Murder Suicide Read Online Free PDF Page A

when everything’s fading to black."
    "Thank you," she said.  "Thank you for that."  She looked at Clevenger in a way that told him she meant it.  "let me check on Dr. Heller for you."  She stood up and disappeared through a set of columns set into an archway in the rose-colored marble wall behind her desk.
    Clevenger watched as she walked past two secretaries working in Heller’s inner office, then disappeared through a set of towering, mahogany French doors.
    She was back out in under fifteen seconds.  "He’ll see you as soon as he finishes up with this patient.  Five or ten minutes, if you can wait."
    "I can wait."
    Heller’s patient, a woman about forty, left in five minutes, but it was twenty-five minutes before Heller called for Monroe to escort Clevenger to his office.  Clevenger figured Heller either needed the time to review his patient’s medical record and write out a progress note or he needed it to stroke his ego, to make it clear he wasn’t sitting around waiting for drop-ins.
    Monroe escorted Clevenger to Heller’s open door.  "Dr. Clevenger to see you," she said.  She turned and walked away.
    Heller stood up behind his desk.  "J.T. Heller," he said, starting over to Clevenger.  He was at least six-foot-three, with a gleaming smile and blond hair nearly to his shoulders.  His eyes were a remarkable shade of blue — deep, but luminous, like sapphires.  His voice was deep, but surprisingly gentle.  He looked and sounded like a sturdy, amiable Viking, in black crocodile cowboy boots.  His name was embroidered in big, red script letters over the pocket of his starched, white lab coat, which hung just above his knees.  He wore the coat open, showing a black crocodile belt with a big, polished silver belt buckle with a red, enameled Harvard academic crest.  "Sorry to keep you waiting.  Please come in."
    Clevenger shook Heller’s hand.  "Frank Clevenger."
    "As if you need an introduction," Heller said.  "Let’s be honest:  You’re more famous than I’ll ever be."  He let go.  "That was some cross-country ride the Highway Killer took you on."
    "Yes," Clevenger said, trying to keep the image of Jonah Wrens’s decapitated victims out of his mind.  "It was quite a ride."
    "But you got him."
    "We got him," Clevenger said, "after he got seventeen people."
    "When you beat cancer, you beat it, my friend," Heller said.  "You’re gonna lose things on the way.  That’s how it is in any war."
    "That would be the surgical perspective," Clevenger said, forcing a smile.
    "What other perspective could there be?" Heller asked, with a wide grin.  "Please, sit down."  He motioned toward a pair of black suede armchairs in front of his long glass-top desk.
    Clevenger sat in one of the armchairs.  Heller took the other one, instead of his desk chair.  Was that his way of making a visitor comfortable, Clevenger wondered?  Or was it his way of directing Clevenger’s gaze over Heller’s shoulder, to a wall covered with academic degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, membership certificates to the American Medical Association and the American Board of Neurosurgery, a Phi Beta Kappa key, a photograph of Heller and the President, the Harvard Teaching Award for 2001 and 2003, Boston Magazine ’s Best of Boston Doctors Award for 2003 and 2004.
    "I’m glad you’re here, Frank," he said.  "May I call you that?"
    "Of course."
    "And please, call me Jet."
    Clevenger nodded.  He glanced at Heller’s desk, uncluttered to the point of obsession.  The only objects on it were a black computer monitor and a black keyboard, a black leather blotter with a blank sheet of letterhead centered on it, and a silver Cartier pen with a little clock built into the cap.
    "Obsessive compulsive disorder," Heller said.  "I have every symptom."
    "I can help," Clevenger joked.
    Heller shook his head.  "I enjoy my pathology.  It’s...  How do you guys put it?  Ego-syntonic .  I like my margins