Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

"In there," said the female nurse.

"How's he doing?"

"He'll survive." She pulled out a chart. A lot thinner than Joanne Doss's encyclopedia of confusion. A Hollywood Division police report was stapled to the inside front cover.

Eldon Salcido had been found beaten and semiconscious at 6:12 A.M. in the gutter of a residential block of Poinsettia Place, north of Sunset.

Three blocks from his father's apartment on Vista.

Paramedics had transported him, and an E.R. resident had admitted him for repair and observation. Contusions, abrasions, possible concussion later ruled absent. No broken bones. Extreme mental agitation and confusion, possibly related to preexisting alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness or some combination of all three. The patient had refused to identify himself, but police at the scene had supplied the vitals. The fact that Salcido was an ex-con with a felony record was duly noted.

Restraints ordered after the patient assaulted staff.

"Who'd he hit?" I said.

"One of our predecessors, last shift," said the male nurse. "Her big crime was offering him orange juice. He knocked it out of her hand, tried to punch her. She managed to lock him in and called security."

"Another day in paradise," said the woman. "Probably a candidate for detox, but our detox unit shut down last month. You here to evaluate him for transfer?"

"Just to see him," I said. "Basic consult."

"Well, you might end up doing it for free. We can't find a Medi-Cal card on him and he isn't talking."

"That's okay."

"Hey, if you don't care, I sure don't. Room 405."

She came out from behind the counter and unlocked the door. The room was cell-size and green, with a lone, grilled window that framed an air shaft, a single bed and an I.V. bottle on a stand, not hooked up. The vital-signs monitor above the headboard was switched off and so was the tiny TV bracketed to the far wall. A low industrial buzz seeped through the window.

Donny Salcido Mate lay on his back, bare-chested, shackled with leather cuffs, staring at the ceiling. A tight, sweat-stained top sheet bound him from the waist down. His trunk was hairless, undernourished, off-white where it wasn't blue-black.

Blue coils squirmed all over him. Skin art, continuing around his back and down both arms. Pictorial arms striped by bandages. Dried blood crusted the edges of the dressings. A swatch of gauze banded his forehead, a smaller square bottomed his chin. Purpling bruises cupped both eyes and his lower lip was a slab of liver. Other dermal images peeked out from within the coils: the leering face of a nightmarishly fanged cobra, a flabby, naked woman with a sad mouth, one wide-open eye emitting a single tear. Gothic lettering spelling out "Donny, Mamacita, Big Boy."

Technically well-done tattoos, but the jumble made me want to rearrange his skin.

"A walking canvas," opined the straw-haired nurse. "Like that book by the Martian Chronicles guy. Visitor, Mr. Salcido. Ain't that grand?"

She walked out and the door hissed shut. Donny Salcido Mate didn't budge. His hair was long, stringy, the burnt bronze of old motor oil. An untrimmed beard, two shades darker, blanketed his face from cheekbone to jowl.

No resemblance to the mug shot I'd seen. That made me think of the beard Michael Burke had grown when adopting his Huey Mitchell persona in Ann Arbor. In fact, Donny's hirsute face bore a resemblance to Mitchell's. But not the same man. None of that cold, blank stagnancy in the eyes. These rheumy browns were bouncy, heated, hyperactive. Hundred percent scared prey, not predator.

I stepped closer to the bed. Donny Salcido moaned and twisted away from me. A tattoo tendril climbed up his carotid, disappearing into the beard thatch like a vining rose. Yellowing crust flecked the edges of his mustache. His lips were cracked, his nose had been broken, but not recently, probably more than once; the cartilage between his eyes was sunken, as if scooped by a dull blade, the flesh below a nest of gaping black pores. Orange splotches remained on his skin where he'd been disinfected with Betadine, but whoever had cleaned him up hadn't gotten rid of the street stink.

"Mr. Salcido, I'm Dr. Delaware."

His eyes jammed shut.

"How're you doing?"

"Let me out of here." Clear enunciation, no slur. I waited, got caught up in the skin mural. Subtle shadings, good composition. I got past that, searched for an image that would tie in with his father. Nothing obvious. The tattoos seemed to encroach on one another. This was the junction of talent and chaos.

Bumps in the crook of his arm caught my eye. Fi-brosed needle marks.

His eyes opened. "Get these things off," he said, rattling the cuffs.

"The nurses got a little upset when you tried to hit one of them."

"Never happened."

"You didn't try to hit a nurse?"

Headshake. "She aggressed on me. Tried to force juice down my windpipe. Not my esophagus, my windpipe, get it? Nasopharynx, epiglottis-know what happens when you do that?"

"You choke."

"You aspirate. Fluid straight into the lungs. Even if you don't suffocate, it creates a pleural cesspool, perfect culture for bacteria. She was out to drown me-if she couldn't accomplish that, infect me." A tongue, gray and fuzzed, caressed his lips. He gulped.

"Thirsty?" I said.

"Strangling. Get these things off of me."

"How'd you get hurt?"

"You tell me."

"How would I know?"

"You're the doctor."

"The police say someone hit you."

"Not someone. Ones. I got jumped."

"Right there on Poinsettia?"

"No, San Francisco. I walked all the way here because this glorious place is where I wanted to be treated." His head rolled toward me. "Better get me outta here or give me my Tegretol. When I'm out of my Tegretol, I get interesting."

"You suffer from seizures?"

"No, stupid. Cognitive dysfunction, affective scrambling, inability to regulate emotional outbursts. I'm

"Yes," she said, "he claims he needs it to maintain 'internal stability.' He played that tune for me, too. I'm waiting to talk to the attending."

"He's self-medicating for assaultiveness and mood swings. If he's already on Tegretol, he's probably gone through lithium and the neuroleptics. Maybe in prison."

"Maybe, but I can't get anything out of him resembling a clinical history. Tegretol's okay, but there's the issue of side effects. I need blood levels on him."

"Did you have a chance to talk to him?"

"He didn't talk."

"He's a bit more verbal now," I said. "There's some IQ there. He knows how it feels before the assaultiveness comes on, is fighting to maintain control."

"So what're you saying?"

"I'm suggesting that at least in one respect he may know what's best for him."

"Did you see that skin of his?" she said.

"Hard to miss."

"Pretty disorganized for someone who knows what's best for him."

"True, but-"

"I get it," she said. "The police sent you to see him and you want him coherent so he'll talk to you."

"That's part of it. The other part is he's already been assaultive and if something works for him, maybe it should be considered. I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job-"

"No, actually you are." She laughed. "But sure, why not? Everyone else does. Okay, no sense having him freak out and me getting a three A.M. call. I'll try to get hold of the attending again. If she okays it, he gets dosed."

"He says he's been taking three hundred milligrams daily."

"He says? The lunatics run the asylum?"

"Look at Washington, D.C."

She laughed harder. "What do the police want with him?"

"Information."

"On what?"

"A homicide."

"Oh. Great. A murderer. Can't wait to see him again."

"He's not a suspect," I said. "He's a potential witness."