Dr. Death

CHAPTER 19

THE EXTERIOR OF Mort's Deli was a single cloudy window over a swath of brown board below red-painted letters proclaiming lunch for $5.99. The interior was all yellows and scarlets, narrow black leatherette booths, wallpaper that looked inspired by parrot plumage, the uneasily coexisting odors of fried fish, pickle brine and overripe potatoes.

Leimert Fusco was easy to spot, with or without neckwear. The only other patron was an ancient woman up in front spooning soup into a palsying mouth. The FBI man was three booths back. The tie was gray tweed-same fabric and shade as his sport coat, as if the jacket had given birth to a nursing pup.

"Welcome," he said, pointing to the sandwich on his plate. "The brisket's not bad for L.A." In his fifties, the same gravel voice.

"Where's the brisket better?" said Milo.

Fusco smiled, showed lots of gum. His teeth were huge, equine, white as hotel sheeting. Short, bristly white hair rode low on his brow. Long, heavily wrinkled face, aggressive jaw, big bulbous nose. The tail end of his fifties. The saddest brown eyes I'd ever seen, nearly hidden by crepey folds. He had broad shoulders and wide hands. Seated, he gave the impression of bulk and frustrated movement.

"Meaning, where am I from?" he said. "Most recently Quantico. Before that, all kinds of places. I learned about brisket in New York-where else? Spent five years at the main Manhattan office. Those qualifications good enough for you to sit down?"

Milo slid into the booth and I followed.

Fusco looked me over. "Dr. Delaware? Excellent. My doctorate's not in clinical. Personality theory." He twisted the tweed tie. "Thanks for coming. I won't insult your intelligence by asking how you're doing on Mate. You're here because even though you think it's a waste of time, you're not in a position to refuse data. Want to order something, or is this going to remain at the level of testosterone-laden watchfulness?"

"So how do you really feel about life?" said Milo.

Fusco gave another toothy grin.

"Nothing for me," Milo said. "What's with this Burke?"

A waitress approached. Fusco motioned her away. Next to his sandwich was a tall glass of cola. He sipped, put the glass down silently.

"Michael Ferris Burke," he said, as if delivering the title of a poem. "He's like the AIDS virus: I know what he is, know what he does, but I can't get hold of him."

Gazing pleasantly at Milo. I wondered if the AIDS reference went beyond general metaphor.

Milo's expression said he thought it did. "We've all got our problems. Want to fill me in, or just bitch?"

Fusco kept smiling as he reached down to his left and produced a brick-red accordion file folder, two inches thick and fastened with string.

"Copy of the Burke file for your perusal. More accurately, the Rushton file. He went to med school as Michael Ferris Burke, but he was born Grant Huie Rush-ton. There are a few other monikers in between. He likes to reinvent himself."

"So now he can get a job in Hollywood," said Milo.

Fusco pushed the file closer. Milo hesitated, then pulled it over and placed it on the seat between us.

Fusco said, "If you want a capsule summary, I'll give you one."

"Go ahead."

The muscles of Fusco's left eyelid twitched before settling. "Grant Huie Rushton was born forty years ago in Queens, New York. Flushing, to be exact. Full-term birth, no complications, only child. The parents were Philip Walter Rushton, a tool-and-die maker, age twenty-nine, and Lorraine Margaret Huie, twenty-seven, a housewife. When the boy was two, both parents were killed in an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Little Grant was shipped off to Syracuse to be raised by his maternal grandmother, Irma Huie, a widow with a history of alcoholism."

Fusco's hands rubbed together. "Logic and psychology tell me Rushton's problems had to begin early, but getting hold of childhood records that document his pathology has been difficult because he never received professional help. I located some grade-school reports that note 'disciplinary problems.' He wasn't a sociable child, so locating peers who remember him clearly has been a problem. A trip I made to his Syracuse neighborhood several years ago unearthed some people who remember the boy as bright and talented and major-league mean-'malicious' is the word that keeps cropping up."

