Dr. Death (26 page)

"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 Rabinowitz'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.
" Point- ing 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 un- stable, 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 before- hand, 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 vics. 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."

"How good is he?" I said.

"Better than average. I took some photos. It's all in there. But don't hold me to any specific guess, look at the overall picture. I've done hundreds of profiles, most of the time I miss something."

"What you've done with Burke goes beyond profiling," I said.

He stared at me. "Meaning what?"

"Sounds as if you've made him your project."

"Part of my current job description is depth research on cold cases." To Milo: "You'd know something about that."

Milo uncoiled the string and opened the file. Inside were three black folders, labeled I, II, and III. He removed the first, opened it to a page containing five photocopied head shots.

In the upper left: a color school photo of ten-year-old T-shirted Grant Huie Rushton. Button nose, blond crew cut, Norman Rockwell cute, except this kid hadn't smiled for the camera. Had looked away from it, set his mouth in a horizontal line that should've been merely noncommittal, but wasn't.

Anger. Cool anger, backed by . . . wariness? Emotional unsteadiness? Furtive, wounded eyes. Norman Rockwell meets Diane Arbus. Or was I interpreting because of what Fusco had told me?

Next: a high-school graduation shot. At eighteen, Grant Rushton looked more relaxed. Pleasant-looking young man wearing a plaid shirt, face broadened by puberty, the features symmetrical, tending a bit toward pug. Clear complexion but for sprinkles of pimples in the folds between nostril and cheek. Strong, square chin, mouth shut tight but uplifted at the corners. Teenage Grant's hair was several shades darker but still fair, worn to his shoulders with thick bangs. This time, he confronted the lens, full-face— confident— more than that: brash. By then, Fusco claimed, Rushton had murdered and gotten away with it.

Below the childhood shots was Huey Mitchell's bearded face on a Great Lakes Security badge. The beard was thick, spade-shaped, a mink brown that contrasted with Mitchell's dirty-blond head hair. Running from atop the cheekbones to his first shirt button in an uninterrupted swath broken only by a mouth slit, it rendered any comparison to the other photos useless. Mitchell wore his hair even longer, drawn back tight into a ponytail that dangled over his right shoulder.

The pale eyes narrower, harder. My flash impression would have been blue-collar resentment. Vital statistics: five-ten, one eighty, blond hair, blue eyes.

The bottom row featured two pictures of Michael Burke, MD. In the first, taken from a New York driver's license, the beard remained, this time clipped and barbered to an inch of dark pelt that served the now powerful-looking head well. So did Burke's haircut— razor-layered, blow-dried, worn just above the ears. By his early thirties, Burke's face had begun to reveal the advent of middle age: thinner hair, wrinkles around the mouth, puffiness under the eyes. Overall, a pleasant-looking man, wholly unremarkable.

This time the stats said five-nine, one sixty-five.

"He shrank an inch and lost fifteen pounds?" I said.

"Or lied about it to Motor Vehicles," said Fusco. "Doesn't everyone?"

"People reduce their weight, but they don't generally claim to be shorter."

"Michael isn't people," said Fusco. "You'll also notice that the license says brown eyes. His true color's green-blue. Obviously, Burke jerked them around— either because he was hiding something or just having fun. On his Unitas I.D., he's back to blue."

I examined the last photo.

Michael F. Burke, MD, Dept. of Emergency Medicine.

Clean-shaven. Square-jawed, even fuller, the hair thinner but worn slightly longer, flatter. Burke had been content with a decent comb-over.

I compared the last shot with Grant Rushton's high-school photo, searching for some commonality. Similar bone structure, I supposed. The eyes were the same shape, but even there, gravity had tugged sufficiently to prevent immediate identification. Huey Mitchell's beard obscured everything. Rushton's bang-shadowed brow and Burke's clear forehead gave the rest of their faces entirely different appearances.

Five faces. I'd never have linked any of them.

Milo shut the folder and placed it back in the file. Fusco had been waiting for some kind of response and now he looked unhappy, curled his fingers around his glass.

"Anything else?" said Milo.

Fusco shook his head. Unfolding a paper napkin, he wrapped the half-eaten brisket sandwich and stashed it in a pocket of his sport coat.

"You bunked down at the Federal Building?" said Milo.

"Officially," said Fusco, "but mostly I'm on the road. I wrote down a number in there that routes automatically to my beeper. My fax runs twenty-four hours a day. Feel free, anytime."

"On the road where?"

"Wherever the job takes me. As I said, I've got projects other than Michael Burke, though Michael does tend to occupy my thoughts. Tonight, I'll be flying up to Seattle, see if I can get U. Wash to be a bit more forthcoming. Also, to look into those unsolveds, which is a mite touchy. With all the publicity about the Pacific Northwest being the serial-killer capital of the world and no resolution on Green River, they don't like being reminded of loose ends."

Milo said, "Bon voyage."

Fusco slid out of the booth. No briefcase. His jacket bulged where he'd stuffed the sandwich. Not a tall man, after all. Five-eight, tops, with a big torso riding stumpy, bowed legs. His jacket hung open and I saw several black pens lined up in his shirt pocket, the beeper and a cell phone hitched to his belt. No visible weapon. Fingering his white hair, he left the restaurant, limping. Looking like a tired old salesman who'd just failed to make his quota.

20

MILO AND I stayed in the booth.

The waitress was leaning protectively over the old woman. He waved for her. She held up a finger.

He said, "Just like the Feds— we get stuck for the check."

"He liked the brisket, but didn't eat much of it," I said. "Maybe his gut's full of something else."

"Like what?"

"Frustration. He's been on this for a while— got a bit touchy when I called Burke his project. Sometimes that can lead to tunnel vision. On the other hand, there's a lot that seems to match."

"What—'geometry'?"

"A killer with a medical background and artistic interests, the combination of 'euthanasia' and lust-murder. And he was awfully close when he described the de- tails of Mate's murder, down to the blitz attack and the cleanup."

"That he could've gotten from a departmental leak."

The waitress came over. "It's been taken care of, sir. The white-haired gentleman."

"And a gentleman he is." Milo handed her a ten.

"The tip's also been taken care of," she said.

"Now it's been taken care of twice."

She beamed. "Thanks."