The Euthanist Read online

  Leland was a dark man with a gaunt face and high cheekbones. If I were to guess, I’d say his lineage was Ethiopian or Somali. A descendant of African runway models. I’m tall for a woman, but he had several inches on me. Maybe six two. It was hard to tell since I never saw him standing. Leland Mumm was bedridden by the time I met him. He shuffled to the bathroom and back, but never during my visits. The way he looked now, he seemed like he’d collapse if he tried to stand. His bones stuck out all over. He didn’t keep photos of himself around, so I couldn’t tell how much body mass he might have lost. At this point, he couldn’t have weighed much more than me.

  I rumbled a chair across the floor and sat beside the bed, covering his hand with mine. “You’ve got spiders outside.”

  “I know,” he rasped. “They’re everywhere.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, you have one less.”

  He laughed faintly. “Big or small?”

  “The size of a volleyball.”

  “And you survived.”

  “Barely.”

  Leland’s wide smile reminded me of Steven Tyler. I’ve heard that teeth are the bellwethers of someone’s overall health, but that’s a load of crap. Leland Mumm was about to die, and his enamel gleamed. Not a filling in there.

  He complimented my clothes. “Nice getup.”

  Death should feel special, so I always dressed for my final meetings. What, was I going to waltz in with mustard-stained sweats? What I wore completely depended on the person. For Leland I wore a form-fitting white cocktail dress with purple piping to match the wig and the eyeliner. As a self-proclaimed sci-fi geek, Leland wanted me to dress like the kind of expo booth hottie you’d find at Comic-Con. Back when he could walk, he apparently made annual pilgrimages so he could meet Stan Lee. Clients have asked for weirder outfits—one wanted a nun habit, and one wanted me in scrubs so I would seem more like a medical professional.

  “That wig. Like the Jetsons.” Leland’s laugh hacked up something. Weak as he was, he still ogled my legs. He didn’t keep photos of his wife out, so I couldn’t tell if I was even his type. But I didn’t mind. If I were in his boat, I’d want something decent to look at on my last day.

  “You requested it.”

  “You look good. Real good,” he wheezed and squeezed my hand. “Gloves to match.”

  Purple satin opera gloves stretched from my fingers to elbows. “As good as latex. I can still handle the delicate stuff.”

  “Gloves, like a criminal,” Leland mused. “You feel like a criminal?”

  A client had never asked me anything like this, and Leland was usually so playful I would have shrugged it off, but there was something abrasive in his tone. Something in the way he shifted his look from my left eye to my right, possibly trying to detect some guilt in my reaction. I had to catch myself so I didn’t rebuke him. There was that combative streak the doctors always complained about. Like a jack-in-the-box, it sprang out so fast, and took so much more effort to push back down. “So long as there are laws, I’ll feel like a criminal breaking them. But I don’t feel like it’s wrong.” I stripped off the gloves. “We don’t need these.” With bare hands I touched his hair as if primping a floral bouquet.

  He wore oversize flannel pajamas with trains on them. Such a sweet nerd of a man.

  “You hot in these?”

  “I get cold.” He drew his blankets closer to his body, withdrawing his arm under the covers like an eel back into its crevice. He shut his eyes, and I noted the slight tremor of his lids before he opened them and nodded to the nightstand. “It’s all there.”

  A stack of documents fanned across the small table. He’d also been reading Dr. Jeffrey Holt’s The Peaceful End, marked toward the back with a green plastic book clip shaped like a tongue. Most of my clients had read it, and all of them had heard of it. A handbook for people who want to take control over their own deaths, it covers everything anyone needs to know about assisted suicide and provides a selection of methods. A popular option described is the bag-and-helium method. Basically, a turkey-sized oven bag hooks up to the same kind of tank used to inflate balloons. Many have tried to convince me how quick and painless it is, but I’ve never met someone who really wants to die with a bag over his head. But the book is important in many ways, and Leland Mumm followed many of its recommendations, which included preparing the materials that now lay on his nightstand. In addition to the DVDs, these included a living will and durable power of attorney document. Finally, a sheet of paper with thick red letters: DNR. Do not resuscitate. I would leave this on Leland’s chest when I left, in case anyone came afterward and thought to revive him.

