Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense (24 page)

"I'm sure Joanna Lenhoff was chosen for the same reason," Amanda said. "She knew the victims in 1962, and she knew you."

"Ginny Haslett knew me, but whoever is behind this didn't kill her. He murdered her daughter instead," Mark said. "Brooke was the same age as the other victims. Why not kill Joanna's daughter instead?"

"How do we know he hasn't?" Amanda asked nervously.

"Her two children are safe," Steve said. "There are officers at her daughter's home in San Diego and campus police have located her son at Boston University. We'll be protecting them both until the killer is caught."

"With the exception of the syringe full of succinylcholine that the killer brought with him, it appears he used whatever was at hand to commit the murder," Mark said. "It suggests this murder wasn't as well thought out. It's missing the details that would give it symbolic significance beyond the murder itself."

"What about the note on the door?" Steve said. "It's a direct reminder of Whittington's staged suicide."

"The note was written here, on the home computer, almost as an afterthought. Why didn't he have her sign it first, to really evoke the past?" Mark said. "I don't think the killer decided to kill Joanna until shortly before he did it. At the moment, it suggests to me that Joanna was murdered for a different reason than Brooke Haslett was."

"You don't think she was killed to tell you something?" Steve said.

"I think she was killed so she wouldn't," Mark said.

"So what was the point of cutting her open like this?" Amanda said.

"Pleasure," Mark said. "I think he enjoys it."

"Just like whoever killed those nurses in 1962," Steve said. "He got off on their terror, knowing they were paralyzed, powerless to save themselves from certain death."

"We know who killed those nurses," Mark said.

"Do we?" Steve took a deep breath and considered his words carefully. "Are you sure Chet Arnold was the right man?"

"He told me he killed the girls," Mark said.

"Yes," Steve said, "but which ones?"

Mark stared at his son, the full significance of what he was saying sinking in.

"What if Harry Trumble was right?" Steve said. "What if there were two different killers? One who killed Sally Pruitt and Tess Vigland, and one who killed the others?"

"Someone who was never caught." Mark took a seat, his legs feeling weak.

"That would certainly explain why the murders of Sally Pruitt and Tess Vigland were so different from the others," Amanda said. "And how Brooke Haslett's murderer knew enough about the details behind the 'accidental' deaths of those other nursing students to suggest they were killed with succinylcholine."

"He knew it because he killed them, too," Steve said, looking now at his father.

It all made such perfect sense. In his youth and arrogance, Mark had missed the obvious clues.

He didn't solve all the murders in 1962. He solved two of them.

And by participating in the police cover-up, he saw to it that Whittington was blamed for all the killings, the case was closed, and nobody ever looked at the "accidental" deaths of those nurses again. Mark made it possible for a murderer to go free without any fear of ever being pursued or punished for his crimes.

Mark knew with heart-wrenching clarity that Steve's theory was correct. There were two killers. One was Chet Arnold and the other got away.

"It all makes sense, except for one thing," Mark said. "Why wait forty-three years to kill again?"

"Maybe he hasn't," Amanda said. "Maybe he just waited until now to tell you about it."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When Steve came home at nine p.m., he found his father in front of the dry-erase board, studying the pictures, the clues, and relationships between them all.

"Come to any fresh conclusions?" Steve asked.

"Just that you're right," Mark said. "There were two killers. And if he's been killing all these years, we may never be able to prove it. We can't go back and double-check every accidental death of a young woman for the last four decades."

Mark thought back to Harry Trumble's last case, the capture of the Clown Killer. One reason he'd eluded capture for so long was because he'd gone overseas, exporting his gruesome brand of murder. What if this killer had done the same thing?

"He might even have been away for most of that time," Mark said.

"Or put away," Steve said. "He could have been in prison, serving a sentence for another crime. I'm checking recently paroled or released violent offenders who were originally incarcerated at least twenty or thirty years ago."

"It's a long shot," Mark said.

"Right now, I'm willing to explore any possibilities," Steve said.

