Dr. Death (47 page)

Facial hair could do that.

He retrieved his coffee, strutted around. Flexed a bicep and inspected the bulge of muscle.

Another sip. Big stretch.

So content. Top of the morning.

The mustache made him look like a Keystone Kop. Nothing funny about him.

Milo's hand was square on his gun, fingers white against the walnut grip, scrambling toward the trigger. Then, as if realizing what he was doing, he drew it away. Wiped his hand on his jacket. Rubbed his face. Stared at Ulrich.

Suddenly Ulrich dropped to the ground, as if avoiding gunfire. We watched him peel off fifty lightning push-ups. Perfect form. When he bounced back to his feet, he stretched again, showing no signs of exertion.

He ran a hand over his thinning hair, rotated his neck, flexed his arms, worked on the neck some more. Even killers get stiff . . . all those hours behind the wheel. . . .

Smoothing one mustache, he reached behind and picked at his seat.

Even killers untangle their shorts.

Watching it— the banality— I felt let down. Human. They shouldn't be, but they always are.

Ulrich finished his coffee, placed the mug on the ground once more, walked to his own car. Popped his trunk. Out came something black. Small leather case, the polished surface reflected the filtered sunlight leaking down through the trees.

Doctor's bag. Ulrich stroked it.

I whispered, "There you go."

Milo said, "What the hell does he need
that
for right now?"

The cabin door opened again. As Tanya stepped outside, Ulrich moved quickly, shifting the bag behind his back, inching toward his car. She took only a few steps, was looking away from him, up at the treetops. Ulrich slipped the bag into the trunk, lowered the lid, sauntered over to Tanya.

Not acknowledging him, she started to turn, was about to reenter the cabin when he reached her. Slipping one hand around her waist, he kissed the back of her neck.

She was rigid, unresponsive.

Ulrich remained behind her, maintained his grip around her waist. Kissed her again and she twisted away from his lips. He stroked her cheek, but his face, unseen by her, bore no affection.

Immobile.

Eyes hard and focused. Face slightly flushed.

Tanya said something, broke away from him, disappeared back into the cabin.

Ulrich stroked his mustache. Spit in the dirt.

Walked back to the car. Quickly. Face still expressionless. Flushed scarlet. He popped the trunk and retrieved the black bag.

Milo said, "Not good."

His hand shot back to his gun and now he was stepping out from behind the tree. He'd barely taken a step when the shot rang out, hard and sharp, like hands clapping once.

From behind Ulrich. Above. The growth of pine at the ridge.

Milo ran back to his hiding spot. Gun out, but no one to shoot at.

Ulrich didn't drop. Not right away. He stood there as the red spot formed on his chest, got redder, larger, blossoming like a rose captured in time-lapse. Exit wound. Shot from the back. The leather bag remained in his hand, the mustache blocked out expression.

Another hand-clap sounded, then another, two more roses decorated Ulrich's white shirt. Red shirt, hard to believe it had ever been white . . .

Milo's gun hand was rigid, still, his eyes bounced from Ulrich to the pine ridge.

More applause.

When the fourth shot sheared off the top of Ulrich's head, he let the black bag drop to the ground.

Fell on top of it.

The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.

Screams from inside the house, but no sign of Tanya.

Duchess was barking. Milo's gun was still out, aimed at the silence, the distance, the trees, that big mustache of trees.

35

IT TOOK A while for the sheriffs to arrive from the Malibu substation, even longer to assemble a squad to travel up to the ridge. A small army of nervous, itchy-fingered men in tan uniforms, each deputy assuming the shooter was still around, wouldn't hesitate to fire.

As we waited for the group to assemble, Milo hung out with the coroner, did his best to let the sheriffs feel they were in charge while managing to inspect everything. He asked me to comfort Tanya Stratton, but I ended up doing nothing of the sort. She shut me out, refused to talk, obtained whatever solace she desired by muttering to her sister over a cell phone and stroking her dog. I watched her from a distance. The deputies had shunted her away from the crime scene and she sat on the ground beneath a silver-dollar tree, knees drawn up, occasionally pummeling herself softly on the jaw. Her sunglasses were back on, so I couldn't read her eyes. The rest of her face said she was shocked, furious, wonder- ing how many other mistakes she'd make over the rest of her life.

While we'd waited for sheriffs, Milo had inspected the cabin. No obvious trophies. Not much of anything in there. A careful search, carried out later in the day, revealed nothing of an evidentiary nature, other than the doctor's bag. Old, burnished leather, gold initials over the clasp: EHM.

Tanya Stratton claimed she'd never seen it. I believed her. Ulrich would have hidden it from her, produced it only when he was ready to use it. A while longer, and she might've lost the opportunity to make any mistakes at all.

Inside the bag were scalpels, scissors, other shiny things; a coil of I.V. tubing, sterile-packed hollow needles in various gauges. Rolls of gauze. Disposable hypodermic injectors, little ampules with small-print labels.

Thiopental. Potassium chloride.

The bag was taken into custody by a sheriff's detective, but he never bothered to ask what the gold initials stood for and Milo didn't volunteer the information. When the search party was ready, he and I rode along, sitting in back of a squad car, listening to nervous-talk from the two deputies in front.

The wounds— the way they'd passed through Ulrich at that distance, the size of the exits— indicated a high-velocity bullet, probably a military rifle, a good-quality scope. Someone who knew what he was doing.

How hard it would be to see the shooter if he'd chosen to barricade himself among the pines.

I knew he hadn't. He'd done his job, no reason to stick around.

