The Euthanist (6 page)

“Whatever you call yourself, the outcome is the same, Pamela.” He stewed over the name. “I don’t like the way that sounds. I’m going to call you Kali.” He nosed into the notes he’d jotted in
The Peaceful End
. “You have a falling out with your folks? Trust fund runaway?”

“I loved my parents.”

He shrugged. “Kids from good homes usually don’t find themselves in situations like this. It’s not that it never happens, just not as much. How did they die?”

I’d already said too much. “You’re a detective. Detect.”

He studied my face. “Someone got to you, though. As a kid, someone got to you. Something bad happened. Was it your mom? She cross a line with you?”

“My mother didn’t molest me.”

“I never said she did.”

“You implied it. And she didn’t. I loved my mom.”

“Not your dad either. He was a good dad. I can tell by the way you talk about them both. Shame. It would be so much easier to blame them.”

I was going to have to pee soon. My bladder had started to swell.

He said, “Listen, I really don’t give a shit about your parents. You don’t have to tell me about whatever happened to you as a kid. Really, I’m just being polite.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your confession.”

When I closed my eyes, a tear rolled down the side of my face.

Leland said, “You’re not done yet. You just need to cook a little more.” He read his book.

• • •

I fell asleep. I’d fought to stay awake, but somehow several hours escaped, and now it was morning. The sun came through the windows in a cathedral beam and baked me gently. If metal weren’t grinding against my bones, this might have been a perfect morning.

Leland was still reading. His shirt now rumpled in places, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. He looked tired as he combed over the last few pages. He blinked slowly and rubbed his eyes. His spare hand propped up a leaden chin. When he saw me budge, Leland regarded me in passing, and then flipped a page.

My bladder was bursting. “I need to use the bathroom.” My throat dried again overnight.

Leland hadn’t moved. “Too bad.”

“You can’t keep me here like this. This has to be illegal,” I thought aloud.

“But you’re not sure, are you?”

“Eighth amendment.”

“You have no idea how it all works, do you? I haven’t hurt you any more than necessary to detain you.”

“I still need to use the bathroom.”

“Do you have something you want to say to me other than please?” When I didn’t say anything, he laughed with less oomph. “Worth a shot.”

My heart beat the way a wing flaps on a wounded bird. I twisted in my cuffs. My left wrist had swollen visibly in the shackles, and now my right wrist chaffed as well from hanging in chains. The cuts and bruises on my knuckles—the ones I’d earned from punching Leland—smarted this morning. I didn’t mind them as much. I scanned my body, especially between my legs. I didn’t feel different down there, just a little musty. As far as I could tell, Leland hadn’t fondled me while I was out.

“I need water.”

“That I can do.” Leland had a glass at the ready and poured it into my mouth from behind the headboard. On the back of the chair he’d draped both his suit jacket and a shoulder holster with a black semiautomatic. I still wasn’t completely assured that he was a lawman, but his props were convincing.

“I need to pee.”

“Can’t let you off the chain.”

“You have a gun.”

“You can’t be trusted.”

My eyes watered. This man wasn’t going to arrest me, and I had no idea what he was going to do. I hadn’t eaten for a day, and although my stomach squealed, the abundant cortisol shooting through me killed my appetite.

A detective would have driven me somewhere by now. He would have called his partner and at the very least, the two of them would have been watching me together. My interrogation would be hosted in one of those cinder-block rooms with the big mirror. They’d give me a cell with a bed and a toilet. At this moment I craved those things. My eyes ached from the pepper spray and fountained with tears. I coughed up the extra mucus in my nose, and then the coughing avalanched into sobs.

“That’s an appropriate reaction.” He let me cry a while before he put his book down. “This can go on for a lot longer, you know. But you can end it.”

A watery gasp from me: “How?”

“Just talk to me.”

Again the confession. He wasn’t going to arrest me without it. Maybe he didn’t have much hard evidence, and he needed me to fess it all up. If this was all he wanted, then I could talk. It was the smallest morsel of hope.

“You’re a good actor,” I said. “I thought you were dying.”

Leland smirked. He pointed to my purple ball of hair, now bunched in a pile with the rest of my purse chaff. “You’re pretty theatrical yourself.” His voice relaxed. We were both tired. He noticed something else in the pile he’d missed. Pinching them between his fingers, he picked up one, then both of the ziplock bags.

“Those aren’t drugs,” I said.

“Of course they’re not,” he said, examining them against the light. “They’re ashes, aren’t they?” He held them in his open palm. “Let me guess. Your mom and your dad?”

“Please don’t empty them,” I said, realizing that I was pleading.

“Don’t worry about that.” He placed them inside his jacket pocket. “I’ll keep them safe.”

I felt like I should keep talking, because the conversation gave me a wobbly sense of calm. “My dad was in opera before he did movies.”

“Name like Wonnacott—of course your dad was into opera.” Leland’s voice was tender now. I knew he was manipulating me, but I didn’t care. Fake kindness was better than no kindness.

“I liked the costumes. I got lost in the wardrobes backstage.”

“Do you dress up every time?”

I remembered I should be defending myself against prosecution. Deny, deny, deny. “What do you mean, every time?” This came out coy.

“When I told you to talk to me, you know what I meant. No reason to dodge anything now. I caught you red-handed.” Leland drifted. His all-nighter must have got to him. “Ever wonder where that came from—red-handed?”

“It means you’ve got blood on your hands.”

“That would make sense.” He chewed his pinky in thought. “How long have you been doing this?”

I was ready to talk, but not to confess. “Doing what?”

“How many people have you killed?”

Not a squeak.

