Dr. O

by Robert W. Walker

  One of the FBI men came back inside and straight up to Robyn. He extended a note. "From Inspector Thorpe," he said, leaving it with her.

  "What is it?" asked Melody.

  Robyn opened it as the helicopter began its ascent. The note read:

  If you want to help Hogarth call me —Thorpe.

  BOOK TWO

  Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  ... in my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race —never quite sane in the night.

  Mark Twain

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Seattle, Washington

  He had not been idle the days following the attack on him at the Fermilab in Illinois, and now Maurice Ovierto was putting the finishing touches on his latest taunt at the FBI's premiere inspector, Thorpe. Chained to a bulkhead in the rusty old freighter that he had been using as his base of operations in the Portland-Seattle area was the third of his slaughter victims. He needed three body parts from three distinct individuals quickly to make his plan work. The parts would round out a little package he wished to forward to Thorpe, a little joke he had arranged both to alert her to the fact that he knew Hogarth was somewhere in Washington State, but also to continue his thoughtful, concerted effort to drive Thorpe out of her mind. With each cut, each death, each "gift" to her, he knew he was eroding away her strength and resolve, peeling back the layers of her ail-too civilized veneer, scratching at the demon within her. He was molding her in his image, to one day be as unfeeling as he had become.

  As for alerting the FBI to the fact he knew they were holding Hogarth somewhere in the vicinity, his ego could do nothing else. He had once again made fools of them in Chicago. Now, if they dared oppose him again, he'd make fools of them in Seattle. Besides, he enjoyed the game. Alerting them to his whereabouts also had the effect of causing them to show their hand. They'd likely make some troop movements, roust the Hogarths out to remove them to yet another location. It could only serve his purposes.

  His mind was filled with these thoughts even in the midst of the dirty little butcher's theater he had created of the old ship he had purchased, moored here at the forgotten end of a dying pier where a tuna cannery, unable to compete with the majors and the save- the-dolphins movement, had left the area bleak and useless save for the few ships plying the Pacific for oysters and shrimp and a unique little area where pearls were bartered.

  He had purchased a few of the pearls himself, paying twice their value, knowing he was being hustled. But he didn't care, for the idea that the pearls gave him was exquisite. It was when he learned that this area was the only area left in all of Seattle that dealt in such trade that he knew his idea had come to full fruition.

  The dark interior of the ship was perfect for the work. His victims had been chosen at random, off the street, for no other reason than that they were at hand. He glanced at his watch, a sterling silver Rolex that told him it was almost midnight, three days after Chicago. Not a bad average for a killer, he silently quipped.

  He wore a blue surgeon's gown and mask and was nude beneath these. As he approached the woman chained to the corner braces of the bulkhead, he saw that the drug had now completely worn off. She was fully conscious, fully aware of her situation and of the fact that he was coming back for more. He had forced himself on her earlier, but it hadn't been good. She had been too out of it. The tension was not there.

  Now things were different. The pupils of her deep brown eyes were so dilated as to appear to be those of a frightened horse. Even her sweat-drenched body added to the moment, as did the wild, flowing hair. He stood about three feet from her, taking her all in, smiling behind the mask, the blade as thin as spaghetti but large enough to reach from his hand at the base of his chin to the forehead.

  "I'm here with you, my dear. Dr. Ovierto is on the job," he said with a little laugh, savoring the moment. "I just need a little something from you, my dear," he continued in his best bedside voice, as if he were about to take her pulse or a little blood. "The doctor won't hurt you."

  The blade and the exaggeratedly pleasant voice made her tear at her bonds and scream against the gag, which was soaked with her spittle. "Here, let me make you more comfortable," he said, taking away the gag. "Isn't that better?"

  "Why? Why're you doing this to me?"

  "It's the only way for me."

  She was a hooker who had responded to the wrong john.

  Now the thin, stiletto blade that gleamed under the single bare light told her she was going to die here. She pleaded with him.

  "Don't beg! Christ, I hate that."

  "All right, all right... whatever you want, but—"

  "I want your Adam's apple."

  "What?"

  "I need a box of them."

  "What?"

  "I've got two, and I need a third to round out the set."

  "What?"

  He stepped closer again, forcing a fresh gag down her throat. She began to thrash.

  He stood back to watch the thrashing. A completely helpless victim, thrashing, eyes registering total fear: this was enough to make him bulge below the surgeon's gown with an erection. He knew he couldn't fight his base instincts, even though he wanted to finish the package for the early mail. But he knew how weak he was in the face of a thrashing woman, and so he put the knife aside for now, resting it comfortably on an old crate within reach. Atop the crate there were numerous mouse droppings. On another crate a plate of oysters, half-eaten, remained to fill the room with an odor other than that of the fear and perspiration coming off the woman. A third odor welled up from the keg of preservative and disinfectant he had days before prepared for this, the final night of his triple Seattle killing spree, which would keep the Seattle authorities quite busy.

