Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  When the fourth shot sheared off the top of Ulrich's head, he let the black bag drop to the ground.

  Fell on top of it.

  The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.

  Screams from inside the house, but no sign of Tanya.

  Duchess was barking. Milo's gun was still out, aimed at the silence, the distance, the trees, that big mustache of trees.

  35

  IT TOOK A while for the sheriffs to arrive from the Malibu substation, even longer to assemble a squad to travel up to the ridge. A small army of nervous, itchy-fingered men in tan uniforms, each deputy assuming the shooter was still around, wouldn't hesitate to fire.

  As we waited for the group to assemble, Milo hung out with the coroner, did his best to let the sheriffs feel they were in charge while managing to inspect everything. He asked me to comfort Tanya Stratton, but I ended up doing nothing of the sort. She shut me out, refused to talk, obtained whatever solace she desired by muttering to her sister over a cell phone and stroking her dog. I watched her from a distance. The deputies had shunted her away from the crime scene and she sat on the ground beneath a silver-dollar tree, knees drawn up, occasionally pummeling herself softly on the jaw. Her sunglasses were back on, so I couldn't read her eyes. The rest of her face said she was shocked, furious, wonder- ing how many other mistakes she'd make over the rest of her life.

  While we'd waited for sheriffs, Milo had inspected the cabin. No obvious trophies. Not much of anything in there. A careful search, carried out later in the day, revealed nothing of an evidentiary nature, other than the doctor's bag. Old, burnished leather, gold initials over the clasp: EHM.

  Tanya Stratton claimed she'd never seen it. I believed her. Ulrich would have hidden it from her, produced it only when he was ready to use it. A while longer, and she might've lost the opportunity to make any mistakes at all.

  Inside the bag were scalpels, scissors, other shiny things; a coil of I.V. tubing, sterile-packed hollow needles in various gauges. Rolls of gauze. Disposable hypodermic injectors, little ampules with small-print labels.

  Thiopental. Potassium chloride.

  The bag was taken into custody by a sheriff's detective, but he never bothered to ask what the gold initials stood for and Milo didn't volunteer the information. When the search party was ready, he and I rode along, sitting in back of a squad car, listening to nervous-talk from the two deputies in front.

  The wounds— the way they'd passed through Ulrich at that distance, the size of the exits— indicated a high-velocity bullet, probably a military rifle, a good-quality scope. Someone who knew what he was doing.

  How hard it would be to see the shooter if he'd chosen to barricade himself among the pines.

  I knew he hadn't. He'd done his job, no reason to stick around.

  • • •

  Gaining access to the pines wasn't very difficult. The same road that had swept us past the property with the broken mailbox continued its climb for another mile before forking. The right fork reversed direction, descending back down toward the coast, but never completing the journey as it dead-ended at a forest preserve named after a long-dead California settler. A state-printed sign said scenic views were up ahead, but no path was provided, the curious were proceeding at their own risk.

  The party fanned out, weapons ready. An hour later, it reconvened roadside. No sign of the shooter. One of the deputies, an experienced backpacker who let us know he'd walked the John Muir Trail twice and could navigate without a compass, estimated where the shooter had stationed himself, thought he probably had the exact spot.

  We followed him to the far end of the forest, where the outermost trees, granted the best light, grew tallest and thickest. Nice clear view of the ugly little cabin and adjoining acreage. Nice view of the ocean, too. As the cops talked, my eyes drifted toward blue. I spotted a steamer gliding across the horizon, dust specks in the sky that were probably gulls.

  Waiting up here wouldn't have been that bad. How long had the shooter been waiting?

  How had he figured it out? Coming across the same detail I had? His copy of the file— the original file. The case of Marissa Bonpaine.

  He'd claimed to be flying up to Seattle. Just a few hours ago, I'd taken him at his word, figured he wanted to review the details of Marissa's murder, cross-reference with Michael Burke's med-school schedule, what he knew about Mate's murder. Discovery by hikers.

  Had he flown back to L.A. to trail the "hiker," gotten here a wee bit faster than Milo and me?

  Or had Seattle been a lie and he'd never left. Figuring it out by doing exactly what I'd done: harnessing the power of obsession. Then watching, stalking, waiting . . . He was a patient man, had persisted so many years, another few days wouldn't matter.

  Kill-spot with a view.

  Had he laid his rifle down lovingly on a rectangle of oilcloth while he ate a sandwich? Drank something from a thermos? Made sure the lens of the scope was clean?

  His own little picnic. The irony . . .

  The cops kept talking, convincing themselves they needn't search any further, no one else was going to get shot today. I turned away from the ocean, looked down at the cabin, now fronted by coroner's vans and squad cars, tried to see it as Leimert Fusco had seen it.

  "Yeah, this has got to be it, the angle's perfect," said the Muir walker. "Look how it gets flat, and there's that rock he could prop his gear against. Maybe he left some trace evidence, let's get the techies up here."

  The techies came. Milo told me later they found nothing, not even a tire track.

