Dr. Death (44 page)

"The front door knocker. I also knocked on the side door, but just with my knuckles."

"The old goat's head," he said. "When I first saw it I wondered if Alice was into witchcraft or something. That, combined with all her talk of Mate being a sacrifice. So
she
ends up tied up— All right, look, I'm going to run interference for you with Glendale PD, but at some point you'll have to talk to them. It'll take days for the prints to be analyzed, maybe a good week for the cross-reference, even longer if the med files aren't on Printrak. But I need to work with them, so I'm telling them about you sooner— figure on tomorrow. I'll try to have them interview you on friendly territory."

"Thanks."

"Yeah. Thanks, too." He inhaled, made the cigar tip glow, created another quarter inch of ash.

"For what?"

"Being such a persistent bastard."

"What's next?" I said.

"For you? Keeping out of trouble. For me, anguish."

"Want Fusco's file?"

"Later," he said. "There's still Doss's paper to deal with. I can't let warrants lapse on an attempted murder case. I do that and Judge MacIntyre puts me on his naughty list. I'll sic Korn and Demetri on Doss's office, have them shlep the financial records to the station so I can get moving at Glendale. Maybe the scene will tell me something. Maybe Burke/whatever missed something in Alice's house and we can get a lead on him." He crushed the cigar in the ashtray. "Fat chance of that, right?"

"Anything's possible."

"Everything's possible," he said. "That's the problem."

• • •

By the time I got back, Robin was home. We had a takeout Chinese dinner and I fed slivers of Peking duck to Spike, acting like a regular, domestic guy with nothing heavier on my mind than taxes and prostate problems. This time I went to sleep when Robin did and drifted off easily. At 4:43 A.M., I woke up with a stiff neck and a stubborn brain. Cold air had settled in during the night and my hands felt like freezer-burned steaks. I put on sweats, athletic socks and slippers, shuffled to my office, removed Fusco's file from the drawer where I'd concealed it from Donovan and Bratz.

Starting again, with Marissa Bonpaine, finding nothing out of the ordinary but the plastic hypodermic. An hour in, I got drowsy. The smart decision would have been to crawl back in bed. Instead, I lurched to the kitchen. Spike was curled up on his mattress in the adjacent laundry room, flat little bulldog face compressed against the foam. Movement beneath his eyelids said he was dreaming. His expression said they were sweet dreams— a beautiful woman drives you around in her truck and feeds you kibble, why not?

I headed for the pantry. Generally, that's a stimulus for him to hurry over, assume the squat, wait for food. This time, he raised an eyelid, shot me a "you've got to be kidding" look, and resumed snoring.

I chewed on some dry cereal, made a tall mug of strong instant coffee, drank half trying to dispel the chill. The kitchen windows were blue with night. The suggestion of foliage was a distant black haze. I checked the clock. Forty minutes before daybreak. I carried the mug back to my office.

Time for more tilting, Mr. Quixote.

I returned to my desk. Ten minutes later I saw it, wondered why I hadn't seen it before.

A notation made by the first Seattle officer on the Bonpaine murder scene— a detective named Robert Elias, called in by the forest rangers who'd actually found the body.

Very small print, bottom of the page, cross-referenced to a footnote.

Easy to miss— no excuses, Delaware. Now it screamed at me.

The victim,
wrote Elias,
was discovered by a hiker, walking with his dog (see ref, 45).

That led me to the rear of the Bonpaine file, a listing of over three hundred events enumerated by the meticulous Detective Elias.

Number 45 read:
Hiker: tourist from Michigan. Mr. Ferris Grant.

Number 46 was an address and phone number in Flint, Michigan.

Number 47:
Dog: black labr. retriev. Mr. F. Grant states "she has great nose, thinks she's a drug dog."

I'd heard that before, word for word. Paul Ulrich describing Duchess, the golden retriever.

Ferris Grant.

Michael Ferris Burke.
Grant
Rushton.

Flint, Michigan. Huey Grant Mitchell had worked in Michigan— Ann Arbor.

I phoned the number Ferris Grant had left as his home exchange, got a recorded message from the Flint Museum of Art.

No sign Elias had followed up. Why would he bother? Ferris Grant had been nothing more than a helpful citizen who'd aided a major investigation by "discovering" the body.

Just as Paul Ulrich had discovered Mate.

How Burke must have loved that. Orchestrating. Providing himself with a legitimate reason to show up at the crime scene. Proud of his handiwork, watching the cops stumble.

Psychopath's private joke. Games, always games. His internal laughter must have been deafening.

Hiker with a dog.

Paul Ulrich, Tanya Stratton.

I paged hurriedly to the photo gallery Leimert Fusco had assembled, tried to reconcile any of the more recent portraits of Burke with my memory of Ulrich. But Ulrich's face wouldn't take shape in my head, all I recalled was the handlebar mustache.

Which was exactly the point.

Facial hair changed things. I'd been struck by that when trying to reconcile the various photos of Burke. The beard Burke had grown as Huey Mitchell, hospital security guard, as effective as any mask.

He'd gone on to use another Michigan identity. Ferris Grant . . . the Flint Museum. Another ha ha:
I'm an artist!
Reverting to Michigan— to familiar patterns— because at heart, psychopaths were rigid, there always had to be a script of sorts.

I studied Mitchell's picture, the dead eyes, the flat expression. Luxuriant mask of a beard. Heavy enough to nurture a giant mustache.

When I tried to picture Ulrich's face, all I
saw
was the mustache.

I strained to recall his other physical characteristics.

Medium-size man, late thirties to forty. Perfect match to Burke on both counts.

Shorter, thinner hair than any of Burke's pictures— balding to a fuzzy crew cut. Each picture of Burke revealed a steady, sequential loss, so that fit, too.