Mark heated up some leftover spaghetti for Steve, who briefed his father on what he'd learned over the last few hours. Officers canvassed the neighborhood, but nobody reported seeing anything suspicious at Lenhoff's house during the last twenty-four hours—not that they would have noticed anyway. Most of the neighbors who drove past her house said their attention was on their driving, concentrating on not having an accident as they made the turn through the flooded curve in the street. There were no signs of forced entry in the house, leading Steve to believe the killer simply knocked on the front door and either was invited inside or pushed his way in. No fingerprints, tire tracks, shoe impressions, or other useful forensic evidence had been uncovered yet, and Steve was still waiting on Amanda's autopsy report.

Mark reciprocated by telling Steve everything he'd gleaned from his interviews with Alice Blevins and Bart Spicer. He also shared his theory that Whittington must have had a home bomb shelter of his own and that it might have been where the blackmail films were hidden.

"If that footage still exists," Steve said, "it could be the break we've been looking for."

"What makes you think the killer is on the film? And even if he is, how would we know? There are probably dozens of men on the film, many of whom it might be impossible to identify now."

"I'll worry about that once I've seen the film." Steve got up from the table and made two calls. The first was to a junior detective in homicide, asking him to wake up someone in the building department and find the original blueprints of Whittington's home and any improvements that might have been made to the property. His next call was to a judge to get the process moving on a search warrant so they could check out the house first thing in the morning.

When Steve hung up, he found Mark in front of the board again, looking at it as if it was the first time he'd seen it, tracing the lines between people, events, and objects with his finger.

Alistair Whittington was in deep financial trouble. To get himself out of it, and perhaps to satisfy his own prurient interests, he coerced nursing school students and applicants to work for him as hookers. The women met the men they would later seduce by first offering their services as babysitters.

Later, the women would bring the men to Whittington's house in the valley, where he secretly filmed their encounters as leverage for blackmail.

Chet Arnold was one of those men, and rather than pay blackmail, he killed the women he slept with, framed Whittington for the crime, and then murdered Whittington, making it look like suicide.

Mark saw through it and the rest was history.

Until now.

Brooke Haslett was murdered in the same way as Chet's victims. She was also the daughter of a woman Mark had treated forty-three years ago.

Joanna Lenhoff was one of Whittington's nursing students and call girls. Now she was dead, too.

There were three people on the board with personal ties to those past events who Mark thought might be involved in some way in the murders of Brooke and Joanna.

Bart Spicer readily admitted to paying for sex and being blackmailed by Whittington. But was he really as easygoing about it as he seemed? He was a doctor then and was still one now, which meant he had access to succinylcholine and knew how to administer it. If Bart did kill the two women, what was his motive? And what did he have against Mark?

Roland Whittington had the clearest motive for wanting to see Mark suffer: vengeance for making Roland and his mother endure the disgrace of Alistair Whittington's financial misdeeds, sexual improprieties, and violent murders. Mark could have eased some of their burden by revealing publicly that Dr. Whittington wasn't a killer. Instead, Mark had helped cover up the truth.

Now Roland was back in Los Angeles during the same week his father was killed forty-three years ago.

It was a disturbing coincidence.

And as a lawyer for a drug company, Roland could probably get his hands on succinylcholine without any trouble. Was Roland back in town to mark the anniversary of his family's shame by murdering two women with ties to his past?

Roland wasn't the only son with reasons to hate Mark Sloan.

Drake Arnold was a lot like his father, Dr. Chet Arnold. He enjoyed drugging women and taking advantage of them while they were helpless. Was it a genetic predisposition? Was it a disturbing coincidence? Or was it something more?

It couldn't be, Mark thought. Drake hadn't been old enough at the time of his father's death to know anything about Chet's psychological quirks or the murders he committed.

Drake would certainly loathe Mark if he knew the truth about his father, Chet, and the circumstances of his bizarre death on that stormy February day.

But he didn't. He couldn't.

Except for Mark Sloan, all the people who knew the secrets about Chet Arnold were dead.