He ticked his left index finger with its right-hand counterpart. "Cruelty to animals, bullying other kids, suspicions of neighborhood pranks and thefts and burglaries. The grandmother was an inept parent, and Grant had free rein. He was smart enough to avoid getting caught, has no juvenile record that I can find. His high-school yearbook entry-a copy's in there-lists no extracurricular activities or honors. He graduated with a B average, which for him was no challenge, he could've done that in his sleep. A few Unsatisfactories in conduct but no suspensions or expulsions." To me: "You know the data on psychopaths, Doctor. High IQ can be protective. Grant Rushton knew how to keep his impulses under control, even back then. Precisely when he went all the way is unclear, but when he was eighteen, a fourteen-year-old girl-a neighbor-disappeared. Her body was found two months later in a forested area on the outskirts of town. Decomposition was advanced and precise cause of death was never determined, but the autopsy did reveal head trauma and neck wounds and sexual exploration without actual rape. The investigation never got very far and no suspects were ever named."

"Was Rushton questioned?" said Milo.

"No. After the girl-Jennifer Chapelle-was found, Rushton graduated and joined the navy. Basic training in California-Oceanside. Honorable discharge after only two months. Military records have proven to be less than precise. All I've been able to learn is that he went AWOL once and they let him go."

"That merits honorable?" I said.

"In a volunteer military, sometimes it does. During the time he was stationed at Oceanside, a prostitute named Kristen Strunk was chopped up and dumped a mile from the base. Another unsolved."

"Same question," said Milo. "Was Rushton ever considered a suspect?"

Fusco shook his head. "Bear with me. After his discharge, Grant Rushton died: single-car crash off the old Route 66 in Nevada. Burned-up auto, charred corpse.

Same death as his parents," I said. Fusco's sad eyes glowed.

Milo said, "What are you saying? A body switch?

The corpse was never examined closely-we're talking french fry. It wasn't till years later, when I matched Rushton's navy prints to those of Michael Burke, that I came across the switch. By that time, it was too late to learn anything about who really got burned. The owner was an accountant from Tucson, driving to Vegas with his wife. The car was hot-wired while they sat at a truck-stop eating burgers."

"Any idea who got burned?" said Milo. Fusco shook his head and looked over his shoulder again. "No sign of Rushton for a year and a half. I figure he copped one or more false identities and traveled around for a while. The next time I can tag him he was living in Denver and going by the name of Mitchell Lee Sartin, a student at Rocky Mountain Community College, majoring in biology. The print backtrack verifies Sartin as Rushton. He applied for a job as a security guard, got his fingers inked. The Sartin I.D. was one of those graveyard switcheroos-the real Mitchell was buried twenty-two years before, in Boulder. Sudden infant death, three months old."

"And no reason for the security firm to cross-reference with the navy," said Milo.

"Not hardly. Those guys have been known to hire schizophrenics. The prints were checked with local felony files, where, of course, they didn't show up. Sartin got a job patrolling a pharmaceutical company at night. By day, he attended classes. He lasted one semester- straight A's. Life sciences and a course in human figure drawing."

"Drawing," I said. "Is that what you meant by talented?"

Fusco nodded. "A couple of his former schoolmates remember him as a great doodler-cartoons, mostly. Obscene stuff, making fun of teachers, other authority figures. He never worked for the school paper. Never chose to affiliate."

He took a long drink of cola. "During Sartin's enrollment at Rocky Mountain CC, two female students went missing. One was eventually found up in the mountains, dead, sexually abused and mutilated. The other girl's whereabouts remain unknown. This was the first time Grant Rushton/Mitchell Sartin attracted any attention from law enforcement. He was among several individuals questioned by the Denver police because he'd been seen talking to one of the girls in the college cafeteria the day before she disappeared. But it was just a routine interview, no reason to check further. Sartin didn't reenroll, left town. Disappeared."

"All this within two years of high-school graduation?" I said. "He was only twenty?"

