Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense (25 page)

"Answer them and you'll find the evidence," Amanda said. "A wise man once told me that."

"You make it sound so easy."

"For you, it usually is," she said. "You're the wise man who gave me that advice."

"I thought I had all the answers and the evidence forty-three years ago," Mark said, gesturing to the board. "Look where that has got us now."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Driving up the driveway to Whittington's house was like moving back through time for Dr. Mark Sloan. The house was exactly as he remembered it, only without the suicide note taped to the front door. There was even a blazing red 1962 Cadillac convertible parked out front, its enormous fins and chrome grill gleaming in the early morning sun shine. The dark clouds had fled during the night, leaving the sky a clear, brilliant blue.

The drapes on the home's distinctive picture windows were wide open to take in the light, revealing the brightly colored vintage furnishings inside. While the decor wasn't identical to what the Whittingtons had owned, it was eerily similar.

Steve emerged from their car first and motioned to the driver of the crime lab van behind them to stay put for the moment. Mark joined his son and they strode side by side to the front door just as it was opened by a bald man in a tank top and shorts. He was in his early thirties, his nose, lips, chin, eyebrows, and ears pierced with jewelry, his bare arms covered in elaborate tattoos of skeletons, naked women, and religious iconography.

"Eldon Wurzel?" Steve asked, flashing his badge.

"Phlegm," the man said.

"Excuse me?" Steve said.

"I'm Phlegm," he said. "Lead singer of Spew. Don't you recognize me?"

"Afraid not," Steve said. "I'm Lieutenant Steve Sloan, LAPD, and this is Dr. Mark Sloan, a consultant to the department. Are you Eldon Wurzel, owner of this house?"

"Nobody's called me Eldon since grade school," Phlegm said. "But yeah, I own this house. I've been trying to get it declared a historical landmark ever since I bought it."

"Because Phlegm lives here?" Mark said.

"Because it's one of the few residential homes designed by architect Randolph Felich that hasn't been demolished for a subdivision or denigrated by 'remodeling'," Phlegm said. "I've stripped all the 'improvements' and restored it to pristine condition. It's the same now as the day it was built."

"Does that include the bomb shelter?" Steve asked, handing Phlegm the search warrant.

"What bomb shelter?" Phlegm said, reading the warrant.

"That answers one question." Steve waved to the driver of the crime lab van to come over, then turned his attention back to Phlegm. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but your home was the scene of an investigation in 1962."

"Yeah, I know. Some doctor guy. It's one of the reasons this house hasn't been ruined. Nobody stays in it for very long. They get creeped out, scare themselves into thinking it's haunted. Realtors always have a hard time unloading it. I stole this house." Phlegm smiled at Steve. "That's a figure of speech, of course."

"Thanks for clearing that up," Steve said, glancing back at the van, where the crime lab technician was taking out a machine that looked like the offspring of a romance between a metal detector and a lawn mower. "The thing is, Mr. Phlegm, we think there might be evidence in the house that's relevant to two murders committed this week."

"You think I killed somebody?" Phlegm said, his voice rising in pitch.

"No," Steve said. "We don't think you or anybody currently living in this house had anything to do with those crimes. But we believe crucial evidence was left here over forty years ago, and that warrant gives us the authority to look for it."

"The floors have been redone, the walls painted, and the cupboards and counters have been cleaned a couple times since then," Phlegm said, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "Where do you think this evidence is?"

"That's what he's going to tell us." Steve cocked his head towards the crime lab technician, a portly man in a loose-fitting jumpsuit who was approaching them now, lugging his equipment. "We're going to survey your home and property with ground-penetrating radar."

The technician slowly pushed the two-wheeled GPR unit over the floor as if he were mowing the carpet, watching the readout on what looked like a laptop computer mounted on the long arm of the device.

As the technician explained to Mark, the GPR units were typically used by surveyors, archaeologists, and engineers to detect pipelines, electric lines, structural components, storage tanks, tunnels, and buried artifacts, among other things.

The crime lab used it to find graves.