What if Drake did know? What if his father had kept some sort of diary or left behind some other evidence of his crimes that Drake had found? What if Drake was intentionally following in his father's footsteps?

"You have any theories on the identity of the killer," Steve asked, "and why he's decided to come out of hiding now?"

"I wish I did," Mark said.

"Want to hear my theory?"

Mark turned to his son. "You have one?"

"I'm just looking at where all the clues point, and it's right here." Steve tapped the picture of Alice Blevins.

"Alice?" Mark frowned. "What possible reason would she have had to murder all those young women?"

"We know she was in love with Whittington and that he was running that call girl ring. Maybe Alice resented the women for trying to entice him away. Or maybe he was sleeping with them and she hated them for that. Or maybe she was sleeping with them and being blackmailed."

Mark gave Steve a disbelieving look. Steve threw up his hands.

"I don't know her motive yet, Dad. But look at the facts. She knew all the victims. She knew all the men. She knew Ginny Haslett, she was there with you when you set her dislocated shoulder. And Alice had access to succinylcholine then and she has access now."

"Based on that logic," Mark said, "you might as well consider me a suspect, too."

"If you weren't my father, maybe I would," Steve said. "But I've got to say, if you are the killer, it's a twist I didn't see coming."

"It would also be the end of your career as a homicide detective," Mark said.

"I've always known you'd destroy it eventually," Steve said. "That's why I bought Barbeque Bob's restaurant with Jesse."

Mark stared at Alice's picture, mentally drawing lines from her to all the suspects and all the relevant clues. He didn't see it before, but he did now. Steve was right—the facts fit.

"Assuming it's her," Mark said, "why is she killing now?"

"I don't know," Steve said. "But she's definitely got a good reason for hating you."

"So why doesn't she kill me instead of Brooke Haslett and Joanna Lenhoff?"

There was a knock at the door. Steve got up to answer it. He peered through the peephole and opened the door to welcome Amanda, who strode in, a file under her arm.

"My autopsy report won't be ready until tomorrow, but I figured you'd like to hear my preliminary findings right away," Amanda said. "So I thought I might as well stop by on my way home."

"You live in the opposite direction," Mark said.

"I bought a new car," Amanda said. "I'm looking for excuses to drive."

"You bought that Chrysler 300 six months ago," Steve said.

"Do you want to hear what I found or do you want to interrogate me some more?" Amanda asked. "I'm doing you a favor, remember?"

"Sorry," Mark and Steve said in unison.

"I found succinic acid in Joanna Lenhoff's system, confirming our suspicion that, she was immobilized with succinylcholine," Amanda said. "It's a toss-up at the moment whether she died of asphyxiation from being unable to breathe due to the paralysis or bled to death from her wounds."

"Did you find anything unusual?" Steve said.

"There were strands of hair in her wounds." Amanda removed several photos from the file in her hand. They were magnified images of the hairs. "I also found the hairs on her clothing, so I think they might have come from physical contact with her killer."

"What kind of hair are we looking at?" Steve asked, studying the photos, which meant nothing to him.

"Cat hair and processed human hair," Amanda said.

"What is processed hair?" Mark asked.

"It's straight, black, coarse hair donated by Indians, Indonesians, and Chinese for use in human-hair wigs," Amanda said. "The hair is bleached, and stripped of its outside cuticle layer and dyed a new color. A wig will eventually begin to shed through repeated combing and brushing. This particular wig was dyed light brown."

"Did Joanna have a cat or own any wigs?" Mark asked Steve.

"She didn't have a cat and I didn't find any wigs in the house," Steve said. "But I imagine a veterinarian spends a lot of time around cats and might even own a few wigs. I'm putting Alice Blevins under surveillance."

Steve got up and went to the phone, leaving Amanda alone with Mark and the case board.

"Alice Blevins? The head nurse?" Amanda asked. Mark nodded. "You don't look convinced."

"She's a strong suspect based on all the connections between her and the victims, but there's no actual evidence and way too many unanswered questions."