"Correct," said Fusco. "Precocious lad. The next few years are another cloudy area. I can't prove it, but I know he returned to Syracuse to visit Grandma a year later. Though no one remembers seeing him."

"Something happened to Grandma," said Milo.

Fusco's lips curled inward. He ran a hand over the white bush atop his head. "One of those Syracuse winters, late at night, Grandma drove her car into a tree on a rural road and went through the windshield. Her blood alcohol was just over the limit and an empty brandy bottle was found on the front seat. By the time they found her body, it was frozen stiff. No reason to think it was anything other than a single-driver DUI thing, except for the fact that Grandma was a stay-at-home drinker, never went out at night. Rarely drove, period. No one could explain why she'd taken the car out in a freezing storm or why she was out in the sticks, a good fifteen miles from her house. No one also thought to question why, with that kind of impact, the bottle would be right there on the seat. Irma Huie didn't leave much of an estate-her place was rented, she kept no bank accounts. The police didn't find any money, not a penny in the cookie jar. Which I find curious because she'd lived on pension money from her husband and Social Security income, and her landlord said she kept cash around, he'd seen wads of bills bound by rubber bands. A year later, Mitchell Sartin surfaced as Michael Ferris Burke and enrolled in City University of New York as a sophomore pre-med major. He presented a transcript-later shown to be forged-from Michigan State University, claiming a year of courses, GPA of 3.8. CUNY bought it. Burke gave his age as twenty-six-to match the stats on another I.D. he'd cribbed, this time from a dead baby in Connecticut. But he was only twenty-two."

"He bought himself some time with Grandma's money?" I said. "But he made no attempt to claim the pension or the Social Security payments."

"He knows how to be careful," said Fusco. "That's why there are periods in his life I just can't tag, and a lot of what I'm going to tell you won't go beyond theory and guesses. But have I said anything, so far, that doesn't make sense from a psychological standpoint, Doctor?

Go on," I said.

"Let me backtrack. During the year between Irma Huie's death in Syracuse and Michael Burke's enrollment at CUNY, two clusters of mutilation murders occurred that bear marked similarities to the particulars of the Denver victim. The first popped up in Michigan. Beginning four months after Mitchell Sartin left Colorado, three coeds were attacked in Ann Arbor. All were jogging at night on pathways near the University of Michigan campus. Two were ambushed from behind by a man wearing a ski mask, knocked to the ground, punched in the face till semiconscious, then raped, stabbed and slashed with a sharp knife-probably a surgical scalpel. Both escaped with their lives when other joggers happened upon the scene, and the assailant fled into the bushes. The third girl wasn't so lucky. She was taken three months later, by that time some of the campus panic generated by the first two attacks had died down. Her body was found near a reservoir, badly mutilated."

"Mutilated in what way?" I said.

"Extensive abdominal and pelvic cutting. Wrists and ankles bound to a tree with a thick hemp rope. Breasts removed, skin peeled from the inner thighs-your basic sadistic sexual surgery. Subdural hematomas from head wounds that might've eventually proven fatal. But arterial spurts on the tree said she'd been alive while being cut. The official cause of death was bleeding out from a jugular slash. Shreds of blue paper were found nearby and the Ann Arbor investigators matched it, eventually, to disposable surgical scrub suits used at that time at the University of Michigan Medical Center. That led to numerous interviews with med-school staff and students, but no serious leads developed. The surviving girls could only give a sketchy description of the attacker: male Caucasian, medium-size, very strong. He never spoke or showed his face, but one of them remembers seeing white skin between his sleeve and his glove. His modus was to throw a choke hold on them as he hit them from behind, then flip them over and punch them in the face. Three very hard blows in rapid succession." Fusco's fist smacked into an open hand. Three loud, hollow reports. The old woman drinking soup didn't turn around.