  His ultimate plan —given the time before he must move in on Elena Hogarth —was to take each of the bodies and place them at three distinct locations where they would be found, each with its throat missing, presumably cannibalized by some mad-dog killer. At the same time, he meant to leave enough of the evidence—perhaps even one of the bodies —here, aboard ship. And, time permitting of course, to also place with that third body his old colleague Dr. Rosenthaler who would stand in for the Seattle mad-dog.

  The possibilities excited his imagination still further.

  It would make for a great hullabaloo and he liked big hullabaloos, especially those that he had himself created from scratch.

  Earlier, he and Charlene, the prostitute chained now to the wall, had enjoyed the oysters, although he had had to force-feed several of the last ones to her, explaining to her about their special properties as an aphrodisiac. She didn't even know what the word meant. But then, it wasn't her brain he was after. He had himself swallowed a number of the oysters but none of those he had laced with the thiopental sodium, an anesthetic. He had eaten two or three just in order to keep her calm at the outset of their "arrangement." He had joked with her and teased her with pearls, taunting her by spitting out several little gems, as if they'd been discovered in the oysters. This made him laugh and it made her say he'd have to pay her with cash. Once he pushed two one-hundred-dollar bills into her purse where she'd slung it over an old chair, asking her how much she was worth, they had begun their picnic in full earnest....

  Now he came again at her.

  He lifted up the gown and became excited as she watched, and the fear in her seemed to subside some-what. She probably thought he was just kinky, and that all the nonsense with the knife and the threats, the rape, and the chains was only for this.

  She stopped thrashing to allow him easy access, and he immediately felt the shift and sensed that the tension had sapped from her; certainly, the level of fear had decreased. Deflated. He felt like a deflated balloon from hi
s chest down, with this sudden change, and now, even as he rammed hard into her, his right hand reached over to the crate and lifted the thin blade to her throat.

  He gauged her by the tension this created.

  "Good," he said. "That's better... better."

  She gurgled under the gag which he reached up to with his left hand and snatched away.

  "Scream if you like," he told her. "I like screams."

  She obliged, but it wasn't right. Her screams now were theatrical, he thought. She needed more motivation. He pressed down on the blade which instantly severed tissue at the throat, the blood trickling down between her breasts, toward his penis.

  Her fear rose perceptibly and now radically as the knife drew more blood like a pipeline sunk for oil.

  He felt himself coming.

  He moaned and repeatedly shouted, "Good, yes, yes! Good! Gooooooooood!"

  As he climaxed in her he rammed the knife deep in at the same instant. And began cutting. And she began screaming in earnest. But the screams turned to bubbling gurgles as he continued to surgically slash in controlled movements. He cut out a square of flesh at the center of her throat, a box around the Adam's apple. He worked at removing the vocal box. Only the severed chords made her screams stop.

  Down in the hold of the old ship, no one could hear. In two other areas of the ship, he had taken the throats of two others, one a man. Now, with his bloody prize, naked and drenched in her blood, he opened an old keg that he had earlier filled with cleansing solutions and formaldehyde disinfectant. Two other such globs of flesh swam in the solution beside it.

  He'd have to work most of the rest of the night to get the package out to Thorpe by morning. It would take some clean surgery to deposit his pearls inside the Washington State apples he intended to send her.

  Behind him the prostitute was dead from a combination of trauma and blood loss. He'd clear her away later. For now, he had work to do. His mind worked at a feverish pace. His base sexual needs gratified, he now meant to satisfy something less degrading to himself. He meant to satisfy his gamesmanship with Thorpe.

  He looked back over his shoulder at what was left of the woman and said to the carcass, "Was it good for you, Thorpe?" This made him laugh.

  He went up to the captain's quarters above the hold, where, in a refrigerator, he kept a stainless steel dish on which all of his instruments were laid out in a row. He set these up on a table in the room. Taking a second steel dish, he returned to the death hold and lifted out the first victim's throat box. He carefully covered the other two and returned to the captain's cabin where he clicked on the TV and listened to the "Arsenio Hall Show" as he began carefully removing the layers of tissue encasing the hard ball of the Adam's apple.

  The solution had done its work well, not only keeping the matter preserved and clean, but pliable. He made another cut just as the audience on the TV broke into laughter at something Arsenio said to his guest star, John Candy.

  John Candy told Arsenio that he had an Uncle Timmy in Cleveland that wanted to sleep with Hall. More laughter but this time a little nervous.

  Ovierto made a neat, near invisible incision in the Adam's apple before him. He worked with surgical gloves on, and beside him, in a clear dish, three shimmering pearls of dubious quality had come to rest at the center.

  Candy's punch line came: "But he was talking about Fawn! Fawn!" he repeated. The audience laughed more naturally, if not raucously. But Arsenio had his arms in the air. He didn't get it.

  "Fawn Hall, not Arsenio!" said Ovierto, thinking Candy's so-called joke was a stupid blunder and that Arsenio was getting sick of such flak and was slow on the uptake, but that the audience was the worst for laughing at the inane remark. People were sheep, he had decided long ago. Everyone laughed and applauded when a light went on, like Pavlov's dog.

  Hall was now trying to elicit some information about Candy's latest picture.