• • •

Gaining access to the pines wasn't very difficult. The same road that had swept us past the property with the broken mailbox continued its climb for another mile before forking. The right fork reversed direction, descending back down toward the coast, but never completing the journey as it dead-ended at a forest preserve named after a long-dead California settler. A state-printed sign said scenic views were up ahead, but no path was provided, the curious were proceeding at their own risk.

The party fanned out, weapons ready. An hour later, it reconvened roadside. No sign of the shooter. One of the deputies, an experienced backpacker who let us know he'd walked the John Muir Trail twice and could navigate without a compass, estimated where the shooter had stationed himself, thought he probably had the exact spot.

We followed him to the far end of the forest, where the outermost trees, granted the best light, grew tallest and thickest. Nice clear view of the ugly little cabin and adjoining acreage. Nice view of the ocean, too. As the cops talked, my eyes drifted toward blue. I spotted a steamer gliding across the horizon, dust specks in the sky that were probably gulls.

Waiting up here wouldn't have been that bad. How long had the shooter been waiting?

How had he figured it out? Coming across the same detail I had? His copy of the file— the original file. The case of Marissa Bonpaine.

He'd claimed to be flying up to Seattle. Just a few hours ago, I'd taken him at his word, figured he wanted to review the details of Marissa's murder, cross-reference with Michael Burke's med-school schedule, what he knew about Mate's murder. Discovery by hikers.

Had he flown back to L.A. to trail the "hiker," gotten here a wee bit faster than Milo and me?

Or had Seattle been a lie and he'd never left. Figuring it out by doing exactly what I'd done: harnessing the power of obsession. Then watching, stalking, waiting . . . He was a patient man, had persisted so many years, another few days wouldn't matter.

Kill-spot with a view.

Had he laid his rifle down lovingly on a rectangle of oilcloth while he ate a sandwich? Drank something from a thermos? Made sure the lens of the scope was clean?

His own little picnic. The irony . . .

The cops kept talking, convincing themselves they needn't search any further, no one else was going to get shot today. I turned away from the ocean, looked down at the cabin, now fronted by coroner's vans and squad cars, tried to see it as Leimert Fusco had seen it.

"Yeah, this has got to be it, the angle's perfect," said the Muir walker. "Look how it gets flat, and there's that rock he could prop his gear against. Maybe he left some trace evidence, let's get the techies up here."

The techies came. Milo told me later they found nothing, not even a tire track.

That didn't surprise me. I knew Fusco couldn't have parked too far from his vantage point and been able to make his escape that quickly. Driving to the left-hand fork and disappearing into hills laced with side roads, most of which ended in box canyons, a few feeding to the Valley, the freeway, alleged civilization.

He'd known which road to take because he was a planner, too.

The main risk had been leaving his car at the side of the road. But even if someone had seen it, recorded the license plate for some reason, no big deal. It would end up traced back to a rented vehicle, hired with false I.D.

So, sure, he'd parked close.

No way he could've hiked far carrying all that gear— the military rifle, the high-grade scope.

Not with that limp.

"Easy shot," said another deputy. "Like picking off quail. Wonder what this guy did that pissed someone off so bad."

"Who says he did anything?" said another cop. "Nowadays, it doesn't take anything to get some nut going."

Milo laughed.

The men in tan stared at him.

He said, "Long day, fellows."

"It ain't over yet," said Muir-man. "We've still got to find the dude."

Milo laughed again.

36

NOVEMBER IS L.A.'S most beautiful month. Temperatures get considerate, the air acquires the squeaky, scrubbed flavor of a world without hydrocarbons, the light's as sweet and golden as a caramel apple. In November, you can forget that the Chumash Indians called the basin L.A. sits in the Valley of Smoke.

Late in November, I drove out to Lancaster.

A month and a half after the slaughter of Eldon Mate. Weeks after Milo had finished cataloging the contents of four cardboard cartons located in a Panorama City storage locker rented by Paul Ulrich under the name Dr. L. Pasteur.

A key found in Ulrich's bedroom nightstand led to the locker. Nothing very interesting was found in the house itself. Tanya Stratton vacated the premises within days of the shooting in Malibu.

The cartons were beautifully organized.

The first contained newspaper clippings, neatly folded, filed in chronological order, tagged with the names of victims. The details of Roger Sharveneau's suicide had been preserved meticulously. So had the death of a teenage girl named Victoria Leigh Fusco.

Number two held meticulously pressed clothing— predominantly women's undergarments, but a few dresses, blouses and neckties, as well.

In the third box, Milo found over a hundred pieces of jewelry in plastic sandwich bags, most of it junk, a few vintage costume pieces. Some of the baubles could be traced back to dead people, others couldn't.

The fourth and largest carton held a styrofoam cooler. Layered within were parcels wrapped in butcher paper and preserved by dry ice. The attendant at the storage facility remembered Dr. Pasteur coming by every week or so. Nice man. Big mustache, one of those old-fashioned mustaches you see in silent movies. Pasteur had only spoken to offer pleasantries, talk about athletics, hiking, hunting. It had been a while since his last visit, and most of the dry ice had melted. The largest carton had started to reek. Milo left it up to the coroner to unwrap the packages.

In a corner of the storage locker were several rifles and handguns, each oiled and in perfect working order, boxes of bullets, one set of Japanese surgical tools, another made in the USA.

The papers presented it this way:

Victim in Police Shooting Believed Responsible for Eldon Mate's Murder

MALIBU. County Sheriff and Los Angeles Police sources report that a physician shot in a police-involved shooting in Malibu is the prime suspect in the murder of "death doctor" Eldon Mate.

Paul Nelson Ulrich, 40, was shot several times last week in circumstances that remain under investigation. Evidence recovered at the scene and in other locations, including surgical tools believed to be the murder weapons in the Mate case, indicate Ulrich acted alone.