Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

"A witness? Guy like that, what kind of witness could he be?"

"Hard to say. Right now, I'm trying to get some rapport. We're talking about his family."

"His family? What, good old-fashioned psychoanalysis? The stuff you read about in books?"

I returned to Donny's room. He was facing the door. Waiting.

"No promises," I said, "but the resident's calling the supervising doctor."

"How long till I get my Tegretol?"

"If she gets the okay, soon."

"An eternity. What bullshit."

"You're welcome, Mr. Salcido."

He drew back his lips. Half his teeth were missing. The stragglers were cracked and discolored.

I pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down. "Why were you on your way to your father's place?"

"He never came to my place, why should I go to his place?"

"But you did."

"I know that, stupid! It's rhetorical-Ciceronian. I'm questioning my own motives-engaging in introspection. Isn't that good? A sign of progress?" He spat and I had to move away to avoid being the target.

"I don't know why I do what I do," he said. "If I did, would l be here?"

I said nothing.

"I hope this happens to you one day," he said. "Feeling this passive. Weak. You think my skin's so weird? What's weird about it? Every shrink I talked to told me skin wasn't important, the thing was to look within. Get past the surface."

"How many shrinks have you talked to?"

"Too many. All assholes like you." He closed his eyes. "Talking faces, little crushing rooms just like this… Get past the skin, the skin, look inside. Man, I like the skin. The skin is all. The skin holds it all in."

The eyes opened. "C'mon, man, get these things off, let me touch my skin. When I can't touch it I feel like I'm not there."

"In time,Donny."

He moaned and rolled his head away from me.

"Your skin," I said. "Did you do all that yourself?"

"Idiot. How could I do the back?"

"What about the rest of it?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you did. It's good work. You're talented. I've seen your other artwork."

Silence.

"The Anatomy Lesson," I said. "All those other masterpieces. Zero Tollrance."

His body jerked. I waited for him to speak.

Nothing.

"I think I understand why you chose that name,

Donny. You have zero tolerance for stupidity. You don't suffer fools." Like father…

He whispered something.

"What's that? "I said.

"Patience… is not a virtue."

"Why not, Donny?"

"You wait, nothing happens. You wait long enough, you choke. Rot. Time dies."

"People die, time goes on."

"You don't get it," he said, a bit louder. "People dying is nothing-worm food. Time dies, everything freezes."

"When you paint," I said, "what happens to time?"

A tiny smile showed itself amid the beard. "Eternity."

"And when you're not painting?"

"I'm too late."

"Too late for what?"

"Responses, being there, everything-my timing's off. I've got a sick brain, maybe the limbic system, maybe the prefrontal lobes, the temporals, the thalamus. Nothing moves at the right pace."

"Do you have a place where you can paint now?"

He stared at me. "Screw you. Get me out of here."

"You offered your art to your father, but he wouldn't accept it," I said. "After he was gone, you tried to give it to the world. To show them what you were capable of."

His lips folded inward and he chewed on them.

"Did you kill him, Donny?"

I bent closer. Close enough for him to bite my nose.

He didn't. Just stayed in place, prone, staring at the ceiling.

"Did you?" I said.

"No," he finally said. "Too late. As usual."

After that, he shut up tight. Ten minutes into the impasse, the straw-haired nurse came in carrying a metal tray that held a plastic cup of water and two pills, one oblong and pink, the other a white disc.

"Breakfast in bed," she announced. "Two-hundred-milligram morsel with a one-hundred chaser."

Donny was panting. He forgot his restraints, tried to sit up. The cuffs snapped against his wrists and he slammed back down, breathing even faster.

"No water," he said. "I won't be drowned."

The nurse frowned at me as if I was to blame. "Suit yourself, Senor Salcido. But if you can't swallow it dry, I'm not going back to the doctor to authorize an injection."

"Dry is good. Dry is safe."

She handed me the tray. "Here, you give it to him, I'm not getting my fingers bit off."

She watched as I took the pink pill and brought it close to Donny's face. His mouth was already wide open. His molars and most of his bicuspids were missing. Putrid breath streamed up at me. I dropped in the pink lozenge. He caught it on his gray tongue, flipped it backward, gulped, said, "Delicious."

In went the white pill. He grinned. Burped. The nurse snatched the tray and left, looking disgusted.

I sat back down.

"There you go," I said.

"Now you go," he said. "I had enough of you."

I tried awhile longer, asking him if he'd ever actually gotten into the apartment, what did he think of his father's library, had he read Beowulf. Mention of the book drew no response from him.

The closest I got to conversation was when I let him know I'd met his mother.

"Yeah? How's she doing?"

"She's concerned about you."

"Go fuck yourself."

I pressed him about novelty shop gags, phony books. Broken stethoscopes.

He said, "What in the ripe rotten fuck are you talking about?"

"You don't know?"

"Hell no, but go ahead, talk all you want, I'm coasting now. Getting smooth."

Then he closed his eyes, curled as fetally as the cuffs allowed, and went to sleep.

Not faking; real slumber, chest rising and falling in a slow, easy beat. The rhythmic snores of one at peace. I left Hollywood Mercy trying to classify him. Assaultive and deeply disturbed, but bright and manipulative. Combative and pigheaded, too. Eldon Mate had rejected his son unceasingly, but genetics couldn't be denied. Zero Tollrance. He'd turned himself into a walking canvas, drifting from squat to squat, numbed his pain with dope and anticonvulsants and anger and art.

Painting his father's portrait, over and over.

Offering his best to his father, getting rejected over and over.

As good a motive for patricide as any. And Donny had considered it, he'd definitely considered it.

Did you kill him?

Too late. As usual.

Denying he'd followed through. As did Richard. Brilliant, bloody production, and no one was willing to take credit.

Despite Donny's slyness, I found myself believing him.

The mental impairment was real. Tegretol was powerful stuff, end-stage medication for mood disorders when lithium failed. No fun, not an addict's choice. If Donny craved it, he'd suffered.

He'd dissected his father on canvas, but the real-life murder reeked of a mix of calculation and brutality that seemed beyond him. I tried to picture him organizing what had happened up on Mulholland. Stalking, enticing, writing a mocking note, hiding a broken stethoscope in a box. Cleaning up perfectly, sufficiently meticulous not to leave a speck of DNA.

This was a guy who got mugged and left in the gutter. Who got yelled at by an elderly landlady and fled.

My mention of the book and the scope had elicited nothing from him. His clumsy attempt to enter his father's apartment in full view of Mrs. Krohnfeld was miles from that degree of sophistication. His entire life pattern was a series of failed attempts. I doubted he'd ever gotten past Eldon Mate's front door.

No, someone a lot more intact than Donny Salcido Mate had planted that toy. The personality combination I'd suggested at the beginning-the same mixture suggested by Fusco.

Smarts and rage. Outwardly coherent but with a bad temper problem.