Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Milo slid into the booth and I followed.

  Fusco looked me over. "Dr. Delaware? Excellent. My doctorate's not in clinical. Personality theory." He twisted the tweed tie. "Thanks for coming. I won't insult your intelligence by asking how you're doing on Mate. You're here because even though you think it's a waste of time, you're not in a position to refuse data. Want to order something, or is this going to remain at the level of testosterone-laden watchfulness?"

  "So how do you really feel about life?" said Milo.

  Fusco gave another toothy grin.

  "Nothing for me," Milo said. "What's with this Burke?"

  A waitress approached. Fusco motioned her away. Next to his sandwich was a tall glass of cola. He sipped, put the glass down silently.

  "Michael Ferris Burke," he said, as if delivering the title of a poem. "He's like the AIDS virus: I know what he is, know what he does, but I can't get hold of him."

  Gazing pleasantly at Milo. I wondered if the AIDS reference went beyond general metaphor.

  Milo's expression said he thought it did. "We've all got our problems. Want to fill me in, or just bitch?"

  Fusco kept smiling as he reached down to his left and produced a brick-red accordion file folder, two inches thick and fastened with string.

  "Copy of the Burke file for your perusal. More accurately, the Rushton file. He went to med school as Michael Ferris Burke, but he was born Grant Huie Rushton. There are a few other monikers in between. He likes to reinvent himself."

  "So now he can get a job in Hollywood," said Milo.

  Fusco pushed the file closer. Milo hesitated, then pulled it over and placed it on the seat between us.

  Fusco said, "If you want a capsule summary, I'll give you one."

  "Go ahead."

  The muscles of Fusco's left eyelid twitched before settling. "Grant Huie Rushton was born forty years ago in Queens, New York. Flushing, to be exact. Full-term birth, no complications, only child. The parents were Philip Walter Rushton, a tool-and-die maker, age twenty-nine, and Lorraine Margaret Huie, twenty-seven, a housewife. When the boy was two, both parents were killed in an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Little Grant was shipped off to Syracuse to be raised by his maternal grandmother, Irma Huie, a widow with a history of alcoholism."

  Fusco's hands rubbed together. "Logic and psychology tell me Rushton's problems had to begin early, but getting hold of childhood records that document his pathology has been difficult because he never received professional help. I located some grade-school reports that note 'disciplinary problems.' He wasn't a sociable child, so locating peers who remember him clearly has been a problem. A trip I made to his Syracuse neighborhood several years ago unearthed some people who remember the boy as bright and talented and major-league mean—'malicious' is the word that keeps cropping up."

  He ticked his left index finger with its right-hand counterpart. "Cruelty to animals, bullying other kids, suspicions of neighborhood pranks and thefts and burglaries. The grandmother was an inept parent, and Grant had free rein. He was smart enough to avoid getting caught, has no juvenile record that I can find. His high-school yearbook entry— a copy's in there— lists no extracurricular activities or honors. He graduated with a B average, which for him was no challenge, he could've done that in his sleep. A few Unsatisfactories in conduct but no suspensions or expulsions." To me: "You know the data on psychopaths, Doctor. High IQ can be protective. Grant Rushton knew how to keep his impulses under control, even back then. Precisely when he went all the way is unclear, but when he was eighteen, a fourteen-year-old girl— a neighbor— disappeared. Her body was found two months later in a forested area on the outskirts of town. Decomposition was advanced and precise cause of death was never determined, but the autopsy did reveal head trauma and neck wounds and sexual exploration without actual rape. The investigation never got very far and no suspects were ever named."

  "Was Rushton questioned?" said Milo.

  "No. After the girl— Jennifer Chapelle— was found, Rushton graduated and joined the navy. Basic training in California— Oceanside. Honorable discharge after only two months. Military records have proven to be less than precise. All I've been able to learn is that he went AWOL once and they let him go."

  "That merits honorable?" I said.

