Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense (22 page)

"What about Dr. Whittington?" Mark asked. "Should you have left him after Korea, too?"

Alice frowned, tore a piece of cotton off a large roll, then picked up a bottle and squirted some liquid into the dog's ear. Before the dog could shake his head, she shoved the cotton into his ear and worked it around inside, cleaning it. Hubert cocked his head towards her and panted happily.

"Everybody who went to Korea died there, even the ones who came back. We just resembled the people who left," Alice said. "Nobody came back. We were either the walking dead or the reborn."

Alice took the dirty cotton from the dog's ear. The cotton was black. She tossed it in the trash, tore off fresh cotton from the roll, squirted some liquid in the dog's other ear, and started cleaning again.

"You can't imagine the misery of serving in a M.A.S.H. unit," she said. "There's a never-ending stream of young boys, butchered and bloody, screaming in agony and despair. There is no happiness, no victory, just constant dread and fear. There is so little humanity or pleasure that when you can find some you take it, regardless of the consequences. Alistair and I saved each other. It wasn't an affair. It was survival."

"And when you came back?" Mark said. "What was it then?"

"We forged a bond separate and distinct from his marriage. There were no lies or illusions between us. I knew he was married. He never stopped loving his wife and I didn't expect him to," Alice said. "But the man Constance married was not the man who came back to her. It was thanks to me that she had a husband left to love at all. We had a shared experience that nobody but us could ever understand. We kept each other's soul alive when the darkness threatened to become too much."

"So when you learned about his suicide, you left the hospital and nursing because you blamed yourself for his death."

"No, I blamed you." She threw the dirty cotton into the trash and looked for a syringe. "Alistair didn't kill himself and he didn't kill those girls. It was all a lie to discredit him."

"Why did you blame me for it?"

"Because I know you went to his house to deliver those papers the day he died. You found his body and yet your name wasn't mentioned once in the papers," Alice said. "That told me volumes."

"You think I staged what happened to him?" Mark asked.

She filled the syringe with an antibiotic and gave the dog a shot. If the dog felt it, he didn't show it. "I don't know what you did, Mark. Or why you did it. I just knew Alistair."

"Not as well as you think. You didn't know he was using nurses as prostitutes or filming their sexual en counters."

She shook her head and dumped the used syringe into the biohazard bucket. "No. Alistair would never have done that. It's a lie."

"He even filmed the two of you together," Mark said. "He had a camera hidden in that house in Northridge."

"More lies," she said.

"Constance saw him watching it and that's why she left the country with her son," Mark said. "Roland told me himself yesterday."

She opened Hubert's mouth and examined his teeth and gums. "What difference does any of it make now?"

"Someone killed a young woman the same way those nursing students were murdered forty years ago," Mark said. "Whoever did it made sure I found her body."

"You think I did that, a woman who has spent her life easing the pain of others, man and beast."

"You were having an affair with Dr. Whittington and you blame me for covering up the murder of the man you loved."

Alice looked up at him. "You admit that it was murder?"

"Dr. Whittington was a panderer and a blackmailer, and he secretly filmed everything that went on in the bedroom of that house in Northridge, but he didn't kill himself or anybody else."

"Do you know who killed him?" she asked.

"Chet Arnold," Mark said.

"You knew that and you didn't bother clearing Alistair's good name."

"What I knew and what I could prove were two different things," Mark said.

"And that makes it all right?" Alice said, shaking her head in disgust. "He's a better man dead than you are right now."

"Is that what you were trying to prove by killing Brooke Haslett?"

She lifted the dog and set him on the floor. "If I did, you think I'd tell you?"

"So tell me you didn't," Mark said.

"Would that give you some peace, Mark?" she asked, attaching a leash to the dog's collar. "The way I see it, that's the last thing you deserve."

She led the dog past Mark and out the door.

Dr. Bart Spicer was the one person besides Dan Marlowe whom Mark had kept track of over the years. It was easy because Bart was always in the news, at least among people who were kept informed by the
Globe
, the
Star
, the
National
Enquirer
, and
People
magazine. Mark wasn't a regular reader of those publications, but issues were often left behind in the hospital waiting rooms and it was hard not to read them, the same way he found it impossible to ignore a bowl of potato chips.