" 'Calculated,' one of the surviving victims called it. A girl named Shelly Spreen. I had the chance to interview her four years ago-fourteen years after the attack. Married, two kids, a husband who loves her like crazy. Reconstructive facial surgery restored most of her looks, but if you see pre-attack pictures, you know it didn't do the trick completely. Gutsy girl, she's been one of the few people willing to talk to me. I'd like to think talking about it helped her out a little.

"Calculated," I said.

"The way he hit her-silently, mechanically, methodically. She never felt he was doing it out of anger, he always seemed to be in control. 'Like someone going about his business,' she told me. Ann Arbor did a competent job, but once again, no leads. I had the luxury of working backward-focusing on young men in their twenties, possibly security guards, or university employees who'd left town shortly after, then dropped completely out of sight. The only individual who fit the bill was a fellow named Huey Grant Mitchell. He'd worked at the U. Mich medical school, as an orderly on the cardiac unit."

I said, "Grant Huie Rushton plus Mitchell Sartin equals Huey Grant Mitchell-wordplay instead of a graveyard switch."

"Exactly, Doctor. He loves to play. The Mitchell I.D. was created out of whole cloth. The job reference he gave-a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona-turned out to be bogus, and the Social Security number listed on his employment application was brand-new. He paid for his Ann Arbor single with cash, left behind no credit card receipts-no paper trail of any kind, except for a single employment rating: he'd been an excellent orderly. I think the switch from graveyard hoax to brand-new I.D. represents a psychological shift. Heightened confidence."

Fusco pushed his Coke glass away, then the half-eaten sandwich. "Something else leads me to think he was stretching. Craving a new game. During the time he worked the cardiac floor, several patients died suddenly and inexplicably. Sick but not terminally ill patients who could've gone either way. No one suspected anything- no one realizes anything, to this day. It's just something that turned up when I was digging."

"He cuts up girls and snuffs ICU patients?" said Milo. "Versatile."

Any trace of amiability left Fusco's face. "You have no idea," he said.

"You're talking nearly two decades of bad stuff and it's never come out? What, one of those covert federal things? Or are you out to write a book?"

"Look," said Fusco, jawbones flexing. Then he smiled, sat back. Let his eyes disappear in a mass of folds. "It's covert because I've got nothing to go overt. Air-sandwich time. I've only been on it for three years."

"You said two clusters. Where and when was the second?"

"Back here, in your Golden State. Fresno. A month after Huey Mitchell left Ann Arbor, two more girls were snagged off hiking trails, two weeks apart. Both were found tied to trees, cut up nearly identically to the Colorado and the Michigan vies. A hospital orderly named Hank Spreen left town five weeks after the second body turned up."

"Spreen," I said. "Shelly Spreen. He took his victim's name?"

Fusco grinned horribly. "Mr. Irony. Once again, he got away with it. Hank Spreen had worked at a private hospital in Bakersfield specializing in cosmetic work, cyst removals, that kind of thing. It was a big surprise when three post-op patients had sudden reversals and died in the middle of the night. Official cause: heart attacks, idiopathic reactions to anesthesia. That happens, but not usually three times in a row over a six-month period. The publicity helped close the hospital down, but by then Hank Spreen was long gone. The following summer, Michael Burke showed up at CUNY."

"Long body list for a twenty-two-year-old," I said. "A twenty-two-year-old smart enough to make it through pre-med and med school. He worked his way through by holding down a job as a lab assistant to a biology professor-basically a nighttime bottle washer, but he didn't need much income, lived in student housing. Had Grandma's dough. Pulled a 3.85 GPA-from what I can tell, he really earned those grades. Summers, he worked as an orderly at three public hospitals-New York Medical, Middle State General and Long Island General. He applied to ten med schools, got into four, chose the University of Washington in Seattle."

"Any coed murders during his pre-med period?" said Milo.

Fusco licked his lips. "No, I can't find any definite matches during that time. But there was no shortage of missing girls. All over the country, bodies that never showed up. I believe Rushton/Burke kept on killing but hid his handiwork better."

"You believe? This joker's a homicidal psychopath and he just changes his ways?"

