The Euthanist (13 page)

Silence fell when I walked in. Jeffrey forced a cordial, “Ga’ morning.”

Christ, I was the class dunce.

“Where are the girls?”

Jeffrey said, “Dropped them off at school. Wouldn’t want them around for this anyway.”

He introduced the red-bearded guy as a lab tech named Morton Ross. “He’s done impressive work on drug interactions.”

The Gifts of Deliverance network conducted research. Hence, it made sense for Jeffrey Holt to retain a bullpen of researchers, people who could test forms of assisted suicide such as the helium-and-bag method. The term “drug interactions” had devolved into pharma jargon, but it referred to how one medication impacted the effects of others. For example, did Valium compound the effects of sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide? Researchers like Morton Ross helped Dr. Jeffrey Holt perfect the most painless ways to end lives.

Morton stopped plucking the acoustic. In glass-rattling baritone, he jollied, “Dr. Holt tells me you have a syringe full of a mystery fluid?”

I retrieved it from the bedroom. Morton cracked open the case and turned the hypodermic barrel up and down. Had it been a dirty novelty pen, a girl’s hula skirt might have rolled up to reveal her nethers.

Morton looked at Jeffrey. “No sweat. Two days, three tops. If it takes more than that, I’ll try drinking it.” When the other woman gaped, he assured her, “I’m kidding.”

Jeffrey introduced the woman as Lisa Kim. Five feet even and slim. Built like a ballerina, her haunches were slightly more developed than her bony ribcage.

I tried to be friendly. “You look familiar. Have we met here at one of the gatherings?”

Lisa Kim almost snorted. “No, we haven’t.”

“Sorry, I thought you might be another Friend.”

Her witchy cackle suggested that was the best joke Lisa Kim had heard in some time. “I’m Jeffrey’s general counsel. If I look familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen my photo on the website. Definitely not a friend
.
”

Jeffrey said admiringly, “Lisa helped put together several of our ballot initiatives.”

In the time I’d known him, the organization had lobbied on four euthanasia and assisted suicide bills in three states.

She said, “I do a lot more than that. I’m the hog that roots out truffles.” She sprang from the sofa and asked me, “I hear you got mail. Where is it?” I pointed down the hallway to one of the guest rooms, and she disappeared and reappeared with the junk mail addressed to Helena Mumm. She said to Jeffrey, “I can make this quick.”

Morton set up a portable laboratory in a guest bedroom. Jeffrey secluded himself in his private office. That left Lisa Kim and me together at the dining table, which we converted into a workstation. She had ample elbow room, but set up her computer right across the table from mine; I can only assume, to make me uncomfortable. Every few seconds, she peeped up above the horizon of her laptop screen to see what I was doing. She struck me as someone with OCD, because she fidgeted more than Jeffrey’s daughters. Every few seconds she made some extraneous movement: checking her cell phone, loudly slurping her coffee,
dinking
the side of her water glass with a fingernail. She even flicked her hollow cheek in a way that sounded like raindrops. As it turned out, she was trying to draw my attention. Finally, she said, “I know who you are, Kali. Pamela Wonnacott.” It sounded like an accusation. “Jeffrey talks about you.” I hoped for a compliment, but no such luck. “I expected something different.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected Joan of Arc, to be honest. Some freaking superhero. But you’re a kid.” She spoke in rushed bursts, reminding me of how a tetra darts about in an aquarium.

“You can’t be more than two years older than me, “ I said.

“I’m thirty-eight, but I look young.”

Law school had trained her not to deviate from her own line of argument. “You’re prettier than I thought you’d be, I’ll give you that. Everyone always talks about your muscles. I thought you’d be one of those women who looks like a man with a wig, but you’re normal enough.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Maybe a little. I expected big, snaky tattoos. Do you even have a piercing?”

I stood and lifted my shirt to show her the navel ring, hoping my playfulness would soften her up. “Indeedy.”

Kim navel-stared until she was satisfied. “Turquoise?”

“Yes.”

