Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense (21 page)

"Yeah," Steve said, "I am."

"The answer is no," Roland said, shifting his gaze to Mark. "That would make me more of a monster than my father ever was."

"Do you buy it?" Steve asked his father as they emerged from the crowded elevator and walked across the hotel lobby, which was crowded with people seeking refuge from the storm outside. There wasn't even standing room in the bar.

"He's persuasive," Mark said. "But I don't believe he's forgiven me for failing to exonerate his father and for participating in the cover-up. I'm not sure I forgive myself."

There were a dozen yellow CAUTION: SLIPPERY SURFACE cones, featuring a drawing of a stick figure losing its footing, positioned every few feet throughout the marble lobby like markers for a slalom course.

For a moment, Mark longed for his roller skates so he could give it a try. Thinking about that reminded him of the horrified look on Dr. Whittington's face the first time he saw Mark skate past him down the hospital corridor.

"It sounds to me like you did the right thing at the time," Steve said.

Mark shook his head in disagreement. "I was young, inexperienced, and lacked the confidence I have today. Now I would never let the police pressure me into hiding the truth, no matter how ugly and embarrassing it might be. It's better to let the truth out and deal with whatever trouble is going to come. The cover-up only makes things far worse, as we are discovering today."

"You had no way of knowing something like this would happen."

"I knew Constance Whittington and her son would have to live with the consequences," Mark said. "Who knows how the disgrace affected them, and what it has driven Roland to do."

"You think he murdered Brooke Haslett?"

"I don't know yet," Mark said, "but I'm troubled by the coincidence that he's here at all right now and that he works for a pharmaceutical company."

"Which you figure would give him access to succinyl whatever.

"Motive, means, and opportunity," Mark said. "He has them all."

"I know somebody else who as all those same charming qualities," Steve said.

"Who?"

"Drake Arnold," Steve said. "Chet's son."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Pacific View Motel on Sunset Boulevard didn't have a view of the Pacific. Its fourteen rooms overlooked a Chevron gas station, an alley, and the motel's cracked asphalt parking lot. The only incentives the motel had to offer its guests were free twenty-four-hour satellite TV porn, a coupon for two dollars off a pizza delivery from Domino's, and a bar of soap in the bathroom.

Drake Arnold seemed perfectly relaxed in his surroundings, sprawled out on the bed, his back against the headboard, a bag of Cheetos in his lap and a six-pack of beer on the nightstand beside him. He wore two days' worth of stubble, a loud Wal-Mart Hawaiian shirt, and a wrinkled pair of ten-dollar cargo pants. His eyes were on an X-rated movie that played silently on the TV, which was mounted on the wall behind Mark and Steve. The storm disturbed the satellite reception, creating streaks of digitization across the picture.

"You're looking at a genuine playboy, Dad," Steve said. "This man is irresistible to women."

Mark glanced at Drake, who was grinning stupidly at Steve's description of him, his eyes never leaving the TV screen.

"I find that hard to believe," Mark said.

"Believe it, Doc. The babes can't get enough of me," Drake said, shoving a handful of Cheetos into his mouth. "All they want is a slice of the big pie."

"That's the crux of his defense against the three women who accused him of spiking their drinks with roofies, dragging them to a motel room, and raping them," Steve said. "Drake is out on bail pending trial."

"I don't need to drug women to sleep with me, Detective," Drake said. "I exude masculinity."

"I can smell it from here," Mark said.

Drake chuckled. "Women are drawn to me like moths to the flame."

"Which usually kills the moths," Steve said.

Drake shrugged. "Maybe I picked the wrong metaphor. Fact is, when it comes to me, women can't help them selves."

"That much I believe," Mark said. "Rohypnol impairs judgment, enhances euphoria, and causes short-term memory loss."

"You want to turn up the sound on the TV?" Drake gestured to Mark. "The remote is broken and this is the best part."

"I'd rather hear about your father," Mark said. For the first time since they entered the room, Mark got Drake's undivided attention.

"What the hell for?" Drake said.

