Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  "Some other wounds, too. Deliberate cuts, eight of them, deep. Abdomen, groin and thighs. Squares, like the killer was playing around."

  "Proud of himself," I said.

  He pulled out his notepad but didn't write.

  "Any other wounds?" I said.

  "Just some superficial cuts the coroner says were probably accidental— the blade slipping. All that blood had to make it a slippery job. Weapon was very sharp and single-edged— scalpel or a straight razor, probably with scissors for backup."

  "Anesthesia, scalpel, scissors," I said. "Surgery. The killer must have been drenched. No blood outside the van?"

  "Not one speck. It looked like the ground had been swept. This guy took extreme care. We're talking wet work in a confined space in the dead of night. He had to use some kind of portable light. The front seat was full of blood, too, especially the passenger seat. I'm thinking this bad boy did his thing, got out of the van, reentered on the passenger side— easier than the driver's seat because no steering wheel to get in the way. That's where he cleaned most of the mess off. Then he got out again, stripped naked, wiped off the rest of the blood, bundled the soiled stuff up, probably in plastic bags. Maybe the same plastic he'd used to store a change of clean clothes. He got into his new duds, checked to cover any prints or tracks, swept around the van and was gone."

  "Naked in full view of the road," I said. "That would be risky even in the dark, because he'd have to use a flashlight to check himself and the dirt. On top of operating in the van using light. Someone could've driven by, seen it shining through the van windows, gone to check, or reported it."

  "The light in the van might not have been that big of a problem. There were sheets of thick cardboard cut to the right size for blocking the windows on the driver's seat. Also streaked with arterial blood, so they'd been used during the cutting. Cardboard's just the kind of homemade thing Mate would've used in lieu of curtains, so my bet is Dr. Death brought them himself. Thinking he was gonna be the trusser, not the trussee. Same for the mattress he was lying on. I think Mate came ready to play Angel of Death for the fifty-first time and someone said, Tag, you're it."

  "The killer used the cardboard, then removed it from the windows," I said. "Wanting the body to be discovered. Display, just like the geometrical wounds— like leaving the van in full sight. Look what I did. Look who I did it to."

  He stared down at the soil, grim, exhausted. I pictured the slaughter. Vicious blitz assault, then deliberate surgery on the side of an ink black road. The killer silent, intent, constructing an impromptu operatory within the confines of the van's rear compartment. Picking his spot, knowing few cars drove by. Working quickly, efficiently, taking the time to do what he'd come to do— what he'd fantasized about.

  Taking the time to insert two I.V. lines. Positioning Mate's finger on the trigger.

  Swimming in blood, yet managing to escape without leaving behind a dot of scarlet. Sweeping the dirt . . . I'd never encountered anything more premeditated.

  "What was the body position?"

  "Lying on his back, head near the front seat."

  "On the mattress he provided," I said. "Mate prepares the van, the killer uses it. Talk about a power trip. Co-optation."

  He thought about that for a long time. "There's something that needs to be kept quiet: The killer left a note. Plain white paper, eight by eleven, tacked to Mate's chest. Nailed into the sternum, actually, with a stainless-steel brad. Computer-typed: Happy Traveling, You Sick Bastard."

  Vehicle noise caused us both to turn. A car appeared from the west, on the swell that led down Encino Hills. Big white Mercedes sedan. The middle-aged woman at the wheel kept to forty miles per while touching up her makeup, sped past without glancing at us.

  "Happy Traveling," I said. "Mate's euphemism. The whole thing stinks of mockery, Milo. Which could also be why the killer coldcocked Mate before cutting him up. He set up a two-act play in order to parody Mate's technique. Sedate first, then kill. Piece of pipe instead of thiopental. Brutal travesty of Mate's ritual."

  He blinked. The morning gloom dulled his leaf-green eyes, turned them into a pair of cocktail olives. "You're saying this guy is playing doctor? Or he hates doctors? Wants to make some sort of philosophical statement?"

  "The note may have been left to get you to think he's taking on Mate philosophically. He might even be telling himself that's the reason he did it. But it ain't so. Sure, there are plenty of people who don't approve of what Mate did. I can even see some zealot taking a potshot at him, or trying to blow him up. But what you just described goes way beyond a difference of opinion. This guy enjoyed the process. Staging, playing around, enacting the theater of death. And at this level of brutality and calculation, it wouldn't surprise me if he's done it before."

  "If he has, it's the first time he's gone public. I called VICAP, nothing in their files matches. The agent I spoke to said it had elements of both organized and disorganized serials, thank you very much."

  "You said the amputation was clumsy," I said.

  "That's the coroner's opinion."

  "So maybe our boy's got some medical aspirations. Someone with a grudge, like a med-school reject, wanting to show the world how clever he is."

  "Maybe," he said. "Then again, Mate was a legit doc and he was no master craftsman. Last year he removed a liver from one of his travelers, dropped it off at County Hospital. Packed with ice, in a picnic cooler. Not that anyone would've accepted it, given the source, but the liver was garbage. Mate took it out all wrong, hacked-up blood vessels, made a mess."

