‘You mean, this isn’t just an isolated incident? There are other places in the country where this sort of thing occurs?’
The agent nodded. ‘There’re a lot of dirty doctors who play God, sir. Frankly, I wish I could string ’em all up. That’s why I’m so hot to nail this bastard to the wall.’
‘Then why not try your plan?’
‘But there’s a big risk. We’ve had a case similar to this, and the defense managed to convince the jury that it was police entrapment, and the guy got off.’ To which he appended in a whisper: ‘And just between you and me, that’s pretty much what it was.’
‘Sullivan, you just get your man, and I’ll take care of those twelve men in the jury.’
The agent shrugged. ‘Well, sir, my gut feeling is still that we should wait it out. This kind of sick human being can’t help repeating his crime. But if you want us to “inspire” him, I’ll do my best.’
The two men rose and shook hands.
‘One thing, Mr Walters,’ the agent continued.
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t think we should see each other or communicate until … we’ve got the evidence.’
The trap was now set for Dr Seth Lazarus.
Special Agent Madeleine Hanson, among the first females hired when the Bureau went co-ed in 1972, had used her talents as a onetime aspiring actress in the service of the Bureau many times. Of course, a lot of her assignments were ‘garden variety’ seductions which, despite the danger involved, now bored her. At last she was presented with a challenge – and the promise of ascending yet another step in the hierarchy of the Bureau.
She spent three days in a hotel in midtown Chicago being tutored and drilled by medical experts and psychologists. The agents had already gone through the medical histories of the terminally ill at the Lakeshore V.A. Hospital and had found the most likely candidate who could unwittingly – or, more accurately, unconsciously – impersonate her husband.
Just reading the file of Captain Frank Campos made her cringe. He had stepped on a land mine in Vietnam, lost a leg and an arm, and had become legally blind and partially deaf. He had 80 percent hearing in one ear and none in the other. But his worst affliction was the shrapnel still welded to his spine. It was inoperable, and the pain unbearable, despite the Demerol and morphine and the other licensed analgesics, which had long since lost the power to give him much relief.
He had pleaded with the doctors for cocaine or heroin – both of which he had tried in Nam, and which he desperately believed could allay his suffering. But his doctors would not act illegally. And thus the wounded hero of America’s most unheroic war was doomed to undiminishing agony.
Once, when they had brought him up to the roof to get some sunshine, Frank had summoned all the strength in his warped body and attempted to propel himself from his chair and over the roof railing. Only the alertness of a nurse save him from death.
Also on the record was an incident recorded the previous Christmas Eve when Campos’s younger brother Hector came to see him at the hospital with a .32 revolver in his pocket, determined to fulfill his brother’s wish: for an end to his relentless pain.
Ironically, his hand was shaking so much that the two shots he had fired missed his brother’s head by inches, and the orderlies subdued him so that he could not shoot again. He was not brought to trial, since a police psychiatrist determined that he was mentally incapable of knowing what he was doing. Instead, he was remanded to an institution for six months’ observation.
‘Christ,’ Madeline remarked, her stomach churning. ‘Are we at least going to let Doctor Death put this poor man out of his misery?’
‘Of course not, ’Lainie. We don’t sanction murder.’
Agent Hanson grinned and said sarcastically: ‘Yeah, tell me all about it, guys.’
Agent Sullivan directed that the little group go back to business.
‘Well,’ he said after another hour. ‘Are you all set, Madeline? Do you think you’ve got the details of Captain Campos’s life in your head?’
She frowned. ‘Guys, this just won’t work. If this doctor’s half as smart as you, then he’ll never buy a “grieving wife” act. I mean, the poor bastard’s been in the hospital for eight years. Just where am I supposed to have been hiding? This bullshit you concocted about “missing dog tags” wouldn’t fool a dog.’
Sullivan glowered. ‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘No,’ she countered. ‘I’m just trying to be smart. You need someone who can really play the role of suffering relative. I mean, his brother has already tried to kill him. He could make a really convincing pitch to Doctor Death.’
