Dr. Death (2 page)

I nodded. "Bodies left on the bed for the cleaning crew to find next morning. Too many traumatized maids turned into bad publicity. I saw him on TV once, getting defensive about it. Saying Christ had been born in a barn full of goat dung, so setting doesn't matter. But it does, doesn't it?"

He looked at me. "You've been following Mate's career?"

"Didn't have to," I said, keeping my voice even. "He wasn't exactly media-shy. Any tracks of other cars nearby?"

He shook his head.

"So," I said, "you're wondering if the killer drove up with Mate."

"Or parked farther down the road than we checked. Or left no tracks— that happens plenty, you know how seldom forensic stuff actually helps. No one's reported seeing any other vehicles. Then again, no one noticed the damn
van
, and it sat here for hours."

"What about shoe prints?"

"Just the people who found the van."

"What's the time-of-death estimate?" I said.

"Early morning, one to four A.M." He shot his cuff and looked at his Timex. The watch crystal was scarred and filmed. "Mate was discovered just after sunrise— six-fifteen or so."

"The papers said the people who found him were hikers," I said. "Must've been early risers."

"Coupla yuppies walking with their dog, came up from the Valley for a constitutional before hitting the office. They were headed up the dirt road and noticed the van."

"Any other passersby?" I pointed down the road, toward Encino Hills Drive. "I used to come up here, remember a housing development being built. By now it's probably well-populated. That hour, you'd think a car or two would drive by."

"Yeah, it's populated," he said. "High-priced development. Guess the affluent get to sleep in."

"Some of the affluent got that way by working. What about a broker up early to catch the market, a surgeon ready to operate?"

"It's conceivable someone drove past and saw something, but if they did they're not admitting it. Our initial canvass produced zip by way of neighborly help. How many cars have you seen while we stood here?"

The road had been silent.

"I got here ten minutes before you," he said. "One truck. Period. A gardener. And even if someone did drive by, there'd be no reason to notice the van. No streetlights, so before sunrise it would've been pure black. And if someone did happen to spot it, no reason to give it a thought, let alone stop. There was county construction going on up here till a few months ago, some kind of drain line. CalTrans crews left trucks overnight all the time. Another parked vehicle wouldn't stand out."

"It stood out to the yuppies," I said.

"Stood out to their
dog.
One of those attentive retrievers. They were ready to walk right past the van but the dog kept nosing around, barking, wouldn't leave it alone. Finally, they had a look inside. So much for walking for health, huh? That kind of thing could put you off exercise for a long time."

"Bad?"

"Not what
I'd
want as an aerobic stimulant. Dr. Mate was trussed up to his own machine."

"The Humanitron," I said. Mate's label for his death apparatus. Silent passage for Happy Travelers.

Milo's smile was crooked, hard to read. "You hear about that thing, all the people he used it on, you expect it to be some high-tech gizmo. It's a piece of junk, Alex. Looks like a loser in a junior-high science fair. Mismatched screws, all wobbly. Like Mate cobbled it from spare parts."

"It worked," I said.

"Oh yeah. It worked fine. Fifty times. Which is a good place to start, right? Fifty families. Maybe someone didn't approve of Mate's brand of travel agency. Potentially, we're talking hundreds of suspects. Problem one is we've been having a hard time reaching them. Seems lots of Mate's chosen were from out-of-state— good luck locating the survivors. The department's lent me two brand-new Detective-I's to do phone work and other scut. So far people don't want to talk to them about old Eldon, and the few who do think the guy was a saint— 'Grandma's doctors watched her writhe in agony and wouldn't do a damn thing. Dr. Mate was the only one willing to help.' Alibi-talk or true belief? I'd need face-to-faces with all of them, maybe you there to psychoanalyze, and so far it's been telephonic. We're making our way through the list."

"Trussed to the machine," I said. "What makes you think homicide? Maybe it was voluntary. Mate decided it was his own time to skid off the mortal coil, and practiced what he preached."

"Wait, there's more. He was hooked up, all right— I.V. in each arm, one bottle full of the tranquilizer he uses— thiopental— the other with the potassium chloride for the heart attack. And his thumb was touching this little trip-wire doohickey that gets the flow going. Coroner said the potassium had kicked in for at least a few minutes, so Mate would've been dead from that, if he wasn't dead already. But he was. The gizmo was all for
show
, Alex. What
dispatched
him was no mercy killing: he got slammed on the head hard enough to crack his skull and cause a subdural hematoma, then someone cut him up, none too neatly. 'Ensanguination due to extensive genital mutilation.' "

"He was castrated?" I said.

"And more. Bled out. Coroner says the head wound was serious, nice columnar indentation, meaning a length of pipe or something like that. It would've caused big-time damage if Mate had lived— maybe even killed him. But it wasn't immediately fatal. The rear of the van was soaked with blood, and the spatter says arterial spurts, meaning Mate's heart was pumping away when the killer worked on him."

He rubbed his face. "He was vivisected, Alex."

"Lord," I said.

"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.