Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (9 page)

"Lieutenant Sloan may not agree," Penmore said.

"He'll be too busy working on the task force I'm creating to deal exclusively with closing these cases," Burnside said. "Get him in here right away."

"What makes you think the chief will go along with forming this task force?" Penmore said.

"Because it will look a hell of a lot worse for him if he doesn't," Burnside said.

"I'd see to that," Dickens said. "And Masters knows it."

"I'm counting on you, Owen," Burnside said. "My future and yours depend on you now."

"I won't let either of us down," Penmore said and hurriedly left the room.

Rhea Dickens looked at Burnside and smiled in admiration. "You're good. I have a feeling that becoming mayor of Los Angeles may just be a stepping-stone to much bigger things for you."

He smiled back confidently, but he knew there was still a wild card that could disrupt everything.

Dr. Mark Sloan.

What was the doctor's motivation in all this? Was it to remove Chief Masters from the political playing field? Or was there a booby trap hidden amidst the files that Mark Sloan knew would blow up in Burnside's face?

It was a risk he'd have to take.

That uncertainty was another good reason to put Steve Sloan on the task force. In fact, maybe Detective Sloan should lead it.

The more Burnside thought about it, the more he liked the idea, if for no other reason than the clear message it would send to Mark Sloan.

If I go down, Doc, your son goes with me.

After meeting with Stryker's lawyer, Steve dropped Mark off at Community General, promising to call if there were any new developments. They both knew that Steve couldn't act on the information in the files until he got the go-ahead from his captain or the DA's office. And there was nothing left for Mark to do on his own.

So Steve decided to go back to his office and concentrate on backtracking Stryker's movements, using his phone records and credit-card statements as a guide.

Stryker's various home, office, and mobile phone records were waiting for Steve on his desk, but the PI's credit-card and bank statements hadn't come in yet.

The first thing Steve noticed was that Stryker hadn't made any calls from any of his phones in the last four days. That in itself was an ominous sign.

He started sorting through the list of calls Stryker had made over the past several weeks. Most of them meant nothing to him at first glance.

Except one.

It was the number for arranging visits with death row inmates at San Quentin.

Steve was reaching out to call San Quentin himself when the phone rang.

The call was from Chief Masters, ordering him to drop everything and report to the district attorney immediately.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mark waited for Steve that night at Barbeque Bob's, the small restaurant his son and Dr. Jesse Travis bought a few years earlier from the original owner. The purchase price included the recipes to Bob's three sauces and his secret smoking techniques, all of which his cattle-driving ancestors supposedly honed on the trail in the 1880s and brought west with them when they finally settled in California. From the looks of the restaurant, most of tables and benches and even the sawdust on the floor dated from the same period.

Steve and Jesse like to call Barbeque Bob's a throwback to simpler times, which was their catchall excuse for not spending any money to fix the place up. While the decor may not have earned them a spread in
Architectural Digest
, the barbecue they served was widely regarded as among the best in Southern California.

Their pecan pie wasn't bad either, especially when paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream the size of a softball.

Mark was enjoying a slice of that pie when Steve showed up forty minutes late and slid into the booth across from him.

"Sorry I'm late," Steve said, setting a file down on the table between them. "I had a long meeting with the district attorney about Stryker's files."

"So did he give you the green light to start acting on Stryker's evidence?"

"I've been temporarily reassigned by the chief to an interagency task force created to oversee all the investigations springing from Stryker's files," Steve said without enthusiasm. "It's being run out of the DA's office by me and Owen Penmore, Burnside's pet prosecutor."

"That's a good thing," Mark said. "Isn't it?"

"I'm not working the Stryker homicide anymore," Steve said.

"Who is?"

"Nobody," Steve said.

"But you can't just ignore a murder," Mark said.

"You can when there isn't a body."

Mark pushed his hall-eaten pie away. He'd lost his appetite. Steve pulled the plate in front of him and picked up where his father left off. His appetite, apparently, was unaffected.