Bart got the most media attention just before the major awards shows, like the Oscars and the Emmys, when Hollywood's royalty inevitably rushed into his Beverly Hills clinic for appearance tune-ups, earning him the nicknames Dr. Frankenstar and Doc Botox. He didn't mind the nicknames. He even had business cards made up with the nicknames in italics under his own. Every talent booker on every talk show on television or radio had one of those cards in the Rolodex.

The plastic surgeon was also a frequent guest on makeover reality shows, where he helped transform earthy, sour-faced Midwesterners into smiling, synthetic West Coasters.

But now Bart was getting some very unwelcome publicity, thanks to a massive malpractice lawsuit filed by an aging action star whose plastic surgery obsession made his famous face resemble something carved out of Styrofoam.

The star's attorneys accused Bart of encouraging their client's unhealthy obsession with plastic surgery, advising him to have multiple unnecessary and potentially hazardous procedures. To bolster their claims of the plastic surgeon's unethical behavior, the lawyers leaked documents showing that Bart received six-figure payoffs and lavish tropical vacations from the manufacturers of his Botox and collagen injections to "talk up at every opportunity" the benefits of the controversial procedures to his patients, his colleagues, and the media.

Although Mark was familiar with Bart's activities, the two men hadn't actually seen each other face-to-face in ten years, and even then it was only briefly, in a chance meeting at a trendy Malibu restaurant.

So Bart Spicer was suitably stunned when he walked into one of his exam rooms to find Mark Sloan waiting for him. He gave Mark a hug. Mark was smiling and he assumed that Bart was trying to smile as well, but the plastic surgeon's face was as stiff as plastic and about as lifelike. He looked like a man wearing a mask of Bart Spicer's face.

"It's been way, way, too long, old friend," Bart said, "though I can see why you're here."

"You can?" Mark asked.

"You can't outrun Mother Nature or Father Time, but you can certainly fool the senile old coots," Bart said. "Just look at me!"

Bart opened his arms wide, pointing his outstretched thumbs at his shiny, stiff face, his capped teeth, his colored contacts, and his full head of implanted hair.

"You look incredibly well preserved," Mark said, though he thought "pickled" or "embalmed" might have described Bart Spicer's appearance more accurately.

"Don't worry, my friend, we'll lift those sagging cheeks, smooth out those wrinkles, and remove those bags from under your eyes," Bart said. "Have you thought about coloring your hair?"

"No," Mark said, stealing a glance at himself in the mirror. He'd had no idea he looked that bad.

"Think about it," Bart said. "You might also consider shaving a little off that nose of yours. I'll throw it in at no charge as a favor to a friend."

Mark didn't think his cheeks were sagging, or that he had bags under his eyes. He knew there were a few wrinkles, but he thought they gave him character.

"Actually, I didn't come here for plastic surgery," Mark said.

"Botox isn't plastic surgery, Mark. It's an injection of youth."

"It's a deadly neurotoxin derived from the same bacterium that causes botulism."

"That, too." Bart said. "Isn't it poetic that something so potentially deadly can also create such beauty and happiness?"

"I need to talk to you about what happened during this same week in 1962."

"Dr. Whittington blew his brains out," Bart said. "And half the doctors at the hospital cheered."

"Probably because they were the ones he was blackmailing," Mark said. "Whittington was running a prostitution ring made up of nursing school students and applicants. Many of the girls offered their babysitting services as a way to meet the doctors they later enticed with sex. Whittington filmed their trysts with a hidden camera and blackmailed the men involved."

"Yeah, I know," Bart said. "I was one of those guys."

The admission took Mark completely by surprise. Of course, Mark had gone there intending to ask Bart if he was involved with any of the nursing students, but he'd figured it would take some finesse to get a truthful answer. The last thing he'd expected was an unprompted confession. It was so unexpected, Mark wondered if perhaps he'd misunderstood Bart's comment.