  "In a volunteer military, sometimes it does. During the time he was stationed at Oceanside, a prostitute named Kristen Strunk was chopped up and dumped a mile from the base. Another unsolved."

  "Same question," said Milo. "Was Rushton ever considered a suspect?"

  Fusco shook his head. "Bear with me. After his discharge, Grant Rushton died: single-car crash off the old Route 66 in Nevada. Burned-up auto, charred corpse."

  "Same death as his parents," I said.

  Fusco's sad eyes glowed.

  Milo said, "What are you saying? A body switch?"

  "The corpse was never examined closely— we're talking french fry. It wasn't till years later, when I matched Rushton's navy prints to those of Michael Burke, that I came across the switch. By that time, it was too late to learn anything about who really got burned. The owner was an accountant from Tucson, driving to Vegas with his wife. The car was hot-wired while they sat at a truckstop eating burgers."

  "Any idea who got burned?" said Milo.

  Fusco shook his head and looked over his shoulder again. "No sign of Rushton for a year and a half. I figure he copped one or more false identities and traveled around for a while. The next time I can tag him he was living in Denver and going by the name of Mitchell Lee Sartin, a student at Rocky Mountain Community College, majoring in biology. The print backtrack verifies Sartin as Rushton. He applied for a job as a security guard, got his fingers inked. The Sartin I.D. was one of those graveyard switcheroos— the real Mitchell was buried twenty-two years before, in Boulder. Sudden infant death, three months old."

  "And no reason for the security firm to cross-reference with the navy," said Milo.

  "Not hardly. Those guys have been known to hire schizophrenics. The prints were checked with local felony files, where, of course, they didn't show up. Sartin got a job patrolling a pharmaceutical company at night. By day, he attended classes. He lasted one semester— straight A's. Life sciences and a course in human figure drawing."

  "Drawing," I said. "Is that what you meant by talented?"

  Fusco nodded. "A couple of his former schoolmates remember him as a great doodler— cartoons, mostly. Obscene stuff, making fun of teachers, other authority figures. He never worked for the school paper. Never chose to affiliate."

  He took a long drink of cola. "During Sartin's enrollment at Rocky Mountain CC, two female students went missing. One was eventually found up in the mountains, dead, sexually abused and mutilated. The other girl's whereabouts remain unknown. This was the first time Grant Rushton/Mitchell Sartin attracted any attention from law enforcement. He was among several individuals questioned by the Denver police because he'd been seen talking to one of the girls in the college cafeteria the day before she disappeared. But it was just a routine interview, no reason to check further. Sartin didn't reenroll, left town. Disappeared."

  "All this within two years of high-school graduation?" I said. "He was only twenty?"

  "Correct," said Fusco. "Precocious lad. The next few years are another cloudy area. I can't prove it, but I know he returned to Syracuse to visit Grandma a year later. Though no one remembers seeing him."

  "Something happened to Grandma," said Milo.

  Fusco's lips curled inward. He ran a hand over the white bush atop his head. "One of those Syracuse winters, late at night, Grandma drove her car into a tree on a rural road and went through the windshield. Her blood alcohol was just over the limit and an empty brandy bottle was found on the front seat. By the time they found her body, it was frozen stiff. No reason to think it was anything other than a single-driver DUI thing, except for the fact that Grandma was a stay-at-home drinker, never went out at night. Rarely drove, period. No one could ex
plain why she'd taken the car out in a freezing storm or why she was out in the sticks, a good fifteen miles from her house. No one also thought to question why, with that kind of impact, the bottle would be right there on the seat. Irma Huie didn't leave much of an estate— her place was rented, she kept no bank accounts. The police didn't find any money, not a penny in the cookie jar. Which I find curious because she'd lived on pension money from her husband and Social Security income, and her landlord said she kept cash around, he'd seen wads of bills bound by rubber bands. A year later, Mitchell Sartin surfaced as Michael Ferris Burke and enrolled in City University of New York as a sophomore pre-med major. He presented a transcript— later shown to be forged— from Michigan State University, claiming a year of courses, GPA of 3.8. CUNY bought it. Burke gave his age as twenty-six— to match the stats on another I.D. he'd cribbed, this time from a dead baby in Connecticut. But he was only twenty-two."

