. Anybody who was involved officially isn’t about to admit that anything hinky went on. And let’s face it: she’d come under the microscope.”

  “That’s exactly what she doesn’t want. Just something she can use to make Jephson back off.”

  “In that case, I’d say: cherchez le hard-on.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Look for somebody who feels ripped off, starting with the family of the guy Robby Vandenard killed. Robbie walked, and your man Jephson engineered it.”

  “Are you for hire?”

  Larrabee nodded.

  “Let’s go pay a call on the widow.”

  Their drinks arrived. The waitress looked older than the dancers: heavily made-up, friendly, but in a way that seemed worn. Monks wondered how many hands she had fended off through how many years.

  Larrabee’s gaze shifted suddenly. Monks turned to see a young woman walking toward them, wearing a satin teal hip-length wrap and three-inch heels of matching color. She was in her late twenties and very pretty, with auburn hair tumbling halfway down her back, the long slender legs of a swimsuit model, and the slightly hard look of a girl who had thought things were going to turn out differently. She sat beside Larrabee, her hand moving to his thigh. He introduced her as Debbie. Monks started to say, I think we spoke on the phone, but caught himself in time. It might not have been her.

  “Stover told me you’re a doctor,” she said. She leaned forward, parting the wrap. “I just had these done. You mind telling me what you think?”

  He started to point out that plastic surgery was not his specialty, but by then she had unhooked the front of her halter, also teal, of a decorative scallop design. She inhaled slowly. Her breasts rose with her exquisite rib cage. She cupped and hefted them. When she let go, they bounced, once.

  “Very professional, in my estimation,” Monks said, sitting back and folding his arms. “A symmetry not often met with.”

  “I hope so,” she said, hooking up again. “They cost me three thousand bucks apiece and a month off work.” She stood and kissed Larrabee’s cheek. “I’m up next.”

  Sadly, Monks watched her hurry off.

  He said, “I don’t mean to pry, but wasn’t there A grad student doing her thesis on you?”

  “They come and they go, Doc. Soon as this is over, I’ll see if I can find an address. What was the name?”

  “Lutey. Merle.”

  Larrabee grinned.

  “That’s got Okie written all over it.”

  Debbie advanced onto the stage, the disc jockey announcing her as Secret. In that light, she looked younger. The two men watched in a respectful silence shared by the rest of the audience while the six thousand dollars worth of remodeled tissue was musically unveiled.

  That was the way it was, Monks thought. You went more than a year without a taste, and just when you thought you were over the whole thing, the world conspired to throw it in your face every time you turned around.

  Larrabee said, “Mrs. Lutey—”

  “Not anymore.”

  Larrabee passed his hand over his shock of hair, embarrassed. Boyish. Disarming.

  “Awfully sorry. My information’s old.” He opened his wallet and showed his PI license.

  The former Mrs. Lutey stood in her doorway with her arms fol
ded and her jaw set in a way that suggested that she was used to dealing with authorities. She was not much over thirty, which put her still in her teens at the time of her husband’s death: strawberry blond, wearing skin tight jeans that accentuated her almost anorexic thinness, and a long-sleeved sweatshirt.

  “We’ve been hired by someone who’s interested in the case of Robert Vandenard and your, uh, late husband,” Larrabee said. “We wonder if you’d take a minute to discuss this with us.”

  “Who’s the someone?”

  “A psychologist, a lady like yourself. She’s uncovered some irregularities, and now she feels her careers being threatened. Look, Mrs.—”

  “My name’s Darla.”

  “Darla, please call me Stover, and this is my associate, Dr. Monks.”

  Monks murmured a greeting and stayed in the background.

  They were in the outskirts of Boyes Springs, a northern extension of Sonoma known for its drug subculture and population of ex-cons. The house was old, small, with checked clapboard siding and blistered paint. The yard suggested kids of all ages. A swing set and other toys were scattered around, along with several trikes, bicycles, and a Bondo-gray TransAm with the hood off.

  “We know that must have been a very difficult time for you,” Larrabee said, “especially being up against a family so powerful, like the Vandenards. Did you—if you don’t mind my asking very frankly—did you feel you were treated with fairness? I mean, obviously you were deeply injured, losing your husband.”

  “Are you going to open the case back up?”

  “That could depend heavily on your cooperation, Darla.”

  She looked from one to the other of them, making up her mind about something. It was a kind of look Monks had seen before, and abruptly he realized where: in the ER, junkies faking pain to con him for a shot of narcotics.