  "Doctors who don't do surgery often forget the little they learned in med school," I said. "Mate spent most of his professional life as a bureaucrat, bouncing from public health department to public health department. When did this liver thing happen? Never heard about it."

  "Last December. You never heard about it because it was never made public. 'Cause who'd want it to get out? Not Mate, because he looked like a clown, but not the D.A.'s office, either. They'd given up on prosecuting Mate, were sick of giving him free publicity. I found out because the coroner doing the post on Mate had seen the paperwork on the disposal of the liver, had heard people talking about it at the morgue."

  "Maybe I wasn't giving the killer enough credit," I said. "Given the tight space, darkness, the time pressure, it couldn't have been easy. Perhaps those error wounds weren't the only time he slipped. If he nicked himself he could've left behind some of his own biochemistry."

  "From your mouth to God's ears. The lab rats have been going over every square inch of that van, but so far the only blood they've been able to pull up is Mate's. O positive."

  "The only common thing about him." I was thinking of the one time I'd seen Eldon Mate on TV. Because I had followed his career, had watched a press conference after a "voyage." The death doctor had left the stiffening corpse of a woman— almost all of them were women— in a motel near downtown, then showed up at the D.A.'s office to "inform the authorities." My take: to brag. The man had looked jubilant. That's when a reporter had brought up the use of budget lodgings. Mate had turned livid and spat back the line about Jesus.

  Despite the public taunt, the D.A. had done nothing about the death, because five acquittals had shown that bringing Mate up on charges was a certain loser. Mate's triumphalism had grated. He'd gloated like a spoiled child.

  A small, round, bald man in his sixties with the constipated face and the high, strident voice of a petty functionary, mocking the justice system that couldn't touch him, lashing out against those "enslaved to the hypocritic oath." Proclaiming his victory with rambling sentences armored with obscure words ("My partnership with my travelers has been an exemplar of mutual fructification"). Pausing only to purse slit lips that, when they weren't moving, seemed on the verge of spitting. Microphones shoved in his face made him smile. He had hot eyes, a tendency to screech. A hit-and-run patter had made me think vaudeville.

  "Yeah, he was a piece of work, wasn't he?" said Milo
. "I always thought when you peeled away all the medico-legal crap, he was just a homicidal nut with a medical degree. Now he's the victim of a psycho."

  "And that made you think of me," I said.

  "Well," he said, "who else? Also, there's the fact that one week later I'm no closer to anything. Any profound, behavioral-science insights would be welcome, Doctor."

  "Just the mockery angle, so far," I said. "A killer going for glory, an ego out of control."

  "Sounds like Mate himself."

  "All the more reason to get rid of Mate. Think about it: If you were a frustrated loser who saw yourself as a genius, wanted to play God publicly, what better than dispatching the Angel of Death? You're very likely right about it being a travel gone wrong. If the killer did make a date with Mate, maybe Mate logged it."

  "No log in his apartment," Milo said. "No work records of any kind. I'm figuring Mate kept the paperwork with that lawyer of his, Roy Haiselden. Mouthy fellow, you'd think he'd be blabbing nonstop, but nada. He's gone, too."

  Haiselden had been at the conference with Mate. Big man in his fifties, florid complexion, too-bushy auburn toupee. "Amsterdam, also?" I said. "Another humanist?"

  "Don't know where yet, just that he doesn't answer calls. . . . Yeah, everyone's a humanist. Our bad boy probably thinks he's a humanist."

  "No, I don't think so," I said. "I think he likes being bad."

  Another car drove by. Gray Toyota Cressida. Another female driver, this one a teenage girl. Once again, no sideward glance.

  "See what you mean," I said. "Perfect place for a nighttime killing. Also for a travel jaunt, so maybe Mate chose it. And after all the flack about tacky settings, perhaps he decided to go for scenic— final passage in a serene spot. If so, he made the killer's job easier. Or the killer picked the spot and Mate approved. A killer familiar with the area— maybe even someone living within walking distance— could explain the lack of tire tracks. It would also be a kick— murder so close to home and he gets away with it. Either way, the confluence between his goals and Mate's would've been fun."

  "Yeah," Milo said, without enthusiasm. "Gonna have my D-I's canvass the locals, see if any psychos with records turn up." Another glance at his watch. "Alex, if the killer set up an appointment with Mate by faking terminal illness, that implies theater on another level: acting skills good enough to convince Mate he was dying."

  "Not necessarily," I said. "Mate had relaxed his standards. When he started out, he insisted on terminal illness. But recently he'd been talking about a dignified death being anyone's right."

  No formal diagnosis necessary. I kept my face blank.

  Maybe not blank enough. Milo was staring at me. "Something the matter?"

  "Beyond a tide of gore in the morning?"

  "Oh," he said. "Sometimes I forget you're a civil- ian. Guess you don't wanna see the crime-scene photos."

  "Do they add anything?"

  "Not to me, but . . ."

  "Sure."

  He retrieved a manila packet from the unmarked. "These are copies— the originals are in the murder book."