  "He bought himself some time with Grandma's money?" I said. "But he made no attempt to claim the pension or the Social Security payments."

  "He knows how to be careful," said Fusco. "That's why there are periods in his life I just can't tag, and a lot of what I'm going to tell you won't go beyond theory and guesses. But have I said anything, so far, that doesn't make sense from a psychological standpoint, Doctor?"

  "Go on," I said.

  "Let me backtrack. During the year between Irma Huie's death in Syracuse and Michael Burke's enrollment at CUNY, two clusters of mutilation murders occurred that bear marked similarities to the particulars of the Denver victim. The first popped up in Michigan. Beginning four months after Mitchell Sartin left Colorado, three coeds were attacked in Ann Arbor. All were jogging at night on pathways near the University of Michigan campus. Two were ambushed from behind by a man wearing a ski mask, knocked to the ground, punched in the face till semiconscious, then raped, stabbed and slashed with a sharp knife— probably a surgical scalpel. Both escaped with their lives when other joggers happened upon the scene, and the assailant fled into the bushes. The third girl wasn't so lucky. She was taken three months later, by that time some of the campus panic generated by the first two attacks had died down. Her body was found near a reservoir, badly mutilated."

  "Mutilated in what way?" I said.

  "Extensive abdominal and pelvic cutting. Wrists and ankles bound to a tree with a thick hemp rope. Breasts removed, skin peeled from the inner thighs— your basic sadistic sexual surgery. Subdural hematomas from head wounds that might've eventually proven fatal. But arterial spurts on the tree said she'd been alive while being cut. The official cause of death was bleeding out from a jugular slash. Shreds of blue paper were found nearby and the Ann Arbor investigators matched it, eventually, to disposable surgical scrub suits used at that time at the University of Michigan Medical Center. That led to numerous interviews with med-school staff and students, but no serious leads developed. The surviving girls could only give a sketchy description of the attacker: male Caucasian, medium-size, very strong. He never spoke or showed his face, but one of them remembers seeing white skin between his sleeve and his glove. His modus was to throw a choke hold on them as he hit them from behind, then flip them over and punch them in the face. Three very hard blows in rapid succession." Fusco's fist smacked into an open hand. Three loud, hollow reports. The old woman drinking soup didn't turn around.

  "'Calculated,' one of the surviving victims called it. A girl named Shelly Spreen. I had the chance to interview her four years ago— fourteen years after the attack. Married, two kids, a husband who loves her like crazy. Reconstructive facial surgery restored most of her looks, but if you see pre-attack pictures, you know it didn't do the trick completely. Gutsy girl, she's been one of the few people willing to talk to me. I'd like to think talking about it helped her out a little."

  "Calculated," I said.

  "The way he hit her— silently, mechanically, methodically. She never felt he was doing it out of anger, he always seemed to be in control. 'Like someone going about his business,' she told me. Ann Arbor did a competent job, but once again, no leads. I had the luxury of working backward— focusing on young men in their twenties, possibly security guards, or university employees who'd left town shortly after, then dropped completely out of sight. The only individual who fit the bill was a fel- low named Huey Grant Mitchell. He'd worked at the U. Mich medical school, as an orderly on the cardiac unit."

  I said, "Grant Huie Rushton plus Mitchell Sartin equals Huey Grant Mitchell— wordplay instead of a graveyard switch."

