Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

"Thought you couldn't get hospital records," said Milo.

"I couldn't. But I did find some nurses who remembered Michael. Nothing dramatic, they just thought he'd spent too much time with the cheerleader. It ended when the girl died. A couple of weeks later, the first of the four unsolved cutting vies was found. Next year, in Rochester, Burke got close to another sick woman. Divorcee in her early fifties, onetime beauty queen with brain cancer. She came into the E.R. in some sort of crisis, Burke revived her, visited her during the four months she spent as an in-patient, saw her at home after she was discharged. He was at her side when she died. Pronounced her dead."

"Died of what?" said Milo.

"Respiratory failure," said Fusco. "Not inconsistent with the spread of her disease."

"Any mutilation clusters after that?"

"Not in Rochester, per se, but five girls within a two-hundred-mile radius have gone missing during Burke's two years at Unitas Hospital. Three of them after Burke's lady friend died. I agree with Dr. Delaware's point about loss and tension."

"Two hundred miles," said Milo.

Fusco said, "As I've pointed out, Burke has the means to travel. And plenty of privacy. In Rochester, he lived in a rented house in a semirural area. His neighbors said he kept to himself, tended to disappear for days at a time. Sometimes he took along skis or camping equipment- both the van and the Lexus had roof racks. He's in good shape, likes the outdoors."

"These five cases are missing only, no bodies?"

"So far," said Fusco. "Detective, you know that two hundred miles is no big deal if you've got decent wheels. Burke kept his vehicles in beautiful shape, clean as a whistle. Same for his house. He's a lad of impeccable habits. The house reeked of disinfectant, and his bed was made tight enough to bounce a hubcap."

"How'd he get tagged for poisoning Rabinowitz?"

"Circumstantial. Burke kept screwing up, and Rabinowitz finally put him on suspension. Rabinowitz said the look in Burke's eyes gave him the creeps. A week later, Rabinowitz got sick. It turned out to be cyanide. Burke was the last person to be seen in the vicinity of Ra-binowitz's coffee cup other than Rabinowitz's secretary, and she passed the polygraph. When the locals tried to question Burke and put him on the machine, he was gone. Later, they found needles and a penicillin ampule in a locker in the physicians' lounge, traces of cyanide in the ampule. Rabinowitz is lucky he took a small sip. Even with that, he was hospitalized for a month."

"Burke left cyanide in his locker?"

"In another doctor's locker. A colleague Burke had had words with. Fortunately for him, he was alibied. Home sick with the stomach flu, never left his house, lots of witnesses. There was some suspicion he'd been poisoned, too, but it turned out to just be the flu."

"So all you've really got on the poisoning is Burke's rabbit."

"That's all Rochester's got. I've got that." Pointing toward the still-unopened file folder. "I've also got Roger Sharveneau, certified respiratory tech. Buffalo police never checked out his Burke story, but Sharveneau worked at Unitas for three months, same time Burke was there. Sharveneau mentions Burke, and a week later he's dead."

"Why didn't Buffalo check out the Burke lead?" said Milo.

"To be charitable," said Fusco, "Sharveneau came across highly disturbed and lacking credibility. My guess would be severe borderline personality, maybe even a full-blown schizophrenic. He jerked Buffalo PD around for a month-confessing, recanting, then hinting that maybe he'd killed some of the patients but not all of them, calling press conferences, changing lawyers, acting goofier and goofier. During the time he was locked up he went on a hunger strike, went mute, refused to talk to the court-appointed psychiatrists. By the time he gave them the Burke story, they were fed up with him. But I believe he did know Michael Burke. And that Burke had some kind of influence on him."

I said, "Why would Burke put himself in jeopardy by confiding in someone as unstable as Sharveneau?"

"I'm not saying he confided in Sharveneau, or gave Sharveneau direct orders. I'm saying he exerted some kind of influence. It could very well have been subtle- a remark here, a nudge there. Sharveneau was unstable, passive, highly suggestible. Michael Burke's the peg that fits that hole: dominant, manipulative, in his own way charismatic. I believe Burke knew what buttons to push."

Milo said, "Dominant, manipulative, and he gets away with bad stuff. So what's next, he runs for public office?"

"You don't want to see the profiles of the people who run the country."

"The Bureau's still doing that J. Edgar stuff, huh?"

Fusco smiled.

Milo said, "Even if your boy really is the ultimate purveyor of evil, what's the connection to Mate?"

"Tell me about Mate's wounds."

Milo laughed. "How about you tell me what you think they might be."

Fusco shifted in the booth, leaned to his left, stretched his left arm across the top of the seat. "Fair enough. I'd guess that Mate was rendered semiconscious or totally unconscious, probably with a strong blow to the head that came from behind. Or a choke hold. The papers said he was found in the van. If that's true, that's at odds with Burke's tree-propping signature. But the wooded site fits Burke's kills. More public than Burke's previous dumps, but that fits the pattern of increased confidence. And Mate was a public figure. I suspect Burke conned Mate into arranging a meeting, possibly by feigning interest in Mate's work. From what I've seen of Mate, an appeal to his ego would be most effective."

He stopped.

Milo said nothing. His hand had come to rest atop the file folder. Touching the string. Unfurling it slowly.

Fusco said, "However the meeting was arranged, I see Burke familiarizing himself with the site beforehand, learning the traffic patterns, leaving a getaway vehicle within walking distance of the kill-spot. Which in his case, could be miles. Probably to the east of the kill-spot, because the east affords multiple avenues of escape. Living in L.A., Burke needs wheels, so I'm sure he's obtained registration under a new identity, but whether he used his own car or a stolen vehicle, I couldn't say."

"I assume you've combed DMV, done all the combinations of Burke, Rushton, Sartin, Spreen, whatever."

"You assume correctly. No good hits."

"You were going to speculate about the wounds."

" 'Speculate.' " Fusco smiled. "Brutal but precise, carved with a surgical-grade blade or something equally sharp. There may also have been some geometry involved."

"What do you mean by geometry?" said Milo, sounding casual.

"Geometrical shapes incised into the skin. He began that in Ann Arbor, the last victim, diamonds snipped out of her upper pubic region. When I first saw it, I thought: his idea of a joke-the irony again, diamonds are a girl's best friend. But then he changed shapes with one of the Fresno vies. Circles. So I won't tell you I know exactly what it means, just that he likes to play around."

"There were two Fresno victims," I said. "Was only one incised geometrically?"

Fusco nodded. "Maybe Burke had to hurry away from the other kill."

"Or maybe," said Milo, "both victims weren't his."

"Read the file and decide for yourself." Fusco drew his glass nearer, touched the corner of his sandwich.

"Anything more you want to say?"

"Just that you probably didn't find much trace evidence, if any. Burke loves to clean up. And killing Mate would represent a special achievement for him: synthesis of his two previous modes: bloody knife work and pseudo-euthanasia. The papers said Mate was hooked up to his own machine. That true?"

"Pseudo-euthanasia?"

"It's never real," said Fusco with sudden heat. "All that talk about right to die, putting people out of their misery. Until we can crawl into a dying person's head and read their thoughts, it'll never be real." Forced smile, more of a snarl, really: "When I heard about the painting, I knew I had to be more assertive with you. Burke loves to draw. His house in Rochester was full of art books and sketch pads."