Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman

“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.”