"Not his ways," said Fusco. "His mode of expression. That's what sets him apart. He can let loose his impulses along with the bloodiest of them, but he also knows how to be careful. Exquisitely careful. Think about the patience it took to actually become a doctor. There's something else to consider. During his New York period, he may have diverted his attention from rape/murder to the parallel interest he'd developed in Michigan and continued in Bakersfield: putting hospital patients out of their misery. I know they seem like different patterns, but what they've got in common is a lust for power. Playing God. Once he learned all about hospital systems, playing ward games would've been a snap."

"How is he supposed to have killed all those patients?" said Milo.

"There are any number of ways that make detection nearly impossible. Pinching off the nose, smothering, fooling with med lines, injecting succinyl, insulin, potassium."

"Any funny stuff go down at the three hospitals where Burke spent his summers?"

"New York's the worst place to obtain information. Large institutions, lots of regulations. Let's just say I have learned of several questionable deaths that occurred on wards where Burke was assigned. Thirteen, to be exact."

Milo pointed down at the file folder. "All this is in here?"

Fusco shook his head. "I've limited my written material to data, no supposition. Police reports, autopsies, etcetera."

"Meaning some of your stuff was obtained illegally, so it can never be used in court." Fusco didn't reply.

"Pretty dedicated, Agent Fusco," said Milo. "Cowboy stuff's not exactly what I'm used to when dealing with Quantico."

Fusco flashed those big teeth of his. "Pleased to bust your stereotype, Detective Sturgis.

I didn't say that."

The agent leaned forward. "I can't stop you from being hostile and distrustful. But, really, what's the point of playing uptight-local-besieged-by-the-big-bad-Fed? How many times does someone offer you this level of information?"

"Exactly," said Milo. "When something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is."

"Fine," said Fusco. "If you don't want the file, give it back. Good luck chipping away at Dr. Mate. Who, by the way, began his own little death trip around the same time Michael Burke/Grant Rushton decided to seriously pursue a career in medicine. I believe Burke took note of Mate. I believe Mate's escapades and the resulting publicity played a role in Michael Burke's evolution as a ward killer. Though, of course, Michael had begun snuffing out patients earlier. Michael's main objective was killing people." To me: "Wouldn't you say that applied to Dr. Mate, as well?"

Calling Burke by his first name. The hateful intimacy born of futile investigation. Milo said, "You see Mate as a serial killer?"

Fusco's face went pleasantly bland. "You don't?"

"Some people consider Mate an angel of mercy."

"I'm sure Michael Burke could manipulate some people to say the same of him. But we all know what was really going on. Mate loved the ultimate power. So does Burke. You know all the jokes about doctors playing God. Here're a couple who put it into practice."

Milo rubbed the side of the table as if cleaning off his fingertips. "So Mate inspires Burke, and Burke goes up to Seattle for med school. He moves around a lot."

"He does nothing but move," said Fusco. "Funny thing, though: until he showed up in Seattle and purchased a used VW van, he'd never officially owned a car. Like I said, a retrovirus-keeps changing, can't be grabbed hold of."

"Who died in Seattle?"

"The University of Washington hasn't been forthcoming with its records. Au contraire, officially none of their wards have experienced a pattern of unusual patient deaths. But would you take that to the bank? There's certainly no shortage of serials up there."

"So now Burke's back to girls? What, he's the Green River Killer?"

Fusco smiled. "None of the Green River scenes match his previous work, but I know of at least four cases that do bear further study. Girls cut up and left tied to trees in semirural spots, all within a hundred miles of Seattle, all unsolved."

"Burke's fooling with I.V. lines by day, cutting up girls in his spare time, somehow working in med school."

"Bundy killed and worked while in law school. Burke's a lot smarter, though like most psychopaths he tends to slack off. That almost cost him his MD. He had to spend a summer making up poor basic-science grades, received low marks for his clinical skills, graduated near the bottom of his class. Still, he finished, got an internship at a V.A. clinic in Bellingham. Once again, I can't get hold of hospital records, but if someone finds an unusual number of old soldiers expiring under his watch, I'm not going to faint from shock. He finished an emergency medicine residency at the same place, got a six-figure job with Unitas, moved back to New York, and added another car to his auto arsenal."