"There's been a murder," Steve said. "We think it may have something to do with activities your father was involved with before his death."

Drake snorted. "You mean like screwing nurses?"

"You knew he was having affairs?" Mark asked.

"My mom told me, said she figured it out after the twister. A tornado in LA, who'd a thunk it?" He snorted again and finished his beer, crumpling the can in his hand and tossing the empty across the room. The can bounced off the rim of the garbage pail and clattered to the floor among the other crumpled empties. "She read in the papers how they found his body not far from a couple of people trapped in a home bomb shelter. It rang this big old bell in her head. She found out the house belonged to my dad's boss, a doc who was getting nurses to whore for him. The doc had a great idea, if you ask me. Nothing sexier than a woman in a nurse's uniform"

"So your mom assumed you dad was in the valley having sex with one of Dr. Whittington's nurses," Mark said. "Did you believe her?"

"Have you ever met my mother?"

"Yes," Mark said, "I have."

"Then you know why my dad would pay to have sex with someone else." Drake reached for another beer. "Mom says God smote him for it with a tornado. She found Jesus after that."

"Makes me wonder what God might do to you," Steve said.

"Look around," Drake said. "This is it."

"Like father, like son?" Steve asked.

They were in the car, driving back home to Malibu, stuck in the darkness and the downpour. Traffic was crawling on Sunset Boulevard, the intersections flooded with water, the stoplights out of order. It was going to be a long, slow drive.

"Chet Arnold was drugging women and killing them," Mark said. "Now his son is drugging and raping them. You think it's in the genes?"

"You tell me," Steve said. "Your father was a cop. You're a consultant to the police. I'm wearing a badge."

"It's the old nature versus nurture debate," Mark said. "Is it in the genes or is it how you were raised? I grew up around police officers. You grew up seeing me actively involved with homicide investigations. But Chet was killed while his son was still in diapers."

"You have to admit the parallels are creepy," Steve said.

"They certainly are," Mark said. "Forty-odd years ago I was a young doctor investigating a homicide, one that never would have come to light if not for Ginny Haslett being rescued from the LA River. Now Ginny's daughter is dead and my son is investigating the murder. Maybe that's exactly the picture the killer wants us to see."

"You can look at the big picture. I'll look at Chet," Steve said. "I see a guy who gets off drugging women and doing whatever he wants to them while they are powerless. He gets off on the control. Maybe he found that controlling whether they lived or died was the ultimate kick."

"It's possible," Mark said. "But what's he got against me?"

"You nailed his father for murder," Steve said.

"Until I told you last night, nobody knew that except me, Harry Trumble, his commanding officer, and the chief of police. No one is still alive but me. So how did Drake Arnold find out?"

"Stranger things have happened," Steve said. "But after what you just said, I may know why whoever killed Brooke Haslett is tormenting you."

"Why's that?"

"Because you're the only one left."

It took Mark and Steve two hours to make what ordinarily would have been a thirty-minute drive back home. While Mark prepared dinner, Steve brought in the dry-erase board from the garage and began making a chart of the investigation in the living room.

He taped crime scene photos and pictures from the 1962 investigation onto the board, drawing lines with different colored markers to delineate the connections between each person and each place. When he was done, he put up photos from the current investigation, adding a line from Brooke Haslett to Mark Sloan, from Mark Sloan to Ginny Haslett, from Ginny Haslett to Sally Pruitt. Along the edge of the board, he attached photos of the various items collected on the beach at Point Dume. And finally, he posted the police mug shot of Drake Arnold and a company photo of Roland Whittington and drew a line from each man to the picture of his dead father.

By putting everything he had up on the board, Steve hoped to get a clear overall view of the case and glean a better idea of where he stood. What he saw instead was a drawing of a multicolored ball of twine with some photographs taped to it.

Mark put a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs down on the kitchen table and came out to look at Steve's board.

He saw the past staring back at him in the faces of the dead—Alistair Whittington, Chet Arnold, Harry Trumble, and all those young women.

