In a rush of adrenaline, Anthony Flores dialed 911 from a Santa Monica hotel to report an emergency seven miles away. “I believe that my friend has died in our house,” he told the dispatcher. Paramedics and sheriff’s deputies raced to the Malibu beachfront cottage of Mark Sawusch, a 57-year-old eye surgeon. They found his body wedged between a sofa and a coffee table near the grand piano he’d been playing that afternoon. The house is suspended 20 feet above a narrow strip of boulders and sand. Waves pounded into the tangle of weathered pilings and beams beneath it. In the distance, city lights shimmered along Santa Monica Bay. Classic stories from the Los Angeles Times’ 143-year archive Two massage therapists had discovered that Sawusch was not breathing. One of them had called Flores. It didn’t take long for investigators to figure out that severe mental illness had recently upended Sawusch’s quiet life as an ophthalmologist with a private practice in Pacific Palisades. His frightening and sometimes violent manic outbursts had destroyed his career and …