  Ovierto pressed into the slit he had made in the apple one shiny pearl. The tweezer had made its deposit perfectly.

  "Good," he said to himself, examining the work. Now he just needed to suture it with the finest material he had in his black bag. He went straight to this part of the job, knowing that as the tissue dried it would show more of the suture.

  It was fine work, and in anticipation of this part he had secured a large magnifying glass to his head. Candy and Hall's voices continued at the back of his mind, but now he spoke to himself. "Just like the jeweler's work. There... there... yes... yes... yes."

  He breathed deeply when he had finished the first one. A glance at his watch told him it was past two. Nerve-racking. He wondered if he could possibly manage all three tonight and get them out in the morning. Debating it was taking up valuable time.

  He returned for the second apple in the barrel, continuing the painstaking work. The TV was flashing scenes from an old Bogart movie. He liked Bogart and wondered why he had never been cast in the role of a doctor. He had seen this particular movie when he was just a boy of eleven, he remembered. He hadn't had a bad upbringing, and he had had a great career spread before him when he had finished medical school and had gotten his position under Rosenthaler. But they—Thorpe and the others—they had changed all that... changed him, Rosenthaler among them.

  But Rosenthaler had gotten his....

  Now serving out his life in a mental hospital not far from here.

  But maybe Rosenthaler had suffered enough. Maybe the man ought to be put out of his misery. It had been almost five years, his suffering. Why not show a little mercy, he asked himself as he made his way back to the instruments to finish his night's work.

  It now remained for him to wrap the package properly, address it, and put stamps on it.

  Exciting... all very exciting...

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lincoln, Nebraska

  For Donna Thorpe home was fast becoming as much of a problem as her work, since it appeared that Jim was suddenly—at least it seemed sudden to her— no longer supporting her. She'd told him all that had occurred in Chicago, sparing no detail in what felt like a confession, for she did feel remorse over the deaths of those that Ovierto had killed, particularly Joe Swisher. She could only tell this to Jim, along with the rest of it, along with her obsession with this case. But he shut her out, saying he did not want to hear another word about it—about the mistakes in Chicago, the mistakes in Houston —none of it. And for the first time in their marriage he grabbed her by the wrists, and, hurling her toward the mirror, shouted, "Take a good look at what you've become, Donna! Look, look!"

  She fought against his hold, knowing that if she wished she could put him on his back in an instant.

  He forced her eyes round to the mirror. "You and this monster you're chasing, girl, they're becoming one! One!"

  "No!" she maneuvered his arm into a gyrating twist and suddenly had him in a choke hold, forcing his right hand against the small of his back. She'd shouted to him to stop it several times, and their shouts drew the children to the door.

  When the children saw them fighting, it did something to Jim. She quickly released her hold. He pretended a smile and lied to the children, bundling them off to bed, but when he returned he was icy cold, seething. In the dark where they lay side by side, unspeaking, his voice sounded like a bell tolling when he finally spoke. "I'm divorcing you, Donna. It's over."

  "What're you saying? That we can't work this out?"

  "I don't believe there is any way to—"

  "We can try counseling," she suggested.

  "It's beyond that."

  "What do you mean, beyond that? We haven't even tried."

  "But we have, in a sense. I've listened and you haven't, all our married life. There's no getting through to you, and the idea someday I'm going to get a call from that grim reaper, Sam Boas, that you've been—"

  "That's not ever going to happen," she insisted.

  "—killed! I'm tired of sitting back, waiting for that call. Maybe that doesn't make me much of a ma
n... maybe getting an arm broken by my wife doesn't make me —”

  "Oh, Jim, please, you know how much I love you! How much I need you."

  "No, no I don't know anything of the kind. I know you have one overriding desire, the same desire that's been the basis of your life for six years. I'm just not able to continue this way."

  "Then I'll try to change."

  "Inspector Donna Thorpe will never change."

  She reached out to him, but he pulled from the bed, taking a pillow and a blanket with him to the guest room.

  She cried alone in her bed, worrying about the children in all this, wondering what her life would be like without Jim, and wondering if he meant to fight for custody of their kids. Exhausted, tearful, filled with regrets brought back from Chicago, she felt as if her world were coming to an abrupt end. Depression painted everything darker and darker until the blackness without her became a blackness within. At the root of all her sadness and remorse was Dr. O. Now the bastard's ugly influence was destroying her marriage.

  The following morning, early before the children awoke, she found Jim in the other bed, and she curled up beside him there, feeling like a little girl, her entire being shaking. Her uncontrollable shaking woke him and he put his arms around her, pulling her into him. She nestled in the crook of his arm and began to kiss him about the chest, interspersing her kisses and caresses with promises.

  "I'll just stop," she said.

  "Stop what?"

  "Pursuing that bastard."

  Jim was silent a long while but his body began to respond to her touch. "Is that possible with you?" he asked.

  "Damnit, I'm not bound hand and foot to Ovierto!"

  "You had the case stripped from you, and yet you pursued him to Chicago."

  "On a tip," she half-lied. "There wasn't time, and no one in D.C. was buying it, and—"