The Murder Book

Bert sighed. 'You're as skillful as ever, Alex.'

'A house on 156^th Street in Watts. A neighborhood where a black man would be comfortable hiding out. Where a white face would stand out. A white police detective named Lester Poulsenn was assigned to guard Burns and Caroline Cossack and one night he was shot and the house was torched as cover. A high-ranking cop murdered but LAPD kept it quiet. Interesting, don't you think, Bert?'

He remained silent. I went on, 'It's a safe bet Poulsenn got ambushed by the people sent to get rid of Caroline and Willie. People who'd pulled off an ambush before and murdered a bail bondsman named Boris Nemerov. Burns's bondsman. Did he tell you about that?'

Nod. 'It came out in therapy. Bill felt guilty about causing Nemerov's death. He would have liked to come forward- to come clean about what he saw, but that would have put him in mortal danger.'

'What's his version of the ambush?'

'He phoned Nemerov for help because Nemerov had always been kind to him. He and Nemerov arranged a meeting, but Nemerov was followed and murdered and stuffed in the trunk of his car. Bill was hiding nearby, saw it all. Knew Nemerov's death would be blamed on him.'

'Why was Burns offered a police guard in the first place?'

'He had contacts in the police department. He'd worked as an informant.'

'But after Poulsenn's and Nemerov's murders the department let him dangle.'

'Contacts, Alex. Not friends.'

'The house was set on fire, but Burns and Caroline got away. How severe were their injuries?'

'She wasn't hurt, his were severe. He neglected the wounds, didn't seek care until months later. His feet had been scorched almost down to the tendons, multiple infections set in, at the time of admission the wounds were suppurating, gangrenous, flesh falling off the bone. Both feet were amputated immediately, but sepsis had spread up into the long bones and additional amputation was necessary. You could actually smell it, Alex. Like barbecue, the marrow had been cooked. We had some marvelous surgeons, and they managed to preserve half of one femur, a third of another, created skin flaps and grafted them. But Bill's lungs had also been burned, as had his trachea and his esophagus. He formed fibroid scars internally and removing the damaged tissue required additional multiple surgeries. We're talking years, Alex. He bore the agony in silence. I used to sit by the whirlpool as the skin sloughed off. Not a whimper. How he tolerated the pain I'll never know.'

'Was it the fire that blinded him?'

'No, that was the diabetes. He'd been ill for a while, had never been diagnosed. Made matters worse by indulging an addict's sweet tooth.'

'And the nerve damage? Heroin?'

'A bad batch of heroin. He scored it the day of the fire. Slipped away from Poulsenn and walked down the block to meet his supplier. That's how they traced him- something else he feels guilty for.'

'How'd he escape on burnt feet?'

'They stole a car. The girl drove. They managed to get out of the city, found themselves on Highway 1, hid out in a remote canyon in the hills above Malibu. At night, she sneaked into residential neighborhoods and scrounged in garbage cans. She tried to take care of him but his feet got worse and the pain caused him to shoot up that last hit of heroin. He lost consciousness, stayed that way for two days. Somehow she cared for him. At the end, she was trying to feed him grass and leaves. Gave him water from a nearby creek that added an intestinal parasite to his miseries. When I saw him in the burn ward, he weighed ninety-eight pounds. All that, and he'd withdrawn cold turkey. His survival's nothing short of a miracle.'

'So you became his doctor,' I said. 'And Schwinn's. And eventually, the two of them connected. Was that by design?'

'I listened to Bill's story, then Pierce's, eventually put it all together. Of course, I never told either of them about the other- Pierce still thought of himself as a detective. Looking for Bill. Eventually- after much work- I got Bill's permission and confronted Pierce. It wasn't easy but… eventually they both came to understand that their lives were interwined.'

Matchmaking. Just as he'd done with Schwinn and Marge. The grand physician. Giving.

'You waited until it was clear Burns had nothing to fear from Schwinn,' I said. 'Meaning you learned the details of Janie Ingalls's murder. But all of you agreed not to pursue it. You became part of the cover-up. That's why you offered me all those apologies.'

'Alex,' he said. 'Some decisions are… these are shattered lives. I couldn't see any other way…'

'Schwinn changed things,' I said. 'Changed his mind about keeping the secret. Any idea why he grew agitated about the murder during the weeks before his death? Why he sent out the murder book?'

'I've asked myself all that so many times, and the best I can come up with is the poor man felt he was going to die and had an urge to make peace.'

'Was he sick?'

'Nothing I could diagnose, but he came to me and complained about feeling weak. Shaky, out of focus. A month before his death, he began experiencing crushing headaches. The obvious possibility was a brain tumor, and I sent him up to the Sansum Clinic for an MRI. Negative, but the consulting neurologist did find some abnormal EEG patterns. But you know EEGs- so crude, hard to interpret. And his bloodwork was normal. I wondered about some late-term amphetamine sequelae. He'd been drug-free for years, but perhaps the self-abuse had taken its toll. Then, a week before the night terrors began, he blacked out.'

'Did Marge know about any of this?'

'Pierce insisted on keeping everything from her. Even hid his headache medication in a locked box in his darkroom. I tried to convince him to communicate with her more openly, but he was adamant. Their entire relationship was like that, Alex. Each of them talked to me, and I translated. In that sense, she was the perfect woman for him- stubborn, independent, fiercely private. He could be a profoundly unmovable man. Part of what made him a good detective, I suppose.'

'Do you think the night terrors were neurological, or unfinished business come back to haunt him?'

'Maybe both,' he said. 'Nothing unusual was found at his autopsy, but that means nothing. I've seen postmortem brain tissue that looks like Swiss cheese and turns out the patient was functioning perfectly. Then you come across perfectly healthy cerebral cortexes in people who fall apart neurologically. At the core, we humans defy logic. Isn't that why we both became doctors of the soul?'

'Is that what we are?'

'We are, son- Alex, I am sorry for concealing things from you. At the time I believed it was the right thing to do. But that girl… the killer's still out there.' Tears filled his eyes. 'One sets out to heal and ends up being complicit.'

I placed a hand on his narrow, soft shoulder.

He smiled. 'Therapeutic touch?'

'Friendship,' I said.

'The purchase of friendship,' he said. 'Cynics coined the term to demean what we do. Sometimes I wonder about the direction my own life has taken…'

We strolled toward the gravel pathway.

I said, 'What kind of relationship did Schwinn and Burns develop?'

'Once I knew Pierce could be trusted, I brought him out here. They began talking. Relating. Pierce ended up helping Bill. He'd come out from time to time, clean the house, wheel Bill around.'

'And now Pierce is gone, Burns remains as the last living witness to the Ingalls murder.'

Bert stared at the earth and kept walking.

I said, 'You call him Bill. What's his new surname?'

'Is that important?'

'It's going to come out, eventually, Bert.'

'Is it?' he said, lacing his hands behind his back. He steered me toward the open space at the front of the house. 'Yes, I suppose it is. Alex, I know you need to talk to him, but as I told you, he has very little time left, and like most ex-addicts, his self-assessment is brutal.'

'I'll be mindful of that.'

'I know you will.'