Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Too sickening to contemplate, but I couldn't stop contemplating. I hoped the revulsion hadn't found its way into my voice. Must have faked it okay because Stacy stopped crying.

  "Everything will be fine?" she said in a little girl's voice.

  "Just hang in there."

  She smiled. Then the smile turned into something fearful and ugly. "No, it won't. It will never be fine."

  "I know it seems like that right now—"

  "Hey," she said, "Eric's right. Nothing's complicated. You're born, life sucks, you die." She ripped a cuticle bloody, licked the wound, picked some more.

  "Stacy—"

  "Words," she said. "They sound nice."

  "They're true, Stacy."

  "I wish. . . . Things will be better?" More need than challenge.

  "Yes," I said. Lord help me.

  New kind of smile. "I'm definitely not going to Stanford. I have to find my own place. . . . Thank you, Dr. Delaware, this has been—"

  Her words were cut off by sounds from below.

  From the front of the house, loud enough to filter upstairs and through the door to her bedroom. Screams and percussion, frantic footsteps, more screams— bellows.

  The pretty music of shattering glass.

  28

  I RAN OUT, rushed down the stairs, followed the noise.

  The living room. Figures in black.

  Two figures, crouched combatively.

  Richard shouted, "What the fuck have you done?" and advanced on his son.

  Eric waved a baseball bat.

  Behind the boy stood what remained of the display cases. Ravaged, the brass dented, glass doors splintered and ragged. Glass spikes and shards on the carpet, glittery dust like raw diamonds. Broken pottery within the cases and on the floor. Horses and camels and little human figurines turned to rubble.

  Richard got closer. His mouth was open. His breath rasped.

  Eric panted also. He gripped the bat with both hands. "Don't even think about it."

  "Put it down!" Richard commanded.

  Eric didn't move.

  "Put it the fuck down!"

  Eric laughed and took another swing at the porcelain. Richard rushed forward, threw himself at the bat, managed to get hold of it as Eric grunted and struggled to wrestle control.

  The two of them fell to the floor, entwined black clothes coating with glass and dust. I dived in, mindful of the bat, aiming for the bat. Reaching it, feeling hardwood, sweaty and gritty, the crunch underneath as fragments bit into my knees. I tugged at the bat. Some give, then resistance. A fist landed on my jaw but I kept my grip.

  Eric and Richard kept growling and spitting, flailing at each other, me, anyone, anything.

  Another pair of hands entered the fray.

  "Stop!"

  I extricated myself. Joe Safer stood there, hands pressed to his cheeks, eyes aflame. Eric and Richard were concentrating on ownership of the bat. "Stop, you idiots, or I'm walking out permanently and leaving you all to your misery!"

  Richard stopped first. Eric kept growling but his hands loosened, and Safer and I both rushed forward and pulled the bat away from him.

  Richard sat down on the floor, letting the ruins of his collection fall through his fingers. He looked stunned— anesthetized. Tiny cuts flecked his face and his hands, one eye was swollen. A few feet away, Eric was down on his knees, looking out at nothing. Other than a split lip, he showed no obvious injury. My jaw was throbbing and I touched it. Hot, starting to swell, but I could move it, nothing broken.

  "For God's sake," said Safer. "Look what you've done to the doctor. What's the matter with you people? Are you savages?"

  Eric smiled. "We're the elite. Pathetic, huh?"

  Safer pointed a finger at him. "You be quiet, my friend. You keep that mouth of yours shut— don't you dare interrupt me—"

  "Why should—"

  "Eh-eh, don't test me, young man. One more problem and I'm calling the police and having you hauled into jail. And I can keep you there, you'd better believe I can."

  "Who ca—"

  "You'll care. Within an hour you'll be anally raped and worse. Now zip the lip!"

  Eric's hands began to shake. He glanced at the havoc he'd created. Smiled. Started to cry.

  No one talked. Safer took in the ruin and shook his head.

  "I'm so sorry," he said to me. "Are you all right?"

  "I'll be fine."

  "Eric," Richard pleaded. "Why? What have I done to you?"

  Eric looked at Safer, requesting permission to talk. Safer said, "Why, indeed, Eric?"

  Eric faced Richard. Mumbled something.

  "What?" said Richard.

  "Sorry."

  "Sorry," Richard echoed. "That's it?"

  Louder mumble.

  "Speak up, for God's sake," said Richard. "What the hell led you to . . ." He shook his head, let it drop.

  "Sorry, Daddy," said Eric. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

  "Why, Eric?"

  Eric began to sob. Richard moved to comfort him, thought better of it, plopped back down.

  "Why, son?" he said.

  "Forgiveness," said Eric. "Forgiveness is all."