  I opened one fat envelope with my name on it. Leland had given me a quarter-inch of cash. As I thumbed through it, he noted my confusion. “That’s for you.”

  I reminded him, “I don’t take money.”

  “It’s a donation.”

  “Someone else can have it.”

  “Who else?” He spaced out, perhaps remembering his wife.

  This wasn’t the first time someone tried to pay me. Some people weren’t comfortable receiving anything unless they gave something in return. “Thank you.” I slid the envelope into my satchel. After this was over, I’d put it back. I wouldn’t take the money, but I wouldn’t insult him by refusing it either.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “How do you think?” The playful tone ebbed out of his voice. “God awful.”

  He seemed afraid, and I pressed my fingers into his palm.

  “You’re strong,” he remarked. Then with several breath breaks, he asked, “Can we please do this? The wait is killing me.”

  “You’re ready?”

  He answered without hesitation. “I was ready weeks ago.”

  I unlatched my leather satchel and assembled my equipment. This part was the hardest for me, and I found it difficult to keep from tearing up. Death is sad. Every time. Not even the process of death so much as the frailty that leads to it, the helplessness. It always got to me. Leland Mumm also felt different than other clients, and I’m not just saying that in hindsight. My fellow paramedics—the ones who were parents—were the ones shell-shocked when they saw kids get hurt. Similarly, I thought that since Leland Mumm was roughly the same age my dad would have been, this hit close to home. But Leland didn’t really remind me of my dad. He just didn’t have anyone. Without family and friends to surround him during his quietus, the bleakness of his solitude ate at me.

  I wish I’d learned to ape the poker faces I saw on other paramedics and docs, but I never mastered detachment. As I prepped the needle, my stomach churned. It always felt like this, and I always considered it a weakness. No one wanted to see his personal Hindu goddess get all blubbery. To stop my eyes from watering, I practiced a look that made it seem like I was concentrating on my job with laser precision.

  “Different kind of needle.”

  “It’s called a butterfly syringe.” Also known as a winged infusion set, this was a tool of the trade. Kevorkian himself used these. Most of my clients were on the older side, and the needle was designed to ease into smaller and more brittle veins.

  “Walk me through it again,” he said. Under the covers, he wrapped his arms tightly around his trunk, embracing himself. Many clients liked to talk through our final meeting so they could diffuse the fear.

  “The first dose puts you to sleep. The second will turn off the lights.”

  “How many people have you helped?” He asked.

  His tone shifted again, and now he sounded suspicious. It triggered my fiery impulses, sending a hot swell through my blood, and requiring a deep breath to calm down again. “Enough to know what I’m doing.” The answer was twenty-seven.

  “You’ll find the vein all right? You’re not going to play darts with my arm?”

  “You shouldn’t feel more than a pinch.” I was a trained paramedic, and kept up my accuracy by sticking needles into oranges at home.

  He breathed louder, faster. “I�
�m scared.”

  “I know. You know you’re in control.”

  “I know that.” He seemed certain on this point.

  “Are you sure you want this?”

  He nodded, maybe too eagerly. “Badly.”

  “I can give you a sedative if you want.”

  “I don’t want more needles.”

  I shook an orange pill bottle from my satchel. “Diazepam. Valium. It can take the edge off.”

  His eyes danced around the room while he considered it. “How long?”

  “You’d feel it in under a half hour.”

  “How long after you stick me?”

  “After I give you the first injection, you should fall asleep in under a minute.”

  “Stick with plan A.” I stroked his arm. An invisible layer of semidry sweat had greased his skin. He tried to smile, but his mouth just twitched. He ran his tongue between his lips and teeth to try and moisten his mouth.

  I readied the needle at his arm and tried to find a vein. He was dehydrated, so I had to tap a few times. “Do you want to close your eyes for the pinch?”

  “Give me one more moment,” he implored.

  “All the time you want.”

  “I’d like to pray.” Leland had never brought up religion, and this wasn’t my area of expertise, but other clients had asked. He held my hand to his chest, and his ribs quaked with a violent heartbeat. “Pray with me.”