  That didn't surprise me. I knew Fusco couldn't have parked too far from his vantage point and been able to make his escape that quickly. Driving to the left-hand fork and disappearing into hills laced with side roads, most of which ended in box canyons, a few feeding to the Valley, the freeway, alleged civilization.

  He'd known which road to take because he was a planner, too.

  The main risk had been leaving his car at the side of the road. But even if someone had seen it, recorded the license plate for some reason, no big deal. It would end up traced back to a rented vehicle, hired with false I.D.

  So, sure, he'd parked close.

  No way he could've hiked far carrying all that gear— the military rifle, the high-grade scope.

  Not with that limp.

  "Easy shot," said another deputy. "Like picking off quail. Wonder what this guy did that pissed someone off so bad."

  "Who says he did anything?" said another cop. "Nowadays, it doesn't take anything to get some nut going."

  Milo laughed.

  The men in tan stared at him.

  He said, "Long day, fellows."

  "It ain't over yet," said Muir-man. "We've still got to find the dude."

  Milo laughed again.

  36

  NOVEMBER IS L.A.'S most beautiful month. Temperatures get considerate, the air acquires the squeaky, scrubbed flavor of a world without hydrocarbons, the light's as sweet and golden as a caramel apple. In November, you can forget that the Chumash Indians called the basin L.A. sits in the Valley of Smoke.

  Late in November, I drove out to Lancaster.

  A month and a half after the slaughter of Eldon Mate. Weeks after Milo had finished cataloging the contents of four cardboard cartons located in a Panorama City storage locker rented by Paul Ulrich under the name Dr. L. Pasteur.

  A key found in Ulrich's bedroom nightstand led to the locker. Nothing very interesting was found in the house itself. Tanya Stratton vacated the premises within days of the shooting in Malibu.

  The cartons were beautifully organized.

  The first contained newspaper clippings, neatly folded, filed in chronological order, tagged with the names of victims. The details of Roger Sharveneau's suicide had been preserved meticulously. So had the death of a teenage girl named Victoria Leigh Fusco.

  Number two held meticulously pressed clothing— predominantly women's undergarments, but a few dresses, blouses and neckties, as we
ll.

  In the third box, Milo found over a hundred pieces of jewelry in plastic sandwich bags, most of it junk, a few vintage costume pieces. Some of the baubles could be traced back to dead people, others couldn't.

  The fourth and largest carton held a styrofoam cooler. Layered within were parcels wrapped in butcher paper and preserved by dry ice. The attendant at the storage facility remembered Dr. Pasteur coming by every week or so. Nice man. Big mustache, one of those old-fashioned mustaches you see in silent movies. Pasteur had only spoken to offer pleasantries, talk about athletics, hiking, hunting. It had been a while since his last visit, and most of the dry ice had melted. The largest carton had started to reek. Milo left it up to the coroner to unwrap the packages.

  In a corner of the storage locker were several rifles and handguns, each oiled and in perfect working order, boxes of bullets, one set of Japanese surgical tools, another made in the USA.

  The papers presented it this way:

  Victim in Police Shooting Believed Responsible for Eldon Mate's Murder

  MALIBU. County Sheriff and Los Angeles Police sources report that a physician shot in a police-involved shooting in Malibu is the prime suspect in the murder of "death doctor" Eldon Mate.

  Paul Nelson Ulrich, 40, was shot several times last week in circumstances that remain under investigation. Evidence recovered at the scene and in other locations, including surgical tools believed to be the murder weapons in the Mate case, indicate Ulrich acted alone.

  No motive for the slaying of the man known as "Dr. Death" has been put forth by authorities yet, though the same sources indicate that Ulrich, a licensed physician in New York State under the name of Michael Ferris Burke, may have been mentally ill.

  November found me thinking about how wrong I'd been on so many accounts. No doubt Rushton/Burke/ Ulrich would've been amused by all my wrong guesses, but teaching me humility would've ranked low on his pleasure list.

  I called Tanya Stratton once, got no answer, tried her sister. Kris Lamplear was more forthcoming. She didn't recognize my voice. No reason to, we'd exchanged only a few words when we'd met and she'd assumed I was a detective.

  "How'd you know to call me, Doctor?"

  "I consult to the police, was trying to follow up with Tanya. She hasn't called back. You're listed as next of kin."

  "No, Tanya won't talk to you. Won't talk to anyone. She's pretty freaked out by all those things they're saying about Paul."

  "She'd have to be," I said.

  "It's— unbelievable. To be honest, I'm freaked, too. Been keeping it from my kids. They met him. . . . I never liked him, but I never thought . . . Anyway, Tanya has a therapist. A social worker who helped her back when she was sick— last year. The main thing is she's still in remission. Just had a great checkup."

  "Good to hear that."

  "You bet. I just don't want the stress to . . . Anyway, thanks for trying. The police have really been okay through all this. Don't worry about Tanya. She'll go her own way, she always does."

  • • •

  November got busy, lots of new referrals, my service seemed to be ringing in constantly. I booked myself solid, reserved lunchtime for making calls.

