Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script (20 page)

"I came in a little late and missed the opening credits," the director said. "Who are you, anyway?"

Mark glanced at Lacey in the backseat of the police car, turned to the director and smiled playfully.

"You can call me Justice."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The scent of death is unmistakable. Even if someone has never smelled it before, the recognition is immediate, as is the instinctive revulsion and fear that comes with it.

Mark and Steve were outside Titus Carville's front door, a half-dozen uniformed officers behind them, when they smelled it.

The odor was like a physical barrier and it provoked a physical response. The gag reflex. The Sloans had encountered the rotting aftermath of death before and had long since learned to control their reactions. The police officers with them weren't as experienced. They staggered back, their chests heaving.

While the officers tried to control themselves, Steve took out the pocket-sized container of mentholated cream that, as a homicide detective, he always carried with him for exactly this kind of encounter. He dabbed a little of the strongly scented solution under his nose to dull the smell, and offered the container to Mark, who did the same.

Steve took pairs of rubber gloves from the inside pocket of his coat, handed one set to Mark, and put on the other. Given the smell, it was a safe bet that they were about to enter a crime scene. Once his gloves were on, he tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

"This is the police," Steve yelled, on the slim chance that somebody was still inside despite the overpowering stench of decomposing flesh. "We're coming inside."

He motioned his father to step back, drew his gun, and proceeded into the house.

It was oppressively hot inside, the odor of death even more intense. The air wasn't circulating at all and felt heavy enough to touch. The living room was empty, except for the flies. They were everywhere.

Steve moved down the hall to the office and found Titus Carville's swollen corpse on the floor in front of his computer. Carville was curled on his side, his desk chair in the center of the room, Lacey McClure smiling down at him from a dozen different posters.

He unclipped the radio from his belt and notified the officers outside. "This is Sloan. We're clear. Secure the location, this is now a crime scene. Notify SID and the medical examiner that we have a decomp."

The desktop computer was still on. He tapped the space bar on the keyboard and the monitor snapped to life, revealing a Microsoft Word document.

It was a suicide note.

Forgive me, Lacey, for everything I have done. I'll be waiting for you in heaven.

Mark came in behind Steve and read the note over his shoulder.

"That's convenient," Mark said, waving away the flies buzzing aggressively around him.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Steve said. "Everything seems to happen just at the right moment."

"For Lacey McClure, though I doubt she was expecting her alibi to fall apart," Mark said, then noticed the coffee mug and CDs scattered on the desk. "Did your friend at the Bureau teach you how to find out a computer's MAC address?"

"I was going to use what I learned on Lacey's computer, but I might as well get some practice now." Steve took out his notebook, referred to his notes, then used the mouse to minimize the Word document and click his way to a DOS command prompt. He typed "ipconfig /all" and hit RETURN. The screen displayed a list of the computer's configuration details. He compared the MAC address on screen with the one in his notes.

"That's one mystery solved," Steve said, diminishing the DOS window and restoring the Word screen to full size. "Titus made the CD with the gunshots on it."

"He was certainly devoted to Lacey," Mark said. "He was willing to help her establish an alibi by making the CD and having sex with her stunt double at the Slumberland Motel."

"I don't know if that last part was such a big sacrifice," Steve said. "I understand his motivation, but I don't see what was in it for Moira Cole."

"Neither do I," Mark said.

Steve motioned to the fly bloated corpse on the floor. "What do you make of this?"

Mark glanced at the office chair in middle of the room, then crouched beside Titus Carville's decomposing body and examined it. The squirming maggots were newborns, about the size of rice, which gave Mark a rough idea how long Carville had been dead. But what was the cause of death? The only sign of trauma he could see was a superficial scrape on Carville's forehead. Otherwise, there were no wounds, no broken bones, nothing that obviously indicated violence. Even so, it wasn't difficult for Mark to make an educated guess about what had happened to Carville.