  Richard had turned pale again. A bad-looking pale, green around the edges. He picked up a pottery fragment. Green and blue and chartreuse. Part of a horse's face.

  "Oh my God," said a voice from behind us.

  Stacy stood at the entrance to the living room. Hands at her side, eyes so bugged they seemed ready to take off in orbit.

  Just moments ago, hearing talk about finding her own way, I'd allowed myself a small hit of self-congratulation. Now, any victory was a joke, demolished as surely as thousand-year-old pottery drawn from the grave.

  "No," said Stacy.

  "Dear?" said Safer.

  When she didn't answer, he said, "No what?"

  She didn't seem to hear him, had turned to me.

  "No," she said. "I don't want any more of this."

  "And you don't have to take any more, dear," said Safer. "You're certain that jaw's okay, Doctor?"

  "I'll survive."

  "Richard," he said, "is your maid in the house?"

  "No," muttered Richard. "Night off."

  "Stacy, please get the doctor an ice pack."

  Stacy said, "Absolutely," and left.

  Safer faced Richard and Eric: "Now the two of you will clean up this terrible mess and I'll figure out if you deserve my further involvement in your case, Richard."

  "Please," said Richard.

  "Just clean it up," ordered Safer. "Do something useful. Do something together."

  • • •

  He shepherded me out of the room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. One of those vast white lacquer and black granite setups— what realtors call catering kitchens. Another L.A. pretense: upscale isolates staking claim to sociability.

  Stacy was wrapping ice cubes in a towel. "One second."

  "Thank you, dear," said Safer, as she brought it over. I pressed the cloth to my face.

  "I'm so sorry," she told me. "So, so sorry."

  "No big deal," I said. "It's really nothing."

  The three of us stood there. Listening. No sound through the kitchen door.

  Safer said, "Please go up to your room, Stacy. I need to confer with the doctor."

  She complied.

  Safer said, "At least one of them seems normal."

  He pushed back his yarmulke, removed his suit jacket and folded it over a chair, sat down at the kitchen table.

  "What just happened out there?" he said.

  "I wouldn't even guess."

  "Not that that's going to change my strategy vis-à-vis Richard. I'll get him past the immediate threat . . . but that boy. He's seriously disturbed, isn't he?"

  "Very angry," I said. You'd be angry, too, if you'd helped your mother die, couldn't talk about it to anyone.

  "Do you see him as a danger to himself and others? Because if he is, I'll get a seventy-two-hour hold."

&n
bsp; "Possibly, but don't ask me to go there. Get someone else for that."

  He massaged the tabletop. "I understand, conflict of interest."

  Yet another.

  "Speaking of which," he said, "let's discuss Detective Sturgis. I know we've talked about this and please don't be offended, but I believe in an ounce of prevention. What you saw tonight— nothing gets repeated."

  "Of course."

  "Good," he said. "Taken care of. And again I apologize. Now as far as Stacy's concerned, you do agree she needs to be out of here? At least for tonight."

  "Do you have a place for her to go?"

  "My house. I live in Hancock Park, have plenty of room, and my wife won't be put out. She's used to entertaining."

  "Entertaining clients?"

  "Clients, guests, she's a very social person. Tomorrow night's our Sabbath, Stacy can have a multicultural experience. Shall I call Mrs. Safer?"

  "If you can get Stacy to agree."

  "I think I can," he said. "Stacy impresses me as a very reasonable young woman. Quite possibly the one sane person in this . . . museum of psychopathology."

  • • •

  He went upstairs and I sat in the kitchen nursing my jaw. Thinking about Eric's rage.

  Forgiveness is all.

  And Richard hadn't forgiven, so now he was paying for it.

  He and Eric, two kegs of explosives . . . not my concern. Not unless it affected Stacy, I had to focus on Stacy.

  Safer was right, she needed to be out of here. A night or two at his house might work out, but after that . . .

  Safer returned. "I convinced her, she's packing a bag. Let me go tell Richard."

  I accompanied him into the living room. The mess was partially cleaned— dust and fragments swept into piles, brooms leaning against the shattered cases.

  Richard and Eric sat on the floor, their backs to a sofa. Richard's arm around Eric's shoulder, Eric's head against Richard's chest, his eyes closed, his face tear-streaked.

  Pietà in the Palisades.

  Richard looked different. Not flushed, not pale. Expressionless. Crushed. Dragged to the edge and dropped off.

  He didn't seem to notice as Safer and I approached, but when we got within two feet of the case, he turned slowly and held Eric tighter. Eric's body flopped. The boy's eyes remained shut.

  "He's tired," said Richard. "I need to put him to bed. I used to do that when he was little. Tell him stories and put him to bed."

  Safer gave a start. Remembering his own son?

  "Do that," he said. "Take care of him. I'm bringing Stacy to my house."