In the upper right-hand corner of the board Steve had written CLUES, underlined the word, and left space below it to fill in. So far, that space was empty.

"Does anything pop out at you?" Steve asked as he heaped spaghetti onto his plate.

"You've got nothing written in the clues column."

"That's because we don't have any yet," Steve said.

"What about all those things you found on the beach at Point Dume?"

"You mean besides the ring that helped us identify Brooke Haslett?" Steve asked.

"That doesn't count," Mark said. "We both know the killer left that for us."

"It could have slipped off her finger or out of his pocket," Steve said. "If he wanted us to ID her, why not leave the ring on her hand?"

"He didn't want to make it too easy," Mark said. "Just hard enough so we had to work at it a little bit, so we were committed to the search."

Steve sighed. "I wish he'd left more for us intentionally, because the rest of the stuff isn't leading anywhere."

"What about the memory card we found in her stomach?"

"The lab guys tell me there isn't anything unique about it that would allow them to track it back to any single individual. There are millions of those memory cards manufactured and sold around the world."

"Can you get anything off the picture of the LA Times front page?" Mark said, his frustration obvious in his voice.

"It could have been downloaded from dozens of different Web sites using a computer at any Internet café or public library."

Mark sighed wearily. "So we're nowhere."

"I'm there so much," Steve said, "I'm thinking of buying some property and settling down."

Mark examined the board as he ate his dinner. He followed each line Steve had drawn. Unlike other cases and other boards he'd studied, each of these lines represented part of his life, times he'd experienced, people he'd known. He wondered if his personal connection was clouding his ability to see the facts clearly. Maybe he was wrong about his approach to solving the crime.

Maybe he wasn't the key to understanding why Brooke Haslett was murdered.

Maybe he was a handy distraction to throw the police, and himself, off the real motivation for the crime.

"How much do you know about Brooke Haslett?" Mark asked his son.

"Nothing beyond what her parents told us;" Steve said. "She was studying political science at Cal State Northridge, was well liked, and had no enemies that they knew of."

"Everything on that board is about me and the past," Mark said. "If someone was trying to totally distract us from looking too closely at her, they've succeeded."

"I'll start digging into Brooke Haslett's life first thing in the morning, though I still think we're on the right course."

"While you're at it, you might see if Carter Sweeney has had any visitors up at Pelican Bay lately."

"I wasn't going to say anything, but that occurred to me, too. I'll look into it," Steve said. "What about the other people on our list from your deep dark past?"

Steve reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to his father. Two names and ad dresses were written on the paper: Alice Blevins and Dr. Bart Spicer.

"I think you're missing a name," Mark said. "Joanna Pate," Steve said. "I haven't been able to track her down, but I haven't tried very hard yet. She may have moved away, changed her name, or got married. Do you still want to talk to Blevins and Spicer, or should I?"

"I'll talk to them tomorrow," Mark said without any enthusiasm. He felt like a windup doll, simply going down the path the killer had set him on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

For a woman in her seventies, Alice Blevins looked like she could wrestle a bear, so the St. Bernard was no match for her at all. She hefted the huge animal up onto the exam table and expertly inserted a thermometer into his rectum.

"The great thing about animals is they don't complain," she said to Mark.

"He doesn't look too happy to me," Mark said.

"They're also loyal, obedient, and uncomplicated," she said. "Sadly, the same thing can't be said for most human beings."

Beyond her gray hair and some wrinkles on her face, Alice hardly showed her age. He saw it in her eyes. She had a gaze like an ugly scar, hinting at battles fought and wounds sustained.

"Is that why you gave up nursing?" Mark asked.

"One of them," Alice pulled out the thermometer, examined the reading, then tossed it in a biohazard bucket. "Hold Hubert for me."

Mark put his arms around the big slobbering dog while Alice examined the animal's ears.

"You left Community General after Dr. Whittington's suicide," Mark said. "Was his death one of the reasons?"

"Between the patients and the doctors, there was just too much heartbreak to deal with every day," she said. "I should have left nursing after Korea."