"I'd say Carville was sitting at his desk about two days ago, drinking whatever was in that mug, when he lost consciousness," Mark said. "He slumped forward, hit his head on the edge of the desk, and then fell, his chair rolling out from under him into the middle of the room."

Steve nodded. He'd come to pretty much the same conclusion. "If I was going to off myself, though, I don't think I'd do it sitting in my home office staring at my computer."

"Perhaps you would if you didn't think of it as an office, but as a shrine to the woman you love," Mark said, glancing at all the posters of Lacey that covered the walls. "And if it was her face you were looking at, not the computer."

The incessant buzzing of the flies seemed to be increasing. It was bothering Steve even more than the smell. "So you believe it was suicide?"

"I believe Titus Carville would do just about anything for Lacey McClure," Mark said. "But I wonder if even he would have drawn the line at taking his own life."

Mark wandered out and went to the bedroom, Steve following after him. The sheets were turned down, as if a maid had come in. All that was missing were the chocolates on the pillows. With a glance, Mark could see they were nicer linens than Carville had on his bed before. He touched the folded-over top sheet. It was soft and silky, 600 threads or better.

He turned to Steve, who was standing in the doorway. "Carville was expecting Lacey."

Steve glanced at the bed. "He was expecting a lot more than that. Apparently, she never showed up."

"Or she did, and it never got this far, because she poisoned him first."

"Looks like Lacey was cleaning up after herself," Steve said. "It's a good thing we arrested her when we did or Moira Cole could have been the next one to die."

"Maybe you can use this as leverage to get Moira to testify against Lacey."

"Wouldn't that be nice," Steve said.

Jesse woke up on the couch at Mark's house. It took a minute before he realized where he was and why he was there and then he felt stupid. He'd begged Steve and Mark to let him come along for the arrest, but he must have fallen asleep while Steve was on the phone, finding out where Lacey McClure was shooting her movie that day.

He'd missed all the action. His thirty-six-hour shift and the hours he spent awake immediately afterwards doing re search on Noah Dent had taken their toll. His body decided to close for business without consulting him first.

Jesse checked his watch. It was a little after six p.m. He'd only been asleep a few hours, but he knew a lot had gone down in the meantime, and it was probably on the early evening news. He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Lacey McClure's surprise arrest for the double murders of Cleve Kershaw and Amy Butler was the top story on every network and local channel, as he knew it would be.

But he wasn't expecting to hear Mark Sloan doing the play-by-play. Over the footage of Lacey being led into the county jail downtown, CNN played a tape, made without her knowledge, of part of her conversation with Mark and Steve in her trailer. The sound engineer only began recording after Lacey accused Mark of getting off on watching her have sex. Jesse didn't know what came before that, but as far as he was concerned, the engineer got the best part. Mark's step-by-step explanation of how she committed the murder, and all the mistakes she made, was all there.

The guys at CNN knew they had some good stuff to work with, and used it well. Over the shot of Lacey McClure walking into jail, the big doors slamming shut behind her, the camera panned up to one of the barred windows and played her final, taunting words:
"This isn't over Dr Sloan. It's only the beginning."

Jesse loved it. He'd been with Mark in so many similar situations that he could easily imagine the expression on his face as every word was said. It was like Jesse was right there, in middle of it all. It was so good that Jesse decided that Mark should consider recording all his confrontations with killers.

When the CNN report was over, Jesse felt like he hadn't slept through a thing. It was easily the most accurate reporting he'd ever seen on television.

He grabbed the phone and called Susan.

"I hope you weren't too worried about me," Jesse said.

"Mark called me and told me he made you take a nap," she said. "He also told me the video you brought him was the key to solving the case."

"So you forgive me for buying it?"

"I never had a problem with you buying it," she said. "I had a problem with how much you wanted to watch it."

"Have you seen the news?" Jesse asked. "You've got to turn the TV on," he said. "You're missing all the great stuff they've got on Lacey McClure. They've even got a tape of Mark nailing her with everything."

"I've been too busy to watch the news," she said.