"I know you hired nursing students as babysitters," Mark said. "Are you saying you also paid them for sex?"

"Absolutely! They'd babysit your kids and have sex with you. Who could ask for more?" Bart said. "The girls were smart, beautiful, and conscientious about their health. The whole thing was convenient, safe, and inexpensive, too."

"Until they blackmailed you," Mark said.

Bart waved the notion away. "It didn't bother me any."

"You didn't mind paying extortion?" Mark asked in disbelief.

"I didn't pay anything," Bart said. "I told them to show my wife the film. She'd enjoy it."

"Mary
knew
you were sleeping with call girls?"

"We had an open marriage," Bart said. "We still do. We even did threesomes, though we're a little old for that activity now. I thought you knew all about that."

"Why would I?"

"Because Mary invited Katherine to join us once, but she politely declined," Bart said. "Didn't your wife ever tell you?"

Mark shook his head. "I would remember something like that."

"I thought you two told each other everything. Mary and I certainly do. Complete honesty. That's been one of the secrets to the success of our marriage. That and Viagra, of course."

Bart winked and gave Mark a nudge.

"Did you ever see one of the films?" Mark asked.

"I wanted to. All they ever showed me was a tiny film strip that I held up to the light," Bart said. "It was definitely me on the film. I remember thinking that I looked pretty good."

"Who asked you for the money? Was it Whittington?"

"Hell no, it came from one of the girls," Bart said. "I didn't know Whittington was even involved until I saw that bomb shelter brochure at his party. I recognized the house out in the valley. I'm sure a lot of guys in that room did. Whittington must have been in pretty desperate trouble to let that happen. I'm not surprised he holed up in his bunker and ate his gun."

Mark was about to correct him, to remind him that Whittington had died in his office, when he had a revelation.

If Alistair Whittington really believed a nuclear attack was imminent, and that everybody needed a home bomb shelter wouldn't he have had one himself?

And Whittington wouldn't have told anybody about it, either, hiding its existence so neighbors and friends wouldn't try to take refuge with him in a nuclear attack.

But he wouldn't have left his bomb shelter, the "Family Room of tomorrow," sitting empty and unused until the atomic apocalypse. No, he would have found a way to enjoy the extra square footage.

A bomb shelter would have been the perfect place for Whittington to watch his movies... and hide them from others.

His pulse quickened with excitement. He knew he was onto something good, and without Bart's offhand remark it might never have occurred to him.

Why didn't he think of it forty years ago?

Mark would call Steve later and ask him to pull the original blueprints for Whittington's home from county records and copies of any permits for additional construction. But he doubted Whittington had followed the rules. If he'd built a shelter, he wouldn't have wanted anyone to know it, including the clerks downtown.

If the bomb shelter still existed, and if they found the film, and if the footage hadn't deteriorated after all these years, there was no guarantee it would lead them to the motivation behind the murder of Brooke Haslett.

So far, all they'd managed to do was reinforce information that Mark already knew. Somehow they needed to break new ground in the investigation.

"You still there, Mark?" Bart asked. "You look lost."

"In a way I am. Do you remember which one of the nursing students made the blackmail demand?"

"I don't remember. It could have been any of them—not that it mattered to me," Bart said. "I didn't hold a grudge."

"You mean you continued to pay them for sex? Even after they tried to blackmail you?"

"Why not? It was a sweet deal for me and my wife. We both got a nice night out away from the kids and I got some action, too. The babysitting service, and the sex, stopped the day Whittington killed himself. It took us months to find another good babysitter."

"Were you sleeping with Joanna Pate?"

"Of course," Bart said. "Weren't you?"

"She made a pass at me," Mark said, "but I declined the offer."

"Your loss," Bart said with sigh. "She was a gymnast in the sack."

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"Why? Are you interested in making up for your mistake? I've got a few spare Viagra pills I can give you if you need them."

Mark wasn't amused. "There was a murder this week that mimicked the killings of those young nursing students. That's why I'm here. I'm talking to everybody I knew then, hoping someone can lead me to the killer."