  Loose photos, full-color, too much color, the van's interior shot from every angle. Eldon Mate's body was pathetic and small in death. His round white face bore the look—dull, flat, the assault of stupid surprise. Every murdered face I'd seen wore it. The democracy of extinction.

  The flashbulb had turned the blood splatter greenish around the edges. The arterial spurts were a bad abstract painting. All of Mate's smugness was gone. The Humanitron behind him. The photo reduced his machine to a few bowed slats of metal, sickeningly delicate, like a baby cobra. From the top frame dangled the pair of glass I.V. bottles, also blood-washed.

  Just another obscenity, human flesh turned to trash. I never got used to it. Each time I encountered it, I craved faith in the immortality of the soul.

  Included with the death photos were some shots of the brown Econoline, up close and from a distance. The rental sticker was conspicuous on the rear window. No attempt had been made to obscure the front plates. The van's front end so ordinary . . . the front.

  "Interesting."

  "What is?" said Milo.

  "The van was backed in, not headed in the easy way." I handed him a picture. He studied it, said nothing.

  "Turning around took some effort," I said. "Only reason I can think of is, it would've made escape easier. It probably wasn't the killer's decision. He knew the van wouldn't be leaving. Although I suppose he might have considered the possibility of being interrupted and having to take off quickly. . . . No, when they arrived, Mate was in charge. Or thought he was. In the driver's seat literally and psychologically. Maybe he sensed something was off."

  "It didn't stop him from going through with it."

  "Could be he put his reservations aside because he also enjoyed a bit of danger. Vans, motels, sneaking around at night say to me he got off on the whole cloak-and-dagger thing."

  I handed him the rest of the photos and he slipped them in the packet.

  "All that blood," I said. "Hard to imagine not a single print was left anywhere."

  "Lots of smooth surfaces in the van. The coroner did find smears, like finger-painting whirls, says it might mean rubber gloves. We found an open box in the front. Mate was a dream victim, brought all the fixings for the final feast." He checked his watch again.

  "If the killer had access to a surgical kit, he could've also brought sponges— nice and absorbent, perfect for cleanup. Any traces of sponge material in the van?"

  He shook his head.

  I said, "What else did you find, in terms of medical supplies?"

  "Empty hypodermic syringe, the thiopental and the potassium chloride, alcohol swabs— that's a kicker, ain't it? You're about to kill someone, you bother to swab them with alcohol to prevent infection?"

  "They do it up in San Quentin when they execute someone. Maybe it makes them feel like health-care professionals. The killer would've liked feeling legitimate. What about a bag to carry all that equipment?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  "No carrying case of any kind?"

  "No."

  "There had to be some kind of case," I said. "Even if the equipment was Mate's, he wouldn't have left it rolling around loose in the van. Also, Mate had lost his license but he still fancied himself a doctor, and doctors carry black bags. Even if he was too cheap to invest in leather, and used something like a paper sack, you'd expect to find it. Why would the killer leave the Humanitron and everything else behind and take the case?"

  "Snuff the doctor, steal his bag?"

  "Taking over the doctor's practice."

  "He wants to be Dr. Death?"

  "Makes sense, doesn't it? He's murdered Mate, can't exactly come out into the open and start soliciting terminally ill people. But he could have something in mind."

  Milo rubbed his face furiously, as if scrubbing without water. "More wet work?"

  "It's just theory," I said.

  Milo gazed up at the dismal sky, slapped the packet of death photos against his leg again, chewed his cheek. "A sequel. Oh that would be peachy. Extremely pleasant. And this theory occurs to you because maybe there was a bag and maybe someone took it."

  "If you don't think it has merit, disregard it."

  "How the hell should I know if it has merit?" He stuffed the photos in his jacket pocket, yanked out his pad, opened it and stabbed at the paper with a chewed-down pencil. Then he slammed the pad shut. The cover was filled with scrawl. "The bag coulda been left behind and ended up in the morgue without being logged."

  "Sure," I said. "Absolutely."

  "Great," he said. "That would be great."

  "Well, folks," I said, in a W. C. Fields voice, "in terms of theory, I think that's about it for today."

  His laughter was sudden. I thought of a mastiff's warn- ing bark. He fanned himself with the notepad. The air was cool, stale, still inert. He was sweating. "Forgive the peckishness. I need sleep." Yet another glance at the Timex. />
  "Expecting company?" I said.

  "The yuppie hikers. Mr. Paul Ulrich and Ms. Tanya Stratton. Interviewed them the day of the murder, but they didn't give me much. Too upset— especially the girl. The boyfriend spent his time trying to calm her down. Given what she saw, can't blame her, but she seemed . . . delicate. Like if I pressed too hard she'd dis- integrate. I've been trying all week to arrange the re- interview. Phone tag, excuses. Finally reached them last night, figured I'd go to their house, but they said they'd rather meet up here, which I thought was gutsy. But maybe they're thinking some kind of self-therapy— whatchamacallit— working it through." He grinned. "See, it does rub off, all those years with you."

  "A few more and you'll be ready to see patients."

  "People tell me their troubles, they get locked up."