  “Of course.”

  We closed our eyes.

  Lost in a meditative moment, I almost ignored the sensation of something hard brushing against my wrist. Hard, like a bracelet. Cold metal pressed into my skin, first lightly and then sharply. Then I heard the click. Eyes open, I saw a gleam of silver steel clasp around my right wrist. A chrome chain draped from the cuff in a wide arc to a thick teak bedpost topped with a carved pinecone. Leland Mumm had chained my arm to the bed frame.

  When he spoke, his voice was clear and resonant. “Kali, I’m with the police.”

  Trigger temper. I latched onto Leland’s neck with one hand. My volatile impulses set loose, I tried to crush his windpipe. I’d never attempted to hurt someone like this, but I dug my knuckles deep into his neck. To protect himself, he hunched his shoulders and stiffened his tendons into wires. His muscles flexed with a shocking power. This man was suddenly vital and dangerous. Leaning over him, I bore my weight down on his body. When my thumb wormed into the ribbed hose of his trachea, he gagged. His hands clawed at my arms, but in my furious blackout I kept my arms stiff as dowels. My palm clamped down over his arteries, and the way his eyelids flickered, I could tell he was losing oxygen fast. A few more seconds, he might have blacked out. I might have killed him.

  Something fast flew into my face, like a kamikaze bird smacking a window. His fist hammered my left cheekbone, and my head snapped to the side. The impact shook me loose. My fingers lost their grip. Slackening with the force of the punch, I slid off the mattress. When my skull struck the floor, needles burst through my brain before the pitch darkness enveloped me.

  Chapter 2

  “You went rabid on me,” he said, delighting in my ridicule. There were no ellipses between the words now.

  Leland only had a few seconds after he knocked me down, but he made use of them. He flopped me onto the bed and kicked my leather satchel across the room. Then he patted me down for weapons, even though the most dangerous thing on me was the syringe. He rolled that across the floor too.

  Our positions reversed: I lay on the death-stink covers, tethered like a sacrificial goat. The mattress was still warm from his body heat. Leland was on his feet, looking down at me. Miracle recovery. His locomotive pajamas sagged at the crotch.

  With my left arm pulled across my body, I yanked the chrome chain taut with the hope that it might decapitate the carved pinecone atop the bedpost. Leland kept his distance, which was a smart move. As soon as my head cleared, I kicked like crazy. When I couldn’t reach him with my boots, I grabbed what I could with my free hand and chucked it at him, including his coffee-stained copy of The Peaceful End. The green plastic book clip fell out and into the covers, and the book only flapped a few feet. Envelopes whirled like Frisbees, but few hit him, and nothing hurt him.

  Leland gave me the same smirk as when he’d ask, “When are you going to tell me your real name?” But he’d mutated into a different man, fast and formidable.

  A residual ache swelled under my left eye, and Leland appeared blurry as he hovered over me. I savagely tore at my handcuffs. As a firefighter, I should have known this wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere, but the pain and panic prevented rational thought.

  It’s not that I’d never been punched. On plenty of calls, an addict half out of her senses could crazy it up and clobber me when I didn’t expect it. It wasn’t ever pleasant, but the shock of being punched was worse than the pain itself. Years of sparring taught me how to take a shot, and how to hit back. Leland Mumm hit hard, but he wasn’t Wladimir Klitschko. Just a tad stronger than my stepdad. He’d caught me off guard and landed a lucky blow. If I’d been ready for it, he wouldn’t have pushed me off my feet.

  He seemed to marvel at my flushed face and gurgle of obscenities. The past several moments had changed me too. My legs thrashed whip-wild, and my growls and swears sounded feral.

  The chain held. After a few minutes, my wrist burned and my lungs heaved. My skin pinked around a thread of crimson where the cuff sliced a faint incision line. I wasn’t about to break the bed frame. Not teak. The wood was too dense to crack the bedpost and too heavy for me to upturn the whole thing and whack apart the joints.

