“It stood out to the yuppies,” I said.
“Stood out to their dog. One of those attentive retrievers. They were ready to walk right past the van but the dog kept nosing around, barking, wouldn’t leave it alone. Finally, they had a look inside. So much for walking for health, huh? That kind of thing could put you off exercise for a long time.”
“Bad?”
“Not what I’d want as an aerobic stimulant. Dr. Mate was trussed up to his own machine.”
“The Humanitron,” I said. Mate’s label for his death apparatus. Silent passage for Happy Travelers.
Milo’s smile was crooked, hard to read. “You hear about that thing, all the people he used it on, you expect it to be some high-tech gizmo. It’s a piece of junk, Alex. Looks like a loser in a junior-high science fair. Mismatched screws, all wobbly. Like Mate cobbled it from spare parts.”
“It worked, “I said.
“Oh yeah. It worked fine. Fifty times. Which is a good place to start, right? Fifty families. Maybe someone didn’t approve of Mate’s brand of travel agency. Potentially, we’re talking hundreds of suspects. Problem one is we’ve been having a hard time reaching them. Seems lots of Mate’s chosen were from out-of-state—good luck locating the survivors. The department’s lent me two brand-new Detective-I’s to do phone work and other scut. So far people don’t want to talk to them about old Eldon, and the few who do think the guy was a saint— ‘Grandma’s doctors watched her writhe in agony and wouldn’t do a damn thing. Dr. Mate was the only one willing to help.’ Alibi-talk or true belief? I’d need face-to-faces with all of them, maybe you there to psychoanalyze, and so far it’s been telephonic. We’re making our way through the list.”
“Trussed to the machine,” I said. “What makes you think homicide? Maybe it was voluntary. Mate decided it was his own time to skid off the mortal coil, and practiced what he preached.”
“Wait, there’s more. He was hooked up, all right—I.V. in each arm, one bottle full of the tranquilizer he uses— thiopental—the other with the potassium chloride for the heart attack. And his thumb was touching this little trip-wire doohickey that gets the flow going. Coroner
said the potassium had kicked in for at least a few minutes, so Mate would’ve been dead from that, if he wasn’t dead already. But he was. The gizmo was all for show, Alex. What dispatched him was no mercy killing: he got slammed on the head hard enough to crack his skull and cause a subdural hematoma, then someone cut him up, none too neatly. ‘Ensanguination due to extensive genital mutilation.’ ”
“He was castrated?” I said.
“And more. Bled out. Coroner says the head wound was serious, nice columnar indentation, meaning a length of pipe or something like that. It would’ve caused big-time damage if Mate had lived—maybe even killed him. But it wasn’t immediately fatal. The rear of the van was soaked with blood, and the spatter says arterial spurts, meaning Mate’s heart was pumping away when the killer worked on him.”
He rubbed his face. “He was vivisected, Alex.”
“Lord,” I said.
“Some other wounds, too. Deliberate cuts, eight of them, deep. Abdomen, groin and thighs. Squares, like the killer was playing around.”
“Proud of himself,” I said.
He pulled out his notepad but didn’t write.
“Any other wounds?” I said.
“Just some superficial cuts the coroner says were probably accidental—the blade slipping. All that blood had to make it a slippery job. Weapon was very sharp and single-edged—scalpel or a straight razor, probably with scissors for backup.”
“Anesthesia, scalpel, scissors,” I said. “Surgery. The killer must have been drenched. No blood outside the van?”
“Not one speck. It looked like the ground had been swept. This guy took extreme care. We’re talking wet work in a confined space in the dead of night. He had to use some kind of portable light. The front seat was full of blood, too, especially the passenger seat. I’m thinking this bad boy did his thing, got out of the van, reentered on the passenger side—easier than the driver’s seat because no steering wheel to get in the way. That’s where he cleaned most of the mess off. Then he got out again, stripped naked, wiped off the rest of the blood, bundled the soiled stuff up, probably in plastic bags. Maybe the same plastic he’d used to store a change of clean clothes. He got into his new duds, checked to cover any prints or tracks, swept around the van and was gone.”