"The DA says whatever happened to Stryker will emerge in the course of our other investigations," Steve said.

"You buy that?"

"No," Steve said. "But I'll question everyone we arrest about Stryker's disappearance and the torching of his office."

"Question them with what." Mark asked. "The DA isn't allowing you to gather any facts in the case."

"You don't work for the DA," Steve said. "No one is stopping you from gathering facts."

"The only leads I have came from those files," Mark said. "Without them, I have nothing to go on."

Steve slid the file on the table to his father. "Now you do. These are Stryker's phone records. Two weeks ago, he called San Quentin and arranged a visit with a prisoner on death row."

"Who?"

"Bert Yankton," Steve said. "I arrested him a few years back for hacking his business partner up and burying the body parts in the desert."

"The partner must have done something pretty awful to make Yankton so angry," Mark said.

"He slept with Yankton's wile and embezzled ten million dollars from the company's clients," Steve said.

"That would do it, Mark said. "How does Stryker fit in?"

"He was the PI Yankton hired to follow his wife," Steve said.

"Stryker definitely had a talent for catching people with their pants down," Mark said. "What did Stryker want to talk to Yankton about."

"I don't know, but I'm sure you'll tell me alter your visit with him." Steve gathered the crumbs of the pie and the last drops of melted ice cream into his spoon and ate them with a satisfied smile. "You have an appointment on death row tomorrow afternoon."

Not too long ago, Mark had read about an experiment conducted by the
Los Angeles
Times
. The paper sent two reporters to San Francisco to have afternoon tea at the St. Francis Hotel. Both reporters left LA at the same time. One flew, the other made the four-hundred-mile drive.

The two reporters arrived at the St. Francis at the same time.

The experiment only confirmed what Mark and most of his fellow Los Angelenos already suspected.

Between the traffic to the airport, the long lines, and the one-hour advance check-in, the forty-five-minute flight to San Francisco had ballooned to three hours. Add to that the time to rent a car or take a cab and make the traffic-clogged drive into the city, and it became a five- to six-hour journey.

All of which explained why Mark Sloan got himself up at five a.m. the next morning. He wanted to get an early start on the drive to San Francisco and avoid getting mired in the morning rush-hour traffic that otherwise would add hours to his trip.

The shortest route to the Bay Area was to take Interstate 5 north up the western edge of California's San Joaquin Valley. The downside was that it was also the dullest stretch of highway in the state, offering neither scenic charm nor interesting places to visit. The interstate was flat and straight, the journey measured in the miles between the next turnoff to a few gas stations and fast-food franchises cut into the farmland.

Whenever Mark stopped over the years at one of those nameless patches of blight, he wondered where the people came from who worked there. Where did they live? He knew there must be small farming towns somewhere nearby, but beyond the occasional road sign on the highway announcing their existence, there was no sign of them in the distance or on either side of the road.

The four hundred miles of mind-numbing, wide-open road were good for a few things—excessive speeding, quiet contemplation, and listening to music. Mark indulged in all three of those pursuits during the five-and-a-half-hour trip. Mostly he thought about what Steve had told him the night before about Bert Yankton's case.

Yankton and his partner, Jimmy Cale, were successful financial managers for actors, directors, agents, and scores of Hollywood executives. Vivian Yankton was an aspiring actress herself. Her husband began to suspect she was cheating on him and hired Stryker to follow her.

When Yankton saw the pictures of Vivian and Cale together, he flew into a violent rage. He smashed up his house with a sledgehammer, ordered his terrified wife to move out, then supposedly drove down to their weekend home in La Quinta to cool off.

Vivian called her lover, Cale, who arranged to meet her in Marina del Rey at an apartment he kept for his illicit assignations. When Cale didn't show, Vivian got worried and went to his home, which she found trashed inside and covered with blood. Police later confirmed that the blood was Cale's.

