Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman

“I assume every metabolic link was checked out.”

“Thyroid, pituitary, adrenal, you name it. I know enough to be an endocrinologist. The weight gain was simply Joanne drowning herself in food. When I made suggestions about cutting back, she responded the same way she did to any opinion I offered. By turning off completely—here, look.”

Out of the purse came a pair of plastic-encased snapshots. He made no effort to hand them to me, merely stretched out his arm so I had to get up from my chair to retrieve them.

“Before and after,” he said.

The left photo was a color shot of a young couple. Green lawn, big trees, imposing beige buildings. I’d collaborated with a Stanford professor on a research project years ago, recognized the campus.

“I was a senior, she was a sophomore,” said Doss. “That was taken right after we got engaged.”

For many students, the seventies had meant long coifs, facial hair, torn jeans and sandals. Counterculture giving way to Brooks Brothers only when the realities of making a living sank in.

It was as if Richard Doss had reversed the process. His college ‘do had been a dense black crew cut. In the picture he wore a white shirt, pressed gray slacks, hornrimmed glasses. And here were the shiny black wing-tips. Study-pallor on the elfin face, no tan.

Youthful progenitor of the corporate type I’d expected him to be.

Distracted expression. No celebration of the engagement that I could detect.

The girl under his arm was smiling. Joanne Heckler, petite as described, had been pretty in a well-scrubbed way. Fair-skinned and narrow-faced, she wore her brown hair long and straight, topped by a white band. Glasses for her, too. Smaller than Richard’s, and gold-framed. A diamond glinted on her ring finger. Her sleeveless dress was bright blue, modest for that era.

Another elf. Marriage of the leprechauns.

They say couples who live together long enough start to look like each other. Richard and Joanne had begun that way but diverged.

I turned to the second photo, a washed-out Polaroid. A subject who resembled no one.

Long-view of a king-size bed, shot from the foot. Rumpled gold comforter strewn across a tapestry-covered bed bench. High mound of beige pillows propped against the headboard. In their midst, a head floated.

White face. Round. So porcine and bloated the features were compressed to a smear. Bladder-cheeks. Eyes buried in folds. Just a hint of brown hair tied back

tight from a pasty forehead. Pucker-mouth devoid of expression.

Below the head, beige sheets rose like a bell-curved, tented bulk. To the right was an elegant carved night-stand in some kind of dark, glossy wood, with gold pulls. Behind the headboard was peach wallpaper printed with teal flowers. A length of gilded frame and linen mat hinted at artwork cropped out of the photo.

For one shocking moment, I wondered if Richard Doss had a postmortem shot. But no, the eyes were open . . . something in them . . . despair? No, worse. A living death.

“Eric took it,” said Doss. “My son. He wanted a record.”

“Of his mom?” I said. Hoarse, I cleared my throat.

“Of what had happened to his mom. Frankly put, it pissed him off.”

“He was angry at her?”

“No,” he said, as if I were an idiot. “At the situation. That’s how my son deals with his anger.”

“By documenting?”

“By organizing. Putting things in their place. Personally, I think it’s a great way to handle stress. Lets you wade through the emotional garbage, analyze the factual content of events, get in touch with how you feel, then move on. Because what choice is there? Wallow in other people’s misery? Allow yourself to be destroyed?”

He pointed a finger at me, as if I’d accused him of something.

“If that sounds callous,” he said, “so be it, Doctor. You haven’t lived in my house, never went through what I did. Joanne took over a year to leave us. We had time to figure things out. Eric’s a brilliant boy—the smartest person I’ve ever met. Even so, it affected him. He was in his second semester at Stanford, came home to be with Joanne. He devoted himself to her, so if taking that picture seems callous, bear that in mind. And it’s not as if his mother minded. She just lay there—that picture captures exactly what she was like at the end. How she ever mobilized the energy to contact the sonofabitch who killed her I’ll never know.”

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