"He held on to the van?" I said.

"Most definitely."

"What kind of car?" said Milo. I knew he was wondering: BMW?

"Three-year-old Lexus," said Fusco. "The way I see it, emergency medicine's perfect for a twisted loner-plenty of blood and suffering, you get to make life-and-death decisions, cut and stitch, the hours are flexible-work a twenty-four-hour shift, take days off. And important: no follow-up of patients, no long-term relationships, office or staff. Burke could've gone on for years, but he's still a psychopath, has that tendency to screw up. Finally did."

Milo smiled. He'd been living with an E.R. doctor for fifteen years. I'd heard Rick praise the freedom that resulted from no long-term entanglements.

"Poisoning the boss," Milo said. "The article said he'd been suspended for bad medicine. Meaning?"

"He had a habit of not showing up at the E.R. when he was supposed to. Plus poor doctor-patient relations. The boss-Dr. Rabinowitz-said sometimes Burke could be terrific with patients. Charming, empathetic, taking extra time with kids. But other times he'd turn-lose his temper, accuse someone of overdramatizing or faking, get really nasty. He actually tried to kick a few patients out of the E.R., told them to stop taking up bed space that belonged to sick people. Toward the end, that was happening more and more. Burke was warned repeatedly, but he simply denied any of it had ever happened."

"Sounds like he was losing it," said Milo. He looked at me.

"Maybe heightened tension," I said. "The pressure of working a tough job when his qualifications were marginal. Being scrutinized by people who were smarter. Or some kind of emotional trauma. Has he ever had an outwardly normal relationship with a woman?"

"No long-term girlfriend, and he's a nice-looking guy." Fusco's eyes drooped lower. His hands balled. "That brings me to another pattern. A more recent one, as far as I can tell. He developed a friendship with one of his patients up in Seattle. Former cheerleader with bone cancer. Burke was circulating through as an intern, ended up spending a lot of time with her."

"Thought you couldn't get hospital records," said Milo.

"I couldn't. But I did find some nurses who remembered Michael. Nothing dramatic, they just thought he'd spent too much time with the cheerleader. It ended when the girl died. A couple of weeks later, the first of the four unsolved cutting vies was found. Next year, in Rochester, Burke got close to another sick woman. Divorcee in her early fifties, onetime beauty queen with brain cancer. She came into the E.R. in some sort of crisis, Burke revived her, visited her during the four months she spent as an in-patient, saw her at home after she was discharged. He was at her side when she died. Pronounced her dead."

"Died of what?" said Milo.

"Respiratory failure," said Fusco. "Not inconsistent with the spread of her disease."

"Any mutilation clusters after that?"

"Not in Rochester, per se, but five girls within a two-hundred-mile radius have gone missing during Burke's two years at Unitas Hospital. Three of them after Burke's lady friend died. I agree with Dr. Delaware's point about loss and tension."

"Two hundred miles," said Milo.

Fusco said, "As I've pointed out, Burke has the means to travel. And plenty of privacy. In Rochester, he lived in a rented house in a semirural area. His neighbors said he kept to himself, tended to disappear for days at a time. Sometimes he took along skis or camping equipment- both the van and the Lexus had roof racks. He's in good shape, likes the outdoors."

"These five cases are missing only, no bodies?"

"So far," said Fusco. "Detective, you know that two hundred miles is no big deal if you've got decent wheels. Burke kept his vehicles in beautiful shape, clean as a whistle. Same for his house. He's a lad of impeccable habits. The house reeked of disinfectant, and his bed was made tight enough to bounce a hubcap."

"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 Ra-binowitz'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." Pointing 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 unstable, 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 beforehand, 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 vies. 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 bar-bered 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 R 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.