  Calls that didn't get answered. Messages left for Richard, Stacy, Judy Manitow. A try at Joe Safer's office elicited a written note from the attorney's secretary:

  Dear Dr. Delaware:

  Mr. Safer deeply appreciates your time. There are no new developments with regard to your common interests. Should Mr. Safer have anything to report, he'll definitely call.

  I thought a lot about the trip to Lancaster, composed a mental list of reasons not to go, wrote it all down.

  I sometimes prescribe that kind of thing for patients, but it rarely works for me. Putting it down on paper made me antsier, less and less capable of putting it to rest. Maybe it's a brain abnormality— some kind of chemical imbalance, Lord knows everything else gets blamed on that. Or perhaps it's just what my Midwestern mother used to call "pigheadedness to the nth."

  Whatever the diagnosis, I wasn't sleeping well. Mornings presented me with headaches, and I found myself getting annoyed without good reason, working hard at staying pleasant.

  By the twenty-third of November, I'd finished a host of court-assigned assessments— none referred by Judy Manitow. Placing the rest in the to-do box, I awoke on a particularly glorious morning and set out for the high desert.

  • • •

  Lancaster is sixty-five miles north of L.A. on three freeways: the 405, the 5, then over to the 14, where four lanes compress to three, then two, cutting through the Antelope Valley and feeding into the Mojave.

  Just over an hour's ride, if you stick to the speed limit, the first half mostly arid foothills sparsely decorated with gas stations, truck stops, billboards, the red-tile roofs of low-cost housing developments. The rest of its nothing but dirt and gravel till you hit Palmdale.

  Motels in Palmdale, too, but that wouldn't have mattered for Joanne Doss, it had to be Lancaster.

  She'd made the trip late at night, when the view from the car window would have been flat-black.

  Nothing to look at, lots of time to think.

  I pictured her, bloated, aching, a passenger in her own hearse, as someone else— probably Eric, it was Eric I couldn't stop thinking about— burned fuel on the empty road.

  Riding.

  Staring out at the black, knowing the expanse of nothingness would be among her final images.

  Had she allowed herself to suffer doubt? Been mindlessly resolute?

  Had the two of them talked?

  What do you say to your mother when she's asked you to help her leave you?

  Why had she set up her own execution?

  I spotted a county sign advertising a regional airport in Palmdale. The strip where Richard's helicopter had landed on all those trips to oversee his construction projects.

  He'd never been able to get Joanne to witness what he'd created. But on her last day on Earth, she'd endured an hour's trip, made sure she'd end up in the very spot she'd avoided.

  Prolonging the agony so she could send him a message.

  You condemn me. I spit in your face.

  • • •

  The Happy Trails Motel was easy to find. Just a quick turn onto Avenue J, then a half-mile drive past Tenth Street West. Lots of open space out here, but not due to any ecological wisdom. Vacant lots, whiskered by weeds, alternated with the kind of downscale businesses that doom small-town proprietors to anxiety in the age of mergers and acquisitions.

  Bob's Battery Repair, Desert Clearance Furniture, Cleanrite Janitorial Supply, Yvonne's Quick 'n' Easy Haircutting.

  I passed one new-looking strip mall, the usual beige texture coat and phony tile, some of the storefronts still vacant, a FOR LEASE sign prominent at the front of the commodious parking lot. One of Richard's projects? If I was right about Joanne's motives, just maybe, because the motel was in clear view across the street, sandwiched between a liquor store and a boarded-up bungalow that bore a faded, hand-painted sign: GOODFAITH INSURANCE.

  The Happy Trails Motel was a single-story, U-shaped collection of a dozen or so rooms with a front office on the left-hand tip of the U and a dead neon sign that pleaded VACANCY. Red doors on each room, only two of them fronted by cars. The building had blue-gray walls and a low white gravel roof. Over the gravel, I saw coils of barbed wire. An alley ran along the west side of the motel and I drove around back to see what the wire was all about.

  The coils sat atop a grape-stake fence that separated the motel from its rear neighbor: a trailer park. Old, sagging mobile homes, laundry on lines, TV antennae. As I cruised closer, a dog growled.

  Returning to the street, I parked. Nothing crisp about the air here. High eighties, arid, dusty, and heavy as unresolved tension. I entered the office. No reception counter, just a card table in a corner, behind which sat an old man, hairless, corpulent, with very red lips and wet, subjugated eyes. He wore a baggy gray T-shirt and striped
pants. In front of him was a stack of paperback spy novels. Off to the side sat a collection of medicine bottles, along with a loose eyedropper and an empty pill counter. The room was small, murky, paneled with pine boards long gone black. The air smelled like every kid's first booster shot. A comb dispenser hung on the rear wall, along with another small vending machine that sold maps and a third that offered condoms and the message Be Healthy!

  To the old man's right was a glass display case filled with photos. Ten or so pictures of Marilyn Monroe in black-and-white. Scenes from her movies and cheesecake shots. Below the montage and stretched across the center of the case, pinned in place like a butterfly, was a pink satin two-piece bathing suit. A typed paper label, also pinioned, said, CERTIFIED GENUINE M.M.'S SWIMSUIT.