The psychologist added his weight to Madeline’s argument.
‘I think she’s right, J. P. If we could somehow convince this guy to ask Lazarus to put his brother out of pain, that would be foolproof.’
‘And,’ she continued, ‘the court could never call “entrapment” on this, either.’
Agent Sullivan was persuaded. ‘Hey, Madeleine, you’re some smart cookie. I mean, you could say you were a nurse – and that you know this doctor—’
‘Now you’re talking, sweetheart,’ she replied. ‘That sounds like something that’ll really nail this Good Samaritan.’
Seth finished his rounds at the V.A. Hospital and mentally ticked off another Thursday in his calendar: exactly three more months and he’d be liberated. He and Judy would take the kids cross country to see Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Disneyland. They would then be able to forget the hospital, the pain, and the ungodly burden.
As he was walking toward his car a small dark man came up to him. ‘Dr Lazarus?’
His accent was sightly Hispanic.
‘Yes.’
‘I am Hector Campos. My brother Francisco – they call him Frank – is a patient in this hospital.’
‘Not one of mine, I don’t think,’ Seth replied.
‘He’s on a different floor from where you work. But I was waiting here to ask you to become his doctor.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Seth replied. ‘I’m afraid I only work here part-time, and I’m sure your brother’s being well looked after.’
‘Please, Doctor,’ Hector begged. ‘For Jesus’s sake, please just read his file.’
And he unbuttoned his shirt and took out a manila folder, which he pushed into Seth’s hands.
‘Just why do you think I should read it, Mr Campos?’ Seth asked, and then looked up.
The man had vanished, leaving Seth holding the file. And terrified.
Seth tried to read the details without emotion. He was determined not to let his pity be aroused.
But there, recorded in Frank’s history, was a brief – but explicit – description of his brother’s desperate attempt to end Frank’s misery. And it was clear the boy was mad with grief.
Just then Judy entered his study in her dressing gown and sat down on his couch.
‘I’m here, Seth,’ she said softly, ‘and I won’t leave until you tell me. I know what you’ve got there in your hand – and I don’t have to ask what you want to do. But if we say it’s over and you keep on going, will we ever stop?’
‘It’s not “we,”’ he answered stoically, ‘this is my responsibility.’
‘I’m sorry, Seth,’ she countered, ‘I share your life, and I share all the guilt, too.’
‘Feelings of guilt,’ he corrected her.
‘At least let’s discuss it.’
He gave her a brief account of Captain Campos’s terrible mutilations.
‘Oh God,’ she responded. ‘Why couldn’t they have let him die on the field?’ She then concluded with bitter irony, ‘I suppose that would have raised the U.S. body count. So now this poor guy’s up there just ticking like a clock that doesn’t know the time.’
‘I want to do it,’ Seth said quietly, ‘for both of them. It won’t make my hands any bloodier than they are now.’
‘But Seth, it’s much more dangerous in the V.A. hospital. You’re there just one
afternoon a week. If anyone suspected anything they could pinpoint that his death occurred while you were there.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ he said. ‘I’ll find some sort of “problem” that’ll make me have to come back after dinner. The place is really dead at night. It’s not like our hospital, with all the visitors bustling in and out. It’s a house haunted by the ghosts of people no one wants to see.’
‘Seth, no. You’re … you’re not yourself. You’re not completely capable of—’
‘You mean I’m crazy?’ he interrupted, uncharacteristically raising his voice. ‘Sure I’m crazy. I’ve been killing since my brother Howie, since—’
‘They were acts of mercy,’ she protested.
‘Mercy,’ he muttered grimly. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever get God’s mercy for the things I’ve done.’
They were silent for a moment. Then a minute, then a quarter of an hour. Gradually she noticed that he’d leaned back in his chair and was asleep. She shut the light and curled up on the couch to be near him.