The mustache . . . stretching wider than Ulrich's face. As good a mask as any. I'd thought it an unusual flamboyance, contrasting especially with Ulrich's conservative dress.

Financial consultant, Mr. Respectable . . . Something else Ulrich had said— one of the
first
things he'd said— came back to me:
So far our names haven't been in the paper. We're going to be able to keep it that way, aren't we, Detective Sturgis?

Concerned about publicity. Craving publicity.

Milo had answered that the two of them would probably be safe from media scrutiny, but Ulrich had stuck with the topic, talked about fifteen minutes of fame.

Andy Warhol coined that phrase and look what happened to him . . . checked into a hospital . . . went out in a bag . . . celebrity stinks . . . look at Princess Di, look at Dr. Mate.

Letting Milo know that fame was what he was after. Playing with Milo, the way he'd toyed with the Seattle cops.

Getting as close as he could to criminal celebrity without confessing outright.

It had been no coincidence that he and Tanya Stratton had chosen Mulholland for a morning walk that Monday.

Stratton had come out and said so:
We rarely come up here, except on Sundays.
Resentful about the change in routine. About
Paul
's insistence.

She'd complained to Milo that
everything
had been Paul's idea. Including the decision to talk to Milo up at the site, rather than at home. Ulrich had claimed to be attempting a kind of therapy for Tanya, but his real motive— multiple motives— had been something quite different: keep Milo off Ulrich's home territory, and get another chance at déjà vu.

Ulrich had talked about the horror of discovering Mate, but I realized now that emotion had been lacking.

Not so, Tanya Stratton. She'd been clearly upset, eager to leave. But Ulrich had come across amiable, helpful, relaxed.
Too
relaxed for someone who'd encountered a bloodbath.

An outdoorsy guy— Fusco had said Michael Burke skied, fancied himself an outdoorsman— Ulrich had chatted about staying fit, the beauty of the site.

Once you get past the gate, it's like being in another world.

Oh yeah.

His
world.

Amiable guy, but the charm was wearing thin with Stratton. Was she edgy because she'd begun to sense something about her boyfriend? Or just a relationship gone stagnant?

I recalled her pallor, the unsteady gait. Wispy hair. Dark glasses— hiding something?

A fragile girl.

Not a well girl?

Then I understood and my heart beat faster: one of Michael Burke's patterns was to hook up with sick women, befriend them, nurture them.

Then guide them out of this world.

He enjoyed killing on so many levels. The consummate Dr. Death, and one way or the other the world was going to know it. How Eldon Mate's fame— the legitimacy Mate had obtained while dispatching fifty lives— must have eaten at Burke. All those years in medical school, and Burke still couldn't practice openly the way Mate did, had to serve as Mate's apprentice.

Had to masquerade as a
layman.

Because since arriving in L.A., he hadn't found a way to bogus his medical credentials, had to represent himself as a financial consultant.

Mostly real-estate work . . .
Century City address. Nice and ambiguous.

Home base, Encino.
Just over the hill.
Respectable neighborhood for an upstanding guy.

In L.A. you could live off a smile and a zip code.

The business card Ulrich had given Milo was sitting in a drawer at the West L.A. station. I phoned information and asked for Ulrich's Century City business listing, was only half surprised when I got one. But when I tried the number, a recording told me the line had been disconnected. No Encino exchange for either him or Tanya Stratton, nothing anywhere in the Valley or the city.

Tanya. Not a well girl.

A relationship on the wane with Ulrich could prove lethal.

I looked at the clock. Just after six. Light through the office curtains said the sun had risen. If Milo had been up all night at the Glendale crime scene, he'd be home now, getting some well-deserved rest.

Some things could wait. I phoned him. Rick answered on the first ring. "Up early, Alex."

"Did I wake you?"

"Not hardly. I was just about to leave for the E.R. Milo's already gone."

"Gone where?"

"He didn't say. Probably back to Glendale, that double murder. He was out there until midnight, came home, slept for four hours, woke in a foul mood, showered without singing and left the house with his hair still wet."

"The joys of domestic life," I said.

"Oh yeah," he said. "Give me a nice freeway pileup and I know I'm being useful."

• • •

Milo picked up his mobile, barking, "Sturgis."

"It's me. Where are you?"

"Up on Mulholland," he said in an odd, detached voice. "Staring at dirt. Trying to figure out if I missed something."

"Son, I'm going to bring some joy into your wretched life." I told him about Ulrich.

I expected shock, profanity, but his voice remained remote. "Funny you should mention that."

"You figured it out?"

"No, but I was just wondering about Ulrich. Because I positioned my car where the van was, walked myself through the scene. When the sun came up it hit the rear window and gave off glare. Blinding glare, I couldn't see a thing inside. Ulrich claimed he and the girl discovered Mate right after sunrise, said he could see Mate's body through the rear window. Now that was a week ago, and the van's windows were higher than mine, but I don't calculate that much of a difference and I don't imagine the sun's angle has shifted that radically. I was waiting around to see if the visibility changed over the next quarter hour or so. By itself it wasn't any big deal, maybe the guy didn't remember every detail. But now you're telling me . . . Left the bastard's address back at the station, I'll run a DMV on him and the Stratton girl. Time for a drop-in."

"The Stratton girl may be in danger." I told him why.

"Sick?" he said. "Yeah, she didn't look too healthy, did she? All the more reason to visit."

"How're you going to handle Ulrich?"

"I don't exactly have grounds for an arrest, Alex. At the moment, all I can do is scope him out in his natural habitat— my story will be that I'm dropping in for a follow-up, has he thought of anything else? 'Cause we're stumped— he'd like that, right? The cops being stupid, my coming to him for wisdom."