“You get it at Bonaroo or something?”

“I’ve never been.”

“I know what happened to your family.” With this she blindsided me in a cross-examination. “Lots of press on that story.”

When people found out about my family history, about my stepdad Gordon Ostrowski, about the fire, most people offered something apologetic. Even if they stumbled through an awkward sentiment, I appreciated the attempt to communicate empathy. Lisa Kim made no such effort.

“You’re a visible woman, Pamela Wonnacott. Is that why you don’t use your real name?”

“You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would recognize my name.”

“So, why the alias? I know other people in the Friends network. They don’t use fake names.”

“Maybe I’m just more careful.”

She gesticulated to our laptops, reminding me that we were all here trying to cleanse my colossal error in judgment. “Clearly not.”

I gritted my teeth. “Maybe I just like the name.”

“You want to be someone else, that it? Pamela Wonnacott was a victim. Kali is someone new, someone who doesn’t have to live with that legacy.”

I noticed my clenched fists, then remembered that I was there because Jeffrey had been kind enough to grant me sanctuary in his home. For his sake, I pressed my palms flat on the table to keep them from balling up.

“I understand how you got to where you are, you know. I could describe the life cycle of Pamela Wonnacott since you were a tadpole.”

“Shouldn’t we be researching Leland Mumm?”

“I checked—there is no Leland Mumm. It’s a fake name,” she said dismissively, momentarily glancing at her monitor at whatever she had looked up to confirm this for herself. Then she continued on the subject of me. “First your dad died, then all this stuff with Gordon Ostrowski happened. You felt weak. You packed on the muscle so no one could push you around. You gravitated to a profession that requires strength—one that even allows you to save people.”

I felt an eyelid twitch.

She kept going. “Lots of firefighters end up becoming EMTs because they go on medical calls.” Her nails pattered on the table. “Not many become paramedics. You need extra training for that.”

“I like to study,” I said flatly.

“Not hard enough to become a nurse or a doctor though. Your transcripts could get you into medical school, but you didn’t go.”

“You’ve seen my school transcripts, then.”

“Remember—I’m the pig who finds the fungus.” Her dexterous fingers tap-danced. I willed myself not to reach out and snap them. “No medical school,” she confirmed.

“Maybe I couldn’t afford it,” I fumed.

“Charity case like you? Dead parents, daughter of a Hollywood composer? Admissions would cream.” She folded her laptop shut and leaned on her elbows. “You didn’t go to medical school because you don’t have your act together. Work like this—Jeffrey’s work—draws its share of the misguided.”

“And yet you tolerate them so well.”

“Most of them don’t bungle this badly.” Lisa flicked a raindrop noise from her cheek. Such a strange woman. “Jeffrey likes you. I used to think it was because you two had a thing going, but now that I’m here, and I can see you two in the same room, I know there’s nothing sordid going on. Someone less enlightened might take a look at you and assume you’re a lesbian, but you don’t like girls. You’re neutered. Declawed. You can’t find the pleasure in life.”

My nostrils flared, and I couldn’t help clenching my fists again, so tight this time that my fingernails dug sharply into my palms. “I date.”

“Not much. Your most recent fling lasted two months. A boy from another firehouse who you met at a softball game.”

I shot daggers at her, and my reaction confirmed everything she said.

She pointed at herself. “Pig.” Then at me. “Fungus.” She swigged her water and swallowed far too audibly for a woman without dentures. “Jeffrey likes you because he has a soft spot for suffering. But this isn’t a place to work out your problems. If you come here for therapy, you’re just another client, and the rest of us are forced to be your caregivers.”

“I don’t want to be taken care of.” If I were anywhere else, this table would have been lifted out of the way, and this woman would have been bent into a pretzel.