The decision was clear-cut. He’d simply not tell Judy. He’d make some excuse to come there on a different day so he would never have to tell her. But first he’d have to see poor Captain Campos for himself.
At the end of his usual Thursday rounds he said goodbye and then, instead of taking the elevator down, walked up the stairs to the fifth floor. It was extremely difficult to find the wounded Marine. Everybody in this ward was mutilated, cut off from society because no one wished to have these horrors of Vietnam recalled to them.
Even in the days he worked up in Pathology, he’d never seen such awesome injuries, such macerations, such disfigurement, such sordid mockeries of human form.
At last he found him. He picked up the clipboard hanging from the bedpost and saw ‘Campos, Francisco R., Captain USMC.’
The official record stated that he still could hear and had some vocal capability, so Seth inquired, ‘Captain Campos?’
‘Uhnn?’ the bandaged figure moaned.
‘Can you understand me when I speak, Frank?’
This was answered with a groan he took to be affirmative.
‘Are you in much pain, sir?’
This was answered by a tirade of anguished groans that needed no words.
‘Captain, do you sometimes wish that you could end it all? I mean, that somehow all this would be ended and you’d die?’
A groan. In a tone that only could be described as a supplication.
‘I understand,’ Seth answered softly. ‘I’ll be back to see you very soon, sir.’
And then before Seth could begin to walk away he heard an emanation from the mutilated man that seemed to say, Thank God, thank God.
While interviewing Frank, Seth noticed the tokens of family affection that sat upon the captain’s little bedside table. A crucifix; some flowers from Hector.
What he did not see was the microphone that Agent Sullivan had installed there.
His drug of choice was morphine, so aptly named after the god of sleep. And undetectable.
Seth’s strategy was exquisite and simple. He’d arrive just after dinner while the trays and dishes were still rattling – nearly two hours before the routine taking of the patients’ vital signs.
Seth parked his car, donned his white coat, and with the full syringe held in his pocket, climbed the stairs to the fifth floor and walked unnoticed to the bed of Captain Campos. He seemed to be resting quietly and – happy sight for Seth – at peace.
Perhaps he could just do it now and Frank would never have to wake up again in pain. He’d already spoken to him, after all, he’d more or less got his consent.
Go on and do it, Seth, he told himself. Just draw the curtain around his bed, inject him, and go home.
But he had his protocol. His code of ethics.
‘Captain Campos, can you hear me?’ he began. ‘It’s Dr Lazarus. I’m here to help you end your pain. I’m here to help you sleep forever. If you agree, I’ll give you just a small injection that will put an end to everything.’
He paused for a response. There was none. He moved closer to the mutilated soldier. The man was not breathing. Jesus, he was dead. Seth was too stunned to move.
Suddenly the curtains shielding Captain Campos’s bed were opened and Seth was confronted by a group of men, all dressed in the same funeral dark gray.
One of them showed his wallet and identified himself. ‘Sullivan – FBI. You are hereby arrested for the murder of this Marine.’
50
‘FBI NABS DOCTOR DEATH.’ The shrieking headlines stirred up mass hysteria that circled Seth Lazarus like a whirlwind. Cynical journalists played upon a universal latent paranoia: My physician holds the power of life and death in his hands. If for some reason he did not like me, he could kill me with impunity.
The news that this malevolent Dr Lazarus had acted out one of man’s most horrific fantasies made Seth an object of anger. Of fear. Of loathing and resentment.
But, most of all, of curiosity.
For Judy every waking hour was a nightmare. It was impossible to send the children to school, for there were always photographers lying in wait. The whole world, it seemed to her, was talking about her husband – their father – and what he had done.
To the unsilent majority he was a monster. They were afraid that merely going into the hospital might expose them to someone like Seth. And many called Judy up and made obscene and terrifying threats.
Yet to others who dared not raise their voice in this emotional debate he was a brave, heroic man.
The case was being tried in every home across America. Husbands asked their wives, ‘If I were in excruciating pain, would you get a doctor like that to kill me?’