“Do you have any idea how long we’ve been trying to find you?” I did wonder—very much. “Roughly two years.” He could’ve earned a master’s degree in that time, and yet he chose me. “The way we’ve counted it, there have been nine unexplained deaths of senior citizens in the Northern California area. I’ll admit, I don’t know if this number represents your full portfolio, but I do know that all of those people suffered from terminal illnesses. They all died in their homes. They were unattended, except by whoever killed them. Big note with ‘DNR’ written on it.” He waved the book over his head. “Do Not Resuscitate—just like the good Dr. Holt suggests. In every instance, death came from an intravenous high-dose barbiturate. Thiopental and pancuronium. One-two punch.” He leaned toward me. “Did I get the number right? Nine?”

As I mentioned, he didn’t have the number right. He’d missed several clients in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Twenty-seven clients. He had counted nine, and I didn’t even know if his nine matched mine. His lack of data boosted my confidence.

“It’s been more, hasn’t it? Doesn’t matter. We only need to get you on one count.”

He was right. What a goon I’d been. I let my guard down a little, and now I was screwed. With every twitch of my face, I was giving myself away. “We can figure out the full count later. Killer’s a killer’s a killer.”

I couldn’t imagine saying it out loud. I wouldn’t have confessed to myself in a locked closet back in Bernal Heights. I killed twenty-seven people. That phrase would never get its proper volume.

“I’m not a killer.” This just came out. He’d riled me. I knew I shouldn’t have spoken as soon as I heard myself. A second later, I thought,
So that’s how people get caught.

Maybe I needed a lawyer, but I didn’t ask for one. Leland hadn’t officially read me my rights, because he hadn’t arrested me. But it was becoming inevitable. If I were an active participant in my own ruin, it would only go faster. I imagined how I’d look in my best suit, standing during the sentence reading. Momentarily, I indexed my wardrobe and chose a heather gray suit that hid my shoulders, softening me. Kevorkian got eight years, but he was a doctor and had a lot of good will behind him. The right legal team could paint me as a piranha and toss me in a dungeon.

“Does the name Nancy Donavan mean anything to you?”

Of course it did. Nancy was Kali’s first official client. Nancy had tightly wound ringlets. Her thick glasses prevented much direct eye contact. She was eighty-seven years old, suffering from delusions brought on by an inoperable tumor behind her right eye. She didn’t remember her family on most days. Nancy’s daughter and son-in-law brought her to live with them. I was queasy the whole time, and popped one of my own Valiums so I wouldn’t hyperventilate during the video good-byes.

I might not have had the gonads to go through with any of it, but Nancy guided me. She wanted it so badly. The whole family wanted it. Even with a house full of witnesses, it didn’t feel wrong. We bunched together, quiet as she drifted off on her side, mouth open in an interrupted yawn. Most of us wept, including me. I didn’t know what killing was supposed to feel like. I suppose I guessed it would feel like stealing. But when her fingers gave a final tremble, I felt like I had gifted her mercy.

“Did Nancy Donovan give you a taste?”

Yes, but not in the way he meant.

“What about Merrill Stromberg?”

Leland had done his homework. Merrill was client number twelve; probably number four by his count. She was younger than most. Younger than him. Forty-four years old and suffering from uremia. Accompanying kidney failure, uremia occurs when urea and waste products stay in the blood instead of being excreted through urine. It gave her a lot of bruising and bedsores, and she couldn’t hold any food down. She’d withered down to a stick. Uremia lowers the body temperature, and her body felt cold when I touched her. Merrill’s husband, Peter, sat with her and read Erica Jong poems until she fell asleep.

“You took money from her.”

“I did not.”

“You had to.”

Merrill came from a very wealthy family, old money New Yorkers who relocated to the West Coast. The Strombergs ran one of the more successful drugstore chains in the region. Leland Mumm assumed that a family of means would have naturally paid me for services. The truth was, she contacted me the same way everyone had. Some people sought me out because they didn’t want to be alone. Some because they didn’t want to botch the job. Some, like Merrill, wanted discretion.

“Nothing that you say or do will ever make that statement true.”

“That rhymed,” he said.

“Unintentionally.” I couldn’t ignore my bladder anymore. “I really have to pee.”

“
Tough
.
Titty
.” Leland meticulously intoned.

“I’m serious. You want me to wet your floor?”

“Go ahead. What makes you think this is my floor?”

“You want to humiliate me on top of everything else?”

“It won’t be the first time I’ve ever seen someone piss their pants.”

I tried to shame him. “Does it get you off?”

“A grown woman soaking her own crotch with urine? No, it does not. Nice try, though.”

“Have a modicum of humanity.”

“I’m not inclined to uncuff you.”

“You’re going to have to eventually.”

“If you’re looking for privacy, you’re not going to get it. I’ve lived with women, Kali. A little urine isn’t going to bother me. And don’t worry about the bed. I was going to throw it out anyway.” Leland walked around to the headboard and loomed over me. I tried to kick him, but my boot wouldn’t reach. Some of the sheets had bunched in the corner of the mattress. For a moment, I thought he was going to drape the sheets loosely over me for a modicum of privacy. Instead, he snapped them out from under me, swiftly as a magician doing a tablecloth trick.

Son of a bitch
. He really wasn’t going to let me use the toilet. He wouldn’t even turn his back. So I opened up my bladder, locking hateful eyes with him. The mattress became warm and wet, and seconds later the dampness around my crotch made my underwear chafe like sandpaper.

Above me, Leland seemed satisfied. He excused himself and made for the bathroom, where he loudly emptied his own bladder into the toilet, flourishing it with a proud flush.

This was my breaking point, the final humiliation that cracked my will. I sobbed again, but this time without any restraint. I had no defiance left in me when he returned to the room.