“And yet that’s exactly what’s happened. We’re all taking care of you. That’s why we’re here. I flew halfway across the country to be here. I live in Dallas. Now, I hate it in Texas. It’s not like I don’t jump at the chance to get out of town when I can, but it’s still not convenient for me to do it. I came here to do a job. My job is to protect Jeffrey, and in doing so protect the larger movement we represent. So my role here is to minimize the damage you’ve done. In the short-term, that means figuring out what just happened to you and neutralizing the threat. In the long-term, it means neutralizing you.” She opened up her laptop so the screen pointed at me. “Here’s your woman.”

In a few minutes, Lisa Kim had uncovered a slew of articles from a sensational court case involving Helena Mumm. The trial earned far more coverage than Gordon Ostrowski’s ever had. Lisa Kim watched my reaction as I pored over the press.

Almost twenty years ago, Helena Mumm worked for the postal service in Livermore. In a blotchy photograph, Helena’s figure was a similar shape two decades ago, but without as much breadth. She’d told me she’d been skinny once, but either she’d lied, or her skinny days were over long before this photo had been shot.

At the time, she lived with a man named Walter Gretsch—according to the photos, in an innocuous-looking single-story stucco dwelling where dirt collected under the siding lips.

The couple wanted children but could not have them. So they created a family. Helena and Walter abducted three children and held them captive for two years. They killed one who tried to escape. They mutilated another to prevent her from escaping. Eventually, they broke the will of those who survived. The two remaining kids—neither of whom were named in the articles—began to refer to themselves as the children of Walter and Helena. They became docile enough that Walter Gretsch even took them on errands. This apparently lasted some time, until one of the children alerted the authorities at, of all places, a post office.

Walter Gretsch did what he could to seem unfit for trial. He spewed Bible verses, even sang Christmas carols to convey how crazy he was. Walter’s defense argued the PTSD from his own father’s abuse led to crystal meth, making him incapable of controlling his sexual urges. Those urges led him to abduct the children. He had deluded himself and Helena Mumm into believing they were making an honest attempt to build a family.

The law didn’t buy any of it. A court-ordered psychiatrist labeled Walter Gretsch a drug user and sexual deviant, but competent—competent enough. He was sentenced to life without parole, narrowly avoiding the death penalty. Currently he resided in San Sebastián, the same prison as my stepfather.

Helena Mumm got a lighter sentence for testifying against Walter, but it didn’t save her. She spent thirteen years in prison for abduction and conspiracy to commit murder, but the parole board took mercy on her and let her out last year. She was terminal, and with a few months left to live, she won over the parole board with her “warm spirit and contrition,” according to the news. They released her so she could die outside the confines of prison.

Lisa Kim had pulled Helena’s sex offender profile. It featured a chinless photo and the address in the Excelsior, an old family house she’d inherited and let decompose on its foundation.

Helena Mumm was also Walter Gretsch’s sister.

Lisa reveled in how my face sunk. “You dropped us in a steaming heap, didn’t you?”

I couldn’t make sense of all of this, not all at once. Jeffrey’s general counsel might have been baiting me, but she was right. I didn’t understand how this might impact the Gifts of Deliverance organization, but I knew this made our situation very serious. I searched for more articles on my laptop, and the two of us read quietly for some time. I scanned old photos for a face that looked like Leland’s, only twenty years younger. I didn’t find anything.

When Stacy and Jess got home from school, they invited me to race in the woods. I went without hesitation. I needed something to clear my head from everything I’d been reading and some distance from Lisa Kim. With a little fresh air, maybe I could figure out how it all connected. The lawyer scowled at me when I left the table, but she was ready to judge me no matter what I did.

They picked a trail behind the house. Down and back, down and back, we weaved around the trees on either side of the trail to make it interesting. Between the roots and the incline, it was harder than I thought. The exertion helped—while I was huffing cool air, I momentarily forgot how much trouble I’d gotten us into. Jeffrey hadn’t said as much, but he must have been worried about his daughters as much as anyone in our professional network. They only had one parent now, and if he went to prison, they would be orphans like me. Running around back there, I could tell they had no awareness of the danger that threatened them. And because they were so carefree, I let myself relax with them, trying to put out of my mind the fact that I might be the person who would destroy their lives.