After two hours, the technician found a "sizeable void" under the carpeted floor of the walk-in closet in Phlegm's recording studio, a soundproof room filled with elaborate audio and computer equipment that he used for cutting demos. The closet stored hundreds of CDs, diskettes, and tapes of all shapes and sizes, neatly arranged on shelves designed especially for that purpose.

Steve glanced at Phlegm and motioned to the floor. "We're going to have to pull this carpet up."

"Be my guest," Phlegm said.

The technician set aside the GPR device, crouched on the closet floor, and pulled at the edge of the carpet in one of the corners. Then he stepped back, lifting the carpet and the padding as he went, exposing the concrete underneath.

There was a section of concrete that was a different shade and texture than the rest. It was square-shaped and had clearly been added after the rest of the cement was poured.

Steve and Mark shared a look and the same thought. Constance Whittington must have had the entrance to the bomb shelter sealed and concreted over before she put the house on the market.

"Get the jackhammer," Steve said to the technician.

After an hour of arguing over the phone with Phlegm's irate lawyer, and repeated assurances from Steve that the city would pay for all damages, Phlegm reluctantly cleared his recordings from the closet and the technician brought in his jackhammer.

It took only a few minutes to break apart the thin layer of concrete that had been spread over the steel door, then another half hour to clear away the rubble and pry the exposed steel door open with a crowbar.

"Cool," Phlegm said, his fury forgotten in his excitement over the new discovery. "I always wanted a secret room. Whatever you find down there, besides dead bodies and your evidence, is mine, right?"

"It's your house," Steve said.

He took out a flashlight and aimed it into the opening, revealing a steep concrete stairwell that descended into blackness. The air was dank, the walls damp. Spiders and other insects scurried away from the light.

"Dad, come with me," Steve said. "You two stay up here in case we run into trouble down there."

Steve descended carefully into the bunker, pointing his flashlight at another heavy door at the bottom of the steps. When he reached the door, he pulled it open, the hinges grinding with a loud metallic squeal that echoed off the thick concrete walls.

He swept his light over the pitch-dark room, glanced up at his dad behind him, and stepped inside. Mark followed Steve in, noticing that the door could be locked and bolted from the inside, a grim reminder of the paranoia and fear of the time.

The interior of the bomb shelter itself was about the size of the living room of the apartment Mark had shared with Katherine and Steve.

Katherine was right, he thought. We could have lived in one of these and parked our Imperial out front.

The shelter was separated into three distinct living spaces—a kitchen, a living room, and sleeping quarters. There was a Geiger counter, shovels, picks, an emergency medical kit, and a fire extinguisher on the wall beside the door.

The kitchen was dominated by a generator, a hundred-gallon water tank, a makeshift sink, and shelves stacked with dishes, cooking utensils, canned goods and bags of rice, sugar, and flour. Other shelves held a radio, flashlights, and batteries.

The bedroom area consisted of four bunk beds bolted to the wall and separated by curtains, and several storage trunks, presumably for clothes and bedding. There was also a curtained area in the corner that concealed the toilet, waste buckets, and personal-hygiene supplies.

The living room was the largest section of the shelter. It was furnished with an area rug, a couch, several card tables, and a recliner. A small bookcase was stocked with a twelve-volume encyclopedia, books, and board games. But the most interesting item was set up within arm's reach of the recliner—an 8 mm movie projector, aimed at a blank space on the wall.

"Homey, isn't it?" Steve said.

"Whittington was ahead of his time," Mark said. "This wasn't a bomb shelter, it was his personal home theater."

"That's what it's gonna be when I'm done with it," Phlegm said, entering the bunker behind them and holding another flashlight. "My secret hideaway, a place to watch all my porn I don't want my wife to know about."

"Oddly enough, that's exactly what this room was used for," Steve said, starting to open the storage trunks in the sleeping quarters. "We're looking for the late owner's collection."

Mark scanned the room for other possible hiding places and could find only one. He opened the cast-iron stove. It smelled of vinegar and was stuffed with small, round film canisters.