  "Exactly, Doctor. He loves to play. The Mitchell I.D. was created out of whole cloth. The job reference he gave— a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona— turned out to be bogus, and the Social Security number listed on his employment application was brand-new. He paid for his Ann Arbor single with cash, left behind no credit card receipts— no paper trail of any kind, except for a single employment rating: he'd been an excellent or- derly. I think the switch from graveyard hoax to brand-new I.D. represents a psychological shift. Heightened confidence."

  Fusco pushed his Coke glass away, then the half-eaten sandwich. "Something else leads me to think he was stretching. Craving a new game. During the time he worked the cardiac floor, several patients died suddenly and inexplicably. Sick but not terminally ill patients who could've gone either way. No one suspected anything— no one realizes anything, to this day. It's just something that turned up when I was digging."

  "He cuts up girls and snuffs ICU patients?" said Milo. "Versatile."

  Any trace of amiability left Fusco's face. "You have no idea," he said.

  "You're talking nearly two decades of bad stuff and it's never come out? What, one of those covert federal things? Or are you out to write a book?"

  "Look," said Fusco, jawbones flexing. Then he smiled, sat back. Let his eyes disappear in a mass of folds. "It's covert because I've got nothing to go overt. Air-sandwich time. I've only been on it for three years."

  "You said two clusters. Where and when was the second?"

  "Back here, in your Golden State. Fresno. A month after Huey Mitchell left Ann Arbor, two more girls were snagged off hiking trails, two weeks apart. Both were found tied to trees, cut up nearly identically to the Colorado and the Michigan vics. A hospital orderly named Hank Spreen left town five weeks after the second body turned up."

  "Spreen," I said. "Shelly Spreen. He took his victim's name?"

  Fusco grinned horribly. "Mr. Irony. Once again, he got away with it. Hank Spreen had worked at a private hospital in Bakersfield specializing in cosmetic work, cyst removals, that kind of thing. It was a big surprise when three post-op patients had sudden reversals and died in the middle of the night. Official cause: heart attacks, idiopathic reactions to anesthesia. That happens, but not usually three times in a row over a six-month period. The publicity helped close the hospital down, but by then Hank Spreen was long gone. The following summer, Michael Burke showed up at CUNY."

  "Long body list for a twenty-two-year-old," I said.

  "A twenty-two-year-old smart enough to make it through pre-med and med school. He worked his way through by holding down a job as a lab assistant to a biology professor— basically a nighttime bottle washer, but he didn't need much income, lived in student housing. Had Grandma's dough. Pulled a 3.85 GPA— from what I can tell, he really earned those grades. Summers, he worked as an orderly at three public hospitals— New York Medical, Middle State General and Long Island General. He applied to ten med schools, got into four, chose the University of Washington in Seattle."

  "Any coed murders during his pre-med period?" said Milo.

  Fusco licked his lips. "No, I can't find any definite matches during that time. But there was no shortage of missing girls. All over the country, bodies that never showed up. I believe Rushton/Burke kept on killing but hid his handiwork better."

  "You believe? This joker's a homicidal psychopath and he just changes his ways?"

  "Not his ways," said Fusco. "His mode of expression. That's
what sets him apart. He can let loose his impulses along with the bloodiest of them, but he also knows how to be careful. Exquisitely careful. Think about the patience it took to actually become a doctor. There's something else to consider. During his New York period, he may have diverted his attention from rape/murder to the parallel interest he'd developed in Michigan and continued in Bakersfield: putting hospital patients out of their misery. I know they seem like different patterns, but what they've got in common is a lust for power. Playing God. Once he learned all about hospital systems, playing ward games would've been a snap."

  "How is he supposed to have killed all those patients?" said Milo.

  "There are any number of ways that make detec- tion nearly impossible. Pinching off the nose, smothering, fooling with med lines, injecting succinyl, insulin, potassium."

  "Any funny stuff go down at the three hospitals where Burke spent his summers?"

  "New York's the worst place to obtain information. Large institutions, lots of regulations. Let's just say I have learned of several questionable deaths that occurred on wards where Burke was assigned. Thirteen, to be exact."