  Richard's eyebrows arched. "Your house? Why?"

  "To keep things simple, Richard. I promise to take good care of her. I'll get her to school on time tomorrow and she'll spend the weekend with us. Or with friends, if she so prefers."

  Not the Manitows, I thought.

  Richard said, "She wants to go?"

  "My idea," said Safer. "She agreed."

  Richard licked his lips, turned to me.

  I nodded.

  "Okay," he said. "I guess. Tell her to come in before she leaves. Let me give her a kiss."

  29

  I CLIMBED THE stairs, nursing my jaw. Stacy sat on her bed. Her voice came out small and wounded. "I'm tired, please don't make me talk."

  I stayed with her for a while. When I returned to the kitchen, Joe Safer was talking on the phone, elbow resting on the counter near a black-and-chrome coffee machine from Germany. I found a jar of espresso in one of the refrigerators, packed enough for six cups, and sat listening to the drip and thinking about what guilt and expiation really meant to Eric. Safer left the room and kept talking. I drank by myself. A while later, the doorbell rang and Safer came back in the kitchen accompanied by a tall, husky young man with wavy blond hair and a briefcase.

  "This is Byron. He'll be staying here tonight."

  Byron winked and inspected the appliances. He wore a blue oxford shirt, khakis and penny loafers, had hyphens for eyes and facial muscles that looked paralyzed. When we shook hands, his felt like a bone carving. Safer went upstairs. Byron and I didn't talk.

  No sound from the living room. The entire house was too damn quiet. Then I heard footsteps from above and a few seconds later Stacy entered, followed by the lawyer. Safer was carrying a small floral overnight bag. Stacy looked tiny, shriveled, much too old.

  I followed the two of them outside and watched him help her into his Cadillac. Byron remained in the doorway, hands on hips.

  "What is he, exactly?" I said.

  "Someone who helps me. Richard and Eric seem calm, but just in case."

  "Were you an oldest child, Joe?"

  "Oldest of seven. Why?"

  "You like to take care of things."

  His smile was weary. "Don't think I'm paying for that bit of analysis."

  He drove away and I watched the Cadillac's taillights disappear. Down the block, the unmarked hadn't moved. The night had turned dank, redolent of fermenting seaweed. My jaw ached and my clothes had sweated through. I trudged to the Seville. Instead of turning around and heading south, I drove farther north till I found it.

  Six houses up. Big Tudor thing behind brick walls and iron gates, vines encircling the brick, the tip-off: Judy's white Lexus visible through the rails. Another vanity plate: HCDJ.

  Here Come Da Judge. The first time I'd seen it was when I'd accompanied her from her courtroom to her parking space. One of the many times we'd worked together.

  All those referrals. This would be the last, wouldn't it?

  I stopped in front of her house, looking for . . . what?

  Light glowed behind a couple of curtained mullioned windows. Movement flashed on the second story— central window. Just a smudge of a silhouette, shifting, then freezing, then moving again. Human, but that's about all I could say.

  Hooking a three-pointer, my headlights aimed through the Manitow gate, I paused, half hoping someone would notice and show themselves. No one did and I headed back toward Sunset, passing the unmarked. Movement there, too, but the drab sedan remained in place.

  I drove east, trying not to think about anything. On the way home I stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore in Brentwood and bought the strongest Advil I could find.

  • • •

  Friday morning, I woke up before Robin, just as the sun whitened the curtains. My jaw felt tender, but the swelling wasn't too bad. I drew the covers over my face, pretended to sleep, waited till Robin had risen, showered and left. Not wanting to explain. Eventually, I'd have to.

  Using the bedroom phone, I called Safer's office.

  "Good morning, Doctor. How's your battle wound?"

  "Healing. How's Stacy?"

  "She slept soundly," he said. "I had to wake her to get her to school on time. Lovely girl. She even tried to make breakfast for my wife and me. I hope she survives her family. Psychologically speaking."

  I thought about Stacy's little speech about self-determination, wondered if it would stick.

  "What she needs," I said, "is to separate from her family. Achieve her own identity. Richard expects her to go to Stanford because he and Joanne did. She should go anywhere but there."

  "And Eric's at Stanford," he said.

  "Exactly."

  "The boy hasn't separated adequately?"

  "Don't know," I said. "Don't know enough about him to pontificate." Don't want to know if he sat by a bed in a cheap motel and inserted a needle into his mother's vein. "If you have any influence with Richard, you might guide him toward allowing Stacy some choice."

  "Makes sense," he said, but he sounded distracted. "I understand the boy's not your primary patient, but he continues to bother me. That level of anger. Any new thoughts on why he'd explode like that?"

  "None. How was he last night?"

  "Byron reports that father and son cleaned up, then went to sleep. Eric's still sleeping."