"Heat up the popcorn," Mark said. "It's movie night."

Phlegm was so excited about the discovery of a hidden bomb shelter in his home that he told Steve not to worry about LAPD reimbursing him for the damages. Before they left, a grateful Phlegm thrust autographed copies of Spew's latest CD into their hands.

Steve dropped Mark off at Community General and took the film back to the crime lab to see what could be salvaged and viewed.

There wasn't anything Mark could do for the time being on the investigation, so he concentrated on the hospital administrative work he'd neglected. He returned calls and sorted through his paperwork, which is how he came across a memo from Community General's chief of staff.

The memo informed Mark that Dr. Dan Marlowe's medical privileges at the hospital were being suspended immediately, pending review by the Physician Well Being Committee and the Medical Staff Executive Committee the following week. In consideration of Mark's long relationship with Dr. Marlowe, they were giving him the option of informing the doctor of their decision himself.

Mark called the chief of staff, thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and said he would tell Dr. Marlowe today about the hospital's decision.

He wasn't looking forward to the meeting with Dan, but it certainly was no worse, and no more difficult to deliver, than the other news he'd had to give his old friend in recent weeks.

On his way to Dan's office, Mark ran into Dr. Jesse Travis in the elevator. Jesse grilled Mark, who apologized for not having the time or the energy to answer his questions.

"I'm feeling entirely left out of this investigation," Jesse said.

"That's because you have been," Mark replied.

"See?" Jesse said. "I'm a natural detective. I'm acutely aware of what's going on around me."

"Someone has to keep the hospital running while I'm ignoring my professional responsibilities."

"Since you put it that way," Jesse said, "I feel honored."

Mark stepped out of the elevator, leaving Jesse behind, and went to Dan's office, where he was told by his nurse that the cardiologist had called in sick and was staying at home today. He thought about calling Dan, but decided that what he had to say was best communicated face-to- face.

The only problem was that Mark had no way to get to Dan's house. Since Steve had dropped him off at Community General, Mark didn't have a car of his own, so he headed down to the pathology lab to see if Amanda would let him borrow hers.

"Perfect timing," she said as Mark entered. "I just finished my autopsy report on Joanna Lenhoff."

"Discover anything new?"

"Do you really expect me to tell you before I tell the detective in charge of the investigation?"

"I'm here first," Mark said with a grin.

"All my preliminary findings were confirmed," Amanda said. "She was injected with succinylcholine, which should have prevented her from breathing and killed her within a few minutes. But she didn't die right away."

Nearly all the people who are given the drug, Mark knew, don't die immediately. They are injected with the neuromuscular paralytic as part of general anesthesia. They don't die because they have some help breathing.

So did Joanna.

"The killer kept her alive while he cut her," Mark said, "For how long?"

"Five or ten minutes," Amanda said.

"My God," Mark muttered. The killings were clearly more about the perverse pleasure the murderer derived from his victims' suffering than about tormenting Mark Sloan. That was simply an added benefit.

"He's going to kill again," Amanda said. "He likes it too much to stop."

Mark agreed. It made him wonder once again why the killer was stepping so boldly out of the shadows now after forty-three years in hiding.

"You better let Steve know right away," Mark said, turning to leave when he suddenly remembered his reason for coming down to see Amanda in the first place. "Speaking of Steve, he dropped me off here, leaving me stranded."

"And you want to borrow my car," Amanda said.

"Do you mind?" Mark said. "Dan called in sick and I need to tell him the chief of staff's decision."

"He's no fool, Mark. He's probably figured it out for himself by now," Amanda said. "It may be why he stayed home."

"Even so, it's something I should tell him myself," Mark said. "I owe him that much."

"I don't envy you." Amanda opened her desk drawer, took out her keys, and tossed them to Mark.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Crime lab technician Moses Depp approached the cardboard box of 8 mm film canisters as if they were infected with the Ebola virus. The barrel-chested African American man wore safety goggles, a respirator with organic vapor cartridges, and protective gloves as he examined the film recovered from the bomb shelter.