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.
CHAPTER 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.
No motive for the slaying of the man known as “Dr. Death” has been put forth by authorities yet, though the same sources indicate that Ulrich, a licensed physician in New York State under the name of Michael Ferris Burke, may have been mentally ill.
November found me thinking about how wrong I’d been on so many accounts. No doubt Rushton/Burke/Ulrich would’ve been amused by all my wrong guesses, but teaching me humility would’ve ranked low on his pleasure list.
I called Tanya Stratton once, got no answer, tried her sister. Kris Lamplear was more forthcoming. She didn’t recognize my voice. No reason to, we’d exchanged only a few words when we’d met and she’d assumed I was a detective.
“How’d you know to call me, Doctor?”
“I consult to the police, was trying to follow up with Tanya. She hasn’t called back. You’re listed as next of kin.”
“No, Tanya won’t talk to you. Won’t talk to anyone. She’s pretty freaked out by all those things they’re saying about Paul.”
“She’d have to be,” I said.
“It’s—unbelievable. To be honest, I’m freaked, too. Been keeping it from my kids. They met him…. I never liked him, but I never thought. . . Anyway, Tanya has a therapist. A social worker who helped her back when she was sick—last year. The main thing is she’s still in remission. Just had a great checkup.”