Still others wondered how many other Doctor Deaths were still lurking undiscovered. In fact, how many others besides Captain Campos had been murdered by the doctor from Chicago?
There was an avalanche of letters to editors of newspapers. The lines of demarcation were clear: ‘Right to Life versus Right to Death,’ in a kind of moral Superbowl.
For there were also those who went to church and prayed for Seth’s salvation.
There were people like the Carson family, whose mother, thanks to him, had been delivered from her suffering. But all they could do was pray. For by coming forward in defense of Seth, they would merely add to the already weighty evidence against him as a murderer.
And, if truth be told, a few of the families were scared for their own skin. Would the doctor become vindictive – name names? And would that make them accessories?
The frenzy that whirled around Seth’s family turned each day into a macabre circus, with Attorney General Walters as ringmaster. His profile was steadily growing more prominent. And he always found time to grant the press a few of his valuable minutes.
Nor was Agent Sullivan a man of reticence. Being an assistant special agent-in-charge – that is, a high official of the Bureau and no longer in the field – he could be photographed and interviewed. And he proved to have a rich imagination. But he was always careful to employ those verbal safety nets like ‘alleged,’ ‘presumed.’ Or else the worst of all – a slyly smiling, ‘I can’t comment on that at this time,’ which seemed to answer the reporter’s question without incriminating himself.
All of this was happening beyond the prison walls where the accused was now confined. For at the arraignment, the prosecutor had been so persuasive in the matter of keeping ‘so dangerous a criminal from threatening the public’ that the judge had denied him bail.
From the moment of his arrest, Seth had been gripped by terror, and his feeling intensified with each new circumstance.
First of all, the FBI agents seemed to derive some perverse pleasure from tormenting ‘Doctor Death.’ Little things like pulling strenuously at his handcuffs, pushing him a little bit too hard into a car, and other such niceties.
But the worst pain of all was not physical: it was the humiliation. The police officials and FBI men mocked him
constantly with phrases like, ‘Who’s going to be your lawyer – Jack the Ripper?’
In fact, he didn’t have a lawyer. There was this nice guy Murray, with whom he’d gone to high school, who had helped him with his tax forms and sued a man who’d crashed into his car. But it was clear to Murray that this case was far out of his depth. ‘Don’t worry, Seth,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you an excellent attorney. I mean, I’ll even call my friends in New York to find out who the best trial lawyer is—’
Seth sat unmoving in his cell for hours on end, not knowing what to do. He longed for Judy’s daily visit. She was his lifeline and his sanity.
‘I’ve driven the kids to Naomi in Indianapolis,’ Judy reported. ‘She says not to worry and that she’ll take care of them as long as necessary. I always told you my sister was a good kid.’
He shook his head. ‘My God,’ he muttered, ‘what am I doing in this place? Why am I being persecuted? Don’t these people have any compassion?’
No, Judy thought to herself, compassion is doled out inequitably in mankind. You had too much; they have too little.
‘What’s happening about the lawyer?’ he asked.
‘Murray’s doing his best. He keeps saying we need someone who’s strong enough to stand up to the A.G. in a courtroom – Walters is as sharp as hell and has political ambitions. Murray says we need a Perry Mason or Mark Sylbert.’
‘Sylbert? You mean the famous “champion of lost causes?” Is my case so futile? Anyway, I don’t think we can afford him.’
‘I don’t care. I’ll sell the house, Seth – anything to help you.’
‘Oh, please,’ he moaned, holding his head in his hands, ‘somebody please get me out of this place.’
She took him in her arms. He was always thin but now he felt fragile – in body as well as soul. She made up her mind to go to Sylbert’s office and remain there until the lawyer consented to see her.
It was the shortest siege in history.
The moment the receptionist indicated who had appeared unscheduled in their anteroom, Mr Sylbert ordered that she be brought immediately to his office.
For the first time in a week Judy felt that she might have a friend in this angry, savage world.