Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

"Glorious. But I won't be anonymous long. The gate."

"Yeah, terrific. I'm waiting to hear back from their detectives. News jackals picked it up, too, it's only a matter of time before they tie Zoghbie and Haiselden to Mate and we're back on page one."

"That's exactly what Burke wants," I said. "But maybe he had another motive for killing Zoghbie and Haiselden: to get hold of any records that incriminated him. He might very well have been planning it for a while, but Richard's arrest might have sped things up: he wouldn't like someone else getting credit for his handiwork. Like Mate, he's after the attention, is eliminating the old guard, telling the world he's the new Dr. Death."

He chewed the cigar's wooden tip, blew out acrid smoke. "You buy the whole Burke thing even though Fusco misrepresented himself?"

"When will you be going over to the Zoghbie crime scene?"

"Soon."

"Wait till you see it. Everything fits. And Donovan and Bratz never dismissed Fusco's findings, they're just worried he'll do something that makes the Bureau look bad. Fusco's convinced Sharveneau and/or Burke murdered his daughter. Personal motivation can get in the way, but sometimes it's potent fuel."

He sucked in smoke, held it in his lungs for a long time, drew a lazy circle on the windshield fog. "So I've been spinning my wheels on Doss… who, from what I've been told by business associates, has very complicated financial records-maybe I'll send my files to the Fraud boys."

He faced me. "Alex, you know damn well he solicited Goad to kill Mate, we're not talking Mother Teresa. Just because Goad didn't go all the way doesn't put Doss in the clear."

"I realize that. But it doesn't change what I saw in Glendale."

"Right," he said. "Back to square goddamn one… Burke, or whatever the hell he's calling himself… you're saying he craves center stage. But he can't go public the way Mate did… so what does that mean? More nasties against trees?" His laugh was thick with affliction and anger. "Gee, that's a terrific lead. Let's go check out every bit of bark in the goddamn county-where the hell do I go with this, Alex?"

"Back to Fusco's files?" I said.

"You've already been through them. Okay, I'll accept the fact that Burke is evil personified. Now, where the hell do I find him?"

"I'll go over them again. You never know-"

"You're right about that," he said. "I never do know. Spend half my damn life in blissless ignorance… Okay, let's handle some short-term matters. Like keeping you out of jail once those prints cross-reference to the Medical Board. Did you touch anything but the gate?"

"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 Maclntyre 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?

Ferns 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 Ul-rich's face wouldn't take shape in my head, all I recalled was the handlebar mustache.