  I split my attention between my shackles and Leland. I was still finding new pain from the punch, shooting down through my jaw now, and found it impossible to concentrate on any singular thing. I stared at Leland’s face above me, trying to focus on the tip of his nose with my foggy eye. Leland seemed taller now, or maybe that illusion was created from him on his feet and me on the mattress. When he sneered, all those healthy teeth reminded me what a goddamned sucker I’d been. I should have known something was up when I saw those pearlies. What I wouldn’t have given to chip a few with a boot heel.

  “Who are you?” I ran a finger over the handcuff keyhole, as good as spinning a safe dial without the combination.

  I kept expecting Leland to climb on top of me, but he hadn’t moved since he shackled me. “I told you. Cop,” he said with no frailty in his voice.

  “No, you’re not. No fucking cop would chain me to a bed. Punch me in the face.”

  “Sorry you think that. Because that’s exactly what a cop would do.”

  Blood warmed the plumping welt under my eye. Where the cheek split, a trickle ran down my face and tickled the skin over where it hurt. “Fucker—I’m bleeding!”

  “Believe what you want, but you’re good and busted.”

  “Bullshit. What about Miranda?”

  “Keep your mouth shut if you want. Call a lawyer when you can. That about cover it?”

  I rattled my handcuffs, but if I fought anymore, I was going to spring a vein. Instead, I looked for weapons. I’d thrown all the loose stuff at Leland, leaving nothing on the nightstand. Pivoting off the mattress and stretching as far as the chain would allow, I stood on the floor and mule-kicked the nightstand at him. The flimsy table was light enough to sail at him, but he sidestepped it like fucking Fred Astaire. When it splintered on the wall behind him, he seemed amused. I went back to fidgeting with the lock, desperate enough to try working my pinky nail into the keyhole.

  “It’s not going to work,” he said.

  Handcuffs were easy. All I needed was a paper clip to spring it. But I didn’t have a paper clip. As Leland predicted, my pinky nail didn’t fit. All my tools were in my cowhide satchel, and that satchel sat by Leland’s ankle. Frustrated, I grasped the chain with both hands and tug-o-warred with the bedpost, but only succeeded in tearing the skin on my palms.

  “You’re not going to pull the chain apart. You’re going to hurt yo
urself.”

  The friction of steel against flesh dug down to the bone, and that hairline incision in my wrist began leaking rivulets of blood. The pain was enough for me to give it a rest.

  The loss of control overwhelmed me. I couldn’t control my own body, not with my heart shuddering and my lungs on fire. I couldn’t remember breathing this hard, not even during the physical aptitude test for the fire department, and for that I had to sprint up and down six flights of stairs with fifty pounds of gear. Worse yet, I couldn’t control the man in the room. Leland was out of my reach and unpredictable. If I expected him to zig, he might zag.

  He spoke like a toastmaster. “We’re going to have a long talk, but there’s something I’ve really got to do first.” He unbuttoned his flannel pajama top, button by yellow button. When I saw his bare stomach, I wrenched the chain again until the pain shooting up my arm made my shoulder spasm.

  He bunched the flannel and absently tossed it against the wall. I didn’t want to look at him, but I felt like I needed to monitor Leland in case he came at me. I imagined him on top of me, his hot mothball breath steaming up my nostrils. The baggy clothes had hidden his musculature. Leland Mumm was thin but tight, a welterweight. Sneaky mofo.

  “Kali. You killed nine people.” Again, it was twenty-seven. He’d counted wrong. “Did you expect this would have a happy ending?”

  I writhed against my clasp. Smears of my blood rouged the sheets.

  “Jesus Christ, calm down!” In the same breath, he pulled his pajama bottoms over his hips, and they dropped to his ankles. “You can’t imagine how good it feels to take these off.” He wore stained white briefs. In a moment he’d be naked. “I’m sorry to be so open about this, but we’re on intimate terms by now, aren’t we?” I dry heaved. He snapped. “For Christ’s sake, get a hold of yourself. It’s going to be a long day for you.”

  I waited for him to charge at me. My mind raced, fishing for defensive options. He was naked, I reminded myself, and I was clothed. I could squat 260 pounds. His nuts were right there at the level of the mattress. If he ran straight at me, I might crack his pelvis. I drew my knee to my chest, readying my left leg, the strong one, for a kick.