"What have you been doing?" Jesse asked, with worry in his voice. The last time he'd left her alone for a while in his apartment she'd rearranged his closet and thrown out his favorite pair of old socks.

"I've been going through all this stuff you printed out about Noah Dent," she said. "I think I found something. Buy me dinner at BBQ Bob's and I'll tell you all about it."

Moira Cole sat glowering across the table at Steve from the same lopsided chair Nick Stryker sat in not so long ago.

While Moira Cole and Lacey McClure shared some obvious physical similarities, they projected a very different presence. Moira's facial features were as sharp, but came across as harder, less feminine. Lacey effortlessly radiated an intensity, with her eyes and with her body language, that Moira simply couldn't match. It was easy to see why Lacey was the movie star and Moira was the stunt double. She was Lacey McClure at half the wattage.

Steve wondered if Moira would be more attractive if she didn't try so hard to look like Lacey, which only invited comparisons. But being the lesser Lacey was Moira's profession and, if she wasn't careful, it would also be her downfall. He was there to remind her of that.

"You've taken being a stunt double to a whole new level," he said. "You don't just stand in for Lacey McClure in movies, but in real life, too."

"I don't get it," she said.

"I'm talking about being an accessory to murder," Steve said. "I'm talking about helping her fabricate an alibi so she could shoot Cleve Kershaw and Amy Butler."

"Huh?" she asked, acting confused. Her acting made Lacey McClure look like Meryl Streep.

Steve held up a video tape. "We know this is you having sex with Titus Carville, not Lacey McClure."

"I didn't know having sex with a guy was a crime," Moira smirked.

"It is if you're doing it to help someone commit murder," Steve said.

"I'm, like, totally lost," Moira replied. "So I hooked up with a guy in a motel. All we killed was an hour and a few calories."

"We know you were in the adjoining room that Titus rented. We know you slipped in and had sex with him after Lacey left," Steve said. "You knew there was a private eye outside with a camcorder. So you positioned yourself with your back to the camera to be sure he'd see the tattoo on your back, but not your face. You wanted him to mistake you for Lacey."

"I positioned myself that way because I like it," she said. "Sure, I've got a scorpion tattoo because I want people to mistake me for Lacey. That's what I do for a living. I get people to think I'm her. But I had no idea some pervert was outside the window filming us."

"So you were just there having a romantic rendezvous with Titus Carville," Steve said.

"Yeah."

"Lacey's boyfriend."

"He's not her boyfriend," Moira said. "He's mine."

"That's not what he told us," Steve said. "He said Lacey was his true love. So you can see why I am bit confused."

"So am I," Moira said. "I suggest you ask him again."

"I'd like to," Steve said. "But he's dead."

Moira's whole body stiffened and she blinked twice, as if trying to clear her vision. Again, not a very convincing perfonnance.

"What happened?" she stammered.

"It looks like suicide," Steve said. "But as you know better than anybody, looks can be deceiving."

"I'm tired of this," Moira said. "I want to leave now."

"You want to go? There's an easy way to walk out this door," Steve said. "Tell us everything that happened. Testify against Lacey."

Moira gave him a cold look. "I have nothing to testify about."

"Lacey murdered two people and you helped her do it by trying to create an airtight alibi for her," Steve said. "Tell us how she planned it and I'll get the prosecutor to cut you a deal. Who knows, maybe you'll even get immunity."

"I told you, Titus and I were lovers," Moira said. "The two of us hooking up at the motel had nothing to do with any killings."

"So why was Lacey there?" Steve said. "And why did she drive off in your car, then come back and leave in hers again?"

"She didn't go anyplace."

"We have surveillance footage from the gas station across the street," Steve said. "We know that you arrived in a rented Ford Taurus. Ten minutes after Lacey showed up, kissed Titus, and went into the room, the car you rented was driven out of the lot. Forty minutes later it came back, and a few minutes after that, Lacey came out of the motel room and drove out again in her Mustang. She was followed out by Titus in his pickup truck and then you in the Taurus."