Steve's theory was that Yankton stopped at Cale's on his way to La Quinta, killed his partner, and threw the body in the trunk of his car.

Once down in La Quinta, Yankton dismembered his partner and scattered the body parts somewhere in the vast desert near his home. When Yankton returned to Los Angeles on Monday morning, Steve arrested him. The crime lab found bloodstains and one of Cale's toes in the trunk of Yankton's car.

Riverside County sheriff's deputies found Cale's blood on an ax in the garage of Yankton's La Quinta retreat but never discovered where Yankton had disposed of the rest of Cale's body parts.

The affair wasn't Yankton's only motive for murder. Cale had misappropriated millions of dollars in funds belonging to their management clients, funneling the money to secret off shore accounts, most of which were never found.

The jury deliberated for one day before returning a guilty verdict against Yankton and even less than that to decide that he should die for his crime.

Of all the wealthy enclaves of Mann County, this was by far the most exclusive neighborhood of all. It was nestled on a pristine shore, windswept by the sea breeze and offering magnificent views of beautiful San Francisco Bay.

But despite the enviable location, the six thousand residents of this guard-gated community were desperate to leave. All they had to do was get past the iron bars, the high walls, the electric fences, the razor wire, and the armed guards.

The builders of San Quentin couldn't have picked a more picturesque spot for California's first prison, erected in 1852 by the boatload of convicts who would be its inhabitants. Now real estate developers were salivating over the prospect that the budget-strapped state government might demolish the decaying, overcrowded prison rather than invest the $300 million necessary to renovate it.

For now, however, the prison remained home to the largest death row population in the nation. Among those 644 men condemned to execution was Bert Yankton, who sat across from Mark Sloan at a table in a private, windowless visitor's room.

Looking at Yankton now, his arms and legs chained, his sunken face sickly pale, Mark was reminded that someone had once said that the leading cause of death on California's death row was old age. Yankton looked deflated, as if all the air, blood, and spirit had slowly leaked from his body.

"I usually get my physicals at the infirmary, not the visitor's room," Yankton said, sounding as fatigued as he looked. "Or do you have something else in mind for me, Doc?"

"Nobody told you why I wanted to see you?" Mark said.

"My secretary isn't very good about passing along my messages," Yankton replied. "I'm thinking about firing her."

"I don't work for the Department of Corrections or for any law enforcement agency, though you've met my son," Mark said. "He's the one who arrested you."

"I didn't know that Lieutenant Sloan was so concerned about my health."

"Actually, it's Nick Stryker's health we're concerned about."

Yankton straightened up in his chair, his eyes showing the first spark of life since Mark arrived.

"What do you mean." Yankton said. "What's happened to him?"

"He's dead," Mark said.

Yankton sagged. This surprised Mark because he didn't think it was possible for Yankton to sag any more than he al ready had after five years on death row.

"He was murdered," Yankton said. "And I know who killed him."

"Who?"

"The same person who killed Jimmy Cale," Yankton said.

"How could you do that from in here?" Mark said.

"I'm innocent," Yankton said. "I hired Nick Stryker to prove it."

"Shouldn't you have done that five years ago?"

"I hired a detective agency that's got offices all over the world. They didn't do anything for me during the trial or afterwards besides suck up cash. I finally realized they were going to string me along until my money ran out," Yankton said, "so I fired them and went back to Stryker. He's not the best, but at least he's a man I can trust."

Mark thought about telling Yankton exactly how trustworthy Stryker really was, but decided the kind thing to do was keep it to himself. He chose his next words carefully.

"What made you think you could trust him more than anybody else?"

"When I wanted someone to follow my wife, I chose Stryker over a big agency because I didn't want everybody in Hollywood to know my business," Yankton said. "Those agencies work with all the big law firms, all the studios, and many of my clients. Stryker was a small-time guy. I figured he'd be more discreet."

Big mistake, Mark thought

"How did you get in touch with Stryker?"

"Through my new lawyer," Yankton said. "Pamela Swann."